Reading other writers

I have been reading a cross section of books recently. Barrack Obama – The Promised Land, Conn Iggulden – Emperor The Gates of Rome, Miranda Aldhouse-Green – Sacred Britain, and Nicholas J Higham – How England Began. Partly research for my own writing and out of interest after hearing about Conn Iggluden’s writing who I had been comparing my manuscript to in the pitch letter to agents. I even pitched to his agent and got a slightly terse but polite ‘not interested’.

It has been entertaining, informative and insightful. Barrack Obama is a distraction, leisure reading. Conn Iggluden on the other hand has been insightful. I can see behind the page and understand what has been happening, the thoughts and processes that left those words. Where there are risks in the narrative and where he has been surefooted abut the story line. His work, like mine, is a re-imagining of ancient life using the known bits to anchor the story and then weave the writers voice through to tie the characters and events into some sense of a past reality. I can see flaws and things I wouldn’t do but I cannot criticise, I do the same things for the same reasons.

My aim is that my comparison to him can be recognised and the potential for my writing can have an audience. Agents need to be bolder and ignore the Waterstones top twenty or the gossip in the book fairs and trust in writing and story-telling that can have a long life on the bookshop shelves.

The frustration with agents’ responses, when one is actually received, and the implication that publishers are becoming beholden to lower and lower common denominators mounts. My effort to get over this barricade increases.

Road Block

A couple of rejection letters recently have indicated that whilst the agent liked my work they didn’t think they could place it with a publisher.

I don’t know if this is just a gentle ‘let down’ or a genuine concern about the nature of publishers. It implies they are risk averse and market followers not market makers. They have lost the pioneering championing of new writing and are cow-towing to shareholders instead and churning out commercial celebrity ghosted slop.

I was asked by one literary agency in their submission criteria to say where I thought my book would be in a bookshop? I was unsure about that and just said ‘fiction’. I have since thought about it. Most fiction on the shelves is either ‘classic’ i.e. been around for a while and still sells or is contemporary. There isn’t a specific ‘historical’ fiction section though there are large science fiction/fantasy sections. Pondering this I have since revised my response and would now say ‘new books’ and avoid the bear pit of trying to classify for others what I have done.

On that thought it occurred to me that the ‘new books’ table in Waterstones is a small one compared to the thousands of titles on offer and has fiction and non-fiction. It is at the front of the shop near the door and catches the eye of customers on entering but is that the best place to be? Its not exactly a clear marketing pitch. Other possible descriptions might include adventure, historical, fiction, fantasy or romance but would be misleading. My book is all of these and doesn’t fit in any pigeon-hole. Perhaps that is why literary agents and more likely publishers have struggled to get a grip and know they could market it. That might imply they are not very good at marketing…

Who comes first the Writer or the Editor?

Writing a book to get to the position of hoping it is a manuscript, the final draft. Is one thing. Re-reading it is the hardest task. Your effort plain to see. Is it good enough? Will an agent like it or bin it? Would a reader laugh out loud? How clumsy and unpolished is it?

These are the hardest questions. They question your very purpose, your faith in what you are doing, your ambition, your reason. At first, I hated re-reading I was always unsure and often made changes I had to undo because I was reacting too quickly before acknowledging the import and purpose of that text to the narrative. I have got better at re-reading and editing. It isn’t such a chore and the polishing of the script. Removing typos, clumsy phrasing, repeated words or phrases, syntax and spelling corrections all make the reading easier. I can see some of my errors now and have got better at removing elements that do not add anything. The redundant words on the page that delay the reader’s understanding or dilute it.

I remember listening to another writer who said they hated drafting their manuscript, that was the hardest and least inspiring part of being a writer – for me it’s the opposite. She enjoyed the editing, the refining and moulding of the story to find its meaning. I view the editing as a necessary task but one I am more comfortable with now. I also now regret some of the earlier submissions I made and I am more confident (without grounds so far) of what I now offer in a submission.

Part of the dilemma is when should you stop editing? If the manuscript is picked up by an agent and a publisher they will edit from a far more authoritative position and with practised professionalism, probably viewing authors as ‘bloody amateurs’.

I think for me part of the problem is that writing is like playing a piece of your own music. It is always interpreted, changed and varied. It isn’t a fixed article like a photograph, it is an evolving understanding of its possibilities, the techniques required and improved to play better or to express it differently. I can see that ownership and understanding of my writing improving with each edit but when to stop? So what comes first the Writing or the Editing?

Frustration is not despair or failure

After years of researching, writing, editing and finally completing the first draft of a novel that is intended to be the start of a series the ‘no-mans land’ of agents and submissions is a strange and unfamiliar place. I have been submitting to literary agents for four months now. Over sixty separate agencies submitted to, following their guidelines, honing the covering letter and the synopsis, adding the extras – brief bio, or back cover blurb. Whatever is desired.

And then nothing, the vacuum is almost perfect with only some bothering to reply so say ‘not for us’. A couple of scraps of encouragement. The majority don’t do anything and I have to score them off after 4, 6, 8 or 12 weeks as ‘not interested’ though I have no idea what they thought. So far the combined lack of interest is close to 60% including nearly 25% which are outright rejections.

Why anyone chooses to write and to seek publication is a mystery. There is zero encouragement, support or succour. I have been asked why don’t I try self-publishing. Internet types encourage this in the belief that the internet is everything (it isn’t!). I was avoiding the ‘fan-fiction’ or ‘vanity publishing’ labels. I have always wanted to be a genuine published writer. Work and life have always made this difficult but never diminished the ambition.

I have established a niche. A small and seemingly overlooked niche in historical fiction and its proving to be a lonely place despite the potential for storytelling in a violent time of many upheavals that is crucial to understanding the history and culture of Britain.

The patience and resignation continue. There is no choice in a tunnel, you make your own light.

Trends, Faith and Hope

There is a tendency I am becoming aware of from reading literary agents’ notes about what they are looking for. There seems to be a preponderance of aims to find women’s literature, complex thrillers or the humour in modern life. This is propelled by the other bias that the significant majority of book readers are women. This manifests itself in the marketing assumptions that agents are making about what will be successful and what is a riskier. All perfectly natural. However this speaks of market followers rather than market makers. The other ‘safe bet’ that many agents and publishers follow faithfully is the ghosted celebrity opus. Public recognition of someone is far more important than merit or originality. Tabloid publishing!

Literature and publishing has many fables about what could have been. Missed chances, work rejected that later out-performed all expectations. Markets are fickle just as people are. Tastes are many and varied rather than predictable and consistent. For the unpublished writer this presents much bigger obstacles than simply the merit of the submission. Agents are making marketing decisions rather than evaluations. I have to have sympathy with their position but it does risk rote like behaviour and limits more enterprising projects.

This leaves me in slack water out of the stream for not compromising on my ambition. I do not fit the current hegemony apparent in the publishing industry. I have had minimal encouragement a 22% direct rejection rate and a 50% ‘no interest’ including rejections, to sixty submissions to date. I was warned to expect this, that writing is personal foolhardiness with no rewards and demonstrates a particularly stubborn stupidity for thinking that anyone would want to support and promote you. Gambling that you will be holding a winning lottery ticket when you are struck by lightening.

Richard Dawkins is renowned for remarking that ‘faith’ in something or someone is illogical compared to the evidence to the contrary. ‘Hope’ is a better banner to proceed under and closer to people’s life experience.

Carry On, carrying On

After another rejection from an agent I was a little more hopeful for – she had been the agent for a writer I had referenced in my pitch letter – I have had to do a little soul searching. All the advice says expect rejection and keep going until someone recognises what you offer and wants to represent you.

However, the reality of rejection is not pleasant. The self-doubt and sense of inadequacy. It’s like one of those childhood moments when some other children you thought might be friends because you are in the same class, turn their back on you. Not fitting in, not being part of the clique, a sense of difference. This is the super strength of every writer for having the gall to actually believe they can write a book and then do so. You ‘put your head above the parapet’ when you submit work and welcome the world’s volley of ‘slingshots and arrows’. The sort of situation that most people spend much of their life avoiding rather than inviting.

I have now submitted to about fifty literary agencies since October and I am still working my way through the lists. I have re-edited the manuscript fully, three times and added a final chapter ending that I realised was missing after using the passage as the opening for the next volume but recognised it belonged to the timeline and story I thought I had completed. I am not in complete despair though. I have a logical genie sitting on my shoulder telling me: ‘This was to be expected and it may well be their loss not yours. If it’s not right for them, it’s not right for you’.

There are many more agents to submit to and I have more story to tell. My focus, and that of the genie, is don’t worry about it and carry on with what you started these are little bumps in the road not terminating disasters. The more you do the more you can do. Carry on carrying on.

Writing Steps

Another moment of awareness after sending off a complete manuscript and considering how to describe my work in a way that gives it the unique appeal I believe it has. The ‘eureka’ moment came whilst walking with Moose, our Fox Red Labrador, in local rain sodden woods. It is the contrast between the world I have imagined and our world today. I described the story as ‘values driven’. It is not a ‘moral story’ just one that by the descriptions, behaviour and decisions of the character reflects a very different set of values and culture to that we live in and sadly accept.

My hope is that this will hook the agent and provide a unique appeal to market the book with, in a way that is relevant today although it is an historical work. Given the time it is set in there is little evidence to contradict my view of then although there is increasing evidence that people did more than survive and thrived in the erroneously termed ‘dark ages’. Romanisation was not complete and culture survived changed and evolved but was not eradicated. Trade continued, contacts and internationalism continued. The western empire did not survive except as the Roman Catholic Church, the holy ghost of the empire.

It is this complexity I am working my way through to tell the story, a sort of cultural archaeology. An intuitive process to find the sense of a time long forgotten and picture the whole from the available fragments.

At last, a little positive feedback

Submitting to literary agents is a fraught business, speed dating but with curtains, smoke and mirrors. The vast majority never bother to reply. About one in five have actually taken the time to send a stock email explaining that they receive lots of submissions and unfortunately they are not interest/not for them etc. This morning I had a rejection that went a lot further and said the agent enjoyed reading my work but they didn’t think with their expertise they could represent me fairly.

That is the first bit of encouragement I have received from all the agencies so far submitted to. Doesn’t say much for the others and I am still working my way through them. I have also re-edited the whole manuscript to tidy and tighten it further and will probably do so again. I can’t look at it without wanting to change something since the last time I went through it. I think it’s an increasing maturity and a less precious frame of mind about my writing, recognising that it can always be improved and that it is ongoing process that can never be finished until published and then its ‘the guillotine’ and the editing is beheaded.

Anyway, that’s to be seen. For now I am still unrepresented and unpublished but have faith and know that I am challenging the market following lemmings looking for popular bandwagon tribute acts. The work doesn’t fit any corresponding genre. I have envisaged an historical world that still has ripples in its relevance today and goes some way to describing our mixed bag of cultures, differences and origins that can draw some parallels with us today.

Rejection

The unavoidable aspect of submitting (10,000 words/first 3 chapters/50 pages and the variations therein of different literary agents and whether they want a synopsis to be one page/full synopsis/chapter by chapter and how much personal information they want, if any) is the, so far, inevitable rejection, short polite and unhelpful.

It sees to be that the agents are more interested in marketing and trend. No definitive evidence for this opinion but looking at the books being promoted by Bloomsbury or Waterstones there is a preponderance of women writers and modern settings exploring daily experiences. I sit at the other end of the spectrum from this trend and the ‘romantasy’ trend both aimed principally at female readers. Another trend, heavily promoted and typically ‘ghost written’, is the celebrity autobiographies after that cookbooks and other self-help volumes on any and every topic!

It feels like an uphill struggle on a rarely travelled path – trying to reach the agent who can see the potential and audience for my writing. I have picked an unfamiliar niche with the Romano-British setting at the time the Roman Empire abandons Brittania and withdraws what little resources and administration still remains leaving the British to fend for themselves against the increasing incursions from the Scotties of Hibernia (Ireland) on South West and Welsh coasts, the Picts and other warring tribes in the North and from the near continent in the East and South East.

It’s a fascinating period with increasing archaeological evidence that it wasn’t a ‘dark age’ but that life continued arguably with little difference to the day to day lives of the majority of people in the same way that changes of Government make little if any marginal difference to most people today. I’m telling the story of how Brittania responded to the challenges before the ‘English’ (Brythonic Celtic for’ foreigner’ or ‘stranger’) arrived and then the impact they had and what has become identified as

‘The Age of Arthur’ during their expansion and colonisation of much of Britain.

It’s a good read!

Feeling the vacumm

Feeling the vacuum

As a writer most of the endeavour is isolated hope that what you are doing is what you meant. That the story characters, prose and language convey the world, places and events you imagined to a reader. It is a leap of faith in your ability to write and to write well. This is nevermore tested than when you submit your work to literary agents, the gatekeepers of the publishing world ultimately looking at marketing and potential sales markets and income. That is looking backwards at what has worked, what is trending and following the market. There seem to be few market leaders or market makers. Each new book offered up to an agent is a possible future genre but gambling is a risky business and I am getting the impression that too many agents are risk averse or focused on niche.

I have submitted to 22 agents to date and have many more lined up. So far I have only had two actual responses, rather than automated emails for receipt. Both short but polite rejections. The majority of presumed rejections have simply passed the agents’ 8 or 12 weeks window for ‘If we have not responded to you in …’ etc.. It is very much a vacuous place with no one offering a little oxygen in the unpublished writer’s space. My next trick is going to take some agencies from the middle and the other end of the alphabetical array. I suspect that those at the beginning get the most bombardment, like Google searches with few progressing to the subsequent pages of the search results. Meanwhile the research for the next volume and its writing continue.