Dear Mr Agent

Dear Mr Agent

It’s taken me a while to muster up the will to write to you again, as I’m sure you’ll understand after that debacle of a Dear John letter. I got in from work (note – 12 hour shift) to find the brown envelope on the mat. Anyway, I opened it and there it was. A freaking rejection. You didn’t even have the courtesy to put my name on it. ‘Dear Nellie’ would have been nice. I’m not saying it would have mended my broken heart, I’m simply pointing out that a little personalisation would make you more attractive as an agent.

It’s not for us, you said. Just like that, Without a thought or a care in the world. You simply keyed in those callous words, printed it off, asked your assistant to put it in the ‘out’ tray and went back to drinking your latte at your desk, in your office, where expensive paintings adorn the walls and the bathroom is smelling of roses, the toilet roll dispenser is filled with Andrex, and the kitchen has its own Aga.

So, I’m writing to tell you that you’ve ruined my life. I want to give up my job, because quite frankly I hate it. I mean, do you really want to be scanning soup tins, spring onions and frozen peas through a supermarket checkout all day? Would you like to be taking people’s orders all night in your second job…no onions please…no wait…I’ll have onions….actually give me sweetcorn, ham and mushrooms instead love? Do you really want to be waiting tables at night in a drab café with netted curtains and plastic ketchup bottles on the tables, the rims caked with sauce? No, I bet you don’t. I bet you don’t want to spend all night wiping down the red and white checked plastic tablecovers, serving truckers, frying their eggs and dipping their bread, then presenting them with the greasefest, all in return for a 50p tip.

Let me tell you this, Mr Agent. And I’m going to say it loud and clear You suck. Because you hate my book. You said other agents may disagree. Like you care! While you’re driving your Bugatti round and round the M25 (and I sincerely hope you get stuck on it) you really should spare a thought for me*. Nellie the waitress by night, part-time supermarket check out girl by day and wannabe novelist. My book is awesome and some day, some agent will come along and say so. But for now, I’m going to try to be happy in my two minimum wage jobs. Until my big break comes along*1 JK Rowling did it and so can I.

Please don’t feel sorry for me. Just go back to doing what you were doing before you opened this envelope. In fact, shred it. Forget about me. Forget you even read this.

Yours

Nellie xxxxx

* Nellie doesn’t own a car and even if she did, she wouldn’t give Mr Agent a lift. If she saw him coming out of Marks and Spencer in the pouring rain with his six bottles of champagne in the cardboard carrier, she would toot, make a rude gesture, then drive on.

*1 Anything is possible. Nellie will soon secure that agent and sign a book deal. She’ll walk away from her two jobs and buy a house in the countryside where she’ll live happily ever after. And she’ll be the greatest author who ever lived.

The moral of this is don’t give up. Whether you have had six or sixty rejections from agents or publishers, keep calm and carry on writing. Practice makes perfect and remember, all authors were once unpublished nobodies.

Agents Do Not Breathe Fire! by Guest Blog Winner - Catherine Hughes

Although writing has always been a big part of my life - my song lyrics were legendary at school! - it has only been quite recently that I’ve started writing novels. Knowing that I would need to amass significant knowledge about the publishing industry, I read - all around the internet and beyond - about how to get an agent.

Agents, I discovered, were tricky, difficult characters with exacting standards. Heaven forbid that there should be a typographical error in your submission, or that your query letter (or email) should be too informal or, indeed, too formal. Don’t ask questions; don’t chase manuscripts unless a significant portion of time has passed; revere and venerate agents, and don’t expect them to be nice to you. They don’t have time.

The thought of submitting my first attempt at a proper novel was, to say the very least, daunting in the extreme. But, being of the ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ mindset, I sent out a stack of submissions.

Most of the fifteen agents I queried sent me standard form rejections. One did not reply at all and still hasn’t. But, to my surprise, one or two of the agents I sent my work to responded in a friendly, helpful manner. One chatted to me using email one evening, checking out my query as we ‘spoke’, and one even requested a full, seeing potential in my work even though my query was neither as flawless nor as confident as it ought to have been.

Because, as it turns out, agents really aren’t these distant, heartless, pernickety types at all. OK, well maybe some of them might be, but I’ve had contact with quite a few now and it seems to me that the majority are pleasant people doing difficult, time-consuming, and often demanding work.

My second novel is a love affair, in that I am in love with it to an extent that wasn’t true of my first. And, when I sent it out to agents (some of whom had seen the first novel and some of whom had not) my hopes were high. Sadly, it did not (although I had two requests for full manuscripts this time) garner any offers of representation, but several agents took the time to send me personal, encouraging responses. One in particular urged me not to give up, telling me that I ‘can definitely write’ a phrase that is now etched on my heart forever. I wasn’t suitable for her list, but she took the time to communicate to me that I would, in all probability, be a good match for another agent, and to keep trying.

I’m not saying that you can be slapdash about your queries, or that they should be anything less than the very pinnacle of your efforts. But my experiences have taught me that most agents are like me - clever, positive people who love books and love writing.

Not fire-breathing dragons waiting for the slightest excuse to toast your work.

Catherine Hughes is a thirty-nine-year-old web copywriter who lives in wild and windy Wales, with her four children, husband and three cats. She is the author of two as-yet-unpublished YA SF novels and is currently working on a fantasy trilogy that attempts to explain our rich lore of myth and magic. Despite having a degree in Law, she is really a very nice person, who blogs at http://dailyimprovements.blogspot.com/ on the theme of making small changes each day towards a better life .

Well done, Catherine, great post! You should receive your prize soon!

Living in the past

I subscribe to Literary Review; if you don’t, you should. The writing is sparkling and I’ve learnt more about the yays and nays of how to knock up a novel from their reviewers than from many of the how-to books crowded on my shelves. Much of LR covers non-fiction books which can lead you down interesting research paths for fiction. Even reading the reviews can throw up ideas for stories. The only danger is that you spend all your money ordering sacks of books using the readers' offer. Well, that’s my review of Literary Review, but this post is not about that: it’s inspired by LR in a different way.

Today, let’s flick forward through the May edition to the fiction section; that’s what we’re into here at Strictly Fiction. We find ten novels reviewed last month, including the latest release from the truly amazing Colm Toibin, ultimate master of characterisation – his stories exist in the spaces between the characters. But, enough of him, the survey we are conducting is about temporal setting. How many of the ten novels would you expect to use a contemporary versus historical setting? Half? A third? One?

You were wrong; the answer is . . . er, not sure, possibly none. Of the ten fiction titles sweating under the precision eye of LR, there are eight historical offerings, one that was actually written in the 1930s and one that might be contemporary. Hoorah, there’s one. It’s included as one of the short pieces in their monthly Four Debut Novels page (my ultimate fantasy, but never mind that). In fact, for the one – possibly – contemporary novel we aren’t actually told when it is set, and this researcher wasn’t painstaking enough to find out. Nine out of ten would be a striking enough ratio, so who needs facts?

I bet the story you are slaving over right now is historical. Notably, the possibly contemporary piece receives, perhaps, the harshest treatment of all the books on trial, but surely that can’t be because its setting is contemporary. No, no.

So, there is a trend; you’ve noticed it too. Contemporary fiction is history. Setting your work in the present is so last year.

As you might have guessed, the novel I’m limbering up to submit is set in the halcyon days of 2008. Do you remember that period in history? So long ago now, the last of the salad-summer afternoons just before the world got crunched. I researched that period constantly while I was writing it, by staring out of the window. Since then it's been laid out on the editing table. Now I’ve come to realise the thing is unpublishable simply because it isn't hist fic. That's the only acceptable genre.

Before I press the delete key, are there any other rational explanations? Perhaps the readers of Literary Review are a load of old farts who only read historical fiction and regiments of contemporary novels are preening themselves on the bookshop shelves, blissfully ignored by LR. Frankly I doubt it. Every recently published book I can find in the Ealing branch of Waterstones harps back to days of yore.

People aren’t interested in now. They want then. We have to face the truth, forsooth!

Here’s an idea. I’ll tuck my novel under the bed for forty years and wait while it grows in value like a fine Margaux. If I’m still alive, I’ll then cast it into the gaping maws of the publishers, pretending I wrote it as a historical piece. Everyone will marvel at the startling recollection of the period just before the end of civilisation, the death of global capitalism. In the meantime I’m starting a new one set in the Mesolithic period; an extract is linked here. It’s called Hist Fic, to leave agents and publishers in no doubt that it’s the sort of stuff they are looking for. It's the only chance for publication to an escapist readership who can’t look today in the mirror.

Let’s extend this research a little more.

So, when is your story set?
	It's historical, of course, like all the rest.
	I'm breaking the trend and risking a contemporary setting.
	In the future: you forgot to mention sci-fi, you muppet.
	What story?
pollcode.com free polls

It's all good

It's good to read, just like it's good to talk (according to BT).


Of course it's good to read, I hear you say. If your nose never graces a book, then realistically what hopes do you have of ever becoming an author?
Granted, you may have been a great speller at primary school and top in the creative writing competitions, but if you don’t read much, let alone stop to analyse a book, then halt your writing dreams now I say.

And this brings me onto what I deem a very valid question - what makes a good book? It’s a question which has been asked many times and one which has generated all manner of interesting replies.
Is is a good story? Interesting characters - ones which the reader can relate to? Or is a good book one which, when you take it to bed, simply allows you to escape the last few hours of a mundane Monday thanks to its engaging plot and intriguing storyline?

Is a good book one in which the plot really grabs our attention? When we think we know 'who dunnit' then the author hits us with a cruel twist, and we're left reeling over the events of the last ten pages? I don't know - what is a good book? Do you know what a good book is? Come on, give me some answers...
Well for me, it's good writing with a page-turning plot - it's as simple as that. Good solid writing with the use of language in a colourful manner. But every once in a while a book comes along and I scratch my head, wondering where its merits lie. I toss and turn at night wondering how the author ever managed to grab the attention of an agent, especially with the opening chapters. There has been one in particular which produced a rather large advance for the novelist and many readers, me included, were convinced our bottom drawer unpublished efforts had more merit. In other words, it needed a darn good edit. Once in a while when a book such as this crops up on our shelves, I wonder why this so-called 'great book' has been labelled by critics as such.
A 'good book' to the average Joe Public reader is usually a personal preference. But if you are a reasonably experienced writer who knows the ins and outs of the business, you tend to look for more than the basis of a solid enjoyable story.

When I read a book, I focus on originality, in characters, story and language. One book which literally blew me away in terms of originality was Darkmans by Nicola Barker - one which now takes its place on my list of all-time favourites.
(If you ask a child what he or she wants from a book, the young reader will almost always say 'I want to laugh' or 'I want funny and sad bits together')

There are books too which have been hailed by critics as the best thing since Shakespeare and sliced bread, and I've struggled to find any admirable qualities. I don't want to condemn certain books as poor quality, but I've just finished Netherland by Joseph O'Neill and I'm still waiting for something to happen. It was like a rambling stream of consciousness with no pace or structure and the reader was constantly being pulled this way and that. I want a book that makes me anxiously turn each page and in Netherland, I was patiently waiting for that. I didn't feel anything happened. More happens in my Bottom Drawer novel in a more erratic fashion.
It’s not the first novel I’ve been disappointed in - there have been a few. A good book will be filled with the author’s passion - and that will be evident in a reading. So whether it be an agent, or an independent publisher, make sure you have a good book lined up too when the time comes.

Have a flick through How NOT to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. I must admit I haven't read it but, according to the critics, it has a plethora of info which will help us avoid the pitfalls of sabotaging our own work....including the over-use of the exclamation mark!! That's my pet hate!!!! So, go on, make your book a good one!!!!!!

Entry into bloggersphere

I feel under pressure to perform right now as this is my first official blog. Like a debutante's entry into society, this 'coming out' is just as nerve-wracking. But I'm delighted to be here and I'm grateful to you for stopping by to read and of course for any comments you may have.

Let me first of all tell you a bit about myself. I'm Gillian, and for the last ten and a half years I've been working as a newspaper journalist. The most exciting person I've interviewed so far is Uri Geller. Whilst chatting to him, my yoghurt spoon bent. I've also stood beside the Queen (royal, not Freddie) and Hillary Clinton (at separate events) and I've had my picture taken with Adele from Big Brother 3. I've been on the box a few times too and I've produced a short documentary on a pet cemetery which made the Daily Mirror telly critic cry. The most daring thing I've done in my writing career so far is dispose of a used cocktail stick inside an antique vase in the drawing room of the Secretary of State's residence Hillsborough Castle (there was no bin, and I'd no pockets).

At this point, you're probably wondering why I have used an astronomical word in the title (bloggersphere) - well this is due to the fact I received a telescope for Christmas from Santa and have been communing with the moon nightly (I also got a Wii – honestly, I am cool).

For the last three or four years I've been working on my entry into the world of novel writing (note again the astronomical pun). I've just finished novel two, entitled The Standing Man and I'm currently in the process of editing, revising and tweaking.
My first novel A River To Cross, set in North Korea, was completed in the middle of last year and I've since managed to notch up a few rejections, coupled with heartening comments from agents telling me to persevere and not give up on this one. It's still very much alive and well in a little yellow folder on my hard drive. I should tell you that my initial attempt grew wings and went to Novel Heaven in the sky but may be reincarnated some day. I've just embarked on my third novel called Cake, set in a fictional Irish village in which a Women's Institute member goes on a murdering spree after losing a Victoria Sponge competition.

All this of course has been a learning curve. When I started out, I thought my work was the best thing since sliced bread. And when I posted my first submission, I sat beside the phone eagerly awaiting the call from Ed Victor (big scary agent). How wrong I was! Much of the earlier ramblings were utter dross and deserved nothing more than to be consigned to the bottom drawer. Fit for nothing but the bin. But if we are honest, that's how we all start out. There's so much more to a book than a story, as I've found over the years. The novelist Kingsley Amis once said 'The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of one's trousers to the seat of one's chair.'

Most of all a novel is fun to write. Don't do it for the money - what money, some say? A novel is like a cupboard – you open it up, there are different compartments like characterisation, plot, description, and of course, the writer's main faux pax – telling rather than showing. And I suppose a book for the customer is like a bag of Revels – you open it up and you don't know what you're going to get - hopefully a nice surprise.
Then there's the opening sentence - just how important that is, I cannot stress. That's the crucial bit that allows you to form an immediate opinion about the book. And if the opener is not engaging, there's the danger of the reader losing interest.

The fact I have a background in journalism means nothing. I thought it did - and I was wrong. Yes, of course it sounds good in the letter which accompanies the submission, but it does not make me a better author than the person next to me. If anything it can be detrimental - there's the rush to finish a news article and the urge to pack in as much information, in as little words as possible. And that's not how to write a novel.

But remember - a good writer never gives up.

Well that's all for now folks: if I continue on, I'll be heading off on a tangent into the stratosphere....Wishing you all a happy new writing year and may all your dreams come true in 2009.

I'm currently reading Netherland by Joseph O'Neill.