Don’t give up

After more than six months of making submissions to literary agents, in all the varied forms required. I have had no takers, a few comments of support but mostly my work has been ignored.

It is dispiriting to face indifference and negativity. I have questioned myself. Re-edited many times. Reflected and sought advice. I have established a world, populated it and given the history it is set in life. I have plotted and told the story, a first chapter in the grand events that shaped early Britain into the lands and cultures we can still recognise today. I have much more to tell and have started the second volume of the endeavour.

I refuse to be cowed by the indifference and remain positive about the project. I can now view the first book as an apprenticeship and a portfolio piece. I have defined the people and times. Characters and stories are known, the next steps in the grander scheme sketched out to be told through the characters themselves.

I can see myself with an unpublished library of works. A personal triumph without the recognition. A hermit in a personal cave, no interaction with anyone. I am out of kilter with the publishing world. Walking around bookshops I see much being promoted but hardly anything in the genre I am contributing to. There are some books, a few multi-million sellers in the last few decades but they are few and far between. Mostly there is ‘vacuous slop’ using a name as a means to shift volume with little merit or mode chasing Amazon like endorsements (if you read…etc.) crowding out the bookshelves and promotional material. The diversity of writing is still there because there are so many good books still in print. It is the new editions that are so narrow in their focus and market pitch. Blinkers are impervious to other views.

It is instructive. I know I have more to learn but I also remain true to myself and my goal. Making that attractive will be the trick needed.

The Hardest Thing

The hardest thing as a writer is to keep writing. Agents, anticipating publishers’ wishes, are risk averse and despite all that their blurb says about supporting writers they have a very narrow definition of what they are willing to commit too. The ongoing disappointment of being either ignored or rejected is a constant. Friends who have read my book or part thereof have been impressed by the quality of writing and the story. Several agents have said that it’s not for them but haven’t been negative. The vast majority are simply mute.

It is hard to keep the confidence and maintain the will to keep writing. I have drafted the first book and started the second continuing the story line from the first. I am also plotting subsequent books to tell the story of the Britons after the withdrawal of the Roman Empire and how that period of history has shaped the Britain we know today and the roots of it’s culture.

There is much more to tell. The early medieval period is poorly documented with unreliable sources and some archaeology. The is plenty of room for conjecture. Common sense and the historical facts about Britain’s place in that world before and after the Romans show that Rome adapted to Britain rather than dominating culturally and that influence declined from the 3^rd Century, vanishing in the early 5^th. These so called ‘Dark Ages’ are fascinating to me because much of what we understand about the United Kingdom depends on these events. The arrival and incremental conquest of much of the country took centuries. The Cornish, Welsh, Scottish and Irish identities are rooted in this time and reflect the inability of the English to be fully accepted or to dominate. (‘English’ is the Britons’ term for foreigner or stranger – the equivalent English term was ‘Welsh’).

The time has such a stake in our world today which is what keeps me interested and inspires my research, understanding and writing. I hope to be able to share my vision and understanding but until a literary agent can see that, I have to continue to manage the disappointment and lack of recognition.

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…

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.

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!