Growth of the new Idea

Since I last wrote I have had TAG rejected by an agent, pas grand chose, but the reason "we are finding publishers do not want WW1 novels, however beautifully written" was rather devastating.   It does not mean I will give up submitting - I plan to do several submissions tomorrow. However, it does leave rather a large question mark over the validity of writing another novel in the sequence just now.

I understand that publishers have long lead-in times and might have got their lists in line already.   However, this may be an opportunity to refine my submissions strategy... stressing that it is set in 1916 etc.  so perhaps getting them to focus on the whole centenary - presumably the commemorations will be lasting 4 years, not just this year.

 This week has been "blighted" by teaching - which has been remarkably exhausting.  I am hoping I will be more in the swing of it by next week and will start to fit writing into the schedule.

The new idea was run by the rejecting agent (she was given a choice of 2 ideas and asked which she thought might be most commercial)... I ran the plot past a 3 friends, 2 writers and a reader and it's getting a broad thumbs up, so, providing I can do a bit of research and really get on with it, I think it may be a goer.  Do I dare write about dim chavish blokes?  Why not?  I've met a few... and perhaps sharpening up and becoming a bit more responsible is part of his story... I'm actually quite excited about it - even if the plot hasn't quite worked.

A comercial idea

I've been praying for a commercial idea - a Harold Fry type thing - a novel of redemption and humour... but better.  Now I think I've had one - but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to carry it off... however, I've started writing it, having sworn that I was going to stick to writing Conscience this year.  The fact is though, if I can't find a market/agent for The Ash Grove I will wonder why the hell I'm writing Conscience and whether it's worth it.   One the other hand, GATD may be a bummer too - and I'll waste months writing something that I don't entirely believe in.

Last week I did nothing on Conscience - this week I am going to be mostly teaching.  We shall see how it all fits together.

Engagement

Occasionally an agent seems very much to want what you can offer, so your covering letter is a bit more personal, a little more enthusiastic than usual.  Of course this is totally wrong - people only want a professional letter.  So this afternoon I sent off a submission (3rd this week!) to a new agency - with two fairly young agents and a not very published client list.  My instinct was to leave them as a last resort - but somehow I thought one of them might have time for my ideas.  So I sent this letter which contained more warmth than was strictly professional.   And then I wondered why it all felt so odd.   It occurred to me that while I am feeling all warm and engaging - they won't even have looked at their inboxes - and they won't get to it for a couple of weeks, and by the time they respond, I will probably have forgotten that I even wrote to them.

New Agents
Carole Blake - the doyenne - writing about 15 years ago, says that "people were being made redundant by publishing houses and setting up as agents the following week".  Well why not?  A year or so ago I was only aware of the agents one can find in the directory - and the on line directory - and many of them seemed to be hopeless for my purposes. Now, having begun to follow things on the internet more attentively I have found a whole new wellspring of agents - new ones are setting up all the time - and they all seem a great deal more receptive to the sort of thing I'm writing.

Is this a good thing? It could be that more people are writing YA and Commercial fiction - too much they say - but maybe more of it is getting published because there are so many agents for it... or that there are so many agents because there are so many writers out here in the howling darkness - trying to force the doors open.  I just hope when I get an agent it will be a good one... 

Sex, lies and book publishing

This is the title of an amusing book by Rupert Heath - about the trade.  It is fairly up to date and rather more useful perhaps than Carole Blake's book From Pitch to Publication.   I encountered it while "researching" agents, i.e. I had been given the names of two agents by Tara Moore who got them from Polly Courteney - who are allegedly molto in gamba and I sent The Ash Grove to one - and will probably write a letter to the other, since the agency doesn't actually accept unsolicited MSs apparently.   But we'll see.  More submissions next week, I think 2 isn't bad for the first working week of the year.

SL&BP advises you to do multiple submissions, but not to tell the agents you're doing them, whereas other agents have said they like to know if they are part of a multiple submission, and some agents (Standen) don't want to be part of a multiple submission.  Conville & Walsh tell you to do them.   Oh dear, it's all so confusing.

http://www.kitwhitfield.com/publisherdating.html has an amusing account of what not to say in covering letters... I think I've avoided most of them over the years.   But I rather hope lousy writers will continue to write lousy covering letters, so that those of us who can write a decent letter might get to the top of the pile sooner.

One of the lies I spotted in the book was this:  at an early stage he states that agents/editors always believe that talent will out and eventually all the good books in the world will get published.   However, he says there are lots of good unpublished works out there.  Later in the book he encourages writers to persist in the face of rejections.  Of course, we are always being encouraged to persist... but what of the lament I heard on R4 a week or so ago  "Just received another rejection from an agent - after 30 years, should I bother carrying on?"   Of course one doesn't know what that means really - in fact I got my first rejection letters well over 30 years ago.  And they paralysed me for a long while... then again, I am more or less inured to that now.  I don't like rejection letters of course, but I can cope with them.  I realise they aren't "personal" and represent all sorts of factors that are nothing to do with my book or my writing (although in part that's the issue).  However, I don't know whether that lament came from someone with a whole lot of novels under his/her belt - all of which were being constantly rejected - or someone who had not been writing full-time etc.

Persistence may be the biggest lie of all - if you are not writing what the market wants.  Literary fiction is safer in a sense - the writing might transcend the market.  But if one persists in writing simply to please oneself - I know I have a hack tendency - I definitely wrote TRF originally to please myself, I re-wrote it to please Judith Murray - and the market - but she still didn't like it enough - so.  Oh dear.  I will argue myself out of writing if I persist in this argument.  Actually I won't, because it's virtually the only thing I can do.

First result of the year...approaches to agents

A nice rejection is always to be preferred to a generic one - a personal touch or comment helps.  "I read it twice, before Christmas and again just now" is comforting... talk about the market makes one feel that in happier times one might have got through...  So TRF is now only with 2 agents - Wm Morris - which doesn't count, because they are just a giant slushpile who never acknowledge or reply... and Aitken Alexander - which I don't think counts either, since I think it has been eaten by a troll there. I sent it in July, then enquired in December - the reply to my enquiry was "send it to me and I'll get it back to you by the end of the week.... I duly did so - and never heard another thing... then "reception" got in touch advising me to re-submit it... I replied but "the troll" has run off with it - so what do you advise?" -  Nada.

Anyway, since this agent seemed agreeable, I thanked her and sent her TAG instead...

Looking back over this blog and its various agenty travails I wonder if this is just Me being inefficient and ineffectual - or are all English writers like this?  When I occasionally read US writers' blogs I am amazed by the bright-eyed efficiency they seem to apply to the task "I researched the agents and sent off my query letters".... I still don't really understand how you "research" agents - you look at their websites, you see which ones represent "quality women's fiction" or some such phrase - and then you see who their writers are - and if you haven't heard of any of them (150,000 titles published a year - so is it likely?) try and look at some of their books on Amazon - decide that none of the writers are anything like you - but have never managed to work out which writers are like me and then have to guess which writers might be similar enough for the agent to like you.   Is that how you research agents?  That's what I've been doing - and looking at Tweets from Literary Rejections to see who's up for submissions.

If of course, one knew which writer one was like - let's say, for the sake of argument, it was Hilary Mantel - it would be plain sailing, you would of course submit to her agent - and then she would reject you, and then what?   So perhaps it's as well not to follow that rule, but I feel I should make an assault on some of the more trad. agents - the scarey ones who run Julian Barnes and people like that.

The (Writing) Year begins

This is where the new writing year begins.   Conveniently for me, it is a new writing year, because although I am tinkering with The Ash Grove, essentially I have begun to research the second novel...probably to be called Conscience and I am now facing the grim necessity of examining the horrors of war and how they affected people.

For the last month or so I have felt a bit confused, but at the moment, although TRF is in the in-trays of a couple of agents, essentially I am going to concentrate all my submissions efforts on AG - since the time seems critical.  I saw JG at a party on NYE - before the drinking started.  She said "Do send it to me!" but I'm less and less sure that she'd be the right agent for me... so what to do?  Saw CA at another party - he is about to have his work produced by the new outlet, called Cumulus which a mutual friend is setting up.  I thought it had all happened very quickly, one minute it was half-written - the next it was about to be published.  Even an established non-fiction writer like CA must have gone through some sort of selection process I thought!

Sounds like I have a really juicy literary life - well, it does feel like that some times, but most of the agents/publishers/editors and writers I know are not in the same sort of line, and aren't really much help.  So I get gossip and commiseration, but none of the lovely successy bits - yet!

I expect it would be a hostage to fortune when I say that "this is the year" - did I feel like that last year?  But I do feel more positive than I expected to feel a few weeks ago.  I worry slightly that this feeling is only because a suspiciously accurate Indian astrologer told me I was going to be rich and influential between the ages of 57 and 63 and I turn 57 in February (and the planet Uranus will stop molesting the Pars Fortune in my birthchart around then too).  So who knows?  But there will be nothing without tremendous boxes of hard work.