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.
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.
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