Help! I NEED a Publisher! (And Maybe an Agent ...?)

GONE AWAY .....

2009-09-14T17:25:00.001+01:00

PLEASE REMEMBER - I AM NO LONGER HERE! SEE NOTE ABOVE. I do hope you will change your link / bookmark and join me along with everyone else on the new blog

IMPORTANT: TO ALL MY READERS

2009-08-31T13:58:00.003+01:00

IF YOU HAVE PREVIOUSLY LINKED TO ME ON YOUR BLOG - please remember that I have MOVED and this means that you need to CHANGE THE LINK on your lovely blog, otherwise you'll never get the auto-updates and you'll think I'm dead.

Rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated.

If I could send you all chocolate to repay you for your loyalty, I would.

Thank you, Bookmaven (Mary Hoffman) for helping point this out.

What a great bank holiday Monday I'm having. God, it's just like really moving house.

SO, please go to the new address here:

www.helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com

TO ANYONE WHO LINKS TO MY BLOG .... HELP!

2009-08-31T12:50:00.001+01:00

NOTICE TO ALL LOVELY PEOPLE WHO LINKED TO ME ON THEIR BLOGS - you need to change the address on your link to me, otherwise you'll never get the auto-updates and you'll think I'm dead.

YOUR WIP IS DEAD - LONG LIVE YOUR WIP!

2009-08-29T10:14:00.011+01:00

After my last post (excuse the pun), you all shared so much about your dead / dying / comatose books (and I loved Donna's image of divorcing her WIP, citing irreconcilable differences!) that I thought I'd reply in a separate post and pick up your points.

First, though, Bookmaven - thank you for your flattering suggestion that I turn the blog into a book. I have sometimes thought about it a bit but have pretty much decided that I love the blog format. (Shame I can't earn any money through it ...) Penny Dolan made the point too. Thing is, I feel that this blog is more than just my words or voice - if this blog is any good at all it's all your voices that have helped make it that way. I think the quality of commenting on this blog is outstanding. I'm delighted to have well-known authors such as yourself (Bookmaven, for those who don't know, is the very successful Mary Hoffman), as well as editors and agents, and a fabulous standard of unpublished authors who seem to be doing all the right things to propel themselves towards publication. I think that blogs sometimes have the edge over books - the sacrilege! - because they are moveable and malleable and mutual. More like a guided group sharing thoughts and knowledge than a figure on a stage lecturing and then disappearing without taking questions.

(Candy - of course I need your comments, and not like a hole in the head! And yes, I know I haven't replied to your email - I'm on the case. Thank you!)

So, no plans for a book (though I wouldn't turn down a fabulous offer ...) but I am thinking of doing some talks around the country. I'd be happy to hear from anyone who'd like to set something up. Crabbit Old Bat on Tour? Crabbit Old Bat Comes to a Town Hall Near You? (Note to self - could be an excuse for serious investment in shoes. Definitely tax-deductible. Note to Penny Dolan - jealousy is an occupational hazard of a writer so if you're only jealous of shoes, you've getting off lightly).

Meanwhile, your excellent comments on 222ing books.

I am in awe of how you've all taken positivity from rejection. (As Caroline said, rejection is information. I like that.) Your thoughts are worth quoting from. And literally everyone was positive.

So, Ebony McKenna (recently published - yay!):

"I finished six manuscripts (and didn't finish others) before I found my groove with Ondine. Two of those manuscripts *might* be fixable, but if they never see the light of day, that's fine with me. They were not a waste of time because I learned so much in the process." Exactly!
Juliet Boyd:: "I find the best way to deal with it [rejection] is to quickly open the envelope and see reject. Then put it away for a week to let yourself accept the rejection. After that, you can go back and read the feedback given with a rational mind and if you're honest with yourself, you will often agree with what is said." Juliet, If you can put it away for a week, you're a stronger woman than I am ...
Iain Broome said...: "I've been lucky so far and managed to get an agent at the fourth or fifth attempt, but I know plenty of people who have struggled and struggled with their novel. I think it's made all the more difficult because our work came out of our time on a Masters programme (Sheffield Hallam), so the investment, in a sense, has been financial as well as emotional, time-related etc." Iain, I wonder if it's not so much the financial aspect but the fact that going on an MA course is a fairly public statement that "I am going to be a Writer" so any "failure" to achieve that is a more public failure. When I was struggling to get published, I didn't tell many people so the anguish was more private.
Donna expresses it perfectly, even though she hasn't got to the point of submitting, let alone rejection! Great attitude, Donna. She says:: "... I do understand the reality that maybe, just maybe, this best book that's ever been written in the history of the world may not ever be published. Do I have the strength to sign a DNR form? Probably not. But I think I could bring myself to sign divorce papers (citing irreconcilable differences, or course). That way, I can officially move on... but I can entertain the dream that maybe a long way down the road we can reunite. It's a slim-to-none chance, but I'm the kind of person that needs the "slim."
The important part of Andy Duggan's experience is highlighted in red:: "I've been through all this as well, but maybe I can give some figures that might help: I've got a collection of approx 50 rejections from agents and publishers. In spite of this, my novel 'Scars Beneath The Skin' was eventually published by Flambard Press. There was a major rewrite somewhere amongst those 50 rejections, though - prompted by constructive criticism from a writing group."
Focus on the red high-lighted parts of Suzie F's comment, too. This is what I mean by the quality of comments. Her point about self-doubting voices is crucial - these are the voices we have to learn to listen to. They so often speak sense. (Except that she had doubts about whether to write at all - the more important doubts are the ones about THIS book, Suzie. Always continue writing if you love it enough - though if you're not good enough, you may not be published ...) Suzie says:: "Today's post hit home with me as I'm currently facing the fact that my current WIP isn't going anywhere. Well, maybe somewhere, like a deep, dark desk drawer. This is actually the second time - my first attempt at a novel was dropped at approx. 10,000 words but I was heading into NaNoWriMo with a fresh idea. ... I was infatuated with my two MCs but got myself into a plot jam. I've been stuck ever since. Then the self-doubting voices began whispering in my ear and I struggled with whether or not I should continue writing at all. Instead, I decided to use this WIP as a learning experience. Editing, rewriting, tightening, researching and reading a ton of books in my genre (MG and YA). I love the process so much and am starting to develop two new ideas." Hooray and triple hooray!
David Griffin gives an insight into the anguish of the writer, and many of us will identify:: "I had the services of an agent for just over a year, quite a while back now. And because the agency were unable to place my novels, we parted company. ... Since then I've tried only a handful of agents over the years, in a sort of half-hearted fashion, really. (i.e if one reputable and well-known London agency didn't want to represent me anymore, why would any other? Silly, I know, but it's taken a long time to get over that thought)." David, silly but understandable - thing is, you are probably a better writer now, writing different things - perhaps you are more publishable now. You have to try.; "So in a way, lacking confidence and motivation in trying other agents, I've attempted to "smother my children" by simply not getting them out there." God, we're into murder now! Eeek, what did I start?; "I'm developing habits of a writer who is committed to writing now, writing every day .... I'm going to try agents with determination and give it up to maybe 20 rejections. Only then will I occasionally read from the POD versions of my novels, with the odd sigh, knowing that not many other people will read them; and try the third one (when it's finished). "Grief, who would be a writer? (Millions of us, I know)."
Indeed ...
DanielB said...: "I have had to "slap a 222" on a novel in the past when the publisher who I thought would be "my publisher" (a reasonable assumption, as they'd published two of my novels) turned it down. ... It's still in cryogenic suspension, awaiting that revolution in medical science. Parts of it have been siphoned off and used for stem cell research to grow bits of other novels." So, not wasted at all. Excellent! And I'm partly including your comment because it's interesting for people to see that even successful writers like you can have temporary probs with publishing and [see next para] with writing ... "That's the second situation Nicola mentions - and I am a little worried that I may also now be facing the first as well! Damn it, I'm supposed to be one of those "experienced writers". It isn't meant to happen to us..." Ah, yes, unfortunately it does, but I am confident that you've spotted it earlier and stopped yourself sooner than if this was your first. For info of others, the second situation Daniel refers to is when you're halfway through a book and you become aware that it's going towards a dead-end fast.
Sue Hyams and Rebecca Knight seem delightfully happy at declaring the deaths of their beloved works. They say, respectively:: "Oh, how timely! Just yesterday I decided that 222 was the only way forward - only I didn't have a name for it then - for the novel I've been working and working and working on for the past 18 months. The decision had been whacking me on the back of the head for some time but I tried to ignore it. Now, it almost feels like a relief. Almost. Great post - thank you!" And:; "This is a fantastic post ... I've had to do this with my book, and it was all for the best :). I received two rejections that got me thinking, stopped querying immediately, and got to work! I can safely say that what I have now is 10 times better than my previous book, and all because of the criticism I received. Thank God for rejection!"
To be honest, I'd say thanks to the writers who take rejection so constructively and leave God out of it, but I know what you mean ...

I want to finish by referring to Catherine Hughes' comment. I'm not putting it in full here because this post is already long enough. Do go back to it on the post below this and see what you think because she's asking you all a question. My instinct is that she should be writing another book, because she has been told she can definitely write, but this vampire book (even if it is really really really different from other vampire books) has not been taken. I think we deserve better than another vampire book and I think Catherine can do it!

However, I also want you to notice that Catherine discovered (from the rejections and feedback) that she has a fatal flaw in her writing: not knowing at which point of the action to start the story.

I have two things to say to that:

I'm going to do a post about starting stories. (Catherine, you will have discovered from your search that I haven't talked about this yet). It's a great idea for a topic.
I have good news for the patient: this is not a fatal flaw. There is a cure! Hooray for illnesses with cures!

Catherine (and others who may be tempted) - you want to revoke your 222. I suggest you don't, at least yet, but I do suggest you take DanielB's suggestion and opt for cryogenic suspension. You may still eventually decide to turn off the life-support but on the other hand a) you may find the cure in time and b) vampires may be back once more. Yes, I do think the agent is referring to you writing something else, but yes you should also hang on very tightly to those words of praise. They don't come often or easily.

Meanwhile, you and we all simply need to remember the most important point of my orginal post, and one which none of you commented on substantially: that whether our WIP is curable, mildly rheumatic, terminal, comatose or cryogenically suspended (or awaiting divorce proceedings) we should be doing one thing regardless: writing and falling in love again.

Because that's what being a writer is.

CERTIFYING THE DEATH OF YOUR BOOK

2009-08-28T07:29:00.010+01:00

Recently I noticed that my blog has 222 followers (now increased, which slightly spoils the point but please don't go away). I noticed because it's a cute number but then it got me thinking. "Not for 222" is (apparently) the medical code for a hospital patient so close to death that he should not be resuscitated in the event of heart failure.

It got me wondering how a writer decides his beloved book is "not for 222". How many times can you allow it to be rejected? At what point do you decide there's no possibility of life? Is your unpublished book terminally unpublishable?

Strikes me there are two situations where you might have to make the dreaded 222 order on your book.

Your Work in Progress (WIP) is not progressing. It's stuck. What started with an appealing idea and hook has ground to a halt. You have begun to force the plot-line; you know that it all now hangs on an episode which doesn't completely ring true, even to you, but you're determined to make it fit and you pile in more and more things to force the reader to believe in your story. You're starting to bite your nails in your sleep. There are bits of your book that you love and you keep reading them aloud to yourself, marvelling at the gorgeousness of your talent, but you know in a secret and painful part of your heart that your book has been built on sand.
Your finished book has failed (and failed and failed and failed) to find an agent or publisher. Some have given glimmers of hope, which you have clutched at and possibly exaggerated in your mind; your friends and family love your book (duh) but no agent or publisher seems to care about that; your writing group keep telling you to carry on trying - they mop up your tears and tell you you are brilliant and that publishers don't know what they're talking about or are "only in it for the money". (Well, yes, actually, if you mean that they can't afford to make a loss on every book they take on and they do have to eat like the rest of us.)

In each of these cases, a brave decision must be made.

Situation One is an occupational hazard of writing. It's an often fatal illness that happens much more often to books written by inexperienced writers. As you become more experienced, you'll spot the symptoms earlier and treat the cause before it becomes terminal. I have just done this with an idea that I was utterly gripped by until I began to look ahead and think the plot through. I foresaw fundamental problems in motivation and development, so I killed my baby before I'd developed a relationship with it.

(Note: we talk about the importance of "killing our babies" in writing and it strikes me that killing babies is a lot easier than killing adults. Metaphorically, I hasten to add. If you let your book grow and invest huge amounts of time in it, it's much harder to let it go. Whereas, spectacularly unlike real babies, an idea being stillborn is just a pinprick, something you have to get used to. Apologies for the unpleasant analogy.)

Situation Two
"How many rejections should I accept before giving up?" I was recently asked after a talk on how to get published. It's not the first time I've been asked it. Obviously, there is no answer, or not in terms of a number. In theory, you could send it to every agent and publisher who takes that sort of book, which might only be 20 or it might be 100.

But there are two more useful questions you should ask:

1. How many rejections should I accept before doing some radical re-writing of my work?

Answer: not very many, frankly. IF you have submitted your book to the right people (ie you have researched carefully and only sent it to agents and publishers who handle this sort of work) and IF you have followed all the guidelines so far given in this blog and the submission guidelines of the agents and publishers you've approached, and IF your writing is good enough and IF your book is sellable, then it is likely either to have been accepted or to have attracted some specific feedback, even if not an acceptance yet. So, IF the feedback has alerted you to a problem, you should be re-writing now. IF the feedback has either been inconsistent or has suggested nothing, you should consider getting (perhaps paying for) a professional critique of your work. But be careful to research very carefully the "professionalism" of this critiquing ... (Future post topic.)

What do I mean by "not very many"? Well, you ask me for a figure and figures don't really figure in this game. But let's say, for the sake of argument, not more than ten. No, eight. Seven?

"Only seven? Or even ten?" I hear some of you say. Ah, I don't mean you'll only send it to 7-10 agents/publishers; I mean you'll only send it to that many before taking a long hard look at what you've written (another long hard look because of course you've already given it dozens of long hard looks - I mean a long, hard, critical and objective look). Somehow, you must get a good opinion as to what's wrong with your book which means that you haven't yet hooked anyone.

Thing is, if you send it to 25 and they all say "no way" and then you decide you could have written it better, that's 25 publishers you can't really send it to again when you've improved it ... Well, you can, but it's tricky and needs some careful handling.

But I said there were two more useful questions and the second one is even more useful:

2. What should I be doing while my book is out there being read by an agent / publisher / anyone?

And the answer to this is dead easy: you're a writer, aren't you? So you should be writing. You should be throwing yourself into your next idea. If you're not, you're no writer, just a one-book wannabe. And no agent or publisher wants a one-book wannabe. No reader wants a one-book wannabe.

So get writing. Be fickle - turn your back on your beautiful slaved-over book and fall into bed with a new lover.

When you do that, you learn several important things:

that your first book may not be as good as you thought it was
that you can fall in love again
that the death of a book is not the end of you as a writer
that being a writer is about striving to be better all the time and that this happens with practice
that if your first book is not good enough you actually don't want it to be published
that actually you can postpone the 222 decision and wait for new technology to come along (in the form of your new knowledge gleaned from writing the second book) which might cure the disease
that if at some point you decide to slap a "not for 222" on your first book, this will be a positive moment in your career as a real writer. And that you will (I promise) get over your apparently tragic loss.

Don't get me wrong: it's tough, it hurts, and even grown men cry. But if you have another WIP, it's not so bad. And you will not regret it. Ever. I don't know a published writer who hasn't got unpublished work in a drawer. And I don't know a published writer who really wishes that that unpublished work was published. God, I'm glad mine wasn't.

And a happy corollary that comes from all this is that resurrection and reincarnation both exist in a writer's world: it can sometimes happen that an idea or a book that died can rise again, later, when you are grown as a writer, and become something so much better and stronger and more beautiful than it first was.

We have to love our books with a passion but sometimes we have to let them die; or leave them lying in bed while we look ahead to the next one to love. Call yourself fickle, call yourself callous - it doesn't matter as long as you are writing.

If you have more than one book in you, let's see it. If you don't, give yourself a 222.

WANTED: SUBMISSIONS FOR PUBLIC OPINION

2009-08-26T10:51:00.007+01:00

Newcomers (and there are many - hello!) to this blog won't know about the occasional Submission Spotlights, so I thought I'd flag up these opportunities to have your Work in Progress mauled in public by readers from all over the world. "Hold me back," I hear you say. Yes, it's a scary thing to do - but here's a thought: getting published is scary too, because then your Work is no longer in Progress but horribly fixed, and real readers will throw eggs and wet sponges at it. So, better get your humiliation in while you've still got a chance to improve the response.

Also, a nice man came up to me after a recent talk I did and was asking about his non-fiction proposal, and I realised that my Sub Spotlights don't give an opportunity for non-fic writers to be abused. This is not right - non-fic writers need to be able face the music too. So, I am going to amend the submission guidelines.

(If you have already sent one in, don't change it. I'm not that much of a bat.)

NEW SUBMISSION SPOTLIGHT GUIDELINES

for fiction (whether children's or adult writing): submit your covering letter and the first 500-600 words of your novel / children's story. In other words, submit almost exactly what you would really submit, except omitting a synopsis and ignoring the "3 chapters or 10,000 words rule". Covering letter should aim (as with real covering letters) to hook the agent or editor by encapsulating your book in a succinct but expressive way, following the guidelines in my recent posts on covering letters. See here, here and here. You would normally be enclosing a synopsis (although you are not for the purposes of this exercise) so don't give details of the outcomes of your plot/sub-plots - just give enough so that we can tell just what sort of book this is and why it is so compelling. As with a normal fiction submission, your novel should be finished before you submit.
for non-fiction (again, could be for children or adults): I want to see almost the whole proposal that you intend to send to an agent or editor. HOWEVER, please do not enclose your CV - instead, your proposal should include a para showing why you are the person to write this book. Also, for the sample, please only send me the first 250 words, without any intro. We want to get a sense of the writing style, voice and pitch.
please email your submission as an email attachment in a Word doc (not pdf) to writingtutor@hotmail.co.uk Make sure it's not read-only. Previously I asked for the submission in the body of the email - I discovered this is more of a nuisance. Again, if you've already sent a submission, don't worry - if I'm going to use it, I will.

Notes to all:

if I don't use your submission, don't take this as a rejection! I'm simply trying to offer a range of different genres
there is no deadline (thanks to Dan H for pointing out that I didn't make this clear) - it's an ongoing thing
please specify if you're contacting agent or editor
you are welcome to use a pseudonym - make it clear what you want me to use

QUESTION - Anyone got any more children's / YA submissions?

Another note for all - do go and read some of the previous Spotlights, for example this one by Jen. Jen was brilliant at working through the feedback and she says she got a huge amount out of it. You'll find the level of commenting very instructional. Remember, some of the commenters are agents or editors in disguise (sometimes not in disguise ...) and others are very astute readers. All have been honest and constructive, even when contradicting each other. They are among the best and most useful readers you'll get withough paying.

Tomorrow is my last day of talks at the Edinburgh Bk Fest - which reminds me, I had better go and prepare them. One is my schools' event - my absolute favourite thing to do on a stage - and one's on Fighting for your Rights as a Writer, which I'm regretting having agreed to. Mainly because I haven't a clue who the audience is. It's a bit like writing a book and not knowing who you're writing it for - a Very Bad Idea.

On the other hand, an even worse idea is going to do a talk without preparing. So, if you'll excuse me ...

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 5 - BEING NICE

2009-08-25T09:52:00.001+01:00

My daughter is (rather usefully, some might say) working in the children's bookshop in the Edinburgh Book Festival. This in no way explains why my books are so beautifully displayed, of course. But a conversation with her on one of the prep days before the festival opened has engendered this pointful point.

Being nice is a very useful and under-rated quality.

No, I'm not saying I was nice to her. Or that she was nice to me. It was something quite different.

This was how the conversation went:

Rebecca: Recommend me some teenage books to read so that I know a bit more about them. Apart from yours, obviously. I know enough about those.

Me: (showing her the teenage section of my personal library, all in alph order, of course) Well, you could try a David Almond or a Julia Bertagna or a Tim Bowler or a Kevin Brooks or a Cathy Forde or a Keith Gray or an Elizabeth Laird or a ...

Rebecca: Which of them are your friends?

Me: All of them. But that's not why I recommend them, of course.

Rebecca: I'll take this Keith Gray one. He's always nice and friendly to me.

So, she picked Keith Gray because he was nice and friendly to her. The tart. (btw, I'm sure the others would be just as nice but she hasn't met them). So, she read his book and is now very likely to recommend it to teenagers when they or their parents ask for recommendations. His being nice and friendly to her could start a word of mouth Keith Gray-fest.

There's a lesson there. Especially when measured against that crappy author at the launch I told you about recently. We're always being told we have to develop a platform, a profile. If niceness is part of yours, I reckon that will draw people to you. And one good and surprising thing about niceness is that it's hard to fake for longer than five minutes.

It may sound trite but trust me: nice can get you a very long way. It makes the world go round more smoothly. If someone who'd written a book brought me sparkly wine, I'd definitely buy their book. Which is another pointy thought for you.

By the way, you may be wondering why, if niceness is so important, I am still proud of being the "crabbit old bat". My theory is that in fact your own niceness has smoothed all my crabbitness away over the last few months. I am but a shadow of my former self. You have destroyed my persona.

I could hate you if I didn't like you so much.

UNREQUITED COMMENTS

2009-08-24T09:15:00.003+01:00

Big apologies to those of you who have left comments recently but not observed me having the decency to reply. I normally do reply, often at length, but I'm not keeping up with myself. Please keep commenting and please keep coming back because I will reply, even to the comments left on last week's posts. I'm still in the middle of book festival madness, still only halfway through my events.

Don't leave me this way.

CONFUSED BY CONFLICTING ADVICE?

2009-08-24T07:45:00.007+01:00

You will have noticed that there's often conflicting advice about how to get published. You will be frustrated by this. And confused. And sometimes despairing. Natural responses, but wrong.

Some of you have been talking about tearing your hair out or curling up in little balls of stress at the conflicting advice. Sometimes you'll read something on my blog and it conflicts with advice on a blog I recommend to you, or it's different from advice that someone else equally amazing gave you.

So what's going on, I hear you ask? Thing is (and here's some more advice), you need to hang on to some truths.

publishing is not an exact science - when an agent or publisher receives your MS, any attempt at science goes out of the window in the face of human emotions and personal response. When an agent or editor tries to decide about your work, he or she is trying to bring objective expertise to bear in order to try to make a commercial decision about something that is personal response and will continue to be personal response right down the line to the customer choosing your book in the bookshop
it's all only advice - even when it's couched in words like RULES, it's just designed to give you a better chance, not a perfect certainty. We offer guide-lines, our best recommendations, that's all.
in the end, it's the power of your book that counts more than anything, not your perfect covering letter or whether you included congealed toffee in the package. It's just that for 99% of agents and editors, having congealed toffee in the package kind of gets in the way of appreciation of the rest of the contents
most importantly, your submission to an unknown agent or editor is a human and personal attempt at communication between two strangers - there is no objective recipe for how this might work. Sometimes, your writing will connect; sometimes it won't. So, what bugs one agent will delight another. What leaves one cold will inspire another. All our advice just tries to steer you in the most-likely-to-be-right direction, but it cannot work every time. Humans aren't consistent like that.
so, writers need to focus much more on making their actual writing brilliant than following the devoted advice of people like me, who stupidly spent hours formulating a post about the perfect covering letter and perhaps ended up making some of you more stressed than you were before

Do remember this most important fact: the vast majority of what agents and editors receive is eye-bleedingly awful. And if yours is not, it already stands a huge chance. Hold that thought and believe it, spending most of your time and passion in getting the book right. The rest is easy. (It just makes sense to follow the guidelines, in order that the agent/editor can focus on your writing without unpeeling toffee from the pages.)

Don't get tangled up in negativity. Don't start saying it's a lottery or that agents don't read your work or that you have to be blonde, gorgeous and leggy. (Take a look at most published authors, including me, to know that that's not quite true.) If you write a great book and if an agent or editor loves it enough and believes that enough other people will love it, it will be published. There's not enough out there that deserves to be published and editors and agents are desperate to find the gems.

My over-riding advice for finding your way through the sometimes conflicting messages is this: work out for yourself which is right for you and your book and your dreams for it.

Thing is, you're all individuals. (Cries of, "Yes! We are all individuals ...") You and your book and your background and your future are not the same as anyone else's, and therefore how you pitch those things to an agent or publisher (who are also all different from each other) will have to be slightly different. And this is why every approach to an agent or publisher has to be tailored and personal - personal to them and personal to you.

The way to do this is, for a writer, simple: put yourself in the shoes of the recipient, enter the mind of the person who will read your words. I say "for a writer" because this is what good writers do: they enter the mind of their readers, they listen, they learn, and they tune in. Do that, and you cannot fail.

I now give you two of my favourite quotes, because they're both apt.

F Scott Fitzgerald said, "The sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing beliefs at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

And the buddha apparently said, (according to the card that sits above my desk all day, every day):

Believe nothing,
no matter where you read it,
or who has said it,
not even if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense.

But I really do recommend that you don't put toffees in with your submission. When I find an agent who would look favourably on such stupidity, I'll let you know.

THE PERFECT BLOG-READER ...

2009-08-22T18:06:00.006+01:00

... is one who comes to my workshop, asks no stupid questions (actually, no one did - hooray for sensible workshoppers) and brings me chocolates. And chocolates of a very superior quality, too.

THANK YOU SUZANNE!

Although Toffee is Not a Way to Get Published, chocolate is a way to make me happy. If I were an agent or editor, it would consequently be hard for you to know whether chocolate would be an appropriate thing to send me in a submission, but my advice would be to wait until I've said I love your work and want to agent or publish you.

Since I am not an agent or publisher and never plan to be, chocolate is absolutely a very delightful thiing to bring me. However, please don't feel you have to, or I am going to put on too much weight.

Also, those of you who live too far away to come to Edinburgh, don't worry. I do not think any the less of you. Because really the perfect blog-reader is one who listens, joins in, is engaging and personable, does not leave spam (note to "glovin" - your ill-disguised spam is not appreciated) and then follows all my advice and gets published.

Can anyone bring me that happiest of all presents yet: one of you obtaining a contract?

Well, until then, I am grateful to Suzanne for today's lovely gift! It will certainly keep me going until that wonderful moment.

Meanwhile, please go and read today's main post, below. It's a long one. DOT - you especially should read it ...

THE PERFECT COVERING LETTER

2009-08-22T14:00:00.003+01:00

I promised that I'd post this at the exact time of my workshop on the subject at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Think of us, eating chocolate and having fun!

(Btw, sticklers for correct language among you will have noticed that that last sentence can be read in two ways. It's deliberately ambiguous: either you or we are eating chocolate and having fun. And I'm not telling you which. It would be unprofessional.)

Now, those of you who have come late to this blog - where have you been all my life? - will need to go and read two posts first, as today's relates to all the ideas that came from them and also the competition I set up. Here's the first one, and the second is here. Or click the links to Covering Letters Part 1 & 2 on the list of articles on the right.

Your task was to guess what two improvements my agent said could be made to the sample letter. No one got both of them but one clever person got one of them. And the congratulations go to .... DOT! (Another reader, "D", got this later too, but a) it was later and therefore not first and b) he over-analysed the reasons and ended up not pinning it down in an objective, market-led way.)

DOT said "I believe your opening sentence, 'Wasted is a story of love, choice and the science of chance' is the weakest. From the description you write of your book, it is more fraught than that sentence implies." Spot on! It is indeed way more fraught. It's damned knife-edge bone-shivering skin-crawling stuff, with a load of passion thrown in. So, you win the prize - please visit my website and choose a book. Then email me (n@nicolamorgan.co.uk) with an address to send it to and a name to sign it for.

But, let's go through that letter now, because loads of comments came out of it, some of which reveal misconceptions and others which are valid. I'll go through the whole letter, explaining my rationale behind each bit. After that, I'll give a list of MUSTs, MUST NOTs, and MAYBEs.

THE NEAR-PERFECT LETTER

Dear Ms Hathaway,

I enclose the synopsis and sample first chapters of my 67,000 word Young Adult novel, Wasted. I also attach my CV, as requested in your submission guidelines.

It is normal and correct to say what you are enclosing. I am indicating that I have read her submission guidelines. Because she's asked for a CV, I don't have to give details of my pedigree etc in the the letter. I have given the word count, implying that it is complete (which it must be) and showing that it is an appropriate word count so I am not an idiot or ignorant. I have identified the genre /age category, so that she knows immediately what she's about to read. I have given the title. I have not waffled, boasted or been obsequious Yay for me!

----
Wasted is a story of love, choice and the science of chance. Jack and Jess meet by chance, and fall powerfully in love. Jess - beautiful and talented singer - and Jack - impulsive, fascinating, intense, drummer in his own band, Schrödinger’s Cats - are on the eve of leaving school; freedom beckons. But Jess’s mother is an alcoholic and Jess, only child in a single-parent family, feels responsible. As for Jack: his mother died long ago - twice. After such unlikely bad fortune, he is obsessed by luck, chance, fate - whatever you call it. Jack calls it something to be controlled and so takes deliberate risks, playing a game with a coin, challenging chance to beat him. Chances are that, one day, it must. Events come to a dangerous climax in the heady, alcohol-fuelled beach party after the Leavers’ Prom, when life or death hang on the toss of a coin.

As DOT says, that first sentence is not strong enough. My agent said it's too soft "for the current market". My preferred sentence would be something like: "Wasted is a novel of danger, risk and Fate, entwined in a passionate love story." (But I still haven't quite got it right - luckily I don't need to, as the book is being published anyway, but I'll need to work on it so I can enthuse people easily.) Several people commented on the need for more detail - but this is quite sufficient for a covering** letter. Remember: there is a synopsis in the same envelope, which there would not be in a US-style "query", and therefore a query would need more detail. The covering letter can be intriguing, AS LONG AS you have answered any questions (eg re motivation) properly in the synopsis and as long as the letter sounds confident. So, we don't need to know why Jess feels responsible, or how Jack's mother could have died twice.

----
An unusual voice - present tense, omniscient, vivid - is not the book’s only defining feature. Twice within the story, I write alternative versions of an event, versions which turn on an almost unnoticeable chance difference, but a difference which has vastly different consequences. I then toss a coin and the story continues with one version, depending on the result. Finally, I write two alternative endings and challenge the reader to toss a coin to “choose” the ending. How the coin lands affects which possibility becomes reality. And it’s a life or death difference.

Someone commented on the present tense, saying that many people are put off by it. Yes, this is a risk and one which can only be taken in the covering letter if you feel that the story is so strong and intriguing that the agent (who may also be prejudiced against present tense) will read on. Thing is, in Wasted it absolutely is a defining feature, not just its present-tenseness but other aspects of the voice. By claiming that it is "unusual" and "vivid" I aim actually to draw attention to it and almost challenge the agent to try it. Someone commented on the repeated use of "difference" - it's deliberate and each use is mutually referential. This is an important pargraph, and this feature of alternative versions is crucial.

----
I have worked very hard to make this novel as ready as possible for publication but I am also very used to welcoming editorial guidance.

Interesting points from this. Someone said, "But shouldn't it be perfect?" It's a fine line I'm treading here. I want to convey that yes, I have worked very hard and am not submitting something that is not the best I can make it. At the same time, I want to convey some understanding that whatever I produce will need to go through editing. So, I am being neither arrogant about my work nor ignorant of the process of publishing. At the same time, I have not committed the cardinal sin of saying "I know that an editor will want to work on this, so I have deliberately not made it perfect." DO NOT DO THAT!!! Some writers think that it doesn't matter about grammar/ punctuation etc, because "it will be sorted at editing stage." It DOES matter - because it shows whether you're a good enough writer.

----
I have had a few pieces published in other fields, as you will see from my CV, but I am ambitious to become a successful author for young people and am prepared to work as hard as necessary to achieve that.

Here, I'm conveying that a) I have some writing experience b) I hope to have a fruitful career ahead of me and c) I know it will take hard work. All of this labels me (I hope!) as someone with whom an agent and editor will enjoy working. Ambition without delusion, confidence without arrogance, and always a determination to do better. What more could anyone want???

----
The high quality YA market may be relatively small, but it’s one I love and would be so proud to work in.

Here, I am indicating a knowledge of the market that I'm aiming to write for. I'm also conveying that the reason I want to write this type of book is that this is the type of book that I love. So, I'm conveying a connection with my intended readers. It shows that I know exactly what I'm doing and why. And that my reasons are good.

But this is where my agent suggested another line should be added. She pointed out that it would be even better if I named a couple of my favourite YA authors, who write in the same sub-genre as Wasted. This would show even greater knowledge of and passion for the genre. I wouldn't say that I am trying to emulate them but I would say something about my respect for their work.

----
I have already submitted Wasted to the Tanya Highbury agency and, although she gave me some very positive feedback, she did not feel that it was right for her at this time. Otherwise, yours is the only agency which I have approached so far.

Several of you were doubtful about this. Why am I admitting that she was not the first agent I approached? It's because you have to be up front - that's being professional and good to work with. An agent is not stupid: think about it - how likely is it that one particular agent was the first one you approached? They don't mind not being the first - though I wouldn't confess if she was the 50th ... - but they do mind very much if you're not up front about sending your submission to others simultaneously. (Some agents specifically ask you not to, in which case you mustn't.) I also have no problem with saying that Tanya Highbury knocked me back for that reason - again, I'm showing honesty and realism; also, by naming the other agency, I'm even giving my potential agent the opportunity to check. (Agents talk ...) By admitting this situation, I reveal that I understand the ins and outs of getting an agent.

----
I know how busy you must be with existing clients but you will understand that I want to approach other agents fairly soon; therefore, I would be most grateful if you could tell me what your position is on my approaching other agents or indeed some publishers.

Ebony pointed out, rightly, that Janet Reid's post, which I'd linked to, said she hated it when an author said something about knowing how busy she was blahdy blah. However, we have to remember that agents are just like other people, ie different and full of individuality. Personally, I believe this sentence of mine shows common courtesy and respect and portrays me as the sensible and aware person that I am. Frankly, if the agent I'm writing to is going to knock me back because of it, I am maybe not suited to her. More importantly, my comment is part of a wider and crucial strategic point: I am asking her to tell me whether she's happy for me to contact other agents. This is a 100% professional attitude that reveals a good understanding of an agent's work. I am also showing that I want to get on quickly and that I am finding a way to do so which does not mess anyone around. Agents understand this.

----
I very much hope that you will like what you read and that you will want to see the rest of Wasted.

I don't think anyone had a comment about this bit. One point though: you should never say, "I know you're going to love what you read..." Because no, you don't know that.

----
Yours sincerely,

Because, obviously, you know about sincerely for letters where you've used the name and faithfully for when you don't know the name. BUT, you should always know the name. Never do a Dear Sir or Madam

Modest confidence, unobsequious respect and clear professionalism - that's what we want to convey. Simple!

So, my trusty lists:

MUSTS

be very clear about genre, and age range. If for kids, exactly what age range - 5-7? 12+?
give length of book to nearest 100 words
follow individual submission guidelines to the letter - and show that you know exactly what THIS agent/editor wants
thereby show that this is a personal approach and NOT a mail-shot
briefly describe what the book is about, sufficiently for the recipient to know a) that you can write b) that you understand the market and c) that this is a fascinating book that the agent will want to read
give the right amount of detail: so, in my letter, I did want to say that Jack's mother has died (twice) but I did not need to say why Jess feels responsible. Becasue the first thing is really important to the book but the second thing isn't (but is answered in the book)
show professionalism
show knowledge of and passion for the specific market you're aiming for
follow the traditional rules of writing letters, including layout, signing off, including date
include proper contact details
be honest
be respectful
be 100% accurate grammatically
follow manuscript layout guidelines available from many places on the internet - ie A4 white paper, black ink, TNR 12pt, decent margins, double-spacing, one side of paper, page number+name+title on every page

MUST NOTS

absolutely no submission services/agencies/companies who claim to send a perfect covering letter to zillions of agents and publishers. See Jane Smith's post on the subject.
no typos or crossings out. If you make a mistake and don't notice till after printing it, reprint it
if for children, don't say it's for 8-18 year-olds - be precise
no sycophancy or creepy compliments
no boasting; no value statements such as "exciting" or "brilliant". Things like "fast-moving" are fine.
no claims that anyone in your family / circle of friends / acquaintances has read and loved it
no comment about how much you love writing and how long you've been writing for - see Rachelle Gardner's post on Aug 11. She's talking about US query letters, but the same principle applies
no tacky email address or one borrowed from husband/friend
no "extras" - such as toffee or a photo of you dressed as a koala (or even not dressed as a koala)
no "I know you're going to love this"
no use of the phrase "fiction novel" - what is a non-fiction novel?

POSSIBLY MAYBEs

gap in the market - with fiction, don't say there's gap in the market: there isn't. With fiction, all we need is a great story to fit within (even if pushing the boundaries of) an existing area. With non-fiction, gaps in the market are useful - but consider whether there's a gap because there are no readers. So, be careful.
mentioning other authors represented by the agent / published by the editor - if relevant
length of letter - not too short and not too long. Just say what you feel needs to be said - and hope that the recipient feels the same. Sorry, but there are obviously elements of the "perfect" approach that are subjective. Just follow the all-important rule of making every word count and not putting in anything without first evelauting its effect.
future projects - yes, if you're at an interesting stage of a similar project (ie one that could be the second novel orf your two-book deal), mention it briefly. But don't let it get in the way of this submission.
comparing your style to another author - this is very tricky to get right and, frankly, I wouldn't do it. It's sometimes a tad arrogant-sounding and risks putting the agent/editor off if they happen not to like that other author (which would be fair enough if your style was really exactly like the other author's, but that is usually not the case). Also, you don't want to sound derivative. But occasionally it can be helpful to mention, done properly.
giving reason for writing this book - hmm, well, yes, OK, possibly relevant, in fact often so. BUT be very very careful not to indicate that this novel is overly personal experience, because then I might worry where your second one will come from. So, yes, do it if it's relevant but do it carefully
cross-over potential - hmm, tricky one. It's pretty much not for you to say, even though you may think you know. So, be very aware of exactly what it means.

And that's about it. Go write that perfect letter, even though perfect is subjective ...

Sorry for the lack of my normal crabbit humour in this post. I'm writing it a couple of weeks before posting and I'm feeling serious because I'm surrounded by lists and lists of lists. I have also lost (temporarily, I hope!) my creative spark, as I have put novel-writing aside to prepare for Edinburgh Book Festival stuff. As well as six events and a few chairings, I've got the Soc of Authors in Scotland AGM and summer party for 200 in a marquee to organise and it's slightly doing my head in. I am feeling like an event manager, not a writer. (But by the time you read this, the event will be over, which is a strange concept for me right now.)

One day, I will be properly back. meanwhile, please don't go away.

WELCOME TO ALL NEW READERS

2009-08-21T08:25:00.007+01:00

I have been overwhelmed (in a good way) by the huge increase in followers and page hits in the last few days, presumably because of Edinburgh book festival activity. The downside to this is that, because I'm not even halfway through my events yet, I am getting behind on replying to your comments and also to the many lovely emails you've sent me.

Be patient - I will be back! Of course, I haven't physically gone away, but I am not at my desk enough to reply at the moment. I tend to read your messages on my iphone while reclining on carpeted sofas in the famous Yurt, but then someone comes along and I get talking and never manage to reply. (Want to see pics of said Yurt? See here.)

Just to give you a sense of what's to come:

tomorrow, (Sat 22nd Aug) I'll be posting the results of the covering letter competition and you'll get the Definitive Guide to Covering letters. This will happen while I am giving a workshop at the book festival on "The Perfect Approach", and I know that some of you will be there. Hello in advance!
on Mon 24th, I have a fairly trenchant Pointy Thought for you
and crabbit old bat will be going into full rant mode about something that Really Bugs Me. Not sure when but as soon as possible. It's something I need to get off my chest and which I know most of you will agree with but some may not ...
we need a Submission Spotlight soon - do keep your entries coming. There's no deadline for these - I just put one up every now and then. If you've already sent me one and I haven't used it, DON'T take this as a rejection or criticism. It's not a sign of anything at all except that there was one that I thought would work better on public display than yours. And I may use it yet anyway. (See here for the rules.)

Meanwhile, keep writing and keep reading. And I'm back to the Yurt today, but NOT doing any events - hooray for a day off and the sun's shining! - just some meetings with lovely people, including coffee with my great friend Lindsey Fraser (Fraser Ross Associates, lit agents), to tell her all about the fascinating dinner I had last night with the Minister for Culture and some seriously famous authors - I kept looking round and thinking, How did this happen? When you think how long it took me to get published, how many years of failure I had to endure, and I end up in this company, in the same week that I hosted a huge party with guests like Margaret Drabble, James Naughtie, Ian Rankin and many many others - you should take heart: there's hope for everyone!

Luckily, I have enough fabulous shoes to cope with all these sparkly eventualities. Yesterday was the turn of the turquoise boots.

WRITING FOR TEENAGERS

2009-08-20T20:00:00.007+01:00

I did a talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival today about writing for teenagers and I promised** the participants that I'd put a fuller version of my notes here on my blog. Of course, devoted as I am to you all, I have not actually rushed back from Charlotte Square to do this - by the wonders of modern technology and forward-planning, I scheduled this post back when I wrote my notes. God, I'm clever. (PS - and, unlike other times, blogger graciously allowed me to do this.)

(** Actually, I forgot to promise this. But the intention was there.)

Anyway. Here's what I planned to say. Of course, it may have come out quite differently, since I tend to ignore my notes. Also, because my actual notes are just bullet-points, I have fleshed them out and turned them into sense. In fact, frankly, these are not really my notes at all. These are simply the words I imagine I might say if things go according to plan.

(Vivian French will have spoken before me, about writing for older children, ie 9-11s. I have no doubt she was brilliant - she's written enough books for kids of all ages and no one knows more than her.)

WRITING FOR TEENAGERS
The best way to understand how to write for them is to understand who they are. And who they are as readers. (Yes, they do read! In fact, those who read do so avidly and deeply, and want as wide a range of books as adults do.) Some successful authors say they don't particularly need to think about their readers when they write - Tim Bowler is a great example. He seems to have the perfect voice and interest-level for teenagers, without thinking about it. I suspect with him that it's all subconscious, and actually he's a big kid himself (he's a friend, so I can say that) so it comes naturally.

But the reason I think it's important is that, as the writer, you must know exactly what your teenage character would do /think / feel, otherwise you risk your story not ringing true. And teenagers can spot things that don't ring true a mile off - and will tell you about them. Ruthlessly.

ABOUT TEENAGERS:
Not children, not adults - so books are different from children's and adults'

How are they different from children (and therefore books are different from children’s books)

Teenagers are (and should be) less protected - so we can’t pretend the world is rosy
They are interested in different things - different things affect, worry, intrigue them, especially the things they may have to deal with now or soon
They have a need for risk-taking / need to break rules - including reading books their parents don't like!
They hate moral messages, hate to be preached at
They can spot middle-aged voice - esp a m-aged voice pretending to be teenage

How different from adults (and therefore adult books)

Teenagers are less patient, less forgiving of waffle; story must get straight to the point
They have some different interests (eg don't care about menopause/surviving on pension). remember that we have been teeangers and so are more naturally interested in them than they are in us
Teenage viewpoint essential to main character - and this MUST be an actual teenage viewpoint, not that of an adult looking back and remembering being a teenager

MUST CONSIDER THE GATE-KEEPERS - adults who buy the books and who choose what gets published and what goes in the shops / schools / libraries.

I believe anyone should read any book, whatever their age, but this is a genre, and you have to know the rules for that genre. There are boundaries you can’t cross, but it's hard to pin them down - you just know when you crossed them. If you're unpublished, it's your crossing of the boundaries which may raise alarm bells with an agent/editor that you don't know the market.

Eg Deathwatch - this was always going to be about a stalker but I needed to nail right from the start that this was not paedophilia and had no sexual connotations at all.
Eg my current planned WIP - about a celebrity-obsessed girl: I'm having trouble with the potential outcome because if she comes a cropper then the story is too trite and moral, but if (as I want) she gives two fingers to everyone's boring opinions, where’s my moral stance? I'm trying to find a way to be radical yet get past the gate-keepers. PS - I've now moved on a long way from this potential WIP and it's all completely different from how I started out.
So, nothing can be gratuitous. Violence needs a context, a moral position; certain topics would be very hard to handle** - eg incest, paedophilia.
Where you show any characters using eg violence or drug-taking, the outcome for those characters would need to be carefully handled.
Certain elements may make your book regarded as a no-go by schools: Eg guns, swearing, sex, drugs - yet these are all topics are of interest to teenagers and therefore legitimately covered - but beware.

Extra point about these boundaries - the fact that a topic is hard to handle (eg incest /paedophilia) does not mean you can't handle it. It means you have to know exactly what you're doing. Read Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan if you want to see what I mean! It is (in my view) utterly brilliant. It's the work of a phenomenal imagination and brilliantly handled.

The real point to hang onto is that everything has to be about the story. So, you don't write "about" eg violence - you tell a story, and if violence has to be in it, then it has to be in it. But the reader should never think you simply set out to ram violence at them to shock them.

THE SAFETY NET FACTOR - this is my little analogy to define a difference between writing for young children, older children, teenagers and adults;

young children - barely any need for a safety-net , as you know nothing bad will happen. Safety-net more like soft-play ball-park
older children - safety-net there: reader knows that even though it feels scary, nothing terrible will happen even if it seems as though it might as you slip off the rope
teenagers - no visible safety-net: the reader feels that something terrible could happen. But, in fact, the safety-net is there because, even if the reader doesn't know it, the author cares. hope will not be destroyed.
adults - no safety-net necessary, especially in some genres. The reader knows that anything could happen.

The skill of writing for teenagers is keeping the safety-net invisible.

SUGGESTED ROLE MODELS - because you MUST read the best in current successful fiction

for the dark, deep and dangerous side: Kevin Brooks, Keith Gray, Catherine Forde
two books that handle dangerous topics but get away with it because of the writers' skill: Looking for JJ (Anne Cassidy), Killing God (Kevin Brooks)
gripping and fast: Ally Kennen, Catherine MacPhail
fab for girls: Cathy Cassidy
the epitome of boundary-breaking - Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

TIPS:

Every sentence has one aim: to stop them going off to listen to their ipods
Never sound like an adult telling them a story
Never sound like an adult pretending to be a teenager telling them a story
Avoid teenspeak - a) it'll be out of fashion next year and b) teenagers will laugh you out of town
Get the practical details of teen life spot-on - account for mobile phones / internet etc
Never preach or patronise
Keep that safety-net invisible
Get rid of the parents

That's it! No idea how I'm going to round it off but I've got some time yet ...

And do check out how I Define A Teenage Novel here and finally some Common Mistakes When Writing For Teenagers.

HOW TO MAKE A PUBLISHER SAY YES

2009-08-19T18:45:00.002+01:00

This evening, in the Edinburgh Book Fest, I'm doing my talk on "how to make a publisher say yes". And I decided to put the bare bones of it below, or at least to try to decipher my notes and then turn them into something that will make sense to you.

I've done the apparently same talk for four years now, but each time I say it differently. Each time, I guess I've learnt more in the meantime. Each year, I throw my notes away because I know I'll do it differently next time.

So, this was how I structured my talk for this evening. I'm sorry you're not there, but you at least have the luxury of being able to relax with wine / chocolate while you're reading it. On the other hand, you don't get to experience my shoes. And, writing this as I am a week ago, I can't predict which shoes they'll be, so spontaneous am I.

WHY DOES CRAP GET PUBLISHED? (I won't use the word crap, because you can't do that in front of a captive audience, some of whom have only come in out of the rain and weren't expect the crabbit old bat to be so rude).

This is the question that frustrated aspiring authors ask. Understandably. The answer is simple: crap sells. Every published book is a book the publisher thought would sell. And, since crap sells in shedloads, you have to admit they were very often right.

Getting angry about why crap sells will get you nowhere. Besides, you're not here because you write crap and want to sell it. You're here because you think you've written something damned good and you're wondering what on earth you have to do to sell it.

I can't (or not here) teach you how to write, but I can show you the most common things people do wrong.

TWO COMFORTING THOUGHTS
The awfulness of the slush pile is reassuring - it means that good stuff shines. When an agent or publisher sees a jewel in a pile of crap, he will leap on it with enthusiasm and is quite happy to get his hands dirty in his efforts to retrieve that shiny jewel and clean it up so that the world can see its beauty.

Because the second comforting thought is: publishers and agents are desperate to find good books, great books, books that readers will love. If your book is good, they want you.

A SLIGHTLY COMFORTING THOUGHT
It's easy to get published: you just have to write the right book at the right time and send it to the right publisher at ther ight time in the right way.

BUT, in order to do that

you must understand what makes a right book
you must understand how publishing works, how commercial decisions are made
you must know (and obey) the rules for submitting your work

TO THE POINT
"How to make a publisher say yes" is not the best question.
The best question is "why do publishers usually say no?"

WHY DO THEY SAY NO?
One reason only: they think they can't sell it. (If your rejected book goes on to be published elsewhere and even be a huge success, that does not mean that the rejectors were wrong. They may well not have been able to sell it, for reasons which you'll find below.)

Before we proceed, you need to understand about the ACQUISITIONS MEETING (AM). (Blog-readers, go here; people in audience, sit back and listen.)

REASONS TO SAY NO
These fall in two categories.

Publisher-related - not in your power to fix
Book / author-related - your job to fix

1. PUBLISHER-RELATED (If even one of these three things applies to your book, it will not get through the AM.

book doesn't fit their list or their publishing schedule is genuinely too full. It might not fit their list because they've already contracted something too similar; or they've decided not to handle fairy books any more (thank the Lord). If it doesn't fit the list because they don't handle this stuff, that's your silly fault for not researching, but there are many other reasons that you had no way of knowing
the necessary investment is too great. Publishers have to pay a load of money months and years before they have a chance of recouping it. They have to budget and if your fabulous wizard series comes along when they don't have the required budget to invest in it over many years, they should not take it on and you would not (should not) want them too
the editor is not in love with your book. This may be because the book isn't good enough (in which case it's your problem) but it may be simply personal taste. Don't underestimate the importance of that. Liking or admiring a book is not an exact science. Hell, it's not even a science at all. And the editor must love your book otherwise she/he won't fight for it.

2. BOOK / AUTHOR-RELATED

The writing is not good enough - punctuation, grammar and basic techniques mark you as someone in control of words or not; you cannot expect the editor to overlook these; voice, pace and structure are essential to powerful story-telling and readable non-fiction; are you thinking of your reader at all times and have you avoided over-writing? (Those are the commonest faults which will make the publisher / agent say no)
Book is not marketable, even though the writing may be good enough - publishers have to make money (they may make mistakes but they are doing it with their money); you need a HOOK - the hook needs to grab the Sales and Marketing team at the AM; you must understand the current market - read current successes in your genre and read them analytically. This does not mean selling out; it does not mean putting commericality before art: it means thinking of your readers
Your submission is faulty - (there are loads of posts on this blog about submissions, so I won't go on about it here too much but here are the absolute bare bones and most common errors:

obey guidelines for each individual agent / publisher
write the perfect covering letter (a new post is coming up on 22nd August, during my workshop on The Perfect Approach) - you have 15 seconds to sell yourself
don't do anything wacky or cool
don't boast; don't say your kids / friends love it
show knowledge of the market and willingness to work hard for long term career

TOP TIPS

every sentence counts and every word within that sentence must earn its place
think of your reader
read within your genre - but read like a writer
miss no opportunity to improve your knowledge of the industry
be very careful whose feedback you believe and whose you ignore. Believe experts before friends and writing group members

MOST TOP OF TOP TIPS
Instead of believing that you are hard-done-by and wrongly ignored or that publishers are stupid, accept that the likely reason is that you haven't yet written the right book well enough. Yet ...

FINALLY - regard the rejection of your book as the rejection of your book. Not the rejection of you. Write another one. Because if you can't write another one, you can't be a writer anyway.

(And then, after illuminating questions from the audience, the event chairperson thanks me for being so interesting and everyone flocks to the signing tent where they buy copious quantities of my book and we staying signing and chatting and generally bonding for about half an hour. Then, the chairperson escorts me across the summer evening grass towards the calming cavern of the Yurt, where I strengthen myself with a glass of wine and some dinky sandwiches and pastries. I then go out to dinner with my husband, older daughter and her French boyfriend and younger daughter who is working in the bookshop [putting my books face-out] and I tell them how a very kind blog-reader brought me chocolate and that three people commented on my shoes.)

I'll tell you if it happens like that.

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 4

2009-08-18T12:31:00.002+01:00

Today I'm mostly going to be stressed. In a good way. I'm writing a week in advance of posting it but when you read this it will be the day of my very last AGM of the Soc of Authors in Scotland, and also our party for 200 which I've been organising with military precision. (Last email document to the committee was headed "The Micro-Manager Strikes Again"). The sun will be shining and I will be welcoming well-known faces to the glorious tent that is the Party Pavilion. I'll post you some pics if I remember to get my camera out of my bag.

Anyway, that is so irrelevant to this post. On the other hand, bearing in mind that this post is about being irrelevant, that is perhaps relevant in itself.

Pointy Thought 4 is: Do not tell your potential agent/editor how much you love writing. It is so not relevant to her / him, though it is to you.

Fabulous blogger Rachelle Gardner prompted this thought. See her post from last week here. It's also very relevant to the conversations (here and here)I've been having with you on covering letters and will be mentioned in my post on Aug 22nd when you get the results of that exercise while I am doing the accompanying workshop in the book festival.

She's absolutely right. The fact that you just love writing and have been indulging your passion since you were two is the sort of detail you can keep for your memoirs or for a talk you do to the Women's Guild. In other words, AFTER you've been successfully published.

When, as an unpublished writer, you tell a writing professional that you've always loved writing, you are prompting all sorts of reactions in the professional's mind:

loser alert
where's the emergency exit?
tell me your name so that I can remember not to read anything you ever send me
another one for the wood-burning-stove

Well-known fact: all agents and editors have wood-burning stoves for exactly this purpose.

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 3 - SANITY (and book fest pics)

2009-08-17T03:14:00.003+01:00

Continuing in my series of Pointy Thoughts, I bring you a thought of extreme importance. This has been engendered by correspondence from an agent friend of mine.

It is simple: do not submit any work to an agent or publisher when you are high on hallucinatory drugs. Ever.

That is the only explanation for the extraordinary example of mania that an agent has shown me.

No, let me be fair. I am going to think about this more carefully. There are some other feasible explanations, and I offer them all to you here:

the writer was in the grips of a quasi-religious seizure - this could be the right explanation, as it did contain references to the notion that God had called him to a writing career. Well, I think it did, but it was a bit hard to make sense of. God did come into it anyway. (And please don't tell me God comes into everything and that God is everywhere. God was definitely not with this guy when he wrote the letter, unless He wished to knacker the guy's career before it started. Which is actually not a bad idea. So, maybe it was a religious seizure...)
the writer was at a particularly difficult and intransigent stage of severe mental illness. Now, this I am very sympathetic to (not through personal experience, but through general human sympathy) and such situations are very tragic. However, this is really not the time to submit work to an agent. Or anyone at all.
a mad axe-man had burst into the writer's garret and was threatening to cut his head off unless the writer submitted the work right NOW and under conditions of extreme stress.

There are no other explanations.

People, submit your work when sober, clean and stable. Do it only of your own volition, not because forced to by either God or an axe-man.

And now, unconnectedly, I bring you some photos of the first couple of days of the Edinburgh Book Fest, including, by popular demand, some never-yet-seen photos of The Yurt.

Day One and Two of the festival, and the sun shines. See!

Now (below) we approach that glory of glories, the Yurt. First, the peaceful bit outside, with authors relaxing in the sun:

And here the entrance, which is deceptive, revealing none of its hidden mysteries.

In the background is the Press Pod.

Below is the entrance again, at a busy time, with Roland, the programme manager, looking important. Which he is. He looks as though he's smoking a pipe, but of course he's not: he's saying "over and out", or something equally technical, into his radio thing.

Here is the hospitality table, with, remarkably, no one there.

The roof of the Yurt, which never leaks.

And the carpet of the Yurt, with some rather fetching shoes.

The children's book tent

A shelf of my books, the non-fiction ones. Sadly, I could not photograph my daughter's handiwork in giving me prominence in the fiction section, because there were too many people in the way. What nuisances readers are.

And the tail end of some party or other - can't remember which. They blur ...

And just to show you that the sun always shines on my blog: Not a drop of rain or gust of wind have we had. Trust me, I'm a novelist.

CRAPPY AUTHOR BEHAVIOUR: THE LAUNCH

2009-08-15T10:28:00.001+01:00

It's a while since you've had a full-scale rant from me and I feel it's been too long. How you have managed, I have no idea. Wait no more: I feel the need to share a little thing that has been bugging me since a book launch I went to a while ago. Let's not be precise about the exact date and let's not go anywhere with the name or genre, because I do not wish publicly to embarrass the author, who should be embarrased enough all by herself. I'll just say that once I was in London and found myself persuaded.

Tomorrow evening, I am going to a launch which will not be crappy. Lin Anderson, gruesome crime-writer par excellence (gruesome crime, not gruesome writer) is launching her new book in the Edinburgh Book Festival and I am going. Partly to cast my eagle eye over the tent because that's where the Soc of Authors party is being held and I need to forestall any glitches which would otherwise come back to haunt me. Partly because I've been asked to another party immediately after it (God, my life is dull) in the same venue so I won't even have to damage my pink suede shoes by walking anywhere. But mainly because it will be a good do and Lin is the consummate professional.

Unlike the author whose launch I took time out of my day to support. Little did she care. I tried to talk to her and say well done but I just got a slit-eyed glare and a miraculous disappearing act. Had my reputation preceded me? Did I kick her with my pointy shoes? No, I missed that chance. Next time, next time ...

Now, when it's your first book, there are lots of things that you can do wrong at your launch and get away with, like being nervous and shy. Nervous and shy can be very endearing. I remember a debut author's launch when there was barely a dry eye in the house, so endearingly nervous and shy was she. You could tell that she had really taken trouble - she'd spent time working out something nice to say and how to thank the various people "without whose help and support" etc etc. Yes, she was shaking with nerves, but she looked at us. Yep and yay, she looked at us. And smiled. Even one of those two would have been enough.

But rude author did neither of those things.

See, there are crappy things that no one should ever do at one's own launch (or in fact anyone's). A sensible publisher should never let a new author loose on a book launch without some timely advice.

Now rather than personalise this, because I really don't want to, let me stop talking about that launch and just talk about launchy mistakes in general, mistakes that can be made and indeed have been made at book launches. In the spirit of helping you achieve a happy launch when your time comes, I give you my simple guide to:

"How to make a good impression at your first book launch."

of course you will invite lots of your own friends: lovely! But please ask them not to be rude to the staff or to the established authors there, who have come to support you, and who may well have better things to do. Those authors wish you well - usually - but you won't get many chances. Earn your place; earn your friendships. Or live to rue the day you were so frigging rude.
prepare something to say - you don't have to be a stand-up comic: just say a few words about how happy and how grateful you are. Because you should be.
prepare a little bit to read; and damned well practise it, often, until you can actually read it in a way that people will listen to while they're standing up with warm wine in their hands (it's always warm, even when it starts cold - it's not the host's fault ...). And, while, you are reading, look up.
smile modestly, occasionally. Or even often.
don't drink too much wine before you speak
if anyone from your publishing company comes, show gratitude. If two people come, be seriously flattered.
when your editor says fabulous things and compares you to JK Rowling, realise that this is what editors do. It means sod all**. It does not mean you're going to be really really successful, or even a bit. It means they're living on dreams and couldn't think of anything else to say. And it also means that everyone in the room who actually knows about publishing is trying not to laugh. (**For Lynn's sake, I should stress that it's only the JKR bit that means sod all - all the other lovely things your editor says are most likely true. Even when they are being paid to say it.)
if anyone buys your books, be grateful; spare them some time to chat and SMILE; thank them for coming
and never, ever, ever play the prima donna. You've got to be stupendously good to get away with it. Actually, to be honest, you'll never get away with it. No one ever does. You may sell books but people will say crappy things behind your back and then blog about you.

The people you meet at your launch are people who gave up some time to support you. They did not come for the free drink and pretzels.

Thing is - back to that launch ... - I had a look at the book, read a few sentences. But all I heard when I tried to read a few words was the author's voice.

And I didn't buy it. Frankly, I wouldn't read it if you gave it to me.

MAKING BEAUTY PUBLISHABLE

2009-08-14T08:53:00.012+01:00

This post by thoughtful and clever author, Emma Darwin, contains lots of apt stuff for all of us, whether published or trying to be. It also connects with this recent post of mine on pigeon-holes.

I like the way it rather successfully answers that thorny question, "So, you mean I have to sell my soul, sell my art, in order to be published? I have to sell out???" No, you don't. You can if you want to but you don't have to. What you do have to do is not be so self-indulgent, so self-obsessed, that you earn no readers with your unattractive selfishness.

It's a bit like Pointy Thought 1 - that the world doesn't owe you a contract.

I was going to treat you with a photo of the Edinburgh Book Festival DDay minus 1, but I walked all the way up there in the rain and then forgot to take a picture of it. Instead, you can have a picture of my sitting-room four days before the AGM and party which are pretty much all I'm thinking about at the moment (with apologies to all the people who are coming to my events which I should be thinking about - fear not, I'll be perfectly prepared when the time comes.)

And yes, those are Starbucks bags that you see before you. In them are not only 200 bags of coffee but 200 bars of chocolate, I'll have you know. Chocolate that I may not eat. It's killing me.

Oh, I have just remembered that although I forgot to take a pictire of the outside of the book festival and the sign saying One Day To Go, I did take a picture inside the foyer. Doesn't it look calm? You'd never know that this time tomorrow it will be buzzing.

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 2 - IDEAS

2009-08-13T05:39:00.003+01:00

Continuing my series of little pointy points while I try to improve my time management skills and deal with book festival generated overload, here's one prompted by catdownunder's comment in which she reminded me painfully of that most hackneyed question that all authors get. A lot.

Pointy thought. "Where do you get your ideas from?" is the wrong question:

Listen, ideas are nothing special. Ideas are just thoughts. Everyone has them. All the time. You can't help it. Where do your thoughts come from? They come from your head, or from someone saying something, or you reading something or simply having an unexplained train of thought.

What's interesting and important - no, essential - is what the writer does with those thoughts. Shaping them into a story is the hard bit, the bit you have to learn and practise. And practise some more. And improve all the time. And sweat over.

People sometimes say to me, "Why don't you write a story about ...?" or "You should write a story about that." Well, yes, that's a thought. But it's not an idea until it's grown a lot, and in my head is where it grows. I nurture it with questions like "What if?" and "What would happen then?" and "How would it affect the story if that happened?" and "Who are the characters who will make this story grow into a full and fascinating shape?" and, crucially, "What problems am I storing for myself if I start down that particular ideas road?"

Because thinking of the idea is easy - shaping it into something that works as a piece of fiction is much much harder.

And you can do it in a formulaic way or you can do it in an original way. I can't do formulae - they bore me rigid, as reader and writer - but formulae can be very successful.

So, ask not where I get my ideas: ask how I turn them into stories that work. And for that I only have one answer: damned hard work.

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 1 - MOUNTAINS

2009-08-11T06:16:00.007+01:00

Since I don't have time for full blog posts this month, I thought I'd give you a series of brief thoughts to think. Pointy thoughts, to go with pointy shoes.

Pointy Thought One:

The world does not owe us a book contract: we have to work for it. We have to suffer and develop blisters on our brains and RSI in our wrists. It's not meant to be easy. Easy is for lazy people, and we cannot be lazy if we want to be successful. As Neitzsche said (or German words to this effect): the more painful and blistery the climb to the top, the more goddamn brilliant the view.

Ah, sorry - not such a good example.

Here's a better one:

Or this:

And you know something? I'll give you a subsidiary pointy thought for free. (Note to self: they're all free, you idiot. Ah, yes, I forgot.)

Subsidiary pointy thought: there's a lot more hard work and a lot less luck involved than some people would have you think.

So, if you want to be published, a) make sure you deserve it and b) be prepared to fight for it. Be prepared to sweat and shed tears. And yell HOORAY from the highest mountain when you reach the top by your own effort.

THE EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL IS NIGHISH

2009-08-09T16:48:00.001+01:00

This must either be the height of laziness or else a supreme example of good time-management skills. I am linking to a post of my own, over on my other blog, Ghostlygalleon, which is where I go to say things that have no bearing at all on the art/skill/desperation of becoming published. Yes, I do occasionally say things that fall into this category. I know you think I live and breathe only to satisfy you, but I occasionally don't.

I do, in fact, have a life.

Not that you'd know it from that particular Ghostlygalleon post. But it explains why over the next month I will be less than usually coherent or pointful. I will regularly be full of chocolate, more than occasionally displaying signs of having had a glass or two, frequently not know what on earth I'm doing, often pretending to recognise the person who is speaking to me, but mostly having a stimulating and glorious time in the eternal sunshine of the Edinburgh Book Festival. Sometimes my feet will be silently sore from having been squeezed into gorgeous shoes. Sometimes I will wish I hadn't walked into the Yurt. (See the afore-mentioned post if you don't know what the Yurt is.) Sometimes my self-esteem will be bruised from having had someone say something crap to me. Or mollified by someone saying something unreasonably flattering. Sometimes, I will be buoyed up by seeing someone buy one of my books (because I will be hiding behind a pillar waiting for this to happen, and will then leap on them and threaten to sign it quickly in case they are thinking of changing their minds.)

Please come. Please speak to me. Please, if possible, say something nice. You don't have to give me chocolate - I'm much cheaper than that.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JANE SMITH!

2009-08-09T13:43:00.004+01:00

You probably all follow her already, wondrous fount of all knowledge about publishing (and wine) that she is, but if you don't, hop along to her much-lauded blog at How Publishing Really Works, and clog up her comments-box by wishing her happy birthday. Or else, you can comment here, as she often reads my blog, feeling the need to keep in touch with civilisation as she must, living in the wilds of Yorkshire where they have no electricity or running water. (She and her family have to have a 24-hour pedalling rota to make the old electricity generator work - it's a sad, sad situation for her woman of her potential.)

I am very cross with her for being a few months younger than me. But otherwise, I can't find anything to criticise in her. And, believe me, I've tried.

I do know that Jane claims to be jealous of me for being able to wear pointy heels and sexy shoes, (you can't do this in Yorkshire - it scares the sheep), so I thought she might appreciate this photo of my feet a few hours ago, just after I'd fallen into a reservoir and hurt my knee. These are seriously not sexy shoes, I am sure you agree. They also now stink, especially since I had to walk for an hour in them oozing reservoir water.

Reservoir clogs?

BE CAREFUL WHEN FALLING OUT OF PIGEON-HOLES

2009-08-04T16:15:00.011+01:00

Excellent example of how not to hook a publisher in this insightful post over on Editorial Ass today. And for once, it's silly agent behaviour, not silly author behaviour. Please read and then return here for my piercing insights.

Clearly the agent in question was clueless. Or you could say that he was actually very clueful: he gave loads of clues but no actual answers.

Let's do some unpicking and see what we can learn. EA says that the category of your book is "perhaps THE most important question for an editor and his/her sales team." It's an important and possibly somewhat shocking lesson. There was you thinking it was your writing or even the story that was the most important. Of course it is, to you and your readers, but you and your readers will never see your book at all if the bookseller doesn't know where to put it.

See, booksellers have a simple system, which you may not like. They have it for a good reason: customers are simple souls who do not wish to look far to find a book. Customers think they know what they like, and don't want to be told otherwise, so they really need to know where they might find it. Fast. You might wish that a bookshop could be a glorious muddle of treasures just waiting to be found serendipitously, with a squeal of glee. "Oh, how wonderful! A part-monograph-part-travel-guide-part-poetry-collection-part-local-history-of-the-inner-hebrides! I normally read sci-fi but this sounds quite delightful." But what real readers want is the exact book that they want (even if they don't know what it is) just THERE, under the label that says "book that you want".

So, first thing to do when you pitch your book is to know what it is. This applies both to covering letters (see on-going competition) and to query letters; it certainly applies when the editor pitches your as yet uncontracted book to the sales/marketing team in the Acquisition Meeting; it also applies when you answer the casual question about your WIP: what's it about? Because before you say it's about a boy and a girl who get lost in the woods, you have to say it's a fairy tale about a boy and girl who get lost in the woods.

If you are innovative enough to have written a book that defies categorisation, be afraid. I did. I wrote a book called Blame My Brain. Now, luckily for me, I never had to pitch it to anyone as I already had a publisher and an agent and all that happened before commissioning was a conversation that went almost literally like this:

Chris (editor): Would you like to write some non-fiction?
Me: Yes.
C: What would you like to write about?
Me: The teenage brain.
C: Good idea.

That afternoon I drafted a one-page plan and wrote the intro, and about three days later she'd come up with an offer.

Yes, I know. You hate me. I don't blame you. But I did take a long, long, long time to get to the point of having an editor trust me that much.

BUT, when it came to the bookshops deciding how to shelve it, then the fun began. Clearly, there is no category in any bookshop called "teenage non-fiction". (There may occasionally be a tiny little bit of a tiny dark shelf very near the floor, and occasionally when there is, I'm on my own in it.) Luckily - understatement - for me, booksellers thought the idea was so strong that they went out of their way to find a place for it but I still can't confidently predict when I go into a bookshop whether I'll find it in teenage/YA fiction, kids' non-fiction, psychology, parenting, popular science, neuroscience, mental illness or Scottish. (I joke not). Yes, this has been a problem. The only reason it was such a commercial success is that we got fab review coverage everywhere and there was nothing else on the market ticking the same boxes (still isn't - yay!); so word of mouth and market position now means that it doesn't matter that no one knows where to shelve it and no one knows where to find it. Well, it matters a bit ...

Anyway, that sort of situation is rare.

So, consider your WIP carefully, lovingly and calculatingly. Which shelf will it go on in the shops? I'll mention this and talk more about it - if I remember - in my Edinburgh Book Festival talk on How To Make a Publisher Say Yes on Aug 19th. (I don't mean it's about how to make a publisher say yes on Aug 19th - I hope a publisher will say yes on many other days as well). And do remember that it will hardly ever go in two sections, much as perhaps it should.

If you write for young people, in which age section of a bookshop will readers find it? I'll talk about the difference between 10-12s and teenage in my talk on Aug 20th. Again, a book that 10-year-olds AND 13-year-olds will love, will not be found in both 9-12 and the teenage sections.

However, there's more to categorisation than what shelf it will go on. We (humankind) like to pigeon-hole things. It's often an unattractive and unhelpful habit. Pigeon-holes are places of safety and comfort, but they are restrictive because you can't easily see out of them. However, while readers continue to be human and want categories, we have to work with them. And, actually, it is helpful when it makes us analyse the elements of our book, to make sure it ticks the right boxes or follows the right rules for that particular category or genre.

So, as well as knowing what section in the shop our book will end up on, we need to know in more detail what sort of book it is, so that we can describe it better and give people (agent, then editor, then marketing, then bookseller, then reader) a clearer idea as to why they might like it. Now, many books don't sit neatly within one pigeon-hole. And that's fine. No one ever said you had to sit neatly in the pigeon-hole. You're allowed to sit on the edge with your legs hanging out - it's a tad dangerous if you've had a bit much to drink, but just be aware of the dangers of alcohol and other substances and you can dangle to your heart's content.

But, while you're allowing your sci-fi book to dabble in romance or your historical novel to veer into magical realism, consider your reader. Are there enough readers out there who will go with you on your strange journey? Is your book like something else (something else successful - and not SO alike that you end up being cited in an anti-plagiarism fracas)? Does it fit a pattern? Are there good reasons why it contains several genre elements? Have you really got the experience to handle more than one? Are you genre-hopping because you haven't got your act together or have you genuinely thought this through?

If your book is a mixture of too many (say, more than two) genres, you are likely to lose readers. You are also likely to show a potential agent or editor that you haven't a clue what you're doing. Now you may well have a clue: you may be about to set a completely new genre-busting target of astonishing, innovative brilliance**: but the first page of your submission is not the place to tell your potential agent/editor this. Allow him to discover your avant-garde brilliance through your writing, not by leaping at him shouting BOO. Remember: eccentric brilliance often looks like crass lunacy at first sight and first sight is often all you get, if you're not careful. Later, the two of you can work out how you're going to pitch your magic to Sales and Marketing, but it will not be by telling them that it's a mixture of eighteen genres and hard to categorise.

** Edited to add: Have just seen a fabulous post by the inimitable Lynn Price, describing the inexcusable ignorance of the author who thought he was writing "literary action/adventure" - go read.

In short:

When you write, first consider your reader.

When you pitch, first consider your bookseller.

When you get your contract, first consider yourself: in my case, buy shoes, chocolate and sparkly wine.

There's no chocolate in that picture, for obvious reasons.

CLUES ABOUT THAT COVERING LETTER

2009-08-02T08:35:00.011+01:00

Yesterday, while you were all frantically trying to find ways to criticise my near-perfect covering letter without offending me by criticising my near-perfect covering letter, I was in town buying SHOES. Because, with 14 days till the start of the Edinburgh Book Festival, things were close to a panic situation. I can't show you the shoes (there's a news blackout) but I can show you the beginning of the tents going up.

Meanwhile, I thought we'd stay on the topic of covering letters and I'd answer a few of the uncertainties in your attempts to guess what my agent thought could be improved about the letter. (If you've just come to this and haven't read the letter and the attached competition, please do now.)

Meanwhile meanwhile, I should also say that one person has guessed one of the two imperfections correctly. I'm not saying who, but I will say that this person has identified the one sentence that isn't quite strong enough.

So, a few points raised by you, in no particular order:

Ebony suggested not saying that I've already been knocked back by the Tanya Highbury agency. No, I put this in to show my honesty and professionalism; and to say that I know how busy she is shows that I understand her task and that I'd be nice to work with. (Then Ebony redeemed herself by saying that the covering letter rocks, which it obviously does.)
Wendy said I should say she was my first pick as agent - thing is, she wasn't. (No, in real life, my agent WAS, but for this made-up one, I've said I approached someone else first). Keren made a linked point - again, I'm going for honesty and professionalism.
Rachel said that I should point out that the book is finished. It certainly should be finished, but I've given its word count, so it most likely is; I think it's clear from how I talk about it that it's finished. So fair point, Rachel, but not the right one.
Rachel also has doubts about this sentence: "I have worked very hard to make this novel as ready as possible", saying that it should be better than that, ie perfect. Point taken, but I wanted to show that I am not arrogant enough to think that it's perfect and that I will work well editorially, while not presenting a piece of work that is less good than I can make it on my own. Rachel also suggests I say why I'm approaching this particular agent (you said author, but you were tired!!) - a valid point, but not the one my agent raised! Actually, I've just found the real letter that I did hook my agent with, and in that I DID say why I was contacting her.
Donna - the YA market IS small in volume. Yes, the quality is strong, but the size is not; and I put that in to show my understanding of the market. Your other point is a good one, but again not what my agent picked up on!
Catdownunder - you comment that the letter was long. It's fine. And the synopsis IS separate and would be much longer (two pages). Re the CV - I agree, but some agents ask for one, and the reason I said this was that it shows I've read her submission guidelines. (viz Lexi's comment, too). The covering letter for some books might be shorter, but it's important to select the info that nails your book and to write a letter which is long enough to say what you feel needs to be said. If what you feel needs to be said is too long for the agent, yes, the agent will switch off, but it's a call you have to make for each book and each agent/publisher. So, yes, a letter could be too long (or too short) but this one is not. Oh, and I'm not sure if the comment about not needing to know how hard I've worked on my submission is part of your joke (!), but the point I wanted to make was that although I've worked hard (and am therefore professional and not blasé) I understand that an editor might have some changes to suggest (so I'm not arrogant) and that I'd respond well to that (and so am easy to work with).
AND, catdownunder, I hope you are joking when you say I should say I know how much she will like my submission! That's an absolute no-no!
Various - no need to say what I'm now working on. Nothing wrong with saying that, but no need. Yes, I agree that we need to show that we have a long-term career in us, but we can do that in other ways - eg when I say I want to work within the YA market.
Various - wanting more details of the plot/motivation? No, not for the covering letter when a synopsis is enclosed. I think I've given the max that an agent would need at this point. If it was a US query letter (ie not accompanying a synopsis and sample) then yes, I'd agree we need more details.
Juliet - no need to compare to style of another author. It's possible to do this but you have to be very careful.
Juliet and others - re the mysterious bit about the mother dying twice: my agent was quite happy about this but I agree that making the genre unclear is not a good idea. However, I'm happy with the tone and the air of mystery about this, and that the agent would discover the answer in the synopsis. Thing is, if you write the letter confidently enough and well enough, little mysteries that are deliberate can have no detrimental effect.
Thomas - a motive for writing the story? No, definitely not. The motive should only ever be a love of telling stories, not a personal connection with the idea/characters. If I'd said it was anything to do with my life, the agent would have run a mile! (But thanks for your comments and please don't apologise - you're all being very brave!)
Juliet - ah the MUFFINS! Of course!!

There's a load more I could comment on but I think that's enough. In fact, it's probably too much. Anyway, keep the comments coming, either on this post or the competition one - I'll consider them all for the competition anyway. Deadline is Aug 14th and the results will go up in a definitive post about perfect covering letters on Aug 22nd, the day I'm doing the workshop. The workshop is 2pm (GMT) so Ill schedule the post for that moment, and you can all think of us having fun in our tent! With chocolate!

As the competition now stands, your task is

work out who got the weak sentence correct (and why) and
identify what my agent thinks is missing (though it would not be a deal-breaker, I have to say)

Excuse any typos in this post - am being hassled to get my walking boots on and go climb a mountain. And my walking boots are not pretty.

LATER ...
I am now down from my mountain. Here was the view from the top, looking over Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth. The fact that I now have no power left in my legs is entirely beside the point. And there is my dog, looking rightly proud. Though in true dog fashion she has her back turned to the view, as she has no appreciation of anything that doesn't taste like food.

Maybe I should have enclosed a picture of her in my covering letter?

COVERING LETTER - PERFECTION REQUIRED

2009-08-01T07:00:00.001+01:00

(It's a long one - settle down with wine, chocolate, anything you need. But there is a competition at the end, so it will be worth it.)

"What's so important about the covering letter / query letter? After all, isn't it the book that counts?"

Yeah, sure it's the book that counts. But the agent/editor isn't going to get that far if your covering letter isn't good. No, forget that. The agent /editor isn't going to get that far if your letter isn't absolutely damned perfect. Or better.

You've been reading the recent Submission Spotlights on this blog. Well, I've been reading the submissions to the Submission Spotlights. Some of these are so bad that if I put them on my blog there'd be blood on the floor and tears at bed-time. So now, I feel, it is time to pound you with some serious sit-up-and-take-notice instruction about covering letters. (Or query letters if you are across the pond. They're not quite the same but pretty close.)

Here we are. Please take note. Even though I hardly know where to start.

when describing your book, give the most important info first. The most important info is the info that the agent/editor needs first. And that is, what sort of book it is. So, Redleg needed to tell us right off that it's futuristic / sci-fi. Yes, lots of people (readers/agents/editors) hate sci-fi and don't read it: that is no reason not to tell them. In fact, it's all the more reason to tell them, otherwise you get one seriously pissed off agent who finds out half way through chapter one that she's reading a piece of rom-com that she thought was an American Civil War novel.
actually, there's an even more important piece of info you have to give first, but it's something you can't say out loud, only show. It's this: that you are not the run-of-the-mill useless sort of rubbish that the agent/editor is assuming you will be. Let your professionalism steam.
don't ever call your book a "fiction novel". Do you need to know why you shouldn't do this? If you do need to know, you're not a writer because you haven't properly thought about the meaning of your words. Which is the entire point of being a writer not a piece of crapness.
don't say that your book is a historical-satirical-romantic-sci-fi novel. If it is, it's a mess.
don't confuse the description of your book with the back cover blurb which you'd like to go on the back of your book. Your letter needs to say more than that - the blurb poses intriguing questions but the covering letter has to give us a bit more detail about how you will answer those questions.
don't ...

Actually, I've had a way better idea. Today, I was preparing for a workshop I'm giving at the Edinburgh Book Festival, on "The Perfect Approach to Publication", and I was planning to major on the ultra-important topic of covering letters. So, in the spirit of putting mouth where money is I decided that I should write a lovely sample imaginary covering letter, and my workshoppers and I could all discuss it and learn from it.

Then .... I had the bright idea of sending it to my actual agent - praise be to her for her tolerance of me and most of my wacky ideas that disrupt her working time and ability to drink coffee at peace - and seeing what she thought of it, professionally, imagining that she'd never heard of me. (Like many people). And guess what, she said liked it, that it was almost perfect and she'd love to be my agent!! Yay! Then we both remembered that she already was.

BUT - and here's the real pointy point - she did actually have two suggested improvements. Aka imperfections. (How dare she? Did she really think I wanted an honest opinion? Hasn't she learnt by now that authors only want to be told they're brilliant?) And then I had my wheeziest wheeze of the day, if not week.

I thought I'd put the covering letter here, just as I wrote it, and ask YOU to say what you thought were her two alleged imperfections. See, I know how much you like competitions and this is one. There will be a prize for the person who most closely (IMHO) guesses the two (obviously deliberate) flaws in this beautiful covering letter.

Clues: one is a sentence which she thinks (rightly) is not strong enough / right. And the other is something she (rightly, because she is nearly always right) would like me to have said but I didn't. (Obviously deliberately. Duh.)

ANSWERS IN THE COMMENTS SECTION, please.

First, I should stress that the book I am talking about is actually my next book, and is being published in June 2010. All details are as the book is - except that the description of me and my attempts at approaching agents are obviously not true, because I have one. Wasted has already been written and accepted and paid for and the copyright is mine all mine, just in case you thought it sounded like an idea you might use. Dabs off - go think of your own ideas. I'll have no plagiarists on my blog.

And obviously I have not enclosed any toffees, glitter, or a photo of me wearing nothing but a snake. I have not listened to myself bang on for nothing.

So here it is. And obviously ignore the silly address etc.

Perfect Author
Address etc etc
Email Address
Phone number

Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway Agency
12 Aspirational Avenue
Dreamland

Date

Dear Ms Hathaway,

I enclose the synopsis and sample first chapters of my 67,000 word Young Adult novel, Wasted. I also attach my CV, as requested in your submission guidelines.

Wasted is a story of love, choice and the science of chance. Jack and Jess meet by chance, and fall powerfully in love. Jess - beautiful and talented singer - and Jack - impulsive, fascinating, intense, drummer in his own band, Schrödinger’s Cats - are on the eve of leaving school; freedom beckons. But Jess’s mother is an alcoholic and Jess, only child in a single-parent family, feels responsible. As for Jack: his mother died long ago - twice. After such unlikely bad fortune, he is obsessed by luck, chance, fate - whatever you call it. Jack calls it something to be controlled and so takes deliberate risks, playing a game with a coin, challenging chance to beat him. Chances are that, one day, it must. Events come to a dangerous climax in the heady, alcohol-fuelled beach party after the Leavers’ Prom, when life or death hang on the toss of a coin.

An unusual voice - present tense, omniscient, vivid - is not the book’s only defining feature. Twice within the story, I write alternative versions of an event, versions which turn on an almost unnoticeable chance difference, but a difference which has vastly different consequences. I then toss a coin and the story continues with one version, depending on the result. Finally, I write two alternative endings and challenge the reader to toss a coin to “choose” the ending. How the coin lands affects which possibility becomes reality. And it’s a life or death difference.

I have worked very hard to make this novel as ready as possible for publication but I am also very used to welcoming editorial guidance. I have had a few pieces published in other fields, as you will see from my CV, but I am ambitious to become a successful author for young people and am prepared to work as hard as necessary to achieve that. The high quality YA market may be relatively small, but it’s one I love and would be so proud to work in.

I have already submitted Wasted to the Tanya Highbury agency and, although she gave me some very positive feedback, she did not feel that it was right for her at this time. Otherwise, yours is the only agency which I have approached so far. I know how busy you must be with existing clients but you will understand that I want to approach other agents fairly soon; therefore, I would be most grateful if you could tell me what your position is on my approaching other agents or indeed some publishers.

I very much hope that you will like what you read and that you will want to see the rest of Wasted.

Yours sincerely,

(incredibly amazingly potentially successful author but wishing she could really be even more so and will definitely follow all editorial advice - no that's not what I would really put: this is for the purposes of HUMOUR)

So, then, whatchyathink?

MIRROR MIRROR, WHO'S THE CLEVEREST WRITER OF THEM ALL?

2009-07-29T19:32:00.005+01:00

Indulge in a happy imagining: a publisher has just offered you your first contract. Hooray! Break open the sparkly stuff and send me chocolate for my invaluable advice.

And then, before you drift off into permanent cloud-nine-land, tell me something: are you ready for it? Specifically, are you ready for the fact that whatever type of writing you do, you will have to defend it. If you write literary fiction, you'll have to put up with a) not selling enough books to buy the jam for your bread and b) people turning up their noses at your pretentiosity. If, on the other hand, you are such a crawling low-brow that you write - God forbid, perish the thought, OMG etc etc - crime fiction .... then be prepared to be well and truly looked down on.

(And let's not even think about what you'll have to deal with if you write chick-lit or - pause to draw three deep breaths - kids' books. The sound of a deflating ego will become familiar to you rather quickly.)

Don't believe me? Well, John Banville is a man who knows. Not only is he, obviously, John Banville, Booker-prize-winning (and therefore erudite and literary ...) author, but he is also, under the name Benjamin Black, a hugely successful crime writer. And he has just put his size elevens in it at the Harrogate Crime Festival. Not a place you'd want to cause a stushie, not with all those crime writers around: scary people who delight in doing very nasty things to others and having their bodies turn up in disgusting states of decay.

You'll need to read the article before you read on here. See, I've got a bit of an issue with the message. Not that I'm one of those silly people who think everything is equal and all must win prizes and that Katie Price deserves to win a literary prize as much as JB.

My issue is this: all he said was that it took less time to write the required words of a crime novel. Is that the same as saying there's less skill? (Isn't he actually phenomenally extra skilful because he can do both?) Is someone who can make intricate sugar decorations for a wedding cake, which takes hours and hours, a better and more skilful cook than someone who can conjure gorgeous flavours from a few perfectly-prepped, inspirationally-seasoned and cleverly-combined ingredients to produce a mouth-watering meal in minutes?

Is how long you take over something the mark of its brilliance? Was Leonardo Da V a better artist than Picasso because he took longer and angsted more about the detail? Or the perfectionist Mozart a better player than the best improvising jazz pianist? Was Flaubert's agonised paragraph better than one that he managed to write in substantially less than a week? Or was he possibly just a tad precious and maybe needed to practise a bit more to get quicker ... (You can picture Mrs Flaubert. "Hurry up Gus, your tea's getting cold. Are you still on that same sentence? Never mind, dear: you'll get the hang of it soon enough.")

Instead of measuring writing skill in how slowly the individual writer chooses the words, should we not measure it in how well he achieves his aim, how perfectly he inspires and delights his intended readers? Whoever those readers may be? Otherwise, don't we have a somewhat absurd situation whereby more respect is accorded to the literary writer who takes ten years than the one who took only seven?

Yes, by some measurements, literary fiction is cleverer; but by other measurements - for example how well it taps into the human love of story - crime is cleverer. As for how well it pays the bills ... **Reginald Hill's wife gives the right answer there.

(**BuffyS - I am quite sick of how clever you are and how much better your reading skills are than mine. And no, sqrl, I'm still not paying you? OK? I do not give money to sqrls, however well they can read.)

Anyway, please stop worrying whether your chosen genre is high-brow or low-brow - just worry about how well you can do it.

EDIT, EDIT, EDIT. THEN EDIT AGAIN.

2009-07-28T06:00:00.004+01:00

I just came across this very interesting piece by Jenny Diski in the Guardian.

In short, she was asked to guest edit a student literary magazine, and then the student editors disagreed with her editorial judgement. They didn't like the fact that she didn't effuse when she didn't think the pieces deserved to be effused over. They appear to have found her attitude of honesty to be at odds with their aim to make the magazine "an encouraging platform for new and developing student writers".

Those of us who want to be good writers, as good as we can possibly be, must be strong enough to allow (in fact welcome) professionals to judge our work. If we don't open ourselves to the notion that our work is not perfect, or is not even as good*** as it could be, then we don't deserve to improve. Or be published. Taking criticism is not easy, and I'm not saying we should always agree with it,. but we have to be open to it.

(*** corrected thanks to BuffyS's superior editing skills - but I'm not paying you BuffyS!!)

In primary school you might expect to be told you're doing brilliantly when you're not (though I question whether that's a good idea either ...) but by the time we're adults we have to face up to our short-comings.

Critique groups and writing groups are also often guilty of over-effusing and under-criticising; partly because when someone delivers negative crits, all hell breaks lose and the fall-out from deflated egos can be ugly to watch. So, if you can't take criticism in public, don't be published, because you'll sure as hell get it once you are. Instead, either find a trusted person and listen to that person's opinions or learn to edit your own work to within an inch of perfection. That inch is as close as any of us can expect to get, but we have to try.

If you remember only one bit of Diski's excellent piece, remember this:

"What surprised me most was how many of the stories felt unfinished, as if I were reading a early draft. Problems with structure, sentences that need to be worked on, far too many easy clichés not rejected - all of this normal for a first draft, even a second. For me writing is the editing. It's where the you make the story your own. Draft, redraft, let the thing sit, and then consider it again, read closely, carefully, cut away everything that you haven't properly thought through, and some things that you have."

It just about sums it up. Accept nothing less from yourself than intended perfection, even if perfection is rarely actually achievable.

DON'T MISS MISS PITCH IN HER PARLOUR

2009-07-27T08:15:00.006+01:00

Well, hooray for people who do things better than me! I do so love to delegate / pass the buck / opt out / put my feet up. And I've just discovered that my Submission Spotlights are redundant because there's a much better place for you to send them to.

Miss Pitch runs her very own pitch parlour. A whole blog devoted to writers sending in their query letters, synopses and samples. So, what are you waiting for? Go send!

But please don't forget to come back.

I'm sure I'd heard of it before as it's ringing all sorts of bells, though mine is a memory where many bells ring but not very tunefully. I suspect it was over on that demon blogger, Jane Smith's blog. Anyway, this morning I've come across it properly, through Twitter, because I was checking out my followers to make sure there were no spammers, suspicious person that I am, and there was Miss Pitch. So, I investigated her and found her not only to be not a spammer but also to be a Very Useful Blogger. Useful for you, and useful for me, because I now get more time to eat chocolate.

While you're still here, and talking of Twitter, any Twitterers amongst you need to know about something that goes on on Mon, Weds and Fri evenings 9-10pm GMT. It's called #litchat (don't forget the hash). Now, frankly, I'm not the best person to tell you about it because the only two times I've tried to join in I have been totally bewildered and wrecked the whole of Twitterworld with my cack-handed ignorance. But this evening, Jane Smith and Maggie Dana have promised to hold my hand across the ether. Apparently the best way to do it is at tweetchat.com. Bewildered? Join the club.

Anyway, if you want either to join in interesting discussions (not that I ever saw any - all I saw was Jane and Maggie talking about my boots) or eat kettle chips and drink pinot grigio or even watch me make a total idiot of myself, do pop by.

I think the problem could have been that I'd had no wine, unlike certain people. This I can rectify.

Mind you, all was not lost: twelve extra people started "following" me after witnessing my hopelessness. I think they thought I was being radical and coolly subversive in wrecking the #litchat tweetchat with backchat: nope, just thick.

SUBMISSION SPOTLIGHT 4: adult readers

2009-07-26T06:12:00.004+01:00

Another Submission Spotlight opportunity for an intrepid author to receive feedback.

The author, "Devan" tells me that she has had good feedback from an agent, but that the agent decided to pass because she "didn't feel the affinity with my style that she would need to champion my work." (Valid reason). Devan is now trying to work out whether this was just that agent or if there are "issues" to sort out. She also says, "I've been working on the ms for so many years that it's becoming increasingly difficult to see where the rewrites are needed." Oh, haven't we all been there!

So, it's over to you.

For those of you who haven't given feedback in a Spotlight before, please go here first for the original submission guidelines, which are NOT exactly what a normal agent would ask for. It might also help you to read a couple of the other submission spotlights, especially the comments, so you can see what happens. (On the Labels list, choose Submission Spotlights).

Oh, and Devan also makes the point that there's a US flavour to this (or should I say flavor??).

Here goes:

__________________________________________

Dear Mr Agent,

I am currently seeking representation for my 108k-word literary novel, The Persistence of Memory. I very much enjoyed (existing client’s novel), and as I seek to write in a similarly vivid style, I believe I may fit in well with your existing list. I am not currently submitting the manuscript to any other agents.

Set in the world of musical theatre in the mid-20th century, The Persistence of Memory follows the life Patrick Winters, an English actor and singer with too many secrets. We meet him in 1939, on the eve of his overnight Broadway success, and follow his career over the course of a quarter-century as he agonizes over his mysterious wife’s infidelity and disappearance. He immerses himself in theatre, affairs, fairy tales, alcohol, and a conflicted relationship with his American protégée Dara, but the great question of his life is whether any of these things can compel him to risk a comfortable life of self-pity for the demands of self-sacrifice. Unusually for the story of romantic crooners, the word ‘love’ appears only once in my novel – in the last chapter – as the characters struggle to discover what it really means in their lives of theatrical romance and overwrought emotion.

My target audience includes, though is not limited to, women in the 18-24 age bracket and fans of musical theatre, which I believe is currently an underdeveloped market. I enclose the first 500 words of the manuscript and look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Yours sincerely

FIRST 500 WORDS, AS REQUESTED

In the last act, the few minutes before curtain-down, the Actor was beautiful. Draped in white robes, he knelt in the one shaft of light that cut through the great darkness. He held a woman in his arms, and around them music flowed, a violin straining forward with vibrato and retreating to a quivering sigh, the accompaniment to a kiss of kisses. As the violin faded, finally out of breath, the man’s hand made a quick movement. In the silence, the woman dropped over in his arms without a cry, red already spreading on the bosom of her gown.

There was no more music for a long time.

Finally the Actor lifted his face to the mezzanine, and a thrill passed through the hypnotized Manhattan audience at the sight of the first tear that ran down his cheek, catching the silver gleam of the spotlight. Nobody noticed when the music started again, but then he was singing to it, his tenor quiet and low:

One blood, one flesh
One knife, one death-

A dagger glinted, and he stabbed himself to the heart and yielded up the spirit without a sigh. The hero was dead, but patrons in the more expensive seats could see that his body still trembled, for the performer was crying. He wept until the curtain fell over his body with the mournful note of a cello.

The heroine was applauded, but when the Actor appeared onstage, looking drained and bashful and British, he was astonished by an ovation beyond all propriety. And what was the musical about, what did it celebrate? It was nearly two thousand years since the Jewish fort of Masada had fallen to the Romans, and the inhabitants thereof committed mass suicide in the face of inevitable defeat. And now a young Englishman who had never known a wound worse than a cricket injury or a broken heart – now he was idolized for his admirably acted self-destruction.

The curtain came down as applause still roared through the auditorium. Backstage stood a colorful knot of the long legs and ribaldry and freakish egos that make up a Broadway cast. The chorus girls stood in the back as always, knowing their places. For a moment every champagne glass, thrust toward the heavens, trembled down liquid gold drops like rain on the cast of Masada. The lead actress stood at the centre of the crowd, giggling and raving as she received the company’s toasts, still wearing her robe that was soaked with mock blood. Only one member of the cast was absent.

In the largest dressing room, all was still and quiet except for the petty, persistent tick of a clock. To be in the room was to be in the presence of mystery and skill, of the theatre itself. For at that dressing table in that room, the Actor, the center of Broadway on that night, remarkable for his dignity, charisma, and theatrical passion, sat before his dingy mirror and stared at the table.

__________________________________________

DO YOU NEED TO GET OUT MORE?

2009-07-22T22:02:00.014+01:00

I know I do. I know this somewhere deep inside, but I forget it when I'm overwhelmed by deadlines. Because things like going for walks seem like luxuries when you're really busy. Which I am: coming up to Edinburgh Book Festival madness, with six* talks to prepare from scratch, two events to chair, an AGM to plan and chair; and I'm organising a hot-ticket party for 200 in one of the festival marquees - and yesterday I was called for jury service. For August. Oh. My. God. A breakdown looms. Or jail, if they don't let me off.

(* thought it was five but realised I'd not put one in my diary)

But all that pales into insignificance when you're trying to get a novel started. As I am. Desperately, because it would have been so great to have the first chapter written before August came and then it could mull away in my brain and I'd be ready to leap back in in September. But it's not working. The voice isn't coming. Why? Because I'm simply not ready. I haven't had enough time (or the right sort of time) to let the characters, particularly the main one whose voice it will mostly be, grow inside me and begin to talk.

Thing is - and here's my learning point for this post - you should never write until your characters are clamouring to get out of your head, till they're pestering you day and night, rattling their cage, till they start to force your hands to move over the keyboards, till, in short, they absolutely demand that their voices are heard.

In fact, Howard Nemerov said that writing was like the relationship with your bowels (stay with me): "First you can, then you can't, finally you must: only then should you reach for the paper ..."

I've talked about voice before - see here. Voice is not something you can order about. Voice has to come somewhat mysteriously, at least partially of its own accord. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. But you have to get it right and you have to nurture it very, very subtly, in a hands-off kind of way - though with utter ruthless control, too. If you don't get it right, your fabulous plot is stuffed. To be honest, in my case I don't have a fabulous plot either, but that's because for me voice comes first, plot follows; because the plot depends on the characters' actions and the characters' actions depend on their voice and the book's voice. I know, you'd think it was the other way round - but think about it, play with it, and see what happens to your relationship with your book when you do. Does it become more real?

So, what's this got to do with getting out more? In the words of my favourite film**, a lot.

I've noticed for a long time that different environments make me more or less creative. You've probably noticed the same. It's not surprising or rocket science. But there is some science behind it. This article in Sciam Mind is pretty eye-opening: it suggests that we are more creative in rooms with higher ceilings, for example. The article mentions research in which two groups of people were given a task. One group was in a room with an 8-foot ceiling and the other was in a room with a 10-foot ceiling. The second group came up with more abstract, imaginative and creative ideas.

In terms of ceilings, what greater ceiling can you have than the sky? I know that when my writing is stuck the only answer is to go for a walk, not to stay at my desk. "Environmental psychology" now explains it. And there's even a word for the tendency of people to work better when they can at least see a natural scene instead of a brick wall - biophilia. Love it! I am a biophiliac, not a drifter who keeps going outside instead of "working".

So, since I'm throughly blocked, writing-wise, I'm going to take Nemerov's advice and not reach for the paper yet. I'm going to get out, outside, out of my study, out of myself, into the biggest ceiling I know. I know from experience, and therefore have to trust, that this will work - ideas will come when I give them space. I'm going to stop trying to force this character to speak before she's ready; she must grow slowly, and one day, soon probably, she'll hit me between the eyes with her power and reality; she'll start yelling to be heard.

I just hope I'm not in the middle of doing an event when she does it. Pretty high ceilings those book festival tents have ...

Meanwhile, here's a picture of my husband (the one on the left) "standing and staring" beside a statue. The plaque in front of them is the first verse of that fab poem by William Henry Davies, titled Leisure. Obviously, I can't print it all here, or I'd be breaking the laws of copyright (by one year ...) but I think that "fair use" allows me to quote the first two lines:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

Of course, if I were to be imprisoned for not doing jury service, I may have quite a lot of time to stand and stare. Mind you, I could get a great novel written.

** Pay attention at the back: Life of Brian. Could it be any other?

And while you're still with me, and talking about getting out more, I thought I'd show you this photo of the results of my minor gardening escapade during which I created an "alittlement" some weeks ago. These are the beans growing in two pots. Jack, where are you?

And finally, after writing this blog post, I decided I would practise what I was preaching and get out. So I did, and all the way up to my favourite hill in Edinburgh I walked. Considering I live in the middle of a city and it only took me twenty minutes to walk here, I think it's pretty inspirational for a writer to have that on her doorstep. No excuses for crappy writing, I'd say. The shot at the end is Edinburgh Castle - which you need me to tell you, as you'd never guess. I suggest you play it with your sound off - it's damned windy today (which is why I am wobbling a lot).

IS THIS WHY YOUR MS WAS REJECTED?

2009-07-21T11:47:00.002+01:00

A lazy post today but why expend energy when someone else has done the work? (But please note: that is NOT an excuse for plagiarism, because there is no excuse for that. Plagiarism is copying or stealing and passing off as your own writing. Linking to other blogs is right and proper.)

Take a trip here and see if any of these reaons could apply to you.

IS YOUR WRITING HOT ENOUGH TO LIGHT FIRES?

2009-07-19T09:31:00.000+01:00

I read this Very Useful Post on agent Rachelle Gardner's blog last month and now is the time to draw it to your attention if you didn't read it at the time. It gives a wonderful insight into the mind of an agent and what mental processes they must go through before saying yes to your magnus opus.

I believe that if you fully understand this, it will do two things for you:

help you when you are rejected, especially after those rejections which are accompanied by a message along the lines of "I liked many aspects of this but in the end I feel I have to pass"
encourage you not to submit your work until you are as sure as you possibly can be that it is as compelling and perfect as you can make it

Rachelle's blog contains frequent gems of warm and important advice. Bookmark it - I guarantee you won't regret it.

And if you're thinking maybe she's fussier than other agents, think again. All good agents and publishers make equal demands of the books they agree to take on. There's so much uncertainty in the world of reading that if there isn't passion and certainty in the agent and editor's hearts, then how can they possibly throw themselves behind a particular book? And if they don't throw themselves behind it, it'll be doomed.

Some other blog posts that help explain reasons why your book my be rejected:

But actually, none of those tell it as clearly as Rachelle's post because in the end it's all about hooking the reader. You can follow all the rules you like: if your writing doesn't have the necessary spark and perfection in the right places, it won't light any fires.

I've now had lots of submissions for my Submissions Spotlights, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that none of them is good enough to be published - yet! - though a few contain potential. But you can't expect agent / editor to see through the imperfections to the potential: they need more than that because they simply can't spend the time training you up. All the training and all the practice have to come from you. You can't afford to send anything less than the best.

Hot? It needs to be boiling point before you send it anywhere. Anything less is failure.

RANT: WHY I WON'T SIGN THIS STUPID FORM

2009-07-17T22:08:00.010+01:00

Sorry, I've been ranting over on my irregular other blog. I'm pretty incensed about this vapid plan. One author friend asked me why I was so bothered. I'm bothered because it pretends to protect children but it simply can't.

I know this isn't about becoming published but it's important to me and I'd like to know your views on it.

Here's the news story, though I admit that not all agree. But how would this ruling have prevented the William Mayne case? That's why I think it's pointless. Of course children need to be protected, but how does this protect them? It's about box-ticking; it says, "look, we've got this form - now we can worry less" - but why would a sensible person worry less when there's been zero difference to the actual threat?

OK, rant over. Maybe my speaking diary will be emptier this autumn, since I am refusing to tow the govt line. I'll be very sad if that's the case, and no, I can't afford it. But maybe I might get some writing done.

Do you sense my anger? I just get so irritated by rules that have no point. Always did. It's the campaigner in me. I'll obey all rules that are well designed to help, but not stupid ones that can't.

EDITED TO INCLUDE NEW INFO: I now gather that this doesn't apply till November 2010 and has already been postponed once. Therefore, I'm much less worried because I think that common sense (if expressed loudly and clearly enough) will win. But I feel that makes it even more important that people who disagree with it should speak out about it now, to make sure that the relevant people know our feelings.

The ISA website is at www.isa-gov.org.uk and the phone number is 0300 123 1111. The ruling was originally brought in to cover people who apply for "employment within a care setting" - which of course would be a really valuable reason for such checks to be made. An author speaking in front of a group of kids with teachers looking on is just not in the same game.

EXCELLENT article here.

DON'T COPY ME

2009-07-17T06:28:00.006+01:00

Good old Jane Smith has designated today as Anti-Plagiarism day. This means I'm allowed to imitate her and post about plagiarism but not copy her words. Since I haven't yet read her words, this won't be hard. Or will it? What happens if our great minds think so incredibly similarly that we are writing the same thoughts at the same time? If she posts hers before mine, how can I prove I haven't read her words?

In a minute, I'll tell you an interesting story (and a less interesting but still relevant one) that happened to me but first let me tell you my take on plagiarism. Entirely in my own words, of course. Unless I was sleepreading and have completely forgotten. In which case, apologies to whoever and please don't sue me. I haven't got any money anyway. But I do have chocolate.

Anyway, to the point.

Being accused of plagiarism is one of my worst fears. Authors can even insure themselves against doing it accidentally. No self-respecting author would ever do it on purpose - goodness knows what the guy Jane talked about was thinking when he did it - but it would be possible to do it accidentally. Or to appear to have done it.

In non-fiction, if you're not careful about how you make notes during research, you may find yourself accidentally copying a small section instead of re-working it, and therefore actually breaching copyright as well as committing plagiarism. Also, some pieces of knowledge could be in the public domain while some would be the preserve of the one person who did the research, and if you weren't careful you might not acknowledge this. You could become so immersed between your own thoughts and the research literature that supports your thoughts, that you could cross the line. Perhaps a combination of these things happened to Raj Persaud last year.

In fiction, while there's no copyright on ideas, it would certainly be possible to come up with the occasional bit of phrasing and to think it was your own when actually it's something you've read and forgotten; or even for you to come up with the same phrase when you haven't read it before; and it would also be possible accidentally to mirror someone else's idea. Let me tell you two stories, both true, and both of which happened to me.

THE TIME I BELIEVE I WAS PLAGIARISED
I discovered (because someone sent it to me) that a writer had written a story which was similar to a published novel of mine in many ways. I believe this was not coincidence because I have reason to believe that the writer had read my book. Why do I think he might have copied so many aspects of it? You may be surprised to hear that I think he did it accidentally: if he'd done it on purpose, he'd have changed some rather obvious and easy things. Only a silly kid would deliberately copy someone's essay and not change enough to fool the teacher. This guy knows you can't/shouldn't copy someone else's work, so, if he was going to do it, why wouldn't he hide the fact?

Am I bothered? Do I look bothered?

THE EXTRAORDINARY COINCIDENCE THAT ABSOLUTELY WAS
In October 2001, my first novel, Mondays are Red, was published. I'd been writing it during 2000/2001. Being unpublished, and not knowing any published author at all, let alone a stellar one like Tim Bowler, I had no way of knowing what any other author was writing in the privacy of his/her own garret.

Mondays are Red is a Young Adult novel about a 14 year-old boy called Luke who has synaesthesia.

Meanwhile, in November 2001, Tim Bowler's umpteenth novel, Starseeker, was published. He had been writing it during 2000/2001. (For those of you who don't know the business, any book published in Nov was certainly already printed in Oct. Unless it's the biog of Michael Jackson.)

Starseeker is a Young Adult novel about a 14-year-old boy called Luke who has synaesthesia.

Because they were published in consecutive months, we had some joint reviews (hooray for me, debut author being reviewed and interviewed alongside TB!) but no one accused the other of plagiarism, because it obviously wasn't, because a) it couldn't have been and b) despite the identical descriptions above, they are two utterly different stories. Couldn't be more different. (Unless mine had been about a fifteen-year-old girl called Lucy with synaesthesia.)

But it's worth considering the following:

if Tim's novel had come out while I was still writing mine, I'd have changed the name and probably the age of the protagonist because the last thing I'd want is to appear to plagiarise
next time you hear that two stories have the same motif / theme / premise, don't leap to the conclusion either that one is plagiarising or that they will actually be the same - unless they are
similarly with the horrible word "derivative" - nothing stands entirely on its own. No author is an island. Thing is, some look more like peninsulars than others.

There's a funny ending to this story
Tim and I became good friends and discovered we thought in many ways alike. "That's not very funny," I hear you say. No, but when I became friends with him I was writing another book, which had the provisional title of Apocalypse.

Luckily, authory friends tend to tell each other what they're writing.

"What you writing at the moment, Tim?" I asked.

"It's called Apocalypse," he replied. "It's about ..."

And since his Apocalypse was coming out before mine, guess who decided to change her title, even though there's no copyright on titles? It became The Passionflower Massacre. Much better. Who'd want to call a book Apocalypse anyway?

DOES MY LIFE HAVE ANY POINT?

2009-07-16T15:09:00.005+01:00

Sorry, I know this is off-message but I have just had an unusual conversation with someone.

Someone: So, what do you write?
Me: Mostly fiction for teenagers.
Someone: Oh! Mills and Boon! How marvellous!

Que??

Sometimes I think I must be whistling in a tornado.

SHOW NOT TELL - Part 2

2009-07-15T07:50:00.004+01:00

If you have read and properly digested yesterday's lesson on SHOWING, NOT TELLING, you may now move on to Lynn Price's typically excellent and trenchant post on VISUAL WRITING. She makes many wise points, but the examples of dialogue particularly link with my show-not-tell post. Lynn makes the same points about adverbs and dialogue tags - and, though we're far from the first to do so, she got there before me, damn the pesky coyote. In fact, it was reading her words that spurred me to bring show-not-tell to your attention earlier than I was going to. Such an influence she is.

By the way, all this stuff about rules: rules are for breaking, aren't they? Rules are for beginners, no? No, actually. Writing rules are for writers who crave the power of language.

The only rule I go by is: if you understand the power of language, you will want every single word to be right. And you will never stop wanting to learn new ways to control your power and therefore control your readers.

Power-crazy? You bet!

SHOW NOT TELL - LET ME TELL YOU HOW

2009-07-14T15:28:00.004+01:00

"Show not tell" we're always being told. "Told", not shown, you notice. Well, tough - I'm going to tell you how to show not tell.

1. Go easy on the adverbs. Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade. Yes, they roll off the tongue, but so does dribble.

Compare:

"Listen," she whispered conspiratorially.

"What?" he interrupted eagerly.

"Nothing," she replied, hesitantly, deciding that she was not going to tell him after all.

with:

She leant towards him, her hair brushing his cheek. "Listen. I ..."

His pulse quickened. "What?"

Carmelle took a breath. She paused. What if her informant was wrong? She shook her head, looked down at the stem of the glass pressed between her fingers. "Nothing."

Well?

2. Don't just tell us what someone is like: show him doing something. If you tell me what Fred is like, I may not trust you. See, you might have judged Fred differently from me. If you tell me he is cruel and callous, I'm struggling to understand what your definition of cruel and callous might be. But if you show me him ripping the legs off spiders and making a collage with them for his sister's birthday card, then I'm getting the picture. Thing is, you may be the author but I am so not interested in what you think and I don't want you to mediate more than necessary - I'll make my own judgements, thanks v much.

3. Go easy on the dialogue tags. They feel clunky and repetitive when over-used. And, as with adverbitis, it's so easy to tell the reader how the speaker spoke, but harder for the writer and often more satisfying for the reader when the attitude is revealed in action. Here's an example of horrible over-use of dialogue tags:

"Do you want to come in for coffee?" she suggested.

"Is coffee all you mean?" he wondered.

"What else would I mean?" she scoffed.

"Well, just that I thought you might have some biscuits as well," he responded.

"Aye, right!" she laughed.

Think about it: do we really need any of the words outside the speech marks? We can manage perfectly well with just the speech. Or, if you don't want the dialogue to speak, literally, for itself, how about this:

Carmelle looked straight at him. "Coffee?"

"Just coffee?" He stared back, streetlight shadowing his jaw.

"As opposed to?"

"Well, biscuits. I was thinking you probably do a mean chocolate digestive." How did he manage to make the word digestive sound so desirable?

"Aye, right!"

Do I make my point? Would you like a short writing exercise? I thought you would. Imagine you are me (buy some better shoes, eat more chocolate and learn to appreciate sparkly wine and you'll be more than half way there) and imagine you are writing this blog post. But imagine that you respect the rules of copyright and therefore can't use my words. So, come up with your own examples of dialogue to illustrate my points in 1 and 3 above.

Then, ask yourself how much longer it took you to write the example of good practice than the example of crappy writing. See, not easy being a good writer, is it?

Oh, I should probably say something very important about covering letters too: in your covering letter, don't tell us how brilliant you or your book are/is. Please, please, please. If you tell me it's wonderful or that it's told in a fabulously original voice, I will immediately not believe you. Let me be the judge of your quality. You're just the writer; you're not your own reviewer. So show me how good you are and then I'll tell you how good you really are.

DO REALISE, THOUGH ...
Often, telling not showing is perfectly acceptable. No, forget that: it's never acceptable. When it's necessary and right, it's necessary and right, and therefore perfect; when it's neither necessary or right, it's crappy. All you need do is think precisely about every word and phrase you write and analyse why you are deciding to put it there, and then your writing will be just wonderful.

"All you need to do" - so easy! Trust me, though: thinking about every word is the only way to learn to be a great writer. If you don't think about every word, your readers certainly will and then they'll tell you all about it; and the thing about readers is that they both show and tell. Ruthlessly.

SUBMISSION SPOTLIGHT 3: adult readers

2009-07-13T08:15:00.005+01:00

Hooray for brave authors: we have another intrepid victim - sorry, subject - for a Submission Spotlight. The author, "Redleg", describes this as the scariest thing he's done. So be gentle! (But not too gentle.) I should also point out that in his message to me he worries that the submission may be "too Yankee-centric" (be proud of it, Redleg!). So, let's assume this is for the US market; and for goodness' sake, let the Brits amongst us not be parochial and insist on our funny UK spellings - the US of A are independent now. All is forgiven. Really. (And frankly, when you've got people like Lynn Behler** inventing horrible things like chocolate martinis, they're welcome to it.)

(**correction - Lynn PRICE. Thanks, Lynn, you eagle-eyed editor, you. Wanta job?)

Before commenting, please note the submission rules, which are not quite the same as those for real submissions. Comments on the last two Submission Spotlights were really constructive (even where they contradicted each other ...) and I'm counting on you for the same again.

The questions to ask yourself are: does this sound like a book that will sell? Does it fit the intended genre? Does it feel like a professional piece of writing? Is this either a fresh voice or does it fit neatly within a commercial genre? How would you improve it? And remember, Redleg has thrown himself on your mercy - be honest but always constructive. Please also state whether you have any professional experience in his chosen area - and whether you are reader, agent, editor etc.

Here goes! Good luck, Redleg ...

______________________________________________________

Dear (Agent Namespelledright),

Jack Pasternak is staring down a row of gun barrels in post-revolutionary Blue America. His only chance to escape the firing squad is to explain to his executioner why he crossed three war zones to save his lover. I hope you’ll consider representing Jack’s swan song AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES, a science fiction novel (with a hint of political satire) complete at X words.

Jack’s gallows confessional is the tale of how he survives the Culture War after the shooting starts. Jack leaves his socialized medical practice in California after he receives a cryptic message from his fiancée in Maryland, “Rescue me.” Three thousand miles of obstacles separate Jack from his lost love including the Las Vegas and Ohio war zones, the independent Mormon State of Deseret, and the entire enemy nation of Red America. With a pot-dealing barista and a partisan warlord (warlady?) in tow Jack takes off in a gas-fueled convertible on an old fashioned road trip through a very brave new world.

Below, per your submission guidelines, I have included the first 500 words of my manuscript. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Best Wishes,

Redleg

Chapter 1

His back against the brick wall, Jack Pasternak contemplated the discordant row of bayonets and gun barrels pointed at him. The cord binding his wrists was a little loose, but even if he did pull a Harry Houdini he would be gunned down like a rabid dog before he got five paces. His options were as follows: die now or die later. Neither was particularly attractive.

“Blindfold?” the Blueist sergeant asked.

Jack shrugged.

“Sure, why not,” he said.

Even as a physician Jack still looked away from his own inoculations. He tried to imagine the firing squad as a big fat inoculation against further breathing, but even he found that metaphor a bit of a stretch.

The Blue sergeant leaned in close to Jack and whispered conspiratorially, “I’d have to fill out the requisition forms. Honestly, we probably wouldn’t be able to get any blindfolds back from the front before tomorrow. So it’s kind of an exercise in futility to even bother trying.”

A lifetime of familiarity with Blue bureaucracy left Jack surprisingly unsurprised. He didn’t even bother to ask why the sergeant had offered him something he couldn’t provide. Asking such questions simply wasn’t done.

“How about a joint?” Jack asked.

The firing squad erupted in scornful mutters and shuffling feet.

“There’s no toking in public here,” the Blue sergeant scolded.

“Just as well,” Jack said with a sigh, “I don’t toke anyway. How long is it until sundown, anyway?”

With no better way of telling, the Blue stared up at the sky. In a streamie Jack would have kicked the Blue in the balls, wrenched his wrists free from their bonds, and run off amidst a hail of poorly aimed bullets. Since this was real life instead Jack just waited quietly for his captor’s assessment of the time.

“Well, there’s no need to wait, I suppose,” the sergeant generously decided, then added, “Unless there’s anything else…?”

It wasn’t really a question, but Jack had only ever seen condemned men offered three things in streamies: a blindfold, a disgusting tobacco cigarette, or…

“Do I get a last request?” Jack asked hopefully.

The sergeant exchanged a glance with the senior member of the firing squad, a corporal Jack had heard the others call Toomey. Toomey shrugged, offering his boss little assistance.

“Well, it is almost sundown,” the sergeant pointed out.

“But not quite,” Jack countered.

The sergeant looked back at the sky, as though hoping that staring a little harder would hasten the sun on its path. Despite his angry glare, though, the sun made its inexorable descent at the same rate it did every day.

“Well, what’s your request?” the sergeant asked.

“I want to plead my case,” Jack said.

The sergeant scratched the back of his neck.

“Okay, go ahead,” he said.

“Not to you,” Jack scoffed.

“Well, who then?” the sergeant asked.

“Who signed my death warrant?”

___________________________________________________

ONLINE REVIEWS? YOUR VIEWS?

2009-07-07T20:00:00.008+01:00

This time, I am asking for your help. Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking: "Crikey, Nicola, O wise and never really crabbit one, what on earth can we do for you? Ask, ask anything, and it shall be yours."

Well, thank you. Indeed I will.

See, recently I opened my mouth in foolishness and landed myself with a task. I was at a meeting of much cleverer authors than I, such high-brow personages as .... no, I will refrain from name-dropping, except to say that there were among them people who'd written books I am in awe of, including The Millstone ... and I was pontificating about the growing value of respected blogs for serious book-reviewing. I waffled on apparently knowledgeably about how it barely mattered that newspapers were cutting back on review space (except that it does matter a lot to the print journalists) because publishers and authors now look to getting their books reviewed on esteemed on-line platforms. (See, with words like platform, it's not that hard to sound knowledgeable).

And although I only slightly knew what I was talking about, everyone else seemed rather in awe of my bluffing so they asked me to write an article for The Author about it. Ah.

"Ah," because I feel that my modest list of Blogs I Know About That Are Kind Of Widelyish Respected may not be enough, and my opinions may just that - my opinions - so I am asking you, my expert bloggers and readers and general good eggs, to tell me what you think. Yes, I'm interviewing you all in one go. And no, I'm not paying you.

(And yes, views from all over the world equally welcome - that's the thing about on-line: there's no such thing as "foreign". Thanks, Catdownunder, for even wondering if your views counted - of course they do!)

So, writers, where would you most like to find your books reviewed online. Readers, where do you go to be informed about books? What do you trust? Publishers, whom do you send review copies to? Sorry, I mean to whom ...

TRUTH HURTS - SO UNLEASH YOUR HIDDEN MASOCHIST

2009-07-03T18:50:00.013+01:00

For a writer, there are sensible ways to take feedback and there are foolish ways to take feedback.

I won't add (much) to the vitriol hurled from and at two writers who got themselves into the news this week as examples of extreme(ly bad) ways to take negative criticism. Alain de B and Alice H will make up their own minds how to react to the feedback to their feedback to the feedback (aka reviews) to which they took such exception. Published writers must learn that some people will hate their books and must work out which negative crits they respect and which they think are rubbish. And how best to react. (Answer: not.)

But what of unpublished authors? What of the feedback that you get, if you're lucky, when you send your precious oeuvre to agent or editor asking for an honest opinion? I know, you don't really want an honest opinion, unless the opinion is "Brilliant! How much do you want for it?" But the fact that so many unpublished authors react unpleasantly to the more unwelcome honest opinions is partly what stops many agents/editors from giving any feedback other than "Sorry, I don't have room on my list." I know agents who've been told to rot in hell after saying that a piece of work wasn't up to scratch. Why should they put up with that when they're not paid and not likely to be paid if offered work that's crap?

Thing is, if you send your oeuvre to an expert, someone you plan to trust with your work during publication, you must accept his/her honest expert opinion when you get it. That doesn't mean you crumple into a heap and blindly make every change suggested if you don't fully believe or understand it, but it does mean that you consider closely what they say and accept that they know what they're talking about. Otherwise, why did you approach them, you deluded idiot? (Crabbit old bat is back.)

The author who does not listen properly to feedback from trustworthy sources (i.e. agents with a track record, publishers with a track record, writers with a relevant track record, and select readers who actually know what they're talking about, and NOT your relatives, friends, pets or even most members of your writing critique group unless they fall into the first category) is a fool and does not deserve to be published. Thing is, if a publisher happens to be taken in by your inferior writing and actually publishes it, readers will not be so forgiving: trust me. They will rip you to shreds on Amazon and your book will die horribly, messily and painfully. And you will be gutted and quite possibly throw a hissy fit. (In private, please.)

The aspiring author who, on the other hand, behaves like Jen Campbell, bravely and open-mindedly laying herself bare (not literally) and allowing herself to receive feedback in public from a host of people she has never met but has decided to trust on the basis that if they read this blog they must kind of slightly know what they're talking about, deserves publication and success.

The aspiring author who does all this and then generously gives me chocolate, just because I allowed her to be publicly judged, deserves to be published thrice-fold (or more) and then to win all the prizes going. Jen, thank you so much for the gorgeous Coco chocolate, pictured below - you honestly shouldn't have, but I'm very glad you did!

Vanessa's bookshop now seems to be the depository of presents for me. In case any of you need to know, for any reason of a donatory nature, her shop can be found at 219 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10, and delicious chocolatier Coco of Bruntsfield is conveniently close by. Vanessa is also opening a grown-up bookshop soon, and I am equally happy to receive chocolate or sparkly wine there too. I am sure Vanessa is quite delighted to look after things for me.

Jen, you're amazing, even without the chocolate - you are an example of how to take feedback properly, maturely and constructively. There's no reason why you should follow it all but I believe what you're doing is seeing your work through the eyes of others and you know much more clearly what you might do to make it gorgeously and perfectly publishable. When you get there, let me be the first to know and I will give you chocolate too.

I also take my hat off to others amongst you who have submitted work to the Submissions Spotlights, either for children or adults, and especially those who sent their work in even after seeing the intensity of the comments that Annie and Jen so wonderfully dealt with. Congrats to Annie too - her response to the feedback for her children's submission was also wonderful.

Meanwhile, I'll be doing another spotlight on July 13th or thereabouts, and I haven't completely decided which ones to pick so do keep your submissions coming. Please follow the same rules as before. I was really pleased with how it went - I learnt from it too.

Thank you all for being such excellently contributory blog readers. You are restoring my faith in unpublished authors: see, I confess that before I started this blog I thought most of you were completely hopeless nutcases and that, on top of that, if that were not enough, many of you were also deluded idiots. Nutcases and idiots among you are obviously keeping quiet, which is quite the best thing for you to do, letting the sane and potentially publishable have their voice and show good author behaviour. Having so many published authors, agents and editors reading this blog is also an enormous help - thanks, one and all.

I can't send you chocolate (otherwise, of course, I would) but I can show you Jen's chocolate and the lovely Coco bag.

I'LL BE BACK

2009-07-02T16:58:00.011+01:00

Dear All

Apologies for my absence for the last few days and at least a few more. I have just ended the most gruelling month of talks I have ever done and am now overwhelmed by emails and tasks and things I should mostly not have said I'd do. Anyone who asks me to do anything over the next few days and weeks is certain to get a weary "Sorry, but no," (as some people have already discovered today ...)

But it won't take me long to re-surface, don't worry.

Meanwhile, a few choice high and low points of my book tour:

HIGHS

All the audiences - especially seeing ultra-cool Year 9s mesmerised by stories
Avoiding going in a hot tub with some librarians (no offence to librarians)
Beeslack High School pupils, English teacher and librarian
The organisational skills of Linda Bromyard - yay for Facebook
The effort lots of schools went to - here are two examples of beetly things inspired by Deathwatch in wonderful Worcester schools

THE UNNECESSARIES
The teacher who said, just before I went into a talk to 120 Year 9s, "You realise that most of them are not looking forward to hearing you? They'd rather be doing computers. They're like "WhaddoIcareaboutanauthorvisit?"

THE LOWS
Just the one. Brace yourself, and then look closely. Why does this always happen to me? Is it surprising I'm exhausted, when I had to look at that for several hours yesterday?

SUBMISSION SPOTLIGHT 2: younger readers

2009-06-26T16:41:00.005+01:00

This is PART TWO of the Submission Spotlight - Annie's submission for younger readers. To see the rules and understand what on earth I'm on about, please go to the previous post here.

Please comment - on BOTH submissions if you can.

Dear Secret Agent Man (or Woman),

I am seeking representation for RAVENSCOURT MANOR, a Middle Grade fantasy mystery novel that takes place in a pseudo-Victorian setting, borrowing heavily from Gothic literature. Complete at 46,000 words, it is a darker work for young readers.

Abigail Crowe is willing to accept that her father died of natural causes. She's willing to appear proper at the funeral (or at least try). She's even willing to put up with her little brother and his questions about death. But when Abigail's mother whisks them away to the estate of their estranged uncle, Dr. Edward Crowe, Abigail decides she is not willing to put up with the eerie strangeness that surrounds ancient Ravenscourt Manor. Ghastly screams in the night, an insane gardener, and a murder blamed on her late father are only the beginning. In order to prove her father innocent, and perhaps avenge his death, Abigail and her brother must face down their uncle, uncover the clues, and unravel a tragic family secret.

The full or partial manuscript is available upon request. I look forward to hearing from you, and whatever your decision, I thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Annie

The first 480 words of Ravenscourt Manor:

As the eldest child of the late Mr. Lewis Crowe, it was, of course, Abigail’s understood duty, as she stood at the foot of her father's grave, to look most properly saddened. Proper sadness, however, proves to be a rather difficult thing to pull off – as you are to shed tears (but not bawl), be respectful (yet not grave), and stand up straight and tall (without being too stiff). While her dress, cut of black crape and horridly uncomfortable, made her, indeed, too stiff, she found the other problems in her proper appearance far more troubling.

For one thing, she could not cry. She did not bawl either; her cheeks remained pale and dry, her eyes distinctly lacking in puffiness. All morning, she had been confronted with the stark reality of her father’s death, and through all of it: through the processions and the prayers and the muted mutterings of the crowd - she had not shed a single tear. It was not that she was unwilling to; even now, she tried her hardest to feel the sadness that she was supposed to be feeling. But for all her trying, the only thing she felt was the very strong urge to hit things.

Her brother William was an appealing target. Pale from medicines that were always too expensive, with his cherubic blue eyes and blond hair, most people thought him an angel. But he, certainly, was being neither respectful nor grave – fidgeting with his collar in an incessant way most improper for a funeral. Only the presence of their Mother – never mind the Preacher and other mourners! – prevented Abigail from acting on her more vindictive instincts.

Ashes to ashes," droned the preacher in a voice as parched and cracked as the pages of his Book. "Dust to dust..."

A sudden breeze, cold and heavy with the scent of rain, blew over the crowd. It pulled at Abigail's frizzy red hair and rustled the fabric of her skirt, a dull and mournful sound, like the whispers of a dying person. Abigail sighed. Even the weather knew how to act properly at a funeral.

And now William's fidgeting could not be ignored. Along with the Preacher’s ecclesiastical ramblings – as meaningless and frustrating to Abigail as ancient Greek – it made the situation almost impossible to bear. But still, she had no reason to break decorum until:

“Oh!” exclaimed the boy. “When is he going to finish, Abby?”

Abigail kicked him in the shin. And just to show that she was serious, she added a disapproving and very grown-up glare. Tsks and titters came from the other mourners, though the Preacher continued on, and Mother remained oblivious – but the important thing was that William got the message, and remained quiet and still throughout the rest of the Preacher’s prayers.

SUBMISSION SPOTLIGHT 1: adult readers

2009-06-26T16:25:00.005+01:00

Well, here we are: Submission Spotlight time! I did find it rather amusing - and sweet and touching - how nervous you all said you were. Some of you said this was worse than submitting to an agent or publisher. Yes, because it's public ... Sorry about that.

I have picked TWO submissions. One, aimed at adults, is in this post; the second, aimed at younger readers, is in the post above. If yours hasn't been picked, fear not (or perhaps do fear ...) I will pick more another day. And anyone else can still send in submissions.

Please remember that I asked participants to write a short letter (like a query letter) and then give us the first c500 words - so this is NOT a normal submission. If you want to remind yourselves of the task, it's here.

Ground-rules for all commenters:

please DO comment - there's no point in this if no one does
please imagine that you ARE an agent/editor who accepts this sort of material. In other words, if it's good enough, then it IS up your street
be brief - you don't have to write an essay (in fact, please don't). Ideally, you might give one positive and one negative point
please be constructive. Although we have to learn to take criticism (which will happen a lot and very publicly when you are published ...), it has to be offered in a considered and careful fashion, in a way that will not overly bruise.
try to be specific - for example, don't say "need to tidy up the grammar" without giving some examples
please note what type of book the authors claim them to be and judge them accordingly
ask yourself some of these questions:

does the idea behind the book grab you (assuming that you would normally go for this genre)? Is it a compelling idea? Exciting, intriguing?
has the author managed to encapsulate the idea in the best way?
does the standard of writing give you confidence that the rest of the work is worth reading?
is there anything that puts you off, and how do you think the author might consider working on it?
are there any habits which, in your opinion, detract from the work?
is this a book that you think could sell? Is this a book that fits easily within an existing successful genre?
how could the work be improved?

Some of you will be commenting as readers; others as agents / editors. It would be helpful if you would start your comment by by indicating which of these applies to you, so that the authors know how to take your comments.

NB - although "Dear Agent" is not normally acceptable, it's fine for this exercise, because it's imaginary.

Finally, please applaud the bravery of these writers! (And the authors can and should respond to comments).

Here goes (and good luck "Yellowstring"!):

Dear Agent,
Please find attached the first five hundred words of my novel, Talking with Kotov, a book on identity and the complexity of truth and fiction. The chapters alternate between two main characters: Ruth, who lives an essentially detached existence, compiling notes on other people, following one woman in particular and documenting her life, and paranoid Melissa (the woman whom Ruth is following) who painted her house with a dead bird, and turned her kitchen into a collage of post-its to try and release her problems into the world. The link between the women is hidden in clues throughout the novel, until revealed two thirds of the way through, however Ruth's narrative is always marred by whatever book she is reading at the time, so much so that the reader is asked to closely engage with what he is reading and decide which parts are true.

When finished, the novel will be between 55,000 and 65,000 words, a literary piece aimed towards an adult audience, especially those who are fans of such authors as Ali Smith or Kate Atkinson. I can send a complete synopsis and further chapters upon request, and look forward to hearing your thoughts on representing my book.

Yours sincerely,
(yellowstring)

CHAPTER ONE

It wasn’t hard to track her down; Ruth etched each of her beelines into the tube map so hard that the whole thing sprang back open as though disemboweled. She'd set her watch three minutes ahead of Big Ben, just to be prepared; she knew never to trust a man with four faces, especially when each of those kept running around in pointless circles, ticking like some sort of bomb. But no, she shouldn't think of bombs.

She, on the other hand, made sure her journey was linear, crossing the town in a perfect square, hopping from bus to bus to avoid the curves, towing the yellow lines right into the groove.She walked the Central line, the red capillary straight, mentally mapping the sixty thousand blood vessels hammering under her own skin: tarmac over live wire. She considered herself a personal navigation system, beeping (internally) with every step she took, honing in with an invisible radar, and her destination overlooked the number seven bus stop, where free newspapers hid worn out faces, and tourists wore rucksacks as fetuses on the outside. They made clothes look like skin, skinny jeans the new answer to anti-wrinkle cream. The handbags gleamed, the oyster cards tapped. Ruth eyed the line-up as she made for the pavement, but each blonde hair was not the right shade.She tried to move quickly, always on the look out for those arty types who liked to freeze in public places, frightened she'd be caught up in the theatrics and then not be able to move.

She had arrived with twenty minutes to spare, but in the mean time there was the bookshop. Ruth thought about those words, ‘mean time,’ and they sounded just right, so she leaned against the window and wrote them down on the back of her tube map. She considered herself a logophile, browsing the market, and she entered the bookshop, heading to the back, for here were the books about everyone’s God. Each day she gave herself a different section, trying to show just how well rounded she was. Religion, romance, and all the way down to history, this was her post. Ruth could sketch the layout in her sleep, and she knew the location of every fire exit; she only ever took calculated risks; she only ever wore flat-soled shoes.

She was very conscious of where everyone else was, who was looking at her, and what they were thinking. The way heads formed question marks if tilted at the right angle. The way the spine would click in irritation. Ruth had long since concluded that the public is a jury, and that each person walks around with a speech bubble balanced precariously on their head, like those women who carry water. They choose their words carefully, so that the bubble doesn't overflow and soak them to the skin: selected, projected thinking. Ruth flinched and thought hard about timetables, focusing on the 'please pay here' sign. It was the only one that wasn't jeering; there was something reassuring about imperatives, the clarity of fullstops; she pretended to roll one on her tongue like a piece of chiseled tobacco. Roll or spit. Roll or spit.

NARRATIVE TRANSPORTATION

2009-06-24T18:41:00.007+01:00

Why do we write fiction? Why should we? What does it do to the reader? Why? Why is it damned important? What will happen to the human race if we don't do it and if readers don't read it?

These questions and more are the ones I will attempt to answer in a speech next week. You can't come, sorry; but it hardly matters because in the course of my research I came across a wonderful blog, written by scientists/psychologists with an academic and passionate interest in the power of fiction. And their research articles are available on it. Free. Which is incredibly generous.

It's called Onfiction and I've put a link in my blog list, as well as here.

It is fascinating, inspiring and very important. And it even gives us novelists a load of useful pointers about engaging our readers and why some types of story engage more than others. Scientists call it "narrative transportation". I love it the whole concept of narrative transportation. I read an article about it in Scientific American Mind last year and it's stayed with me ever since. What more could a writer want than that the reader be transported into the world we create? (Sarah - many thanks for the link to that! Last time I looked it wasn't on-line and I'm delighted that it now is. Thanks to SciamMind too.)

Go carry your readers away!

EIBF - BOOKING HAS OPENED!!

2009-06-23T09:30:00.006+01:00

A reminder about the Edinburgh International Book Festival - booking opened yesterday and some events are sold out. Workshops tend to go very quickly because they are so small, and, indeed, my workshop on The Perfect Approach is fully booked.

BUT, there are plenty of bigger events and the vast majority have lots of places available. Many won't sell out but some will. So, DO book your places without delay.

I am doing several larger events of interest to aspiring and up-and-coming authors - "How to Make a Publisher Say Yes" (covering everything from the writing of the book, to submitting it, and what sort of things publishers/agents want), "Fight For Your Rights" (essential for writers at all stages; and I have got Lorraine Fannin, ex chief-exec of Publishing Scotland and guru on Intellectual Property Rights/Copyright/foreign rights, to be in the audience and answer the stuff she knows more than me about), and "Writing for Older Children" (jointly with Viv French).

Then I'm on a panel called "Getting Published" too.

I'm also chairing a couple of events - "Writing in a Recession" (Mark Le Fanu, Gen Sec of the SoA, is the brilliantly knowledgable speaker ) and the "Monkeys and Type-writers" one, about how/whether we can learn to write. I'd love it if you came to these and asked lots of piercing questions. It's horrible when not enough people come - then the speakers think no one like them, and we are sensitive souls. (You should see the mutual comforting that goes on in the Authors' Yurt afterwards ... Helped along by the free booze.)

Please let me know if any of you are coming to any of those events - I'd love to see you! And I am still contemplating having a blog picnic ... You interested?

READERS AND OPPORTUNE CHOCOLATE MOMENTS

2009-06-20T16:01:00.012+01:00

Hooray for lovely blog readers who actually DO bring me chocolate!

I was in The Children's Bookshop, Edinburgh today, allegedly signing, but really pretending to be quite happy that we had only sold two copies of Deathwatch, including one to my neighbour. And then there was a voice from behind me, "Lovely shoes!" (As you will see in this pic which I include this just to show you that you don't have to wear pointy heels to get into the shoe hall of fame).

At this point, a very nice person called Jude introduced herself and said she was a reader of my blog. Well, this was a refreshing change from not selling any books, so we chatted away about this and that. And off she went.

Only to reappear twenty minutes later with .... CHOCOLATE. This wasn't just chocolate: this was Coco of Bruntsfield chocolate, which is seriously special luxury organic chocolate. I think it feasible that I could get them to offer me some more just for praising them a few times. I am not above a bit of product placement. (Coco, please call me. I am always in to people like you. Green and Black's have just knocked me back - pah! - but I am nothing if not easily swayed to different loyalties. I have always loved Coco chocolate, when I can afford it. Which I could not today.)

So, Jude, thank you! That was so kind. May you find time to turn your "sort of" writing into "definitely" writing.

Now, here is something I am never likely to see again. Because, of course, next time I walk past the window they will all have been sold ...

(I realise you may not quite see what you are supposed to be looking at but that there is my book, filling a bookshop window. A rare sight. Thank you, Vanessa! And of course, let's not forget that you have already sold around 150 copies!!)

Meanwhile, please do keep your Submission Spotlight entries coming.

SUBMISSION SPOTLIGHT

2009-06-18T07:17:00.006+01:00

How brave are you? Are you ready to let total strangers comment on your query / synopsis / proposal for your beloved Masterpiece? Because, I am offering you the chance to do just that.

On the basis that I trust that all comments will be given in the spirit of honest opinion with a view to helping rather than hindering or destroying, this is a chance to hold your work up for constructive criticism by your fellows. Many readers of this blog are well-published; some are agents and editors; and some may be deluded idiots who know nothing - I make no guarantees that everyone's opinion is equally valid.

But that is exactly what real readers are like: unpredictable and uncontrollable. Some future readers of your Work in Progress will not understand the depths or subtlety of your intellect or the meaningfulness of your Work. Some of them won't be able to tell the difference between a perfectly pitched voice and the ugly shriek of fighting cats. Get used to it.

Anyway, to the task. When you have fulfilled the criteria (below) for this mini-submission, email it to me at writingtutor@hotmail.co.uk (Please note: fabulously cool though it is, this is not my normal email address and I only look at it when I've got some blog-related competition or other foolishness going on.) Then, every now and then, I will pick one of the submissions and put it, lock, stock and barrel, on the blog. Then everyone will comment on it.

I won't necessarily pick the best or the worst - just one that I think will be interesting to study. It depends what I get from you. (I don't mean money, though that would be lovely: I mean it depends on the nature of your submissions.) And I'll maybe pick one every three weeks or so, so do keep them coming.

NOTE: as you know, there are differences between the US/UK/other countries in terms of what you put in your initial approach to an agent or publisher. In the US, for example, first approach is with a query letter only; and this query letter will therefore be fuller than a UK "covering letter", which would be very short and would accompany a full synopsis and the first pages of the actual work. For the purposes of this exercise, I am queen of my own imaginary country and am making my own rules, so please read them! (And, more importantly, when you actually submit something, please make sure you know what the requirements are in your country, by going onto some agent/publisher websites and reading the "submission guidelines".)

So, here are the criteria:

Unlike previous activities, this is not a joke. Your task is not to write a deliberately useless submission. You may address your submission to either publisher or agent - please make it clear which one.
Please send only the following: a perfectly pitched letter, selling your book and hooking the reader, making clear exactly what sort of book this is and describing it succinctly (something like this would work for both UK and elsewhere without much alteration); and no more than the first 500 words of your book. (You may wish to edit your actual work down so that your first 500 words work well enough.) Edited to add: pasted into body of email, please, NOT attachment.
The whole thing should be as perfect as you would send to a real agent/editor.
Please tell me your full name when you send you submission. However, I will not put your name on the blog, so please also offer a pseudonym. After the process is over and all comments are in, you may reveal your name but you do not have to.

When your fellow blog readers comment, the questions they will ask themselves are:

Does this book sound really, really interesting?
Does this writer seem to have real control over the written word?
Is there something fresh and engaging about this writer's voice?

And now I am going to disappear to London for a few days. (Actually, I've gone already if this post goes out as planned on Thursday.) It's my last ever Society of Authors Management Committee meeting and the lovely Annual Awards Ceremony - introduced by Margaret Drabble and presented by Sebastian Faulks; and I'm seeing my older daughter one evening and my crime-writing friend, Aline Templeton, another evening. It would be entire bliss, except that I also have to prepare a scary radio thing for the weekend and a big speech and some workshops for the following week. So, if I don't reply quickly to your comments, that's why - but I will be watching you.

YOU ARE NOT READY - TRUST ME

2009-06-16T22:19:00.005+01:00

I have surfaced from the Deathwatch Dash, briefly, before dashing to London tomorrow. Actually, despite my not really being here very much, I have a post half-done for you. Can't remember for the life of me what it's about. But anyway it doesn't matter because here is a very apt post from someone else in the meantime during (any Life of Brian fans will recognise that incongruous phrase ...). Agent Rachelle Gardner (no, not a member of the CIA - or maybe she is? Who knows? Or who would say?) says it absolutely all in this post.

See, really you don't need my whatever-it-was post: because you need to make your book better before you do anything with it. It's such an annoying message, isn't it? Because you think your work is good enough: it's not. I know. I am psychic. It's all this dashing about, gives me extra powers.

Even if you are good enough, think how much better you could be with some more honing. So, get honing.

The biggest mistake of unpublished authors is not being good enough within the genre in which they are writing. Despite the fact that lots of crap is published. But not by any reader of this blog, please.

I wore my turquoise boots yesterday, you'll be glad to know. And I can prove it.

THE NEW WRITER

2009-06-15T08:04:00.002+01:00

When you read this, I will be exhausting myself on the dreaded Deathwatch Dash - please remind me to shut up next time I have stupid idea. It's not helped by suddenly having an ill daughter at home so I'm full of extra angst and stress, with the pleasures of the weekend rapidly fading.

Anyway, I'm not going to be able to blog particularly usefully or deeply for at least another week, for one reason and another. However, I have a little snippet to draw quickly to your attention.

There's a great magazine for writers, The New Writer, which many of you will know about. If you don't, take a look and do consider subscribing. I used to, years ago when I was trying to get published, and once I'd got published I stopped. (Which I needn't have done, as there's lots of stuff for published writers too, and besides, publication does not guarantee continued success).

I came across it again recently, still with the same hugely expert hands at the helm - Merric Davidson, Suzanne Ruthven and Sarah Jackson. It's full of great advice, lots of outlets for short story writing and poetry, and is an important source of information.

On the website, you'll see that you can ask for a free back issue to see what sort of things it contains. Give it a go. Lots of published writers have been through its pages and gleaned useful tips.

You may detect lack of humour, spark and crabbitness in this post. Sorry about that - I am seriously stressed about the coming week. I have put a note above my desk, saying, "JUST SAY NO".

SAVE OUR SCHOOL LIBRARIES

2009-06-12T13:17:00.003+01:00

I am not here. To all intents and purposes - stupid phrase - I do not exist. I am having a rare weekend off. And when I say "off", boy, do I mean "off"? Indeed I do.

Let me tell you what I am doing. (And there will be a serious point to this post, as ever.) When I say "am", this is confusing, because actually I "am" writing this post in advance of doing the thing that I "am" doing. But, having an imagination, I can tell you what I will be doing when this post automatically wings its way to you. What I am doing is ... prepare yourself ... relaxing.

See, Jane Smith thinks I'm working really really hard promoting Deathwatch, and she is in awe of my energy. Little does she know that this weekend, from Friday afternoon till Sunday afternoon, I am going to be alternately in states of bliss and euphoria and my only exertion will involve trying to work out if there is any difference. (I will report back.) Two friends are coming to stay, both female, which is important, because otherwise this wouldn't work - hang on: what did you think I meant?? - and we are indulging in a weekend of pure, well, indulgence. This involves, in almost equal measure, chocolate, sparkly wine, laughter, friendship, reminiscences, sparkly wine, chocolate and ... spa treatments. Oh yes! I am having a rejuvenating facial (increasingly necessary, according to a man close to me - too close for comfort if he says that again) and a "sports" massage (the closest I plan to come to "sports" this side of death).

While I am doing this - in preparation, I may say, for a horrendous week of all the things Jane thinks I'm doing - you are going to be doing a very, very simple task. You are going to go on-line and sign an incredibly important petition. I think you have to live in the UK to do this, but if you don't, please cheer us from the side-lines.

The petition is simple. It calls for school libraries to be statutory.

Now, OK, so I am children's author and perhaps therefore care more than some about school libraries. But every author should care equally. Because school libraries create the readers of the future. The readers of your books. Without readers we can no more than whisper in a storm.

Every children's author knows the wonderful work that school librarians do. They inspire reading; they have myriad ways to entice even the reluctant or afraid into the magical world of books. They can, quite frankly, save people. We, keen readers, take reading for granted. We assume that reading is an optional hobby, just because you don't die if you don't do it. But we forget that you don't live if you don't do it. Or not properly, not fully.

Only someone who takes for granted the pleasure and power of reading, or someone of extreme callousness, could not want to support something which offers that power and opens that world to all. Without the reader paying anything.

In a couple of weeks' time, I'm doing a key-note speech at a librarians' conference and I plan to show them what goes on in the human brain when we read fiction, why it is necessary for our soul and our humanity, our health, our decision-making, our morality. I'll be preaching to the converted, but I want them to understand and value the immense importance of what they do. I want them to go away knowing that they are doing one of the most relevant jobs possible and one that is needed more than ever in our fast-paced digital world, where we are bombarded with data too quickly to process it properly, too quickly to generate wisdom.

Please, please sign this petition. Your future readers depend on it. You depend on it.

Meanwhile, I've signed it, so I am allowed to have rejuvenating collagen facials and relaxing sports massages. But I will not be so relaxed that I won't be absolutely furious if lots of you haven't signed it.

Listen, someone told me I was scary the other day. Hooray for scary. I can be even scarier if called upon.

Just sign, OK?

I'm even going to harangue the masseuse into signing.

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL IS ON ITS WAY

2009-06-11T17:03:00.004+01:00

Now that I have just been to the press launch - yay for sparkly wine in the morning - for the Edinburgh International Book Festival (sorry, got to do the whole name thing - corporate branding etceterydah), I can bring you more detailed news than the sketchy things I said in a recent post. (Don't bother going to find it: I'm going to paste the relevant bits here. Apologies to myself for plagiarism.)

The events below are aimed specifically at writers, published or unpublished. The whole programme is now live on the website, but you can't book till June 22nd. If you are incredibly lucky when you phone, you will get to speak to my younger daughter, Rebecca, who is in the booking office for the weekend. Do say hello to her but please don't confuse her because it's hectic there on opening weekend and I do not want you to be responsible for her cocking up the whole shebang. You could also ask her if she's going to be back in time for supper and why she hasn't brought her dirty mugs downstairs.

These are not all the writer-related events available - they are just the ones I have a connection with, either because I'm involved in them or because I helped arrange them. They fall within a strand called the Writing Business and are designed to be very practical. A workshop is 1.5 hours; the others are talks which till focus on the practicalities of the topic, and last one hour.

Most of the authors involved have websites and you might even be able to contact them like that. Why don't you drop them a line, tell them you're coming and ask what they're going to talk about? (If they haven't prepared anything yet, tell them Nicola Morgan says hurry up, f'crying out loud - don't they know there's only two months to go??)

Sat 15 Aug - 2pm - How to make a living as a writer (workshop) - Keith Charters

Sun 16 Aug - 11am - Writing non-fiction (workshop) - Angus Konstam

Sun 16 Aug - 2pm - Self-publishing (workshop) - Keith Charters

Mon 17 Aug - 11am - Writing crime fiction (workshop) - Lin Anderson

Mon 17 Aug - 6.45pm - Writing in a Recession - Mark Le Fanu (Gen Sec of SoA), chaired by me - please come to this: Mark is so knowledgable and has all the gen on exactly how UK authors are being affected by the recession and what publishers are doing.

Mon 17 Aug - 2pm - Contracts workshop (workshop) - SoA staff (real experts!)

Tue 18 Aug - 2pm - How to Market Yourself - Alison Baverstock

Tue 18 Aug - 4.30pm - How to structure a story - Lin Anderson

Wed 19 Aug - 4.30pm - The Art of Blogging - Caroline Dunford and Helen Fowler

Wed 19 Aug - 6.45pm - How to make a publisher say Yes - Nicola Morgan

Thurs 20 Aug - 4.30pm - Writing for children and teenagers - Viv French and me

Fri 21 Aug - 2pm - Writing fantasy - Alan Campbell

Sat 22 Aug - 2pm - The Perfect Approach (was meant to be called The Perfect Submission ...) (workshop) - Nicola Morgan

Mon 24 Aug - 2pm - Getting Published panel - Frances Bickmore, Maggie McKernan and rather annoyingly, me. Only annoyingly because I was asked to be on this panel and accepted without knowing what the topic was, and now I find it's the same as the "How To Make A Publisher Say Yes" one I'm doing on my own ....

Tue 25 Aug - 11am - Getting Creative (workshop) - Caroline Dunford

Tue 25 Aug - 6.45pm - Monkeys and Type-writers: can you learn to write and if so how? - Sam Kelly, Lin Anderson, Caroline Dunford, chaired by me

Wed 26 Aug - 11am - Dealing with rejection (workshop) - Caroline Dunford

Wed 26 Aug - 2pm - Writing for teenagers (workshop) - Keith Gray

Wed 26 Aug - 6.45pm - Self-publishing - Keith Charters

Thur 27 Aug - 6pm - Fight for Your Rights - Nicola Morgan

Fri 28 Aug - 11am - Writing short stories (workshop) - Susie Maguire

Fri 28 Aug - 2pm - Writing for young children (workshop) - Linda Strachan

Sat 29 Aug - 2pm - Creating a crime series - Aline Templeton

Mon 31 Aug - 11am - Writing biography (workshop) - Angus Konstam

Mon 31 Aug - 2pm - Writing romance (workshop) - Eileen Ramsay

Even if you can't come to an event, do come to the book festival. I am there most days and would love to meet you. Know me by my shoes, as usual (except when it's raining). The book festival have got rain down to a fine art - last time there were plastic ducks on the accidental ponds and the sculptures depicted sheds and things semi-submerged in mud. And ice-cream still rocks in the rain.

Today, as I write this, it's sunny, and I'm thinking we should have a blog picnic. Would you come? I have organised a picnic in the book festival for the last three years and every year it has rained; on the other hand, every year I have blagged a marquee. Yay for bribery.

Here is a fab pic that Tim Duncan has sent me of the above-mentioned ducks. Is that a hippo lurking?

DANGEROUS READING

2009-06-11T07:44:00.000+01:00

I now bring you a heartening school story.

Message from an English teacher to me today: "Some of my pupils were reading Deathwatch under the desks last lesson as they needed to find out what was happening next - very gripped! (No I didn't tell them off!)"

Hooray for teachers who so much like the fact that their pupils read that they turn a blind eye when they read in the wrong place!

But it leads me to ask you: what books did you risk punishment to read when you were young? What stories helped turn you into the readers and writers you now are? What exactly was it about those books that tranpsorted you to a place where detentions were worth courting?

One of my favourite reads, which I read over and over again and would certainly have gone to many detentions for, was The Black Tulip, by Alexandre Dumas. Oh, the romance, the swords, the horrible torture, the blood-curdling pain, the honour and bravery and all that bejewelled swash-buckling!

So go on, share your favourite books from your youth, if you can remember that far - and maybe jog our memories so that all those illicit moments of dangerous reading come flooding deliciously back.

Whatever it is that you identify as the must-read factor, I bet you that if we all put a bit more of it into our own writing, we'd end up writing stories that more people would want to read. And publish.

Because it is my firm belief that it's not just kids who want to be gripped by a book, gripped so that the real world fades away for a while.

EDITING DESTROYS THE CATHARTIC CREATIVE PROCESS

2009-06-10T09:04:00.010+01:00

Sometimes I bring you stories of the things that happen to me as a writer. Sometimes these stories are funny. Sometimes they are not. This one is not.

Yesterday, I was happy until approximately 4.15pm. From 4.15pm onwards, I was not.

Until 4.15pm, I had been doing some lovely events in Dyce Academy near Aberdeen (yay for Dyce Academy, home to many people of taste and intelligence and general excellence in education). Then I got on my train at about 4pm, satisfied with a good day's work. After I had moved from my designated seat in order not to spend the journey sitting next to two men each with a six-pack of Special Brew (for transatlantic readers, this is not tea, but strong lager), I ensconced myself in a carriage the peace of which was spoiled only briefly by the extraordinarily loud voice of a man from Yorkshire (like Porlock but further north and with fewer palm trees), who felt it necessary that everyone in the carriage should hear him phone his secretary to ask how many loads of shingle they had sold that day and whether his wife had phoned to say that the plumber had come to fix the leaking tap yet.

Then, at 4.15, I opened an email. From a school which I was supposed to be visiting with a free visit.

The school has suggested cancelling because they feel the event is "commercial". If losing money is commercial, remind me not to apply for The Apprentice. Why have they decided it's commercial? Because book-buying is (always was) on offer - with fun activities provided for those who don't want to buy books. Fun activities with prizes paid for by me. Because I can't stand the thought that anyone should feel left out if they don't buy a book. I could weep. Actually, I pretty nearly did.

I cannot express how much of my time, effort and money has gone into this series of events. But I was enjoying the whole idea until 4.15 yesterday and saw no downside, except that I'll be exhausted. But exhausted and happy, I thought.

You know me well enough to know that there will be a learning point to this. Indeed. The clue is in the mysterious heading to this post.

That phrase about editing destroying the cathartic blah blah refers to an oft-derided (by me and others) view held by misguided vanity publishers and some self-publishers - anyone in fact who hasn't got the knowledge, wisdom or literary insight to understand the utter essentiality of a good editor for EVERY writer.

Well, you know, they're right after all: editing does wreck the cathartic creativity and all that stuff. I know. Because after I'd spent some time feeling upset and being completely unable to concentrate on the thing that I was supposed to be doing on that train journey, and knowing that it would be a bad idea to reply to the email immediately (not least because I can't type on my horrible little netbook), I took pen and paper and spewed it all out into the written word. My letter was eloquent and beautiful and free-flowing and incredibly cathartic and creative. Unedited. Yay! But completely unpublishable. And unsendable. And needing to be kept private. Frankly, the equivalent of bulimia for writers?

Anyway, it cleared my head and I was then able to focus on the thing that I was supposed to be doing instead. Which is the point of catharsis.

The point being that yes, editing does impede catharsis etc, and so thank goodness for editing. Because without it it's all just spew.

PSEUDO-AGENTS - BEWARE

2009-06-07T11:27:00.002+01:00

As you may know, hell hath no fury like me when I see inexcusable ignorance. When people don't know something, that's fine: I am happy to elucidate. Even when people think they know everything but in fact only know a small proportion of everything, I can cope: acerbic elucidation is called for, and acerbic elucidation is my forte. But when someone thinks he/she knows enough about the writing world actually to call himself an AGENT, when that person knows less than mouse-droppings about it, then I get angry. My mouth begins to resemble a guppy's as I struggle to produce any lucid words.

See, I thought an agent was someone who knew about publishing. Like, even anything. Because the ones I know are incredibly knowledgeable about it. (As you'd, er, expect??) Mine, for example, knows exactly to whom anything should be sent and exactly what rights should and shouldn't be offered for exactly what dosh. I ask her a question and she tells me the truth. She knows the ins and outs and the ups and downs and can guide me through minefields and extract the best deal from the situation. It's what she's there for and why I'm delighted to hand over her percentage.

Yay for such agents! They are worth their weight in commission. Even if they are very large. Which mine isn't. (Despite the meal I gave her after the launch party, which included meringues and cream and cheese and voluminous sparkly wine. But I accidentally forgot to offer the chocolates round and so, sadly, must eat them all myself.)

But news has come to me of horrible things that worse-than-useless pseudo-agents can do. Thing is, anyone can be an agent. There's no exam or anything. In recent months, I've heard the occasional story of surprising lack of knowledge on the part of some people who call themselves agents. And I've chosen to ignore it.

Until now. Exercise your imagination for a moment. Suppose there was a vanity published author who was ignorant of every aspect of publishing; suppose that "author" then called himself an agent. To be clear, let's imagine that this is someone who doesn't realise that an author is supposed to be allowed to earn money from writing, who hasn't heard of rights and doesn't know the first thing about even the tiniest part of the publishing process, and who will swallow the line that books shouldn't be edited because "editing diminishes the creative and cathartic flow necessary to the transportation of the real writer" (my arse) - and he thinks he can agent someone else? And now imagine that this was not imaginary ...

Since such crappiness could happen, I need you to know how to choose a proper agent. Believe nothing if you don't believe this: a bad agent is worse than useless and certainly much worse than no agent. A bad agent will destroy your career before it has started and will leave you more stressed than you can imagine an unpublished writer can be. And, as you've probably already discovered, being unpublished is stressful enough.

So, before getting into bed with an agent (do I need to specify that I am not being literal?), ask some questions:

what other authors does the agent represent?Investigate how well the books have done.
what previous experience of publishing led to him becoming an agent?
is this the agent's full-time / only job? If not, why not and how much time and energy will the agent have for you?
how does the agent sell foreign rights? For example, they might use sub-agents or scouts - but there should be some clear answer to the question. Ask what countries any other clients have been sold into. (Similar question for TV/film rights.)
what professional bodies is the agent a member of? Investigate them.
can you see the contract that you would sign with the agent? Get it checked by someone who understands - perhaps another agented author, or the Society of Authors if you are a member, or any other body that you belong to.
what would be the agent's plan for your career?
is the agent asking for any money up front? NO! The agent should earn commission - ie a % of your writing income from any work which falls within the scope of the above contract. So, the agent doesn't earn from you before you earn yourself. An agent will not charge a reading fee.

And here are three questions to test the alleged agent's knowledge:

can the agent explain in clear terms the difference between vanity publishing, self-publishing and mainstream publishing?
can the agent answer the question: what trends do you see in publishers' attitudes towards this particular genre at the moment?
how can an agent help an author exploit IPR?

That should sort the cream from the rancid yogurt!

If you happen to have a friend or acquaintance who is offering to be your agent in an amateur way, be very cautious. If I were you, I'd think barge-pole, frankly. This could be the end of a beautiful friendship and is unlikely to be the start of a glittering career. Being an agent is not a job for amateurs. Obviously, every agent must start somewhere and acquire a first client - but this can only work if that agent already has substantial experience of dealing with publishing rights in another professional capacity. For example, many agents were publishers / editors for years before they became agents - a very good way into the business.

So, please be very astute and cautious, walking onto an agent's list with eyes wide open. Do not be so desperate or flattered that you leap into a relationship immediately - a bad agent is worse than no agent and much more stressful.

I think I've been pretty calm about all this, in the circs. My first draft included phrases like cockroach vomit but I decided to leave that out, so as not to spoil your breakfast. Ever caring, that's me.

YAY! THE CRABBIT OLD BAT IS BACK!

2009-06-06T16:21:00.007+01:00

Actually I've been here all along. I have emerged from a morning of fuming tension as I tried to discover why none of my blog posts for the last week have appeared on your blogs. I felt bereft of your company. It was like standing on a mountain-top and whispering into the ears of a blizzard. Not that I have ever done that but I have an imagination.

I knew the posts were there because I could damn well see them but YOU didn't know they were there unless you happened to go to my blog, and why would you if you thought I hadn't said anything??

And I had SHOES to show you, too!! I could weep at the lack of attention my shoes got. Many of you thought (I now realise from some emails) that I was busy with the Deathwatch launch. Well, I was, but not that busy. It was very kind of you to leave me alone but I actually thought you'd buggered off. My stats went way down and I thought, "Blimey, that's me dumped, then!"

Anyway, I sorted it, but not before I'd added a few grey hairs and put myself in a really bad mood. Sometimes only my husband discovers the depths of crabbitness of which I am capable. Though the dog has an inkling too.

Now, could you possibly all do me a big favour? Just to make me feel less pissed off with the world of technology? And to smooth my wrinkled brow? Or release the tension from my shoulders? All you need to do is go back and read the last few posts, if you haven't already. The last one that was automatically posted to you was the Stroppy Author one.

I hope Jane Smith is still planning her blog party tomorrow, as I'm going to make a huge effort to find time to join. Need to remind people I'm still there. Fingers crossed this one lands in your in-boxes or wherever such things land.

Next week, I will endeavour to post coherently and importantly. The following week, I suspect all efforts to do so will be in vain as I'm off on the maddest book tour ever devised by woman.

Till then, here's a pic of part of what I was doing this week. These are some of my lovely Deathwatch Girls, looking very proud at our launch party.

BY HER SHOES SHALL THEY KNOW HER

2009-06-04T16:19:00.011+01:00

Thank you to so many of you for good wishes yesterday. Here's my impression of the evening.

Normally, I find a "learning" for any picture or anecdote, but I confess that today's link is a bit tenuous. It is that I wish Vanity publishers would be as up front about their vanity as I am about mine. I keep hearing stories of people being sucked in and not having a clue what's going on.

Remember Golden Rule number one: the person entitled to earn money from your writing is a) you (first) and b) the people who work to help make your book into a proper book that anyone might want to read. If the so-called "publisher" offers you neither advance, royalty nor fee, EVER, it is not a publisher and you will not be published. You will simply be wrapped in a tacky cover that people will be amazed at for all the wrong reasons. (Oh, and btw, the fact that it's "Arts Council funded" doesn't tell you anything relevant.)

Edited to add: I just came across a very informative site by Johnathon Clifford, who gives a lot of pretty clear advice about how to tell what's a Vanity press or not (including how to spot the GOOD ones, for there are good ones and perfectly valid reasons why you might choose this method for certain books that could not be commercially published.)

Lynn Price and Jane Smith (through her guest blogger, David L. Kusminski) have also been thinking about the ways that unwary authors can be deceived by various scams and promises. As always, they bring you important insights. In fact, it was reading Jane's guest post that reminded me how annoyed I am by the traps that catch unwary authors.

So - cue learning point - keep on your toes: even if they are pointy and pink and somewhat decadent.

ARE YOU REALLY REALLY READY TO BE PUBLISHED? (2)

2009-06-03T09:05:00.009+01:00

Of all the questions to ask yourself, this is The One. Much of what I say in this blog is designed to get you looking ultra-critically at your work to see whether it is good enough to present to a publisher. I have said many times, and will no doubt say many times again, that many unpublished authors spend far too much time worrying about how many pages to include in their submissions and far too little time worrying about the brilliance of the words in the submission.

And so, in the spirit of being a bit busy today because of a certain launch party and the need to go and decide which shoes I'm going to wear, I bring you this very useful post from Jane Friedman.

And while the writing method/aim/vision of Tim Ferris is not necessarily one that will wow all of you - it doesn't appeal to me either, but he's at least done what he set out to do - a professional approach to making sure your book is publishable is the right one.

In other words, if you want your writing to be read, you have to write something that enough people want to read and you have to write it well enough for them to stay with you for thousands and thousands of words instead of going down to the pub or into the garden with a sudoku puzzle and one of Lynn Price's chocolate margharitas that she still hasn't given me. That's the only way to be published. Do it any other way and you're just writing for yourself. Which is fine, if that's what you want. Interestingly, I read that Kate Atkinson wishes she could write without being read. I'm a big admirer of her work, so I'm very glad she hasn't achieved her aim.

Tomorrow, I bring you nothing but a headache (from relief and tiredness, I hasten to add) and perhaps the following day I will bring you shoes.

THE EDINBURGH INT BOOK FEST IS COMING

2009-06-02T12:29:00.007+01:00

Thought you might like some advance warning of some events aimed specifically at writers, published or unpublished, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The actual and complete programme is announced on June 11th. (Blog reader and book festival person, Tim Duncan, has just helpfully pointed out that booking doesn't start till June 22nd. How can we wait that long??)

These are the events I know about, either because I'm involved in them or because I helped arrange them. They fall within a strand called the Writing Business and are designed to be very practical. A workshop is 1.5 hours; the others are talks which till focus on the practicalities of the topic, and last one hour:

How to make a living as a writer (workshop) - Keith Charters

Writing non-fiction (workshop) - Angus Konstam
Self-publishing (workshop) - Keith Charters

Writing in a Recession - Mark Le Fanu (Gen Sec of SoA), chaired by me
Writing crime fiction (workshop) - Lin Anderson
Contracts workshop (workshop) - SoA staff

How to structure a story - Lin Anderson

How to make a publisher say Yes - me
Blogging - Caroline Dunford and Helen Fowler

Fight for your rights as a writer - me

Writing fantasy - Alan Campbell

Writing the perfect submission (workshop) - me

Publishing Scotland panel on trends in publishing - me on panel, don't know who with
Ghost writing - ?

Can you learn to write and if so how? - Sam Kelly, Lin Anderson, Caroline Dunford, chaired by me
Creativity (workshop) - Caroline Dunford

Self-publishing - Keith Charters
Dealing with rejection (workshop) - Caroline Dunford
Writing for teenagers (workshop) - Keith Gray

Writing for children and teenagers - Viv French and me

Writing short stories (workshop) - Susie Maguire
Writing for young children (workshop) - Linda Strachan

Creating a series - Aline Templeton

Writing for theatre - Zinnie Harris

Writing biography (workshop) - Angus Konstam
Writing romance (workshop) - Eileen Ramsay

Even if you can't come to an event, do come to the book festival. I am there most days and would love to meet you. Know me by my shoes, as usual (except when it's raining). The book festival have got rain down to a fine art - last time there were plastic ducks on the accidental ponds and the sculptures depicted sheds and things semi-submerged in mud. And ice-cream still rocks in the rain.

Maybe we should have a blog picnic .... Hmm, I could be tempted. I have organised a picnic in the book festival for ther last three years and every year it has rained; on the other hand, every year I have blagged a marquee. Yay for bribery.

Here is a fab pic that Tim Duncan has just sent me of the above-mentioned ducks. Is that a hippo lurking?

THE SECRET OF PUBLICITY?

2009-05-31T07:52:00.009+01:00

I have talked before about how getting a contract is not the end of the story, and that there then ensues all the unavoidable promotional stuff. I was wrong. I have been wasting my time with all the stupid things I've been doing to promote a book (the name of which I cannot tell you) which may or may not be published some time soonish, on a day which I will not reveal. My lips are sealed. In the words of the waiter from Barcelona, "I know nothing."

It was all going so well - the publicity for this nameless book - and I'd even, to my shame and horror, had some lovely reviews on places like that big book-selling website that everyone goes on about. Then, on Saturday, I read the papers and discovered, in a horrible flash of gah-ness, that I'd got it all wrong.

Here's the story that shook my world. After five years of fevered anticipation by readers, Haruki Murakami's new novel, IQ84, has been published. The flood of advance orders meant that his publishers had to increase the initial print-run to 480,000. The secret to this stunning success? Secrecy. Silence. Nothing. Yep, he totally refused to say anything about it. Ever. For five years and all the way up to publication, he zipped his mouth and swanned around eating sushi and drinking rice wine. (I made that up: for all I know, he could be teetotal. After all, a writer with the self-control not to mention his book? You couldn't do that if you were sober.)

Now this is the sort of publicity campaign I could quite easily be attracted to. It's a bit late, but from now on my lips are sealed. I will not tell you anything, not one teensy item, not even the title, about my new booky thing that's possibly published on Monday, or Tuesday, or thereabouts. I've no idea where you can buy it and if I see any copies I will hide them behind someone else's titles. Everything I have already said about the book is a lie. Someone said it's Book of the Month in some **poxy shop - well, pah to that. If you read any reviews before publication, they are fabricated. Any videos you find are probably created by a jealous rival, just to throw you off the scent.

I will from now on be a woman of extreme mystery. One day, I will be like Shakespeare and everyone will argue about whether I was really the writer of a book called ... Or maybe even Homer and people will argue about whether I existed.

Sometimes, I have wondered this myself.

** No offence, Vanessa - all in the interests of not identifying the shop, which could never in a million years be called poxy.

STROPPY AUTHOR'S BLOG

2009-05-29T09:44:00.004+01:00

I bring you a blog that I like, partly because a "stroppy author" sounds as though she would get on very well with a "crabbit old bat". I feel we could share many glasses of wine and bars of chocolate together and still not finish being stroppy and crabbit.

So, here it is: The Stroppy Author's Guide to Publishing.

Her words of stroppy wisdom are directed at those of you who are either published (but still confused - and this will apply for a very long time after publication, perhaps even for ever) or on the verge of being so (many of you), or keen to know how to deal with it if you were. And that should include all of you, because it is never too early to learn, though it is sometimes too late. Or at least later than it might more happily have been.

Spurred on by the growing pressure from my blog readers (bleeders? breeders?) to impress them with my boots if ever I am spotted in public, I was going to go boot-hunting today, following the tantalising advice of Barb, but it's so sunny that instead I am going to have to expose my legs in the garden. And if that is not a sufficiently frightening thought to keep you all firmly indoors working on your WIP, I don't know what is.

BIG MISTAKE 2: PROBLEMS WITH PACE

2009-05-27T09:52:00.003+01:00

I promised that I would soon hit you with a post which would improve your writing. Big Mistake 1, you'll doubtless remember, was back in February, when I talked about making mistakes with voice. This Big Mistake "series" aims to point you towards the commonest mistakes in otherwise decent manuscripts, the things that so often stop them pressing the necessary ecstasy buttons for an editor or agent to say "OH YES!"

This lesson is aimed at already decent writers, not those whose writing is at a level of direness which you cannot imagine. (Unless you've seen a website that I recently gawped at. Put it this way: supposing its author decided to go down the vanity publishing route; this would be a) the only way she stands a chance of getting published and b) akin to Medusa paying for some glamour photos to be done as a birthday present to herself.)

Sorry, but I needed to get that off my chest. There are some seriously deluded idiots out there; please tell me you are not among them.

Anyway. Pace is one of the things that perfectly decent writers often fail to analyse in their own work and is, thankfully, one of the easiest things to fix. In fact, so easily might you be able to fix it, that I would not be surprised if this post alone does not propel at least one of you to publication. Go, go, go! If one of you gets published, I will feel like a midwife, which would be rather lovely (in some ways, though not in others). I could get to be at the birth - otherwise known as champagne-drenched launch party.

What is pace? Where will you find it?
Pace is not always fast; nor does it have to be. Pace consists of controlling the variety of speeds with which the action happens and with which the reader reads. And you find it in any book where you keep wanting to turn the page.

Hold onto that thought because it's your ability to make the reader want to turn the page, instead of just turning down the corner of it prior to going to sleep, which is your whole aim as an author. Regardless of whether you write crime fiction or romance, kids' books, comedy, literary fiction or whatever - including non-fiction - you want your readers to keep going. And if you get the pace wrong, they won't.

Clearly, some books move faster than others. Some genres require a faster pace throughout: action stories, thrillers, books for teenagers, chick-lit - all require more foot on the accelerator more of the time, because that's what their readers are there for.

But no readers respond well to a constant fast pace. After all, if it's fast all the time, how do you get your reader's heart racing faster for your climactic scenes? How do you create suspense if every page is a sprint? You must play with the reader. You must think: where do I want the reader to become breathless with anticipation? When will I allow him to relax before upping the pace again? How many times will I do this and how often? If we have a really fast bit here, what happens when we get to the scene later which I want to be even more intense and dramatic?

So, pace is about control. Pace is a tool, one of the most important tools in keeping the reader going. Now, I can't decide for you where your fast or slow bits should come, because I don't know your story-line. (Please don't tell me). Only you know that, and it should be obvious to you. But, once you have worked out which are your big scenes and paciest bits, I can give you some tips for how to control the pace at those times.

Technique 1 - chapter ends
You can change the whole pace of a section (or whole book) by simply changing where you end your chapters. Think of a chapter as a breath. If your chapter depicts a complete episode, the reader starts by inhaling, reaches the top of the breath (the climax of the episode), then exhales to the end of the chapter, at which point he relaxes. And quite possibly turns out the light and goes to sleep. Which is fine - your reader needs to sleep. But, what if you don't want him to sleep now? What if this is supposed to be a fast bit where you want your readers breathless with excitement? Simple: end your chapter mid-breath. So, end it before the climax, at a point where the reader cannot relax. Do that a few times, and you've created a really fast-moving section. You've upped the pace. Try it: go through your book messing around with your chapter ends.

Technique 2 - chapter lengths
Fast sections = short chapters. Simple. Make the reader sit up. Make the reader read another one. Can't stop themselves. Just one more. And one more. And now they're really into the story. You've got 'em.

Technique 3 - sentence lengths
One common mistake of not-good-enough writers is having sentences that are all the same length. (And same structure, but we'll tackle that another day.) It slows everything down (if they're all quite long) and makes it monotonous (even if all short and breathless). The simple rule is: short when you want to increase the pace. Again, it's about breathlessness.

You can also extend the technique to paragraph lengths. So, for a particularly dramatic fast bit, you might have a series of very short sentences, each on a new line. I did this in my next novel (not Deathwatch - the next one, Wasted.) Let me show you, and bear in mind that this is the most dramatic moment of the book, which the reader has been waiting for for a long time:

There is a moment of emptiness. It is a fraction of space, when one thing ends and another begins. Laughter stops, punched in the face, shocked.

Jess’s body freezes.

Breath holds.

One jetski.

It is coming.

Straight.

Towards.

The beach.

Jack is standing now. His back to the sea.

Grinning.

The rider’s face. Laughing.

But then.

Terrified.

Trying to turn.

Screaming.

A spray of froth.

A flash of red.

OK, that's a bit extreme but this is a novel where much of the book has a dreamlike, headachey quality, a thick summer feel with the menace of thunder, and when I need to gear up I use what I call the Ferrari Method - (well, I'm calling it that now) - a super turbo-charged shock to the reader. That particular example shows something else about Ferraris - you can hear them coming, but there's not enough time to get out of the way. The build up of short sentences lets you know, absolutely know, that something horrible is just about to happen.

Alternatively, you could also use Fire-cracker method, where the short sentences come out of the blue, in the middle of some long sentences. Earlier in Wasted, I do this when a pigeon flies through the window ... (Something of which, as you know, I have considerable experience). I give absolutely no warning of this and both my agent and editor commented on this as being the most shocking moment because the reader is not ready. Bearing in mind that there are a considerable number of far more shocking moments, a pigeon is doing a pretty good job if it over-takes human disaster on the shock stakes.

Technique 4 - controlling tense
Now, this isn't exactly a technique but it's something that affects pace in ways which are worth looking at. The easier tenses to handle are the past tenses. No one has a problem with these. Using the present tense is much trickier, and creates its own atmosphere which is (surprisingly?) not always one of greater speed and immediacy. It can sometimes feel detached. So, with the present tense, you need to be even cleverer about controlling pace. I don't recommend the present tense unless you really know what you're doing. There are too many pitfalls and many readers are put off by it.

Whichever tense you are using, Technique 5 comes into play.

Technique 5 - chopping words
When you want a particular section to feel very immediate, you could omit bits of sentences altogether, usually subjects, articles, or finite verbs. Don't do this too much, or it becomes irritating; and if you do it, as I do, it needs to be a recognised part of your style, not something you just inserted for effect on page 178.) Here's a bit from Deathwatch. The bits in red are where I've left words out, deliberately to increase pace. The bit in blue is technique 6.

The towpath was narrow here, backed by a high wall. No escape. She looked behind her. The barge was nearly at this bank. She could just make out the figure of the woman at the helm. Hear her voice but not her words. She didn’t want to hear her words.

She ran, pummelling the air, cold wind in her throat, rain running down her face, pain in her lungs. Straining to hear any sounds behind her. No sound of the boat, not any more. It must be at the bank. The woman would be leaping off. She would be only seconds behind."

Technique 6 - running phrases
That sentence in blue could have been separate "sentences". (Yes, I know, not technically sentences, since they lack finite verbs, but I could have separated them with full-stops/periods). And that would work too. But in some ways this method creates a smoother speed, not a jerky breathless one. Here, the character is running sucessfully - she feels powerful. If I'd made them separate staccato sentences, I'd have created a more breathless and desperate effect, but I'm saving that for later ...

Please don't think I'm setting myself up as in any way a perfect writer. No, no, no. I look all my published books, including the new one which is looking at me accusingly right now, and think, "ARGHHH, why didn't I change that bit or notice this bit?" No, what I want to do is show you how carefully you have to look at your writing at every level, from overall structure down to individual word and punctuation point, in order to be in control of your pace.

See, if you can't control your pace with absolute precision, you've lost your reader. And, published or unpublished, you cannot afford to do that.

Now, on a personal note, I am feeling very much under pressure, and not for any reason you might guess. Last night, I was accosted in a bar (in the nicest possible way), by a very interesting and personable person who asked me if I was Nicola Morgan, "because" she read my blog. We then had a really good chat, but what was disconcerting was that she said she recognised me from my boots. Considering that the boots in question have never featured in this blog (though others have), this was remarkable. Anyway, she said she knew I'd be in this bar because I'd put it on Twitter and on my blog, and she thought to herself, "Hmm, if Nicola is there, she'll be bound to be wearing great boots." So, she must have gone around the bar looking at everyone's feet. I feel a little like Cinderella.

Anyway, if I'm going to be held to account by the gloriousness of my boots, this puts me under some extra pressure, to which there is really only one answer: I'd really better go and buy some more.

SOME TRUTHS ABOUT PUBLISHING

2009-05-25T21:12:00.008+01:00

I was/am halfway through writing a Very Useful Post for you, on the important subject of controlling pace. I know you must be on tenterhooks about this but meanwhile I just came across a Very Useful and Thought-Provoking Post by someone else.

I am going to post that VUTPP here, before my own words of wisdom tomorrow or Wednesday, not because I am derelicting my duty to you, but because amongst many true points in his piece, Joshua Mohr makes one in particular: "I need only concern myself with one thing: the quality of my writing. That isn’t chance at all. I can’t control marketing trends or debutantes, but I can control the amount of energy I put into my revision process. I can take my time and make sure to write the best book I can."

I cannot tell you how right he is and what a wise decision he has made. Well, in fact, I can tell you. And indeed am. Otherwise, why would I be writing this post?

One of my most trenchant beliefs is that too many unpublished writers take up too much time too early trying to find out how to approach publishers/agents, and not enough time early enough accepting that they have to improve their writing first.

Anyway, trust me, it's the writing what counts, and only when we've got that right is it worth approaching a publisher or agent. Before that, it's embarrassing, because one of two things will happen: a) you'll be rejected or b) you'll have your rubbishy writing published and be mortified when the reviews appear. Or don't appear.

Joshua also says: "Turns out, chance is a brutal part of the publishing trade. Good books sometimes vanish without a trace, and obvious, dumbed-down books with clever marketing tricks often become successful. It’s a savage reality of the business, one writers need to be aware of."

Again, spot on. Or "back of the net", as we say over here, which I once had to explain to my transatlantic friends.

So, since chance plays a big part, would any of us make that chance even smaller by not making our writing as good as possible and doing absolutely everything necessary to do so? Only the deluded idiots amongst us. And there are some, but surely they're not still reading this blog? I aimed to frighten them off long ago. Which is good, because one of them won't see what I'm planning to say about her/him in my forthcoming Very Useful Post.

(Edited to add: Sally Zigmond makes the same point over on The Elephant in the Writing-Room about the need to work more on our writing before expecting publication. She is another author who deserves to succeed. I didn't mention this at first because I am still blushing about her kind words about me in it, but I decided that it was more important that I send you over to her blog anyway. She has lots of useful insights. In fact, the very title of her blog makes the point: that the thing that is staring us in the face but which we too often don't talk about enough is the need to write better.)

Meanwhile, there's a lot we can learn from Joshua's blog post and I wish him success with Some Things That Meant The World To Me. I also wish success to Two Dollar Radio, the small independent publisher which is publishing Joshua because they believe in the quality of his writing even if bigger houses didn't think the book would sell enough to satisfy them. Which is not to knock big publishing houses either - big houses have big heating bills - but simply to say that there are plenty of readers out there who want something a bit special and I care that all types of book and reader should be catered for.

Anyway, my point in offering you his wisdom, apart from its obvious truth, is to prepare you for the fact that my next post will really be a writing lesson. Unless something else comes up, of course. I know I should be thinking about book launches, but I've got to have something to take my mind off the Litopia interviews that are going out this week. I don't know what I said - it's all a blur, largely because marauding dogs were running around behind me, dragging heavy chains in quite a threatening way, which is not something I'm used to in the genteel part of Morningside in which I live.

IN WHICH I ATTEMPT TO CONTROL AN INTERVIEW

2009-05-24T21:05:00.007+01:00

Look, I really will get on with some trenchant and perceptive advice about improving your publishability. Soon. Honestly. Probably on Tuesday. But first, I had such fun today. After telling you yesterday (scroll down one post - save me linking) about Lynn Price's hilarious promo video for her forthcoming book, The Writer's Essential Tackle Box, I investigated the software she'd used. I felt I should.

A couple of hours (well, OK, four hours) later, I had come up with my own effort. And if there's got to be a "learning point" in every post on this blog, it is this: that getting published is only the beginning. Life from then on becomes one heady round of "interviews" and associated madness.

I had a long list of things to do today and this wasn't on it. But it was much more fun.

Oh, and still don't forget to try to win your free copy of the Writer's Handbook. Your deadline is Thursday.

"THE WRITER'S ESSENTIAL TACKLE BOX"

2009-05-23T12:13:00.007+01:00

This brief post kills several birds with one stone. (Metaphorically, though I have been known to kill pigeons simply by the force of my presence.)

It allows me to mention the wonder that is Lynn Price - see the BehlerBlog for advice that is sometimes even more in-your-face than mine and much, much funnier. And if I praise her enough she may invite me to stay with her in California and feed me margharitas and chocolate.
It allows me to recommend her surely wonderful forthcoming book, which obviously I haven't read because it's "forthcoming" and I'm neither psychic nor important enough to be sent a review copy. It's called The Writer's Essential Tackle Box and I'm absolutely certain that it is, so maybe I am psychic after all.
It allows me to show you the funniest and most wonderful promotional video you'll see this weekend, and quite possibly all year.

Now, please go and read the post (below this one, of course) that I put up earlier this morning, because it has more bounty from me and the Writer's Handbook, which I would hate you to miss. For those of us unlucky enough to live hundreds of miles from Lynn, there is at least the consolation that the free copies of the Writer's Handbook and money off the excellent day-long event are only available to us poor UK-dwellers.

Meanwhile, I really need to do some work. I seem to remember I have a book to promote. Talking of which, feast your eyes on this little video thing:

GIFTS FOR YOU - and boots for me

2009-05-23T08:24:00.020+01:00

I love to be able to bear gifts, especially at no cost to myself. So, I am delighted to be able to:

a) tell you about an interesting and useful event
b) offer you a substantial discount on the ticket price
c) offer FIVE lucky UK readers a copy of The Writers' Handbook 2010
d) offer you a glimpse of some new boots

The downside is that for a -c you have to live in the UK. On the other hand, it's a very nice place to live and we're so generous that we pay for the moats and duck-houses of our MPs' second homes.

I am very grateful to the people at The Writers' Handbook (henceforward in this post, TWH) who made this offer and flattering comments about my blog. Flattery goes a long way, I find, and free things for my readers go even further.

I'm going to tell you about their event below but first, here's what you have to do:

if you want to book a place on the event, with £10 off the £30 price, quote 'blog10' when you book, by email or phone. (Booking details on the link that follows).
if you live in the UK, and would like to enter a random draw to win a copy (5 winners) of the new edition of this excellent book, add a comment to this post; whatever else you say, make sure you a) indicate that you'd love a copy and that you will be grateful to me for at least ever if you win, and b) include your email address. If you are a lucky winner, I will email you and ask for your postal address.
the deadline for the free book draw is next Thurs, May 28th, midday UK time, at which point I will create the best semblance of randomness that I can, and pick 5 winners

So, the Writers' Handbook event. It's on June 6th (so get your skates on) in London (shame) and for all the details of it, including how to book, click here.

TWH is an excellent book for authors at any stage of their career. I am wondering what I have to do to get my own free copy as my current one is a bit out of date (though still very lovely). Maybe they'll send me one. You never know. Meanwhile, if you are unlucky in the draw and would like to buy the 2010 edition, do click the link in my recommended books list on the right. That way, I earn a few pence from Amazon and will be able to start saving for more boots.

_____________________________________________

Point of incidental information: there's a link on the TWH website to YouWriteOn. I mention this because part of what YWO offers is a self-publishing/vanity service, with the other part being a well-known showcase for unpublished writing. I rarely bother to talk about self-publishing, simply because I'm far more interested in "mainstream" publishing as the more reliable way to encourage the best writing standards, at least in fiction. This is not an anti-self-publishing post but I simply suggest that you investigate all self-publishing offers before leaping in. (And a perfect starting point to check out YWO is Jane Smith's work at How Publishing Really Works).

My point is only this: I would always want you to make an informed decision - and that applies equally when you are offered a contract by a "mainstream" publisher.

Go everywhere with eyes wide open. Otherwise, you're likely to stub your toe.

Or, far worse, damage the pointy bit of your glorious RED boots. Yes, I know they look pink, but trust me: these are absolutely scarlet.

MONEY MATTERS - THE MAD MATHEMATICS OF ROYALTIES

2009-05-21T12:12:00.007+01:00

Every now and then laziness overcomes me. Luckily, this usually happens when someone has just done something so clever and useful that the most clever and useful thing I can do is tell you about it and then go back to sleep.

So, if you have ever wondered about the maths (or math, for you over yonder ocean) of royalties and advances and foreign rights and returns and all sorts of other bogglingness, please travel over to Editorial Ass here, for the detailed rundown on what it all means and what you can expect/hope for/dream of/fear when you eventually see your treasured WIP hit the shelves. As you surely will if you keep listening to my advice and acting on it.

It simultaneously answers the question that the unagented among you often ask: Why do I need an agent? Maths/math is why. That and a lot of other things, such as calming pissed-off authors down when stuff happens, as you can be sure it will. Stuff has a habit of doing that.

DECIPHERING YOUR REJECTION LETTER(S)

2009-05-20T08:54:00.014+01:00

I found that each time I got a rejection letter, I would actually groan. The sound slid out as if someone had physically squashed me. It's horrible. I guess I'll get no disagreement there. At this point, you have some choices:

be delusional - take the view that you're brilliant and they don't know a thing
be crushed - take the view that you're crap and they're right and you are not worthy to lick the stamp on the next submission
be practical - work out why you were rejected and do something about it

Most rejection letters fit into one of these categories:

No.
No, sorry, but our list is full.
No, this is not the sort of book we publish.
We thought about this carefully and it has many qualities, but we don't feel strongly enough about it.
We thought about this carefully and it has many qualities; however this, this and this are not quite right. We would be happy to see it again if you were to think of re-writing with those points in mind.

There is a subtext behind each of them. Sometimes, one rejection letter of a particular sort is not enough to go on. Several in the same vein should tell you something. 700 rejection letters of any sort should tell you a great deal ... (See the Behlerblog for this extraordinary story of idiot delusion.)

1. The subtext behind "No" is "this isn't a book we can publish/sell." There are many reasons why this may be the case.

you may not be a good enough writer
you may be a goodish writer or even a very good one, but your book is not right
either because it doesn't fit a pre-existing category, or because it's not original enough (yes, I know - contradictory reasons there, but this is the real world, not Narnia); or because it's old-fashioned, or because it doesn't have a USP / hook / anything about it which will make it easy to sell in enough quantities to cover costs
but, whatever, you have not grabbed them sufficiently for them to bother to encourage you
(very often they are terrified of giving detailed feedback of any sort because far too often authors retaliate with vitriol
but also because of the sheer size of the slush pile)

2. The "list is full" excuse is usually a red herring. Yes, the list may be full, but if your writing is good enough and it is the sort of book they'd have wanted if the list wasn't full, the publisher will not lose you in such a cavalier fashion. So, the subtext behind this is "this isn't a book we can publish/sell, and your writing isn't great enough for us to want to snap you up anyway." So, your book is not good enough - even though (and remember this) you may be a good enough writer; you just haven't shown your writing skills well or, perhaps more importantly, provided the vehicle of a good enough story.

3. The third category (the "not the sort of book we publish" one) indicates one thing: you're an idiot - you should have done your research and sent it to the right publisher. So, please go to the bottom of the class.

4. Obviously this one (the one about good qualities) is more positive. They wouldn't say this if it wasn't true, so pin it to your board and cover it with sparkly things. But, clearly, it's still a rejection... As briefly as possible, here are the things you need to consider.

this is not about whether your book is better or worse than half the rubbish that IS published, so don't trot out that old chestnut. This is about whether a human being who is also an expert in selling books LOVES your book enough to fight for it in all the meetings that will have to happen before your book gets to market. See my post here and here and Lynn Price's here.
it has to be not only a book the editor loves and believes in, but also one that fits the lists and the plans of that particular publishing company at that time.
although "worse" books than your rejected one are often published, understand why I put "worse" in quote marks. It's not about "better" or "worse": it's about being right for an intended group of readers. Readers of chick-lit want something different from readers of Margaret Atwood. If a publisher sold chick-lit readers a Margaret Atwood, the readers would say it was crap and wouldn't recommend or buy it. So, your book might not be as "good" as a Margaret Atwood and therefore not "good" enough to be literary fiction, but much more "literary" than a chick-lit novel, and therefore not "good enough chick-lit". You have to know exactly who your intended readers are and write for them. So, you may well have written a "better" book than some of what you consider to be published drivel, but it's still not the right book for the right market.

5. The last one (the "re-writing" one) is obviously also very positive. Take it extremely seriously, but be sure that you understand and agree with the suggested changes before you do anything. If you don't agree, you won't be able to do it properly. However, be careful about pestering editors at this stage, since they have to deal with existing projects and the last thing you want to be is needy-seeming or irritating. It's fine to send ONE briefish email to check that you understand what they're saying, but after that you should keep quiet until you've done the work, unless they say they're happy to correspond more often. Often, a suggestion by the editor is a light-bulb moment, when you suddenly realise what's wrong with the book. A light-bulb moment is a wonderful thing and even if the publisher later turns you down, you will have improved your book.

Essentially, behind all these rejection letters is one message: you got it wrong. Sometimes you were just unlucky. But most often, it's simple: your writing is not (yet?) right.

If you want to do know just how hard it is and how hard you have to work to write better, I recommend the blog of a writer who is so close to having her novel published in that hardest of markets, literary fiction, that I am holding my breath for her. Sally Zigmond, who writes the wonderful and wonderfully-titled Elephant in the Writing-Room blog, understands all of the above perfectly. She has a quiet and determined belief in what she does, knowing that the responsibility for perfecting her work is in her hands alone. Sally deserves to be published, and I'm not just saying that because she has generously reviewed Deathwatch, both on her other blog and Amazon, and has even used a bit of it as a writing lesson. She knows that publication is all about the writing, that we can't carry on making excuses or ignoring advice, and that the best thing an aspiring author can do is spend time honing those words until readers are dragged into and then trapped by the story.

We too often think about getting published as a means to acquiring readers. But we should see it the other way round: think of your readers first, because if you don't, you won't be published. (Subject of forthcoming post.)

Motto for the day: getting published is not about wowing a publisher; it's about wowing readers. The more clearly we believe that, the better.

WRITING IN A RECESSION

2009-05-17T13:05:00.005+01:00

After what I've done in the last 24 hours, it's hard to be rational, but I will do my best because this must be a Very Serious Post. Before that, though, I know you are clamouring to know what I've done that was so taxing: a seriously serious radio programme - all my previous forays into radio being comparatively doddly and unserious, usually involving me talking about myself or my books, two subjects on which I am quite literally the world expert. No, this was the Shereen Programme, BBC Scotland's Sunday morning current affairs prog, where the news and papers are discussed intellectually by some erudite guests, plus, on this occasion, me. So, I had to spend yesterday trying to read every story on MPs' expenses, MPs' expenses, MPs' expenses, KatiePrice+PeterAndré's surprise (que?) divorce, and Eurovision.

So tired was I after being forced to watch the WHOLE of Eurovision on my own (no one else would join me) and consequently getting to bed late and not quite sober, and then getting up at 5am, that when we got to Katie Price, I had a bit of a rant. I am now in hiding in case she understands the bit about "plastic body and plastic brain". I was surprisingly well-briefed on KP, having spent all of three minutes on her pink and sparkly website (well, the bits I could get into without paying the sub - from which, btw, she earns a tidy £20,000 a month, even after she's reduced her sub because she is "taking into account the current financial situation everybody is experiencing.") To save you from having to look at even the free bits of this piece of tat (the website, not the woman ... or, on the other hand ...), I will quote my fav bit: "My no-nonsense approach has earned me the status of "thinking man's crumpet" as well as making me a strong, realistic, female icon for ordinary girls and women."

Your mind stoppped boggling yet? Lock up your daughters. Esp bearing in mind that 85% of visitors to her website are women. Including me.

Clearly, I enormously digress and must now come right down to earth.

Writing in a Recession

I was drawn to this topic for two reasons. First, it's the title of a talk I'm involved with in the Edinburgh Book Festival (in an organisational and chairing capacity, rather than having to think of anything profound to say, fortunately - we're leaving that to Mark Le Fanu, the General Sec of the SoA); and second, Sally Zigmond recently did a poignant post about how her was-to-be-published-soon book has been buggered by the recession.

So, how are writers being affected by the financial situation and what, if anything, can we do about it?

1. Some publishers are certainly behaving differently. Some (as I know through work with the Society of Authors) are pulling out of contracts; others are taking longer to make decisions. But, let's unpick this and see what we can say, a bit more specifically.

pulling out of contracts sometimes masks pre-existing weakness in that company
and is sometimes an unnecessary reaction
taking longer to make decisions is often simply rabbit behaviour. Sometimes, rabbit behaviour is wise. If you're a rabbit. But it sometimes isn't, especially if the thing chasing you is another rabbit.
sometimes, taking longer to make decisions is a good idea because many decisions should be reached slowly and a decision reached slowly may well be the right one
sometimes, for a publisher to pull out of a contract is a seriously stupid thing to do. In this case, for the author, it's a good thing, though it may not seem like it, because that publisher was a seriously stupid publisher and you really do not want to be with a seriously stupid publisher.
of course, sometimes it is a wise decision and genuinely necessary

2. Is this bad or good?

Obviously, it feels bad. Especially if you're the one who's just been dumped. In which case it's going to feel seriously rubbish.
On the other hand, too many books are published (and everyone in the know agrees with this - in fact, there are more and more being published every month, even now) and the more carefully publishers think about their decisions, the more likely they are to pick books that will sell, which is what they have to try to do.
BUT, trouble is, there are certain genres, very wonderful genres, which sell in small numbers and are more likely to be hit in a recession. (Lit Fic being the prime example. And Lit Fic is very very important.) So, this is bad news for them.
On the other hand, this creates a survival of the fittest situation, which is arguably good ...
... unless you're the unlucky gene that gets gobbled. (I don't think that was the word Darwin used, but he was a bit old-fashioned and those stiff collars made it hard to say words like that.)
Some enterprising smaller publishers see this as an opportunity, because they're lean and clean and know exactly what works and how to sell it, even if it is gem-quality Lit Fic. Lynn Price of Behler Publications made this point when commenting below Jane Smith's post about how to beat the recession. (Thank you, Jane, you inspirational person, you!)
And some big publishers who are well-run and also lean and clean will also do fine in this situation too.

So, things are not as gloomy as you may be led to believe.

And, if we're clever and calm and if we're, most importantly, brilliant writers, there are things we can do to help our own situation, whether published or not yet.

What should authors do to survive and thrive in this recession?
There are three main things, and you should consider how they each apply to you before rejecting them. If you reject them all, that would be foolish and you'd deserve to fail. That would be not so much rabbit behaviour as ostrich behaviour.

Look extra carefully at your MS and your work in general. Everything about good writing applies even more when the barrier is set higher, as it is. See this high barrier as an incentive, not a brick wall. Read everything you can about how to write the best possible book within your genre; practise as much and as open-mindedly as you can; read everything you can that's being published now within that genre; be the most critical judge of your own work that you can possibly be, and do your utmost to get it read by someone you absolutely trust. (People in the know - people working in the business, or published writers within your genre. Honest people. Not friends and family.) This might be the time to consider some form of course (we're also doing an event on that at the Ed Book Fest ... details of all our events coming v soon) - but it must be the right one for you, and be taught by genuine professionals, published authors or people in the writing industry.
Understand your genre and its marketability and consider carefully whether you should branch out and work within another genre, either as well or instead. Now, I know this is a horrible thought if, for example, you passionately believe in the value of Lit Fic (as you would be right to). But you have to be realistic: if your sort of writing is not selling, then you may set yourself an unreachable target by continuing to try. My advice is: continue to write your beautiful Lit Fic, but at the same time write something else, something that might sell. This achieves several aims: publication will boost your morale hugely, publication may give you a foot in the door to other types of publication, and you may discover a hidden talent in and love for something else.
Boost your writing profile by selling articles, short stories, fillers, anything. If you've done research, use it for something else. Your novel could inspire a short story. Magazines and newspapers are always looking for short fillers. Talk to someone in that industry or look at the many books and websites that give you insights. Writing a blog is useful - it keeps you writing, gets your name out there, helps you meet other authors, and can lead to something else. Note that I said "writing profile" not income - of course, income would be nice, and I'd never suggest you sell yourself short, but this is about getting your writing out there, and sometimes the pay just is crap. Most writers do also need "proper" jobs, at least at first.

In short, be realistic, be active and pro-active, be positive. Don't be like a rabbit or an ostrich. A recession can be an opportunity for talent to float to the top. Grasp that opportunity - but first, hone that talent. Talent has never been more necessary than it is now - though nor has luck. Only a few people get where they want with luck and no talent.

I can think of an example, but I would prefer not to think about the plastic one any more today.

AN AGENT ADVISES AND I FILL IN THE GAPS WITH SOME FEET

2009-05-14T19:07:00.014+01:00

I could beat myself up about how long it is since my last post, or I could gloat about having spent some days in Paris and the north of Scotland, (all in the course of authory duty, naturally).

Or I could do neither and just tell you something useful.

In my usual kindly way, I will tell you something useful and then I will make a comment or three prompted by an inappropriate and unwelcome sight on my train journey home from Aberdeen this afternoon. (You will need to brace yourselves.)

The useful thing
A wonderful website (which is apparently about to be updated, but I'm struggling to see how it could be better - maybe some vouchers for free chocolate or shoes? You know where I am) by UK literary agent Andrew Lownie. It is not enough for Andrew to have a stable of talented authors (including one of my all-time favourites, Daniel Tammet): he has also taken a lot of time to provide a huge bank of info which will help you muchly, whether you are published or not, and agented or not.

Inside the useful thing ...
... are many pages which, if they are not of interest to you, damn well should be. Like Andrew's submission guidelines - although these will inevitably differ from those of some other agents, they provide a paradigm of the sort of rules you will be asked to follow. And hey - he IS looking for new and unpublished wonderful authors. (Trade secret: agents always are.)

And the FAQ page will also tell you a great deal of stuff which I've said before myself, and which other similar blogs and sites will tell you, but nicely set out in one place, instead of hurled at you in dollops in a shouty way, as I tend to do in my crabbit moods. Andrew is absolutely not crabbit. (Well, he may be, but he doesn't seem so on his site.)

When an agent takes the time to explain everything so clearly, the least we can do is read it.

Trouble is, he doesn't tell you the most important thing - how to write the right book brilliantly in the first place. But that's not his job. It's mine ... and one day I will get back to it. (Meanwhile, if you're new to my blog, go and check out the posts with "right book" labels.)

Meanwhile, the inappropriate thing:
Please bear in mind that this was a gorgeous evening in Scotland and I should have expected to see something like this:

Or, this (please excuse the flies on the window):

Or, for those of you who appreciate the wonderful engineering of the Forth Rail Bridge, this:

Clearly, I did see those things, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to photograph them. However, it was difficult to see or focus on those views because of this:

These are the feet of a tourist who I think had been doing a lot of walking. (The clue was the blisters, which you can't see.) The feet are not pleasant, nor are they appropriate things to put on a seat which I might one day have to sit on. They did not enhance my journey at all. They served only the pure self-indulgence of their owner. If you could have seen them as closely as I did, you would have noticed many unpleasant details about them.

Now, I have a reputation for making my many negative travelling experiences tell a story or make a point of vague relevance to this blog. This is no exception. In fact, I have four points to make, to fill in the gap in Andrew Lownie's education of you (the gap being, if you remember, the all-important advice about writing the right book).

Whereas that woman entirely failed to consider what those around her wanted to see, you should, when writing, think of the reader at all times. If the reader would not appreciate something, leave it out. (Or in the case of feet, don't get them out at all.)
Do not be self-indulgent as a writer: that woman was thinking only of her feet and her own comfort. You do not have that luxury. You have a job to do, and that includes attracting and then keeping your reader.
Be appropriate. This does not mean that your book may not contain horrible / gruesome / outrageous things, only that they should only be there when they should be there. That woman was perfectly entitled to remove her shoes, just not there and not then. The art of the writer is to know exactly what word or what detail to reveal and to know how and when.
When you include something inappropriate or ill-considered in your writing, you detract from the surrounding beauty of your language. You wreck the view. Don't do it.

I had actually almost prepared a very topical and important (naturally) post about writing in a recession, but the recession can now wait till tomorrow, or more likely Saturday.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you the really really annoying thing that happened to me today. Suffice it to say that someone is going to find themselves appearing in one of my books very very soon and coming to one of the most appropriately nasty ends that I can imagine. And I can imagine a few.

PS re BEING REALLY REALLY READY

2009-05-07T18:41:00.005+01:00

PS An extra thought to add to last post (below, obviously), and one which I believe so strongly that I didn't want to add it to the post but say loudly and in shouty coloured letters, is this:

The writing by a published author is not necessarily "better" than that of a writer who has so far failed to get published. There are many unpublished writers out there (including, doubtless, some of you) who are way way better as writers than some published ones.

Publication is not the badge of brilliance: it is the mark of having written a book which a) fits perfectly within its intended genre (even if that genre is full of, er, what you might call crap) and b) ticks all the boxes of publishability, literarily flawed though some of those boxes may sometimes be and c) an editor wants, loves and believes can sell to the specific market which that editor understands.

That's it. Now go and write beautifully and don't forget to read the post below, otherwise my point above will be pointless, which would be a shame.

ARE YOU REALLY REALLY READY TO BE PUBLISHED?

2009-05-07T17:34:00.008+01:00

I am about to disappear again for a few days, this time to Paris - yeah, I know, being an author with a book to promote sucks - and I am also aware that a) I have been dilatory with your edification recently and b) I am about to enter a phase of being even more dilatory, as I have to hurl myself into more promotional stuff AND there's been (still is) the bloody Nanowrimo (sorry, Elen, I mean incredibly wonderful Nanowrimo which you kindly organised) and some guest blogs I've promised to do and a list of tasks the length of several arms. No mountains though, or only metaphorical ones.

So, until I come back from Paris (did I say that was where I'm going?) I thought I'd leave you with an excellent website full of sound advice and a particular post within it, which I thought was apt to all of us.

The website (and you should bookmark it, as I'm about to) is Casting the Bones, and thanks to "Sarah" for pointing it out. Robert Gregory Browne is the no-nonsense, successful author and I recommend his advice. I also hope you will look at the craft-honing articles BEFORE the "how to get an agent" ones ... I think he would agree.

The article I want you to think about is Are You Ready to be a Published Writer? There were so many lines in it that had me silently cheering but I particularly liked this: "So don’t be so anxious to get published. Be anxious to hone your craft. Expand your understanding of the process. To write stories that will have editors and producers thinking they have no choice but to buy it." This is exactly the drive of my blog.

We've all had that moment of finishing something and being desperate to send it off NOW because it's FAB and we're WRITERS and need to be READ, NOW, or SOONER if possible. But a) when we look at it a few days later, we should be very glad we didn't send it and b) it is almost certainly not as brilliant to a reader as it felt to us as its writer. When we step back, if we've learnt anything, we'll see those faults and know that there are also more faults that we haven't seen.

We must work to find those faults and improve until our writing really is the best it could be. And also good enough to be read and enjoyed by our intended readers, however many they may be.

This leads on from the interesting conversation in the comments on my recent self-publishing post, because there's so much I didn't have time to say about that, and calm though the opposing reasoning was, I simply wasn't persuaded by it and its sieviness. The reason it leads on is that this time to hone, this need to understand about not being ready to be published, this vast chasm that too often exists between how you are writing now and how you could be writing given good direction, is precisely why self-publishing is a very poor answer for the author in that position. (But a good answer for some other authors.)

Self-publishing tempts the unpublished author to bypass that crucial honing and improving and growing stage - unless you really think that your self-published book is only a practice run and you really don't care whether it's the best you can do, or indeed good enough - and if you don't care, well, er, good luck to you because possibly I don't too much care about that sort of writing or writer either ....

The only sort of writer I care about, and the sort of writer this blog is written for, is the sort of writer who will go to the ends of the earth on hands and knees with a cactus strapped to his back to become a better writer, the best writer you can be. Because nothing else is worth doing, as far as I'm concerned. And granted that "better writer" or even "best writer" is not a finite or objective or box-tickable target, it's the only one I am aiming for.

Yay, crabbit is back! And now is going again ...

From Saturday morning till next Wednesday night, I will be unlikely to get online much, not because they don't have the innernet in Paris (did I say that was where I'm going?) but because I am going to be expected to be working for my baguettes; I've seen my programme from the schools and no minute is left untended, believe me. Even the bits that are not work (and to be very fair, there are many, as they have a decent pace of living over there) are occupied by things like "walk in such and such beautiful garden" or "have coffee in such an such café" or "drink champagne in..." No, sorry, got a bit carried away there: there was no mention of champagne.

Oh, by the way - funny question in one of the school-talks I did this morning (from an eleven-year-old boy, remarkably): "Why aren't you wearing blue boots?" My fame precedes me, clearly.

Au revoir.

SELF-PUBLISHING - WHAT ABOUT IT???

2009-05-05T08:30:00.016+01:00

I'm pleasantly surprised no one has yet asked what I think of self-publishing. And I'm very glad no one has said, "But isn't self-publishing the future? Isn't "traditional" publishing dead?" If they had I might well have produced a major hissy fit and then you really would have seen the ultimate definition of crabbit.

One of the reasons I haven't talked about self-publishing is that I have so much to say that I'd hardly know where to start. Another reason is that Jane Smith, over at How Publishing really Works, speaks about it so clearly, regularly and eloquently that I hardly need to. If you scroll down her list of labels, you'll find 39 for self-publishing and 38 for vanity publishing. Go, Jane!

However, faced with a day in which I am supposed to be writing 5000 words of my own Nanowrimo-driven WIP, how can I resist the temptation of a major Work Avoidance Strategy by wading in with my own views?

Especially since I have just seen a blog post over on Writer Beware which you absolutely must read, because it hammers so many nails on the head. (And it most beautifully nails the reason why I put "traditional" in quote marks.) Do read it first, before going on to read my own scream.

Now, I'll take several deep breaths and then tell you where I stand on the subject of S-P and vanity publishing.

Vanity first, and briefly. Briefly because frankly I couldn't give a toss about vanity publishing except when it pretends it's not, and then I get really angry at the way it manipulates unwary authors and cares nothing about books. Essentially, with vanity, you lose money and control but you get a pretty (if you're very lucky) book at the end of it. It's pure vanity. No doubt I should force myself to say more, because of the obfuscation sometimes created by companies pretending not to be vanity presses, but to be honest, Jane covers it so well. Buck neatly passed.

Random musing: aren't we all pretty vain to want to be published? No, actually, though of course some authors are vain, like anyone else. "Vanity" is emptiness (think about the derivation), a pointless gazing at oneself, a vacuous and selfish preening. Wanting to write and be published is wanting to connect, to create, to share and to change people's worlds.

OK, what do I think about self-publishing? Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Another coffee and some Green & Blacks. And then ...

(Ooh, first - delaying tactic - I've thought of a phrase to replace "traditional" publisher, since the latter is, as Victoria explains on Writer Beware, misleading. I'll call them "book-led publishers". I know it's not elegant, but it reflects the fact that a real publisher leads on producing the books it believes add to the existing body of books out there. Whether a book-led publisher publishes art books, academic books, lit fic or chick-lit or whatever, it selects them because of something about the books and nothing else. So, book-led is what I'm going to call them.)

No more delaying ...

Some books are appropriate and even ideal for self-publishing and I have nothing but respect for the right authors going about this for the right reasons: niche non-fiction, memoir, and poetry are examples - books where either there really isn't enough market for a publisher to do justice to the book; or where the author has existing marketing/production/editing/design skills or is prepared to outsource these tasks to genuine professionals; or where an author has an existing fanbase, perhaps through a blog or other medium, and the skills and time to publish. Even a children's picture book could work, given exceptionally enormous talent and effort on the part of the author/illustrator and the facility to dedicate every waking moment to selling it.
Self-publishing, print-on-demand (POD) and vanity presses are often guilty of being very unclear about what they do. It is easy to tell whether you are dealing with a book-led publisher: ask yourself how the company makes its money. If it makes its money from readers, by selling books to them, it's a book-led publisher; if it makes its money from the author (even a tiny bit, even a penny/cent) then it's not and if you use it you are not being published: you are paying for publication. Which, as I said, could be perfectly sensible but you should be under no illusion.
Most self-published material, especially fiction, is dire. DIRE. There is no point in searching my vocabulary for a better word. (Yes, I KNOW a lot of published stuff is dire too, but self-published direness takes direness to a whole new level - trust me. I've talked about WHY CRAP IS PUBLISHED and I will again. You know the dire published book you're thinking of? Well, imagine if that had only been edited by the writer's six-year-old child while in bed with flu and with the family cat sitting on the MS? That's halfway to the direness of some self-published stuff. I get given it on my unlucky days, so I know.)
Nearly all self-published books sell in minuscule numbers. How many friends do you have? How many could you persuade to part with cash? Well, that's how many books you will probably sell. Unless you are a seriously brilliant and dedicated salesperson and are prepared not to write any more ever again because you will be selling, selling, selling. You will lose hair, weight (hmm, good idea), self-esteem and years off your life; you will gain wrinkles, bags, and new respect for book-led publishers. You will probably not make any money but if you do, you will be rightly proud of it. But too tired to do it again.
Whenever someone tells you that publishing is "broken", ask yourself who is saying this and why. Is it a published author? Is it an author who has won awards, received good reviews, has a genuine fanbase? Or is it someone who has either failed to get published or who has decided to make money out of other people's failure to do so?
When you hear about a self-published book becoming "successful", (and this does occasionally happen, but much less often than you are led to believe) realise that this success nearly always happens when a book-led publisher takes on the formerly self-published book. So, is that a self-publishing success or proof that publishing is neither dead nor the future?

Nifty tip: I forget who suggested this (I think it was someone commenting on a blog but I don't think it was this one - reveal yourself if it was you!) but I came across a really good reason for using Lulu (or any other similar POD service). When you've finished your MS, get a copy printed on Lulu as your own proof copy: then you get to see your book as a real book, at which point it suddenly becomes so much easier to spot all its horrible errors and general unpublishabilitiness.

In short: please do yourself a favour:
do not even contemplate going down the s-p route unless for the right reasons and with eyes wide open. If you do have the right reasons and eyes wide open, I have enormous respect for you and wish you lots of luck. I certainly do not look down on those few s-p authors who produce an excellent book.

If you do decide that self-publishing (in any form) is your way to go, please follow this advice from a well-meaning, crabbit old bat:

PAY as much as necessary for:

editing - authors should never never never consider editing their own work (apart from the obvious stages of self-editing that we all do before submitting to an editor)
proof-reading
design (unless you are a designer) - you need a fab cover, because we do judge a book by the cover, in the sense that we won't pick it up if it looks like a piece of piss; and you need the words set nicely on the page with decent margins, which s-p books never seem to have because they're scrimping on paper
medical insurance, for when you have a nervous breakdown; not to mention child-care, house-keeping, and one hell of a lot of high-quality chocolate and quite possibly a gin or two ...

So far on this blog, you have all been very genteel and freindly with your comments. But I've noticed that when a blogger dares to criticise self-publishing/vanity he/she tends to receive vitriol in return. So, in advance of any of that I am going to arm myself with chocolate and write the 5000 words that I'm supposed to be producing today, for my completely "traditional" publisher ....

DELUSIONS OF ABILITY

2009-05-01T22:08:00.023+01:00

I've been thinking. It's kind of all you can do when you're up a mountain, other than wondering how the hell you're going to get down when the cloud has suddenly wrapped itself around your feet and you are on a peak without a piton.

OK, I lie: I wasn't thinking anything interesting at all while on this mountain, but I did need to get that picture into the story somehow. Later on, I will show you the mountain from afar and then you will be seriously impressed and want to examine my calf muscles. (All brand new).

Oh, all right, if you insist:

Yeah, really, me!
Up that mountain thar in the distance.

And again, a tad closer. Just because.

Anyway, now that we've got the fascinating concept of me as a mountaineer out of the way, as I say: I was thinking. I was thinking about people being deluded into thinking they can be published when they are seriously shite. Or sometimes not shite but giving a remarkable impression of being shite by doing everything stupid that could possibly be done by one person in one life-time.

You've seen it yourself, on Somewhere's Got Talent / Dragon's Den / the X-Factor - the utter uselessness of some of the contestants, the ones who are not just quite bad or even pretty rubbish or even pretending to be rubbish just to get on TV, but the ones who long ago crossed the line into madness, the ones who really do think they're the next superstar if only someone would give them a chance. The ones who think they've been held back from stardom by bad luck or the poor judgement of Simon Cowell instead of cringe-making hopelessness.

OK, now this concept is easy: that some wannabe writers, similarly, are utter rubbish. And they are - please do believe me. I have seen the evidence. It is writ in the runes which are passed from editor to editor and agent to agent and even humble author to author and go down in the anals (sic) of ludicrosity. The distance by which some aspiring authors are missing success is the sort of distance it takes light years to cover. You could even say that the length of time it would take them to reach stardom is pretty similar to the length of time it would take them to reach an actual star.

Which is all very well and interesting but not at all pointful for you, who are not numbered in the serried ranks of awfulness. If you were, you wouldn't be reading this blog, I think. You'd have been scared off way before now.

What I want you to consider is other forms of delusion. Delusion such as I too once suffered and which, therefore, is not shameful. Except a bit, in retrospect. Well, quite a lot actually: remember, I was the person who once seriously wrote a covering letter in rhyme. And did a few other things that lack of alcohol prevents me from divulging. I possibly even inserted something silly into an envelope to accompany a submission, but I have happily forgotten this.

But more importantly than that embarrassing silliness, I was deluded. I thought I was better than I was. I thought I was ready to be published. I didn't know that the beauteousness of my prose was of zero interest to a reader if it wasn't hung on a compelling story. Or that my voice was inconsistent except in its pretentiousness. Or that a story about my particular subject had not been written yet for a very good reason: that no one wanted to read it.

Now, the missing link to those photos from my recent Highland trip is this: I was like the people who ran the crap hotel that we stayed in. They were deluded into thinking that they were offering something of quality. They thought that in order to put "locally sourced produce" on the menu, it was enough for a van from Wiltshire Farm Foods to arrive at the door in full view of the guests to deliver the "local" food. Local to Wiltshire, I guess. (For the benefit of my transatlantic friends, Wiltshire is almost as far from the Highlands of Scotland as it is possible to be without getting wet.) They thought that "home comforts" might indeed describe a paper bath mat with a picture of feet, but not enough room on the floor to put it. And that when we pointed out that the cereal bowl was encrusted with brown stuff, it was an adequate explanation to say, with a laugh, "Oh! That'll be the toffee sauce!" (Yeah, well wash it, maybe?) They thought that it was OK to provide a bed with no obvious mattress, so that every time you unthinkingly sat on it you staved in another two vertebrae. And that the sodding Wiltshire Farm Foods van could happily recharge its refrigerator battery all night outside a guest bedroom and that the answer to the bleary complaint from the guests could reasonably be, "Oh! That'll be the freezer lorry!"

And if you haven't got the picture yet, these deluded hoteliers really thought that whatever the shortcomings of their crappy hotel, at least the guests would wake each morning and comfort themselves with the happy thought, "Praise be! There's a Corby trouser press!" Because, if you can't have decent food and a mattress and a double bed big enough for two people, you can at least have a perfect crease in your crimplene trousers.

The point being, caller, that there are aspiring authors out there - and I ask you to search your souls and ask yourselves whether you might be among them - who are making the equivalent mistakes: you're trying really hard, but there are editors and agents somewhere who are doing the equivalent of crunching their vertebra as they clunk down on your heavy prose or bite eagerly on your disappointing, salty, recently-thawed and ready-plated meal .... (The clue to the ready-platedness came in the answer to one guest's request to have a salad instead of veg: "But it comes with veg.")

"It comes with veg" is the equivalent of "My friends have read it and loved it".

"That'll be the freezer lorry" is the equivalent of "This is just a first draft and any mistakes can be sorted during editing."

"At least there's a Corby trouser press!" is the equivalent of "At least there are adjectives. Shame about the plot. And characters, Oh, and voice, pace and style."

Thing is - and here's the main point - there's one thing those deluded idiots should do in order to discover what they're doing wrong: they should go and stay in good quality places. Someone who knows about good hotels and taste and decent fresh food should show them the light and let them imbibe the wonderfulness of a good hostelry (whether simple or luxury: it doesn't matter) and let them see for themselves how it's done. Not just in one trip but in several: see how guests feel comfortable and why not crushing your vertebrae is a happy thing.

And the equivalent for aspiring readers is to read good writing, often, lovingly and admiringly. Any aspiring writer in doubt should ask an expert in their genre what to read and then go out there and read, read, read. Read while working out what is good and wonderful and gripping and powerful about this writing, and work out how this can transfer to your own work and what you might be missing.

See, not being a deluded hotelier is easy if you open your eyes and immerse yourself in the world you want to be part of. Same with not being a deluded writer: don't stop reading, reading, reading all the stuff that's being praised in your genre. Be critical but most of all, enjoy good writing: it's the best way to become a good writer.

It's not easy to write a novel, but then it shouldn't be. Would you want it to be easy?

But, once you've scaled the mountain, the view from the top is seriously worth the effort.

Sorry, that was a corny analogy, but I wanted to show you the pic.

And then there was the dog on the beach, which has absolutely no point in this blog post, but is quite cute: