Split the difference

I’ve just typed ‘The End’ on a novel I’ve been working on for over a year. I’ll let it ferment for a bit and in the meantime I’m planning a re-write on another project. This means that at some point in the next few months I might actually have two books ‘Out There’ in the submission machine at the same time.
A terrifying prospect, you say? Luckily I have a cunning plan.

I’ve hired myself a Submissions Assistant.

She’s efficient, straight-talking and – best of all - tough as a rottweiler in hob-nailed boots. She’s going to roll up her sleeves and trawl the Writers and Artists Yearbook, firing off subs by the bundle and having no hesitation in phoning up scary publishing types to demand they hurry up and bloody well read them. If any of the envelopes come back with rejection slips tucked cruelly inside, she’ll crumple them up in her ham-like fist and chuck them in the bin without a second thought. Then she’ll make me a nice cup of tea. And bring me a biscuit.
(Go on, admit it, you’re jealous, aren’t you? Well, hand’s off. She’s mine).
The best part is that she’ll do it all for nothing, because she is, in fact, a figment of my imagination. I’m thinking of calling her my Kickass Alter Ego tm or KAE for short.
Just in case you’re wondering if I have literally lost the plot here, let me explain.
This writing game seems to me to require two quite incompatible personalities in one person. There’s the wafty creative you, who spends a significant portion of each day in a land of make-believe, sometimes, ahem, actually preferring fictional folk to the real thing. But publishing is a business like any other and once you send off your baby, sorry, manuscript, it’s out there in a world where harsh realities, tough decisions and financial constraints are the name of the game.
Somehow we all need to bridge the gap between the sensitive soul who likes writing stories and the person who has to deal with (in the case of wannabes like me) rejections from agents, or (for those further into the process) tough-talking editors who casually ask you to kill off your main character, make the ending the beginning, or completely re-write every bit of dialogue. It would be nice if all this just ‘pinged’ off us, like cartoon bullets.
Some writers suggest you have a ‘writing head’ and an ‘editing head’, so you can dispassionately slaughter your darlings and cut swathes of unnecessary words when needs be. And it’s true that emotional distance is vital when it comes to honing and shaping your work.

Well, I’m just proposing you go that little bit further.

I’m not the first to come up with such an idea. Take the author Preethi Nair. She self-published her novel Gypsy Masala after countless rejections and pretended to be her own publicist in order to flog it to bookshops. She did such a good job of persuading them, that her made-up persona was shortlisted for Publicist of the Year (red faces all round there then). Nair eventually landed a major publishing deal.
Strictly Writing’s Sam recently talked about the need for rhino hide in this business. I don’t think I’ll ever manage that so maybe I’m proposing a kind of mental armour, which you only slip on when you need to put your creative side on hold and get out there with your elbows flying.

The strange thing is, I’m not half as sensitive and thin-skinned when it comes to my day job as a freelance journalist. I can negotiate fees with the best of them and a significant part of my day is spent cold calling interesting or clever people and trying to extract good soundbites from them. It’s just that when it comes to writing stories - which come from somewhere much closer to my heart - then it all becomes a good deal harder.
Maybe in time I’ll become a little tougher about the realities of publishing, just as I have in my other career. Who knows, I might one day successfully combine the sensitive writerly me with a right old business bruiser.
In the meantime, I’m sticking with KAE.
Now, where’s that cup of tea she promised…