What it's like when your manuscript is 'with' an agent ...
It won't get there. It will arrive all torn up with pages missing. I left a line out of the address. I addressed it to the wrong person. The counter person got the postage wrong and it will take three months to arrive. I shouldn't have sent it first class - it looks too eager.
Then the acknowledgement of receipt arrives
I should have taken a week to read it again. I shouldn't have sent it in the first place, because it doesn't match my pitch letter and they are going to think I don't know what I'm doing. It's too long. It's too short. I should have put back in the two chapters I took out. I should have taken out another 4,000 words.
The first Harry Potter book is reported to have been rejected by fourteen publishers
My central character is simply me, thinly disguised, and the agent's reader will laugh at me. My central character is unrealistic because she's not based on anybody real. My antagonists are made of cardboard. My antagonists are my family and friends and they will hate me. My dialogue is terrible. My central premise stinks.
Stephen King's novel Carrie was rejected thirty times before being published
It's definitely too long. Although I should have had the courage of my convictions and stuck to the original length, which was even longer. It's just like another book somebody told me about so they won't publish it. It's nothing like anything I've read recently so it's unmarketable. It's set in the wrong place. The ending is weak. The ending is histrionic. The ending sucks.
After 743 rejection slips, John Creasey went on to have over 500 mystery novels published
My opening chapter is horrible. My final chapter is feeble. The whole narrative sags in the middle. Nobody wants to read that kind of thing. I should have sent it out under my initials like JK Rowling. I shouldn't have sent it out at all.
Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingstone Seagull garnered over 140 rejections before publication
I want to die.
And then you go and get on with your day, like everybody else, and nobody would know you're a writer whose novel is 'with' an agent.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Inspiration
A series of conversations recently has had me thinking about the subject of inspiration, and the fact that many writers have a fear, verging on the pathological, that inspiration will 'vanish'.
I put this down to GCSE English (or O Level, if you're old enough). Nearly every student of English literature gets told the story of Coleridge, and the 'man from Porlock' who interrupted him while he was writing Kubla Khan so he 'lost' the inspiration to finish the poem.
Hmmm
I think he just got fed up with it. Why not? We've all got unfinished fragments galore on hard drives and in notebooks, haven't we? So when poor old S.T. was being nagged by his cronies to finish the work, I think he came up with a convenient excuse.
But it's become the stuff of legend, that lost inspiration, and as long as we believe it happened to him, with all his genius, then we're sure it will happen to us.
Pshaw
A good enough idea has one defining criterion - durability. If it slips away from you in the night, then it wasn't good enough to start with. Let it go and find another. Often an idea fades because it needs more time to mature, or to accrete other aspects, like plot or location or voice - if we try to force it, by jamming it down on the page too early, it's like a seedling that's outgrown its strength, all pale and leggy and destined never too bear fruit.
Trust your subconscious. It will give back inspiration when it's ready. Until then, get on with something else and you'll be surprised how vigorous your good idea will be, when it finally emerges.
A series of conversations recently has had me thinking about the subject of inspiration, and the fact that many writers have a fear, verging on the pathological, that inspiration will 'vanish'.
I put this down to GCSE English (or O Level, if you're old enough). Nearly every student of English literature gets told the story of Coleridge, and the 'man from Porlock' who interrupted him while he was writing Kubla Khan so he 'lost' the inspiration to finish the poem.
Hmmm
I think he just got fed up with it. Why not? We've all got unfinished fragments galore on hard drives and in notebooks, haven't we? So when poor old S.T. was being nagged by his cronies to finish the work, I think he came up with a convenient excuse.
But it's become the stuff of legend, that lost inspiration, and as long as we believe it happened to him, with all his genius, then we're sure it will happen to us.
Pshaw
A good enough idea has one defining criterion - durability. If it slips away from you in the night, then it wasn't good enough to start with. Let it go and find another. Often an idea fades because it needs more time to mature, or to accrete other aspects, like plot or location or voice - if we try to force it, by jamming it down on the page too early, it's like a seedling that's outgrown its strength, all pale and leggy and destined never too bear fruit.
Trust your subconscious. It will give back inspiration when it's ready. Until then, get on with something else and you'll be surprised how vigorous your good idea will be, when it finally emerges.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
A potentially frabjous day
First, because I posted my novel mss to an agent yesterday. Now the trick is to forget all about it and get on with the new novel ...
Second, because a very special set of research materials arrived this morning. Five 1920s 'dirty postcards' from a dealer in Paris. There is nothing like holding this kind of material in your hand - real things have a resonance that no amount of historical research can match. Already I notice things that I wouldn't have picked up from seeing the same pictures in a book: the women all have permanent waves, or have curled their hair (one has curl pins still holding her side waves,which suggests curling irons were used); none are wearing wedding rings; two postcards are thin and shoddy, suggesting they were cheaply produced, but the other three are much thicker than modern cards; while all would have been sent 'under cover' if they were sent at all (most were purchased for collections by young men on leave in Paris or through advertisements) one does have a frank mark on the back, although there is no writing - why?; one has the date '1923' in pencil on the back, the writing being much more ornate than modern script. Suddenly the whole slightly coy, slightly seedy, world of the risque postcard has come to life in my hand.
Third, because Tony is going to Houndslow today and that - with any luck - means Indian sweets! I have given him my order; 500 grammes of Pera, the round flattened cakes topped with chopped pistachio, and somehow I have to get through the day in anticipation of my favourite treat arriving this evening ....
First, because I posted my novel mss to an agent yesterday. Now the trick is to forget all about it and get on with the new novel ...
Second, because a very special set of research materials arrived this morning. Five 1920s 'dirty postcards' from a dealer in Paris. There is nothing like holding this kind of material in your hand - real things have a resonance that no amount of historical research can match. Already I notice things that I wouldn't have picked up from seeing the same pictures in a book: the women all have permanent waves, or have curled their hair (one has curl pins still holding her side waves,which suggests curling irons were used); none are wearing wedding rings; two postcards are thin and shoddy, suggesting they were cheaply produced, but the other three are much thicker than modern cards; while all would have been sent 'under cover' if they were sent at all (most were purchased for collections by young men on leave in Paris or through advertisements) one does have a frank mark on the back, although there is no writing - why?; one has the date '1923' in pencil on the back, the writing being much more ornate than modern script. Suddenly the whole slightly coy, slightly seedy, world of the risque postcard has come to life in my hand.
Third, because Tony is going to Houndslow today and that - with any luck - means Indian sweets! I have given him my order; 500 grammes of Pera, the round flattened cakes topped with chopped pistachio, and somehow I have to get through the day in anticipation of my favourite treat arriving this evening ....
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Two things, information and a rant
First the good stuff, Shaun Levin, excellent writer and tutor, is giving a course via New Writing South on Saturday 9 & Sunday 10 June. It's called Making a Living for Writers and it's geared towards writers looking to increase their income from arts-based activities: residencies, workshops, exhibitions, etc. If you have any ambitions to become a working writer, this is a great place to start. Book here:
http://www.newwritingsouth.com/home/introduction.php
Now the rant - let's call it The Error of Veracity
Marcel Berlins, in Wednesday's Guardian, has been commentating on Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves, an award-winning novel written by a woman with agoraphobia. This is significant because the novel is set in Canada, a place she's never visited - she did all her research in a library.
This is what he says:
I have to say, right away, that I enjoyed Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves, last week named the Costa Novel of the Year. But one aspect disconcerted me and diminished my liking of it. Penney, a sufferer from agoraphobia, had been unable to travel to Canada, where her book is set. She conducted all her research in the British Library. No doubt some Canadian readers with experience of their country's wilderness in winter will point out that Penney hasn't got it quite right. They will be small in number compared to readers who would be ignorant of any mistakes or, if they knew, would not care. To me, though, her lack of direct knowledge matters. As a reader, I feel short-changed and disappointed. When place plays an important part in a story, I expect the writer to have been there.
Why? Science fiction and historical fiction both require the writer to describe places they've never been. As L P Hartley famously wrote "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." And Penney's book is set not just in Canada, but in 1867. He goes on to say:
True, when I read a book about a place foreign to me, I may not know whether the writer's portrayal is accurate; so why should it bother me? First - and here I wear my hat as book reviewer - there is often a quivering of the antennae which tells me that, even if I haven't been to the place in the book, the writer doesn't know it well, either. Something about it feels wrong. The writer will make sure he gets the name of a restaurant right, but will he have listened to the way people talk, noticed the little manners and eccentricities of life, smelled the smells?
This is bunkum in my view. What Berlins picks up on is bad writing, not lack of experience of a place. If a writer can't convince the reader of the veracity of the experience, then they've failed, and I read enough short stories by people who are steeped in their city or country and still can't make it 'real' to be confident that it's lack of writing skills, not lack of direct experience, that shows.
If we buy travel books we have a right to expect the details to be factually precise, but fiction requires something more complex. Not only is there the reader's willing suspension of disbelief, there is also the writer's ability to create - yes create - a place, whether it's real or not, in a way that gives it substance. And substance is what matters, not accurate detail. I don't give a damn if Vikram Seth (to pick a random example) has trains running to stations that don't exist (and I have no idea if he does or doesn't) because Seth's India is real to me. It was real before I went there and it's no more or no less real now that I've been. It's a deeper reality that requires the interaction of people and place to be consistent with the writer's intention that matters.
This focus on 'reality' concerns me, and many writers. It's linked to the persistent nonsense that you can't write outside your own gender (which even Berlins has to admit is rubbish) or your own race (a more politically correct nonsense and a disturbing one which threatens to ghettoise literature) and it's a feeble way of approaching the quality of fiction.
Take me for example. Leaving aside any claims I have as a writer of fiction, I've visited over thirty countries and lived in four. But I get lost all the time, even in my 'home' cities of Brighton and London, both of which I've lived in for over a decade. Colleagues are used to getting calls from me, as I stand with my street map, trying to work out how to get from A - B, even if I've been from A - B a dozen times, or a hundred. Once, infamously, I got lost between London Bridge station and my office, a journey that I had completed successfully, every working day, for over five months. I was so disoriented I had to get a cab. Does this mean I can't write about London? I think not. Does it mean that when any novel of mine gets published (from my mouth to the ears of the literary gods on that subject) my publisher will have to put out a press release saying that I'm cartographically challenged? Hardly.
I've written one story about the Isle of Wight, a place I know like the back of my hand, and got an email from an old friend when it was published, pointing out that I'd relocated a pub to the wrong corner of the street. Funnily enough, I lived in that pub for two and a half years ... I'd just forgotten the landmarks. It didn't matter to me, the publisher or any of the readers that the pub was three hundred yards out of place - in fact most of the comments I've had on that story have come from Islanders who say how exactly it matches their experience of growing up in Sandown in the seventies. So they all failed to see the error too, or thought it didn't matter, in light of the greater veracity of fiction - which is the veracity that twists and shapes experience to tell a deeper truth of the emotions.
It's hardly surprising that people aren't reading novels if they have the idea that, as well as enjoying them, they should be running some kind of internal audit for factual accuracy. It turns the immersive process of reading into some ghastly tick-box exercise. Marcel Berlins may get paid to do this, but most of us pay for the privilege of buying a novel and losing ourselves in it. And that's the operative word - losing. We choose to get lost in a writer's invention, not to plod through it with a street map in one hand and a railway timetable in the other, checking the veracity of destinations and journey times.
I wish Stef Penney all success and shall read her novel without the faintest desire to get a map of Canada and catch her out.
First the good stuff, Shaun Levin, excellent writer and tutor, is giving a course via New Writing South on Saturday 9 & Sunday 10 June. It's called Making a Living for Writers and it's geared towards writers looking to increase their income from arts-based activities: residencies, workshops, exhibitions, etc. If you have any ambitions to become a working writer, this is a great place to start. Book here:
http://www.newwritingsouth.com/home/introduction.php
Now the rant - let's call it The Error of Veracity
Marcel Berlins, in Wednesday's Guardian, has been commentating on Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves, an award-winning novel written by a woman with agoraphobia. This is significant because the novel is set in Canada, a place she's never visited - she did all her research in a library.
This is what he says:
I have to say, right away, that I enjoyed Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves, last week named the Costa Novel of the Year. But one aspect disconcerted me and diminished my liking of it. Penney, a sufferer from agoraphobia, had been unable to travel to Canada, where her book is set. She conducted all her research in the British Library. No doubt some Canadian readers with experience of their country's wilderness in winter will point out that Penney hasn't got it quite right. They will be small in number compared to readers who would be ignorant of any mistakes or, if they knew, would not care. To me, though, her lack of direct knowledge matters. As a reader, I feel short-changed and disappointed. When place plays an important part in a story, I expect the writer to have been there.
Why? Science fiction and historical fiction both require the writer to describe places they've never been. As L P Hartley famously wrote "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." And Penney's book is set not just in Canada, but in 1867. He goes on to say:
True, when I read a book about a place foreign to me, I may not know whether the writer's portrayal is accurate; so why should it bother me? First - and here I wear my hat as book reviewer - there is often a quivering of the antennae which tells me that, even if I haven't been to the place in the book, the writer doesn't know it well, either. Something about it feels wrong. The writer will make sure he gets the name of a restaurant right, but will he have listened to the way people talk, noticed the little manners and eccentricities of life, smelled the smells?
This is bunkum in my view. What Berlins picks up on is bad writing, not lack of experience of a place. If a writer can't convince the reader of the veracity of the experience, then they've failed, and I read enough short stories by people who are steeped in their city or country and still can't make it 'real' to be confident that it's lack of writing skills, not lack of direct experience, that shows.
If we buy travel books we have a right to expect the details to be factually precise, but fiction requires something more complex. Not only is there the reader's willing suspension of disbelief, there is also the writer's ability to create - yes create - a place, whether it's real or not, in a way that gives it substance. And substance is what matters, not accurate detail. I don't give a damn if Vikram Seth (to pick a random example) has trains running to stations that don't exist (and I have no idea if he does or doesn't) because Seth's India is real to me. It was real before I went there and it's no more or no less real now that I've been. It's a deeper reality that requires the interaction of people and place to be consistent with the writer's intention that matters.
This focus on 'reality' concerns me, and many writers. It's linked to the persistent nonsense that you can't write outside your own gender (which even Berlins has to admit is rubbish) or your own race (a more politically correct nonsense and a disturbing one which threatens to ghettoise literature) and it's a feeble way of approaching the quality of fiction.
Take me for example. Leaving aside any claims I have as a writer of fiction, I've visited over thirty countries and lived in four. But I get lost all the time, even in my 'home' cities of Brighton and London, both of which I've lived in for over a decade. Colleagues are used to getting calls from me, as I stand with my street map, trying to work out how to get from A - B, even if I've been from A - B a dozen times, or a hundred. Once, infamously, I got lost between London Bridge station and my office, a journey that I had completed successfully, every working day, for over five months. I was so disoriented I had to get a cab. Does this mean I can't write about London? I think not. Does it mean that when any novel of mine gets published (from my mouth to the ears of the literary gods on that subject) my publisher will have to put out a press release saying that I'm cartographically challenged? Hardly.
I've written one story about the Isle of Wight, a place I know like the back of my hand, and got an email from an old friend when it was published, pointing out that I'd relocated a pub to the wrong corner of the street. Funnily enough, I lived in that pub for two and a half years ... I'd just forgotten the landmarks. It didn't matter to me, the publisher or any of the readers that the pub was three hundred yards out of place - in fact most of the comments I've had on that story have come from Islanders who say how exactly it matches their experience of growing up in Sandown in the seventies. So they all failed to see the error too, or thought it didn't matter, in light of the greater veracity of fiction - which is the veracity that twists and shapes experience to tell a deeper truth of the emotions.
It's hardly surprising that people aren't reading novels if they have the idea that, as well as enjoying them, they should be running some kind of internal audit for factual accuracy. It turns the immersive process of reading into some ghastly tick-box exercise. Marcel Berlins may get paid to do this, but most of us pay for the privilege of buying a novel and losing ourselves in it. And that's the operative word - losing. We choose to get lost in a writer's invention, not to plod through it with a street map in one hand and a railway timetable in the other, checking the veracity of destinations and journey times.
I wish Stef Penney all success and shall read her novel without the faintest desire to get a map of Canada and catch her out.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Writing a novel
Seems to me to be a three stage process. The first stage is when you get an idea that refuses to fit itself to a smaller scope than the novel. It won't agree to be a short story, nor break itself into a series of stories to serve as a collection - it insists on the larger form.
The second stage is when you have written about half of the novel and everything slows down to the point that you hate your characters and wish they would all die. Instead you plod through the narrative line, feeling as if there is neither life nor hope in this huge unwieldy creature you're constructing.
The third stage is when you've finished and you plane away all the unecessary verbiage and plotlines to leave something like an arc, a sinuous shape, along which the bends and contortions of the story and its inhabitants reveal their various beauties and peculiarities.
What I've discovered recently is that I can tell - roughly - the maturity of the writer from the part of the process that they wish to discuss. Beginners are fascinated by the 'idea' stage and spend all their time asking how you know you've got the 'right' idea. Writers with a novel or so under their belts (published or unpublished) are inclined to discuss the end process and the horrors of revising something as large and intimate as a novel. But long-term writers, those with several novels published and more in the cupboard, talk about the middle stage. And it is the worst of the three, by far.
I'm currently writing my sixth novel. The first two were science fiction - one still being considered by a publisher and the other is its sequel so who knows ... the third did the rounds of agents and died, the fourth is currently doing the rounds, the fifth is being serialised (it's pure erotica, not 'real' fiction, as the purists would say), and the sixth ....
Well, it's spent a couple of months dying slowly on its feet, but I have just discovered, or perhaps excavated, the narrative structure that it requires to get itself to a worthwhile ending. It's a complicated process involving a very tight chronology on the protagonist over slightly under a single year and a longer backstory, each section of which is prompted by something that happens in the eleven month 'front' story.
It's been a minor epiphany and I've been telling everybody, by phone and email, that I've finally found the route through it. And that's how I realised that the different points in a writer's career can be spotted so easily. Beginners asked me about the idea. Middle-term writers reminded me about the hell of revision to come, but the old school writers, without fail, have shared their own heartfelt hells of the middle stage. One sci-fi novelist, with eight titles under his belt, simply said, 'Do you want to kill them all?' I said I did. 'Ah,' he replied. 'Then I know exactly where you've got to.'
And suddenly I feel heartened. If it doesn't get easier, even for double-figure novelists, I'm not doing anything wrong, and when now I'm 35k into a 90k novel, that negative realisation might be enough to get me through.
Seems to me to be a three stage process. The first stage is when you get an idea that refuses to fit itself to a smaller scope than the novel. It won't agree to be a short story, nor break itself into a series of stories to serve as a collection - it insists on the larger form.
The second stage is when you have written about half of the novel and everything slows down to the point that you hate your characters and wish they would all die. Instead you plod through the narrative line, feeling as if there is neither life nor hope in this huge unwieldy creature you're constructing.
The third stage is when you've finished and you plane away all the unecessary verbiage and plotlines to leave something like an arc, a sinuous shape, along which the bends and contortions of the story and its inhabitants reveal their various beauties and peculiarities.
What I've discovered recently is that I can tell - roughly - the maturity of the writer from the part of the process that they wish to discuss. Beginners are fascinated by the 'idea' stage and spend all their time asking how you know you've got the 'right' idea. Writers with a novel or so under their belts (published or unpublished) are inclined to discuss the end process and the horrors of revising something as large and intimate as a novel. But long-term writers, those with several novels published and more in the cupboard, talk about the middle stage. And it is the worst of the three, by far.
I'm currently writing my sixth novel. The first two were science fiction - one still being considered by a publisher and the other is its sequel so who knows ... the third did the rounds of agents and died, the fourth is currently doing the rounds, the fifth is being serialised (it's pure erotica, not 'real' fiction, as the purists would say), and the sixth ....
Well, it's spent a couple of months dying slowly on its feet, but I have just discovered, or perhaps excavated, the narrative structure that it requires to get itself to a worthwhile ending. It's a complicated process involving a very tight chronology on the protagonist over slightly under a single year and a longer backstory, each section of which is prompted by something that happens in the eleven month 'front' story.
It's been a minor epiphany and I've been telling everybody, by phone and email, that I've finally found the route through it. And that's how I realised that the different points in a writer's career can be spotted so easily. Beginners asked me about the idea. Middle-term writers reminded me about the hell of revision to come, but the old school writers, without fail, have shared their own heartfelt hells of the middle stage. One sci-fi novelist, with eight titles under his belt, simply said, 'Do you want to kill them all?' I said I did. 'Ah,' he replied. 'Then I know exactly where you've got to.'
And suddenly I feel heartened. If it doesn't get easier, even for double-figure novelists, I'm not doing anything wrong, and when now I'm 35k into a 90k novel, that negative realisation might be enough to get me through.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Contests
It's one of those months. I'm reading two lots of slush, one for a themed contest and one for a high literary publication that seems unable to hang onto slushpile readers - and I'm reading for Her Circle, as I do all year round, and finally I'm working through a batch of novel synopses for a small scifi publisher whose normal reader has gone sick.
There's nothing like reading as an editor to show you why most people don't get published.
To begin with, for the themed contest, I'm able to reject two batches of stories instantly - these are the stories that don't feature the theme, and the ones where the theme has been shoehorned into an existing story. The first are easy to spot; a single skim shows that quite a few contestants just don't understand what a theme is, or believe that a theme contest means everybody has to write about the theme except them. The second lot are quite easy to pick out too - sliding a theme into a story you've already written isn't as easy as people seem to think. The joins show, sometimes very badly and its always the case that some other aspect of the story will be stronger than the inserted theme, which makes the story seem oddly balanced, like a person torn between rice pudding and chocolate icecream and ending up with a dollop of each on the plate.
As for the literary contest - it's amazing how similar the stories are. If I didn't know better I'd say that some tutor had gathered up three or four university classes and set them this competition as their term's project. They are polished works, no doubt about it, but there's almost no originality, and most of them either fade into bathos or end with some oddly equivocal scene that leaves it to the reader to decide how the narrative arc actually plays out. Ambiguity is much harder to pull off than it seems, and when you've read five stories in a row where people leave a party together but aren't talking, or walk down a road together but aren't talking, or get into bed together but aren't talking ... well you get the picture.
The scifi is difficult. I don't like judging writing from synopses alone, and with science fiction it can be almost impossible to tell if a plot is a zinger or a flatliner unless you've got a sample of the writer's prose in front of you. On the other hand, there's very little ambiguity about the endings, which is refreshing, and while the world-building and science elements are often not fully thought through, or not fully expressed in the synopsis, there's a level of imaginative play that the literary submissions rarely achieve. I've picked two that seem worthy of further exploration and suggested to a couple of the other writers where the major weaknesses in their outlines have prevented them making the cut, but I don't think I'll take this work on again. I wouldn't want my own novel evaluated on synopsis alone - although of course this is exactly what many agents do - and I'm struggling to trust my own instincts based on a one page outline and whatever writing credits the poor author has included. One thing it does reveal though, is how often people just can't follow instructions, and I sympathise with agents and publishing houses who do this every working day - the guidelines are not arbitrary, they help the reader measure like against like and if you break the rules, you're more likely to end up in the pile of rejects than impress a tired reader with your inventiveness.
It's one of those months. I'm reading two lots of slush, one for a themed contest and one for a high literary publication that seems unable to hang onto slushpile readers - and I'm reading for Her Circle, as I do all year round, and finally I'm working through a batch of novel synopses for a small scifi publisher whose normal reader has gone sick.
There's nothing like reading as an editor to show you why most people don't get published.
To begin with, for the themed contest, I'm able to reject two batches of stories instantly - these are the stories that don't feature the theme, and the ones where the theme has been shoehorned into an existing story. The first are easy to spot; a single skim shows that quite a few contestants just don't understand what a theme is, or believe that a theme contest means everybody has to write about the theme except them. The second lot are quite easy to pick out too - sliding a theme into a story you've already written isn't as easy as people seem to think. The joins show, sometimes very badly and its always the case that some other aspect of the story will be stronger than the inserted theme, which makes the story seem oddly balanced, like a person torn between rice pudding and chocolate icecream and ending up with a dollop of each on the plate.
As for the literary contest - it's amazing how similar the stories are. If I didn't know better I'd say that some tutor had gathered up three or four university classes and set them this competition as their term's project. They are polished works, no doubt about it, but there's almost no originality, and most of them either fade into bathos or end with some oddly equivocal scene that leaves it to the reader to decide how the narrative arc actually plays out. Ambiguity is much harder to pull off than it seems, and when you've read five stories in a row where people leave a party together but aren't talking, or walk down a road together but aren't talking, or get into bed together but aren't talking ... well you get the picture.
The scifi is difficult. I don't like judging writing from synopses alone, and with science fiction it can be almost impossible to tell if a plot is a zinger or a flatliner unless you've got a sample of the writer's prose in front of you. On the other hand, there's very little ambiguity about the endings, which is refreshing, and while the world-building and science elements are often not fully thought through, or not fully expressed in the synopsis, there's a level of imaginative play that the literary submissions rarely achieve. I've picked two that seem worthy of further exploration and suggested to a couple of the other writers where the major weaknesses in their outlines have prevented them making the cut, but I don't think I'll take this work on again. I wouldn't want my own novel evaluated on synopsis alone - although of course this is exactly what many agents do - and I'm struggling to trust my own instincts based on a one page outline and whatever writing credits the poor author has included. One thing it does reveal though, is how often people just can't follow instructions, and I sympathise with agents and publishing houses who do this every working day - the guidelines are not arbitrary, they help the reader measure like against like and if you break the rules, you're more likely to end up in the pile of rejects than impress a tired reader with your inventiveness.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Going out - it's the new staying in
For this writer, at least. I try to stay away from the strictly personal in this blog, sharing J A Konrath's view that for a blog to be useful, it should contain personal experience only where it's useful to the reader, but on this issue, I feel the need to nail my colours to the mast.
I'm not very good at going out. I can teach, or attend meetings, or even get together with a friend for coffee, but the general social going out thing has somehow never been part of my life. I used to think it was because I grew up in a hotel and spend my teenage years living in pubs - there was never any need to go out, because home provided a complete (and often inappropriate) social life. But the last couple of years have forced me to amend that view, because I have discovered that many fiction writers are not good at going out. As a generalisation, the writers I meet are more on the reclusive than the gregarious end of the spectrum, which suggests we find our interior lives satisfying enough not to need very much external stimulus.
Well and good. But if you want to continue to grow as a writer, you have to start moving outside your own resources. It's broadly agreed that journalists are good at grabbing what's outside them and repackaging it, while fiction writers tend to use what's inside them - but that simplistic view negates the value of observation and intuition in shaping our fiction. It also deprives fiction writers of exposure to new experience, fresh voices and perceptions that challenge or shade our own inner understanding.
So I made a deal with myself to go to one new place and have one new experience every month - and tonight I'm off to the Marlborough in Brighton to take part in a Queer Writers Workshop.
For this writer, at least. I try to stay away from the strictly personal in this blog, sharing J A Konrath's view that for a blog to be useful, it should contain personal experience only where it's useful to the reader, but on this issue, I feel the need to nail my colours to the mast.
I'm not very good at going out. I can teach, or attend meetings, or even get together with a friend for coffee, but the general social going out thing has somehow never been part of my life. I used to think it was because I grew up in a hotel and spend my teenage years living in pubs - there was never any need to go out, because home provided a complete (and often inappropriate) social life. But the last couple of years have forced me to amend that view, because I have discovered that many fiction writers are not good at going out. As a generalisation, the writers I meet are more on the reclusive than the gregarious end of the spectrum, which suggests we find our interior lives satisfying enough not to need very much external stimulus.
Well and good. But if you want to continue to grow as a writer, you have to start moving outside your own resources. It's broadly agreed that journalists are good at grabbing what's outside them and repackaging it, while fiction writers tend to use what's inside them - but that simplistic view negates the value of observation and intuition in shaping our fiction. It also deprives fiction writers of exposure to new experience, fresh voices and perceptions that challenge or shade our own inner understanding.
So I made a deal with myself to go to one new place and have one new experience every month - and tonight I'm off to the Marlborough in Brighton to take part in a Queer Writers Workshop.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
The cover letter conundrum
What to include? How to write it? One year's publishing credits or more than one year's or no credits at all? Biographical information?
It's a bit of a minefield, and as we tread carefully with each submission, reading the guidelines, buying the back issues, sending within the open to submissions periods, the cover letter can seem like the last stretch of innocent-looking sand, surely we can sprint this last bit and get home?
Beware; dangers lurk ... while I've never rejected a story on the basis of the cover letter alone (although I know an editor who claims he does this constantly), there are many ways that a cover letter can influence the editor, intern or slushpile reader who receives your manuscript.
1 - First and foremost, it can influence by its absence. Some places read blind. If you're submitting to one of those, it doesn't mean don't bother with a cover, it means assume your cover is filed until a decision is made about your story. So make sure you include the SALIENT information on a separate sheet, or in the body of the email if you're sending a story attachment. SALIENT means: your name, your address, your telephone number and email address, whether the story has been published before, and whether you have been published at this venue before.
OPTIONAL (check the guidelines) information: biographical information, publication credits, word count.
2 -Where a place doesn't say it reads blind, you still can't assume your cover will accompany your story. This means you need to check the submission format to ensure you have included your name in the story header or footer if requested, and so on. Most places read cover then story, whether its a print or online submission. Again, make sure you include the SALIENT information and then check their guidelines on the OPTIONAL information.
Simple, isn't it? So why do we fret so much about it.
Okay, so here's some things they don't tell you, but that help move you towards publication, in my experience.
If you're sending an email cover, send it to yourself first. It's amazing how badly formatted some email submissions are, they look nothing like a letter, and I can only assume people didn't take this basic step before sending their story to an editor. If it doesn't look businesslike when you open it, it certainly won't look businesslike to me.
Stick to three paragraphs wherever possible:
1- here is my story, title X, previously published/unpublished - this is where you put the other stuff the journal wants to hear about: word count; which theme issue you are submitting for, and so on. If an editor encouraged you to submit again, or said something nice about your last submission, mention that here. If you've been published there before, please mention it at this point as some journals don't republish a writer for a year or two, others like to republish, but none like to get a nasty surprise when they've made a decision on a story.
2 - here is my biographical information, essential this means any writing qualifications you have, and story credits that are less then two years old and in print publications only. If you don't have print, include online credits; I certainly take notice when writers mention zines that I respect and read and any RECENT credits are better than no credits. But if there's a two year gap when you haven't had a credit, better not to include dates, or not to mention credits at all. It just feels a bit weird to the reader, and even weirder if you go on to explain why ... we really don't care if you were breastfeeding or in Patagonia, it's squicky to be given too much detail about a stranger.
3 - here is anything else I need to tell you: you once dated their poetry editor; you were a finalist in one of their contests; you went to their latest reading - if it makes a bond and it's relevant, say it here. Don't just say nice things about their journal though, it's (a) taken for granted that you like it or you wouldn't be submitting and (b) a waste of the reader's time, especially if you only say 'I really love your magazine'.
Thank them for their time, and get out of their hair.
Exceptions to the rules above:
Things you should never mention:
So I hope that helps - ask any questions that occur to you and let's unpick the cover letter puzzle together.
Oh yes - one more thing. What, you are probably asking (if not, you should be) qualifies me to talk about cover letters? Eighty-three published short stories, excluding erotica and science fiction, that's what.
It's quite amazing how many people can tell you how to write a cover letter, or a story, but if you google them, you may find they have little or no success to point to - writers are always keen to get good advice, but don't always check the source of that advice to see how well the adviser has succeeded. Don't be naive, always judge for yourself if the person you're seeking help from is the kind of person whose help is worth having!
What to include? How to write it? One year's publishing credits or more than one year's or no credits at all? Biographical information?
It's a bit of a minefield, and as we tread carefully with each submission, reading the guidelines, buying the back issues, sending within the open to submissions periods, the cover letter can seem like the last stretch of innocent-looking sand, surely we can sprint this last bit and get home?
Beware; dangers lurk ... while I've never rejected a story on the basis of the cover letter alone (although I know an editor who claims he does this constantly), there are many ways that a cover letter can influence the editor, intern or slushpile reader who receives your manuscript.
1 - First and foremost, it can influence by its absence. Some places read blind. If you're submitting to one of those, it doesn't mean don't bother with a cover, it means assume your cover is filed until a decision is made about your story. So make sure you include the SALIENT information on a separate sheet, or in the body of the email if you're sending a story attachment. SALIENT means: your name, your address, your telephone number and email address, whether the story has been published before, and whether you have been published at this venue before.
OPTIONAL (check the guidelines) information: biographical information, publication credits, word count.
2 -Where a place doesn't say it reads blind, you still can't assume your cover will accompany your story. This means you need to check the submission format to ensure you have included your name in the story header or footer if requested, and so on. Most places read cover then story, whether its a print or online submission. Again, make sure you include the SALIENT information and then check their guidelines on the OPTIONAL information.
Simple, isn't it? So why do we fret so much about it.
Okay, so here's some things they don't tell you, but that help move you towards publication, in my experience.
If you're sending an email cover, send it to yourself first. It's amazing how badly formatted some email submissions are, they look nothing like a letter, and I can only assume people didn't take this basic step before sending their story to an editor. If it doesn't look businesslike when you open it, it certainly won't look businesslike to me.
Stick to three paragraphs wherever possible:
1- here is my story, title X, previously published/unpublished - this is where you put the other stuff the journal wants to hear about: word count; which theme issue you are submitting for, and so on. If an editor encouraged you to submit again, or said something nice about your last submission, mention that here. If you've been published there before, please mention it at this point as some journals don't republish a writer for a year or two, others like to republish, but none like to get a nasty surprise when they've made a decision on a story.
2 - here is my biographical information, essential this means any writing qualifications you have, and story credits that are less then two years old and in print publications only. If you don't have print, include online credits; I certainly take notice when writers mention zines that I respect and read and any RECENT credits are better than no credits. But if there's a two year gap when you haven't had a credit, better not to include dates, or not to mention credits at all. It just feels a bit weird to the reader, and even weirder if you go on to explain why ... we really don't care if you were breastfeeding or in Patagonia, it's squicky to be given too much detail about a stranger.
3 - here is anything else I need to tell you: you once dated their poetry editor; you were a finalist in one of their contests; you went to their latest reading - if it makes a bond and it's relevant, say it here. Don't just say nice things about their journal though, it's (a) taken for granted that you like it or you wouldn't be submitting and (b) a waste of the reader's time, especially if you only say 'I really love your magazine'.
Thank them for their time, and get out of their hair.
Exceptions to the rules above:
- If you have a really profound reason for submitting (hey, I just spent two years writing poetry while photographing marsh lizards in Patagonia and you have a call for submissions on Patagonian wetland poetry, how cool is that?) then mention it.
- If you have been asked to send in a story by a named member of their staff, mention that too.
- If you are going to Patagonia for two years, and will only be contactable by phone on Tuesday mornings, please say so.
- If a writer who has been published there recently has suggested you send this story, it's worth mentioning that too.
Things you should never mention:
- How many times this story has been rejected elsewhere
- That it took you twenty minutes (or seven months) to write this piece
- What inspired you to write the story and what it's about
- That this is the first thing you've written
- You think it would make a great film ...
- That your mum or partner loved it
So I hope that helps - ask any questions that occur to you and let's unpick the cover letter puzzle together.
Oh yes - one more thing. What, you are probably asking (if not, you should be) qualifies me to talk about cover letters? Eighty-three published short stories, excluding erotica and science fiction, that's what.
It's quite amazing how many people can tell you how to write a cover letter, or a story, but if you google them, you may find they have little or no success to point to - writers are always keen to get good advice, but don't always check the source of that advice to see how well the adviser has succeeded. Don't be naive, always judge for yourself if the person you're seeking help from is the kind of person whose help is worth having!
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