INEXCUSABLE DIMNESS

You don't need to read this. You know it already. You're clever and wised up and you've seriously been paying attention over the last few weeks. However, there may be someone in a distant corner of a distant land who is trying to get published but has been going around with eyes closed, brain in neutral and a deluded grin on his/her face.

If you know such a person, please direct him or her to this post. And now get ready to roll your eyes in tired incredulity.

Answer me something. Suppose there was an agent who worked on his own and didn't have an army of secretarial staff. And suppose the agent, as with so many agents, had put clear submission guidelines on his website. Suppose one of the guidelines was,

"Please do not phone me or send your manuscript electronically unless you are already my client."

And supposing this then happened:

The agent's phone rings. It is an unknown voice. The agent knows from the sound of the anxious breathing and the distinctive sound of toffees being unwrapped that this is an aspiring writer looking for an agent. (New readers of this blog may need to refer here for elucidation of that point.)

Writer: Hello, I wonder if I could have your email address so I can send you my manuscript.
Agent: Have you read my submission guidelines? They're on my ....
Writer: Yes, I know, but it just seemed like a waste of paper and stamps when I could so easily email it to you.

NOTHING is a waste of paper or stamps or time or money or effort or blood or tears or sweat or coffee or chocolate or wine or years off your life to achieve your aim of publication. Nothing, do you hear?

Just.
Follow.
The.
Guidelines.

Otherwise, either (major crabbit old bat alert ...):

1. Since you can't read, I'll bet you can't write, OR
   
2. You are letting your great writing down by not reading and following the guidelines which are given to you free, repeatedly, and simply

Unusually succinct post by yours truly, don't you think? And nary a hint of all those silly colours I used to shower you with in the early days when I was carefree and irresponsible.

Tomorrow I will bring you a little bit of word play and a teensy competition (I knew that would get you going) to indulge you while I disappear for a few days. Four days out of blog-shot. How will I cope without you?

WHY WASN'T I PUBLISHED FOR SO LONG?

What, you mean apart from the fact I wasn't good enough?

Well, time I explained this, I suppose, after several weeks of appearing to know it all. Because the truth is that once I knew a lot less than I do now. Obvious, really.

First, for those of you who have missed the tragic enormity of this failure, it took me twenty-one years of failing to get a novel published. At the time, that was more than half my life, and certainly all of my adult life. Yes, ALL my adult life failing to achieve the one thing I really wanted: to be a novelist. That's some bruising failure. And bruised I was. Badly. It affected my health and happiness and my sense of self. Luckily (for them) few people knew about my constant attempts at fame and fortune. Unluckily (for him) my husband did. He's still here. Still waiting for me to earn a lot of money, I guess. I'm trying.

OK, I did get some "stuff" published during that time, but it wasn't enough. Home learning books (which have done very nicely financially and which allowed me to say I was a published writer) and stacks of magazine articles. Oh, and talking of doing nicely financially: I regularly get money from a magazine I wrote for ten years ago which keeps using my articles and pays me every time, with me sitting at home doing sod all - would you believe that today I actually sold "36th rights" for three articles?? This means they have used them 36, yes 36 times. God, who needs to be a novelist when you get paid 36 times for something you can't even remember writing?

And there was the odd moment of relative success (relative to abject failure), like appearing in Reader's Digest with my photo and actually being recognised on a bus, and a story winning an expensive pen in the Ian St James awards, and a couple of times almost making it through an aquisitions meeting. But almost is not really good enough, is it?

Anyway, reasons for my abject failure:

1. I thought I was better than I was. I just didn't know what mistakes I was making. This was in pre-blog days, when people like me (as in me now, not me then - me then would have been pretty useless) weren't sharing and there were few relevant books and nice helpful things telling me what a load of shocking errors I was making.
2. I wasn't thinking of my readers. Couldn't give a toss about them frankly - yep, it was all for me. Moi, moi, moi. Self-indulgent beauteous prose, right up my own backside, just gorgeous (but over-written) plotless stuff that gave me shivers of gratuitous pride, and gave any potential reader a severe case of "where the hell's the plot gone or going and I mean why should we CARE about your drivellingly unlikely character who murdered her husband just because of some arcane psychological problem to do with Samuel Johnson which we are supposed to guess through the boring fog of your however-erudite turgidity?
3. I hadn't written the right book. As in a book with a concept which would grab the agent / publisher with its stupendous hook, draw them into a tightly-written and either original or genre-specific plot, written by an author exuding wisdom and knowledge of the market. (Actually, I thought woman who murders husband because he's fat was quite good hook-wise, but hey, that was then.) See here for my post on this topic. (Not murders of fat husbands: I mean writing the right book.)
   
4. I wasn't even following the rules of submissions to publishers, despite the fact that I roll my eyes at you lot for sending toffees to agents and being similarly foolish. In fact, once I even .... but no, I can't tell you that. It's too embarrassing. (For rules for submission, see the Writers and Artists Yearbook, publishers' websites and relevant labels on this blog. There is no excuse for not following these rules - there wasn't then, and there isn't now. Well, unless you actually want to beat my 21-year record.)
   

And so followed the rejection letters. Because yes, I've had a few. There were the occasional ones that said lovely things but which gave suggestions contradicting previous ones (like "we feel it's too short" after "we feel it's too long" and "the plot is somewhat avant garde" after "the plot is somewhat traditional"); there were the "not right for our list" ones (unhelpful but true); there was my favourite (though not at the time) which consisted of my rubbish covering letter with the word NO! scrawled across it in pencil and returned to me in an envelope without a stamp even though I HAD included return postage; and there was the one which arrived back the day after I'd posted it, something which defies the laws of both postage and Newtonian motion and I can only assume that the postman was an Orion employee sent to destroy the slush pile before it occurred.

So, if you are now in the position I was in then - one of soul-searing awfulness, when you feel that life will be utterly meaningless if you don't get that contract, when your whole belief in yourself is shaken daily - I feel your pain, I really do.

That not being good enough thing? In a way it's true, I wasn't good enough. And maybe ... sorry ... you aren't either. But maybe, by listening and learning and improving, you can become good enough. But remember too that it's not just about being good enough - it's about writing the right book at the right time and sending it to the right publisher at the right time. I know, I've said it before. I could even become boring. (If you're new to this blog or need a reminder, use the label "right book" on the list of labels to the right.)

The trick, and the one which this blog tries to help with, is to work out whether:

1. you are good enough but haven't written the right book yet
2. you are good enough and have written possibly the right book really beautifully but haven't sent it to the right person in the right way
3. you aren't good enough but could become so, with time, practice and/or help
   
4. you aren't good enough and won't ever be published satisfactorily
   

Thought for the day: actually, a lot of published writers aren't good enough either. Some of you may well be better than some of them. It all boils down to what a publisher thinks will sell. And I've already done a post on Why is crap published? But you're not writing crap, are you? Please say you're not. Though I have to be brutally honest and say that if you ask any agent or editor they will tell you that the vast bulk of the slush pile is absolute utter crap, of a meaningfully finger-in-the-throat boggingness.

After that bit of brutality and after all these weeks of listening to me seem to know it all, you deserve to know that embarrassing thing I did. I think I can trust you now. Please don't laugh.

Here goes. Deep breath. Will you still respect me? I was young then. Young and really stupid.

The thing is ...

I
once
wrote
a
covering
letter
in
rhyme
...

People! Don't do it!

IN DEFENCE OF AUTHORS, AND ABOUT TIME TOO

First an apology: this is not the Thursday light relief that I promised. That story of extraordinary and hilarious incompetence is coming, I promise (something for the weekend?) but I have a need to offload something that is seriously bugging me first.

Warning: crabbit old bat in major full swing. But with a difference. Today, I’ve had enough of criticising my fellow authors, unpublished and published - because we’re all in it together, dahlings - for things like “Inexcusable Ignorance” and general tawdry and unprofessional behaviour. I think I even perhaps once mentioned drunkenness and unpleasantness and possibly arrogance. How could I? Anyway, I’m going to turn the tables. Yes, I am. Now it’s the turn of you nasty mean editors and other forms of publisher, and even booksellers. Because you just don’t understand us, you really don’t.

I feel that in the very few weeks that this blog has been in existence, I have had many approving noises from (wonderful) publishers and (gorgeous) booksellers and I’ve accepted them all like the pathetic, insecure gallery-playing author that I am. And I would not be surprised if you fabulous, long-suffering, aspiring authors were not sitting there weeping quietly and bravely at the crap I’ve been dealing out to you, allowing yourselves to be flagellated by the likes of me. (Please don’t get too excited by that concept - it’s really not nice and, anyway, I mean it only metaphorically.)

So now I say, ENOUGH! Let’s hear it for authors, and let me send a message to those powerful, cruel publishers and booksellers who hold us in their thrall. (Just what is a thrall anyway? I don’t know, but it sounds like a very nasty thing in which to be held.)

I should start by saying that of course I know, and have said before, that very occasionally an author lets the side down by behaving as though he (or even, more occasionally, she) has a brain the size of mouse genitalia, an ego in inverse proportion to said genitalia and an alcohol habit to match the inverse proportion. Occasionally, it must also be said, authors are exceptionally rude and crass and many other unacceptable things. But APART from those few, we are simply misunderstood. And the sooner that editors and agents and booksellers understood this, the better for world peace and various other useful things.

So, let me, on behalf of my suffering writerly colleagues (to whom I apologise for all previous cruelty and mockery - though I don’t take it back, because it was entirely justified most of the time) enlighten those professionals who take such pleasure in berating us for our failure to understand the errors of our ways.

1. It’s a real bugger being an author, sometimes. Honestly, it’s over-rated as a holiday destination.
   
2. We suffer constant insecurity. (Most of us. And we hate the others, so that’s OK.) Well, how wouldn’t we be insecure, when people regularly tell us we’re rubbbish, even once we’re published? And if anyone says nice things, they’re most likely to be a) our publicity people b) our parents or c) deluded (which includes our parents).
3. Would you like it if your work was reviewed negatively and those negative comments were put on the internet for like EVER? Would you like it if your audience went on message-boards and said a load of rubbish about your oeuvre? The fact that this ignorant rubbish is often written by people who should be asleep instead of messaging crapness at 3 in the morning, and that they can’t spell, doesn’t make it hurt less. Actually, it makes it hurt more to think that such a stupid person would care enough to have gone online to over-share - I mean if the book was just mediocrely awful, wouldn’t they just have ignored it and watched re-runs of the X-Factor?
4. Some unpublished authors absolutely and utterly deserve to be published and have a glittering career in front of them - perhaps far in front of them but distance is like size: not everything. No one should assume that because an author has failed to be published (yet), they are rubbish. Lynn Price of the phenomenal BehlerBlog was kind enough to be fabulously, well, kind, about my writing - which is a) wonderful of her and for me but b) confusing because in that case how come I was unpublished for so almost-soul-destroyingly long? The point being? The point being that for very many painful years I had regularly and horribly assumed that I wasn’t good enough and for that long I was the person that published writers (including me, until now) and editors and booksellers often knock: the wannabe no-hoper, the deluded idiot who really should just keep on with the day job because everything else - the dream - is nothing more than a dream.
5. We work for years and years and years (and in my case years) before we earn anything at all from our writing, because we love it are and drawn to it and driven to it and yet some (most) of us will never earn anything approaching a decent salary for it. No violins, please. And OK so some of us don’t deserve to earn anything from it, but we lay our heads and hearts (and actually sometimes lives, though I can’t claim such bravery myself) on the line in our belief that what we produce is art and matters. And what do we get for that? What we get is 96% of the world never having heard of us, 3.9% of the world messaging at 3 in the morning to say what rubbish we are and the remaining 0.1% being either related to us in some way, or pathetically undecided.
6. We cringe in abject mortification (and some) when we go into a bookshop and our books aren’t there and 99% of the time we slink out (after buying something we didn’t want, just to make us feel there was a point in being in the shop in the first place) and the other 1% of the time we pluck up courage to ask the busy and godlike bookseller if by any chance they might consider - pretty, pretty please - stocking our book because it’s quite a good book and it’s had some lovely reviews which unfortunately you, o glorious bookseller, don’t seem to have seen but if you were to consider stocking my humble little book I promise I will come in and give up my time - free, because of course my time is free since no one’s sodding well going to pay me for it - and do an event for you to bring five people into your shop because I’m such a loser (cue more cringing embarrassment and mortification), four of whom are related to me and the other one of whom came in looking for a birthday present for his mother but got forced or confused into listening when you locked the door. Trust me, it’s AWFUL doing the “how to help bookshops sell your book” thing, unless you have a monstrous ego, which I just don’t, so I apologise in utter shrivening abjectness to every bookseller whom I have failed to help sell my books. And they are many. Oh, how often I have slunk away, worm-like, and how often you have never seen me. I have never put my books face out (yeah, I know, I’m really rubbish as an author - please don’t tell my publisher /agent /editor /daughters / dog and everyone else who relies on me to earn some money for them) or done anything remotely annoying or in-your-face - and more’s the pity, according to my publishers and my royalty statement. I am sorry, so sorry, and please forgive me and please stock my next book because it will be much much better than anything I’ve ever done and has a gorgeous cover, which you always say is the MAIN thing.
7. It’s a real bugger being an author sometimes. Frankly, it sucks. But you know what? We love it. So forget your violins and take back your sympathy because I’m changing nothing. Sorry, but I just can’t do enough to help you sell my books because I’m too shy and pathetic and actually, you know, I am supposed to be WRITING. And you are the bookseller and that’s why you do it so brilliantly and kind of that’s why I would like to think I’m the writer in this deal and you’re the bookseller / editor / publicity person / EXPERT. And yes I KNOW I am supposed to help but please just let me go home and write. Where the hell is that garret I dreamt of for so long, and that delicious loneliness??

So anyway, calming down slightly (but not much) in the spirit of almost Valentine’s Day (omigod, better go out and buy something for him - maybe a BOOK, and if so then certainly and absolutely from Vanessa’s fabulous bookshop) let’s show a bit of a loving understanding for all those misunderstood authors out there. Yes, sometimes we're rubbish but we are trying not to be. We're doing our best to overcome our paltriness.

Yep, it’s a real bugger being an author sometimes. Which, to be honest, is why we eat chocolate. It gives us courage to brave all you scary, scary professionals. Chocolate is the only known antidote to insecurity. That and shoes.

TOFFEE IS NOT A WAY TO GET PUBLISHED

The setting: a house in the heart of England.

The year: this one. This week, in fact.

The weather: snow and general unpleasantness.

The protagonist: a well-known literary agent with tooth-ache; she has spent a day last week at the dentist having a filling replaced - or actually not having it replaced because the dentist, after three injections, had told her, "I can see this is hurting you - let's leave till next week." His leaving it till next week has not helped the agent one bit.

The dramatic tension: the agent is awaiting the arrival of the day's post with unbridled anticipation. After all, the next Dan Brown / JK Rowling / Ian Rankin could be in it. They rarely are, but, like all agents, she lives very much in hope.

Lights, camera, action. The post arrives. The agent snatches it up almost before it hits the mat, and rips open the promising brown envelope. She ignores the picture of a grinning pink fairy at the corner - this could simply be a re-used envelope and she approves of recycling. She does quite a lot of it herself.

Out falls a manuscript. There is no return SAE. This is a bad sign. Her inbuilt "unprofessional author" alert is beginning to beep. Though worse things have happened: there was the time when ... But wait - there is something else in the brown envelope. She shakes it onto the floor, not sure whether to be wary or intrigued.

Two Werther's Originals fall to the carpet. (Point of information for anyone lucky enough to have been born after 1979 or so: these are toffees, very old-fashioned, and the source of arcane amusement in post-toffee Britain, especially in educated circles. I once stayed in a hotel where a Werther's Original was placed seductively on my pillow each night, to which the only sensible reaction was, "What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Get out of bed and clean my teeth afterwards, or stand here freezing in my bare feet while I eat it first?" A very recent visit to Wikipedia elicited some fascinating and detailed information about the different varieties of Werther's Originals which apparently exist but suffice it to say that I entirely agree that these sweets recall "a halcyon age of innocence, nuclear families and good old-fashioned sweets." None of this, however, is likely to help either author or agent.)

The question: does the agent think to herself, "Well, that was a kind thought. After all, the generous and attempting-but-failing-to-be-innovative author was not to know that a) I have severe toothache and b) I HATE Werther's Originals. So, I will now settle in my armchair by the wood-burning stove, with a peppermint tea and warmed oil of cloves, and forget the pain by immersing myself in what may well be a stunning debut of obvious shining literary and commercial merit by a new author with the whole reading world at his finger-tips."?

The answer: No.

The denouement: The agent places the manuscript unread in the pile of fuel for her wood-burning stove. (I told you she was into recycling.) After all, it's the snowiest day the UK has apparently had for eighteen years, we're in the middle of a British winter that is giving two fingers to global-warming and she's not one to waste a genuinely useful bit of fuel.

The message: don't do it, people. Don't even be tempted. That kind of wacky innovative approach went out around the same time as Werther's Originals on the first occasion, and whereas Werther's Originals (sugar-free version in biodegradable wrappers) have come back, this hasn't.

The really sad thing: that could have been a great submission consisting of perfect covering letter / succinct and compelling synopsis / glitteringly lucid sample. It probably wasn't, if the author had to disguise it with Werther's Originals, but in theory it might have been. You may think the agent should have read it if she'd really cared. But why, if the author didn't care enough to be professional? The agent has many, many submissions which the author thought good enough not to need to be supported by toffee. You can be witty, dynamic, different, extraordinary, unique, fabulous, but you can't send toffee in the post and expect to be taken seriously. Or taken at all.

The quite amazing thing: even chocolate would not have helped. Ask your dentist.

WHY HAS A PUBLISHER NOT SAID YES (YET)?

You will find the answer in one or more of the following:

1. You have not written the right book.
2. You have not sent the right book to the right publisher.
3. You have not sent the right book to the right publisher in the right way.
4. You have not sent the right book to the right publisher in the right way at the right time.

So far, so glib. But so true. The whole essence of being published is contained in those four lines. Most of it involves talent; some of it involves learnable skills or information; and some of it (but less than you might think) is luck. The less talent you have, the more luck you need. Some people have the most enormous amount of luck (and no talent) - I prefer people with talent and determination.

What is the right book? The right book is any book which the editor can convince the marketing department that they can convince the sales department that they can convince book-sellers that they can convince readers to buy. The right book is a great book or a popular book or a fresh-voiced book or a book on a topic so sensationally interesting that lots of people (or enough people) would want to buy it. Not in the opinion of you or your grandchildren or your best friend's friend, but in the expert (though not infallible) opinion of the professionals in the publishing industry. What you think doesn't matter - it's what you can make them think that does.

What is the right publisher? The one that publishes or wants to publish the sort of books you've written. Supposing you go to a bookshop to research which publishers publish books like your fantasy series about dinofairies, and supposing you find that Edgar Allen Pickles & Co never have, do NOT think to yourself, "Ah, they don't, so maybe they should - I know, I'll send them mine and they'll LOVE it." No they won't, because if they wanted to publish fantasy they would. So, research which publishers like your genre. This applies equally whatever type of book / reader is yours.

What is the right time? Ah, that's when luck comes in a little bit, though do try to avoid bandwagons when they've already passed in a flurry of dust. (And remember that your book if taken today is probably up to two years from hitting the shelves). You can be unlucky and send something to a publisher which has just filled its list, taken something similar to yours, decided never to touch dinofairies EVER again. Or you can be lucky and send just what they're looking for.

What is the right way? That's easy. That's the bit (see the piece on Inexcusable Ignorance) about reading all the stacks of advice on the topic, in places like the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook and publishers' / agents' websites. Rules may be made for breaking but don't break their rules, except one: when they say they're not taking new submissions or unagented work, ignore them - if yours is great, they want it. I'm adding an article on submitting work soon, which will add to your knowledge. But get genned up first.

Many unpublished authors think that their work is brilliant and that the agents/publisher who have rejected them are stupid and ignorant. No, they're not. They can be wrong but even if they don't want your book, for good commercial reasons, they'll spot your talent if you've got it and they'll make suitable nice noises. If you haven't been accepted yet, you simply haven't written the right book (etc etc) or shown your talent, or perhaps found your voice, and you have to face that and decide what you're going to do about it. You have to deal with it, not by moaning about ignorant publishers but by ruthlessly and analytically working out what you are doing wrong. And putting it right. And if it can't be put right, you won't be published.

I strongly suggest you read the article on COMMON MISTAKES BY UNPUBLISHED AUTHORS.