Goodbye cruel (publishing) world?

Periodically one's writing is a source of despair.  Viewed rationally this despair is no more real than one's feelings of delight in one's work.  The work is as it is, nothing has changed (apart from a little light proof reading) but one's whole attitude to it is changed.

Last week, the publishing marketing guy took on the task of giving me a one-line pitch for The Malice of Fairies.  We exchanged a couple of emails, and then he was delayed by his other work...so I felt low again.  I think it's really hard to do a one-line pitch for the book.  I've had this discussion with T and I know the theory behind the one line pitch, but getting the feel of TMoF into a sentence is crazy.   The marketing man agrees with his ex-wife that TMoF is a title that will not work... A lot of people like it - they say it's intriguing, they sense an opposition between Malice and Fairies... they say they'd pick it up... I'd be sorry to lose the title, the suggested alternatives  "The Stolen Child" "The Road through the Woods" "Hashtag Lost Girl" don't really do it for me...I'm usually good at titles...

Another point is that the number of agents who have turned me down in the UK is still only about 20 (including the madwoman mentioned in the previous post, who seemed to think it was horror).  I haven't submitted it anywhere recently, I am waiting for the guru to pronounce.  Yet somehow I feel as if I have no where left to turn.  But there are about 79 agents who might be interested.  And things can happen, but over all, since the edit in the spring I have felt increasingly unwilling to write, unwilling to engage, unwilling to believe that anything will happen.    Apparently visualising (ie daydreaming) about your future success is not as helpful to creating actual success as having sensible expectations based on previous experiences.   A lot of my previous experiences are so long ago I cannot quite tell what I should expect on the basis of them.   I got sacked from several jobs - but I can't see how that fits with the future success of this or any other novel.

So, at present, I am seriously considering giving up writing.  Been there, done it, failed.  I have devoted the best part of 7.5 years to this - to say nothing of all the abortive novels and ideas pursued since my late teens. I have nothing to show for it financially.  People admire my tenacity - but I am increasingly wondering if I am barking up the wrong tree.  The emotions I feel are similar to those I felt when I abandoned the idea of becoming a priest.  An intense disbelief that something I had pursued so ardently and with considerable work and energy and felt was the right thing to pursue, turned out to have no future.  Something that meant everything for me had to be abandoned, at that time, when I prayed about what I should do next, I heard the word Writing.  It took a while to get up to speed, but finally I did, and now it doesn't seem to be the answer either.   T has been very staunch and saying "the darkest hour is before the dawn" etc., but I really feel this must be one of the longest hours before dawn ever...I am glad I don't do Tarot cards any more - I suspect I would endlessly be getting that card, I think it's the 3 of Swords, which means "the false down, disappointment, despair".  That seems to sum it up when I feel at my worst just now.

So the plan is this: inundate agents with the book, then give up and self-publish.  The only question I have is whether to go to the Festival of Writing and see if I can hook an agent there.  It's £400, which would make TMoF the costliest book ever.   Will I ever get back all that money?  

A small shift in the pack ice?

This week I have had two interesting things happening, well three actually.  I received an email from an agent who I had sent a query to nearly 8 weeks ago, asking to read my "chapters" because she said she was "trying to avoid the genre" but "couldn't resist" my offer.   How lovely.  The chapters went back by return click.

On the same day an Irish publisher sent me a rather confusing email.  It said that they were full up currently but I could send it again next year, when I'd continued to edit it.  This wasn't a guarantee of publication, only that I could go through the process again.     I asked them to clarify what they meant, so they sent me a longer email, suggesting I try the Mercier Press, which don't take unagented books, but I could send them a query letter.

Meanwhile I had been negotiating with an editor about giving the book a critical read and giving me some notes... but she wanted £450 - paid in advance, so I will wait and see what the agent says and then perhaps get it done.  I don't know, I don't really want the book edited again, which is what she was suggesting..I just want a bit of advice.  Why does it have to be so expesive?

This is a dream I had about a fortnight before this post, after being offered an edit (unwanted), of my novel for £500.

I dreamed that the house (not this house, another one) was full of young men, all involved in publishing, chiefly editors.  They were here because they wanted to edit my book, and I was trying to placate them with booze.  They were drinking the house dry and getting increasingly drunk, one of them offered to edit the book for £150 for me.  I was pleased with that, but then became preoccupied with the state of the house, which was full of empty bottles and glasses and mess.  I think I invited one of the editors to go and have dinner out or something, so that we could continue our discussions.  They were all young and fairly attractive, one of them a bit like that French actor I clocked for Connor, Sylvain Dieudonne...

Clearly I was not happy about the rampaging greed of editors, shocked at how much they had drunk and how I had no wine left in the cellar.   Clearly I did not want to spend my hard earned cash on an otiose re-edit.

The Bachelor Sparrow

About three weeks ago I noticed a cock sparrow singing loudly from the second from top branch of the dead elder tree, that sprouts spectrally from the heart of a flower laden lilac bush.  I wondered why it was singing - perhaps it was a warning, had it spotted the cat, Bernard, tracking the erratic paths of imaginary frogs through the flower bed?  I knew a blackbird's warning cry, but this song didn't sound like a warning.  It was robust, repetitive but unremarkable.   After a while, the bird flew away.

The next time I was in the garden, there was a cock sparrow, clinging to the elder tree, ringing out a message.  I mentioned it to my husband, he said "how can you be sure it's the same one?"   I felt sure it was, it had the same MO as crime writers say.   As if alarmed by our scrutiny, it launched itself in a bowl shaped flightpath onto our neighbour's roof, where it began its song again, now within earshot of the sparrow nest under her dormer window.  Was it a joyful father sparrow, announcing the good news to all and sundry, and taking a break from the work of nest building and feeding..

After a few days I decided that this must be a courtship song, destined to draw a mate.  And then my heart sank. It was already May, the birds had coupled up weeks ago, nests had been built, eggs laid.  This lone sparrow was persisting in trying to attract a female, but honestly, what were his chances?  Perhaps if Bernard caught some hapless foraging cock sparrow, there might be a female in want of a mate.  This spare bird would be the answer to a matron's prayers, if he could be encouraged to feed her orphaned chicks, and forego his own immediate right to father a brood until this batch were fledged.  Did that happen?  Do sparrows make good step-fathers?

Three weeks later, the sparrow still sits in the elder tree and sings, then shifts to a nearby roof and sings again.  Occasionally I hear his song from the top of the apple tree.  Sometimes I fancy I hear a faint answering twitter, but it's probably another bird, a blue tit, touring the aphid patches on the honeysuckle for a good feed.

Why doesn't he leave and try another garden?  There are no spare females here, but I know there are sparrows at the end of the road, within easy flying distance.   Perhaps he does, perhaps he sings out his brand message in many trees in this rectangle of back gardens.  Perhaps he will never find a female.  Of course he doesn't know that.  It can't occur to him that all the females locally are mated and nested and brooding.  And if he could know that, what would he do about it?  Now at least he is fulfilling his biological destiny, to sing for a mate.

This creature has moved me, I am praying for him.  I am praying that he will, against all the odds, find a mate and pass on his persistent, determined genes, to breed a race of resolute young sparrows who are able to stand up to what fate holds for them.   But I fear for him.  How long do sparrows live?  Will he survive the winter?  I am terrified to think that he will freeze or starve over the winter and not be able to know the triumph of successful mating.  To die alone, on some bare twig, or perhaps in the shelter of the camellia or one of the other evergreens, this seems a desperate fate to me.  Surely he will survive to next spring, when his mature and masculine trills will thrill susceptible female sparrows from all the local gardens.  He will mate with a youthful, healthy female and bring forth a brood of unsurpassable beauty and strength.

When I first thought about this sparrow, I was thinking about his loneliness, and projecting human emotions onto him.  While I was writing this, I realised that his desperate attempts to sing out and attract attention moved me because they were similar to my own attempts to sing out and attract attention for my book.  I do not want to die before it finds a home, I want it to go out and flourish in the world, although I would prefer not to have to go through another winter before that happens.
  

Two book blurbs, both alike in dignity?

I have just read an article on how to write book blurbs.   I had one in place for The Malice of Fairies, this one:

Deirdre is a rationalist and a sceptic, but a visit to West Cork and a romantic encounter with the mysteriously irresistible Connor begin to challenge her long-held belief system. The whole structure of her life begins to totter when her young daughter Elsie disappears, abducted by the sióga, a powerful clan hidebound by thousands of years of tradition. There’s nothing fey about these fairies and Elsie’s abduction catalyses the clan’s disenchantment with Aurelia, their ageing chieftain. Aurelia’s sons, Connor and the ambitious, sexually-conflicted Gawen, are rivals to succeed her, threatening further dissension within the sióga. Elsie is in danger of becoming collateral damage, while Deirdre risks losing not just her precious daughter, but everything that really matters to her. 

After reading the article, I wrote a new one: 

Deirdre’s lost in the woods when she meets the irresistible Connor. A sceptical academic, Deirdre falls for this uncannily charming man, and is drawn back to Ireland to visit him, taking her nine year old daughter Elsie.  With Elsie’s sudden disappearance, Deirdre receives a series of devastating blows which steadily force her to see the world differently, until finally, Connor’s mother, the manipulative Aurelia, offers her a terrifying bargain.

Aurelia’s people, the sióga, are bound by centuries of tradition which Connor and his sexually-ambiguous brother Gawen, are both longing to change.  Rivals to succeed Aurelia, their struggle for dominance seems remote from Deirdre’s familiar, professional world, but everything she loves depends on its outcome.

Which do you think works best?   Comments below please - or on the FB page The Malice of Fairies,

Tara Moore "Fade to Dead"

This is my friend Tara's latest novel, published by Urbane Publications, and available from all good online stores and crime festivals.   Just as Trotskyites in the 1970s were urged to "make the turn to industry" (i.e. go and become agitators in the workplace, rather than intellectualise in universities), writers are being incessantly urged to write crime. Tara has had a long career writing commercial women's novels, with a hint of the dark in the last ones, until her agent urged her to turn to crime.  As I don't read much crime (or much of anything  at the moment) it would be a long slog to become a crime writer, and the results would not be as satisfying as this is. I particularly liked the main character, DI Jess Wildacre, although apparently some reviewers do not.  I found it funny in places, and very grim in others.  You feel all the frustrations that the police team feel with this serial killer and it seems impossible to see how they can find any evidence.  It's a relief when they do.  I didn't see the twist coming either.  What more can I say?  Read it yourselves.

The Point of Blogging

I started this blog about 5? years ago, because I was told by other writers that we all had to have a blog, a calling card, something to impress the industry with our "platform".  I don't know if anyone else gets a chance to see the stats on this blog, but if this was my only "platform" it would be a pretty wobbly and isolated one.

The intention of this blog was to provide an insight into the process of working, for anyone who might be interested.   Occasionally I put up a sample of the work.  These samples always have far more readership than anything else on here, quite reasonably, since they are properly written chapters, and not just me whinging on about how hard things are.

The blog falls between any number of stools - I could do something with it, like become a mega reviewer, or I could indulge in a bit of literary gossip, to attract more customers.  But this is not about the numbers, it's more of an aide memoire for me, how I felt, how I responded, what I did.  It's not personal, anyone can read it really.  I don't think I've been rude to anyone; a bit cheeky about agents maybe, but when you've had the rejection letters I've had, you can't help that.  

I continue to do it not to gratify the loyal readership (sorry) but because I am interested in the process and progress of the works, the ideas I've had, the ideas I've discarded, and so on.   However, I will try and write more about other writers I know and what they are doing.  This is called backscratching (and ruder things), but is essential to "get on".

Avanti!

I was rather shocked today to realise that it was about 6 months since I'd done any serious writing.   Of course I have been involved in the editing and re-writing of The Malice of Fairies and I have written considerable chunks of The Devil's Chapel, The Dog-Walkers Book Club etc. but despite applying my bottom firmly to my chair and typing so much that I seem to have RSI or something in my elbow, no new work is forthcoming.  What I mean by serious writing is what I do when I'm writing a book, 2-3,000 words a day, and a smart answer for anyone who is foolish enough to interrupt me (cups of tea and coffee delivered silently are acceptable).  Everything in the last few months seems to be a bit scattergun.

This is due partly to the slow progress of TMoF - although if agents were getting back and asking for changes and so on, I wouldn't have much time for other writing.  It is also due to an underlying "is there any point?" feeling.  Yes, I would enjoy writing them, but I am not so sybaritic that I can simply lounge in the pleasure of writing for its own sake.  It needs to earn me some money.

At present, I have gone beyond sorrow, into a place of incredulity.  However, yesterday I discoverd a US website called Query Tracker, which lists about 1400 agents, so clearly I have barely scratched the surface.  The trouble is dealing with each individually crafted submission, as well as my paltry attempts at a social media presence.    I feel happy because I'm getting on top of it, but at the same time, the unplanted summer plants, the ironing, the state of the spare room, dealing with our listings on the AirBnB website, the redecoration of Ned's room etc. all are neglected as I sit here, close cousin to Mrs Filth-Packet, in my dressing gown, awaiting the CALL!


The other projects I have begun, or am continuing, include: screenplay treatment of TMoF, because everyone says it would be a great filum entirely, a sarcastic but helpful book about approaching agents, working title "Other Agents May Feel Differently", the Beastly Betty idea, a thorough overhaul of The Romantic Feminist since apparently there is still interest in the 70's.  But I am not working consistently on one thing.  I cannot tell if this is good.  I like to focus on one thing, but maybe it's more "creative" to diversify one's interests.  Maybe I should just go with the flow and do a bit here, and a bit there.   I am reading more, and doing odd bits of research for The Devil's Chapel.  In fact I've just had an idea for another element of it...I haven't "lost it".   This is just a different phase.  Maybe it's a better one, multi-tasking could be more stimulating.  Now, what am I giving the guests for dinner tomorrow night....?