DELUSIONS OF ABILITY

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:

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!

DEFINE A TEENAGE NOVEL

OK, so two posts in a row about teenage fiction is hardly balanced, but then I never made any claim to be balanced and any time I'm asked to walk along a white line I find myself becoming suspiciously unbalanced. Besides, your comments and interest in the subject were really all the excuse I needed, if I needed any excuse to talk about one of my pet subjects, which I don't.

Do we need to define a teenage novel in order to write one?
Some teenage authors whom I respect claim not to be able or wish to define or even particularly think about what a teenage novel is when they write one. Others are with me, enjoying trying to pin it down without restricting it, and trying to reach a level of understanding that helps us identify with our readers as perfectly as possible. The former authors prove that you don't have to. But I think those authors are very few and far between and happen to write books which happen to be teenage in tone simply because those happen to be the books they want to write.

For the rest of us who dare to tread the tight-rope between writing a great story from the heart and writing a great story that will hit specific readers in the heart, and for those of us who want to understand our market, we need some analysis and some knowledge.

PLEASE NOTE: a teenager, like any other reader, is perfectly entitled to read and enjoy ANY book. When I talk about "teenage novels" I don't mean "novels that teenagers often enjoy". I mean "novels aimed specifically at teenagers" (but which other readers may indeed enjoy).

It would help if you first read my last post - COMMON MISTAKES WHEN WRITING FOR TEENAGERS. In fact, without it you won't understand what I'm about to say, especially about safety-nets. Yes, safety-nets - essential tools for writing for young people.

A perfect illustration
If you are prepared to borrow or buy three books, I can show you with absolute clarity what makes a teenage book a teenage book. A quick read of the first few chapters of these three books will illustrate all I am about to say. Without reading the books, however, you'll still get a pretty good gist of what I mean from what follows. All three start with a young person being bullied or set upon at or near school, which is one reason they make a great comparison:

Bad Girls by Jacqueline Wilson
Malarkey by Keith Gray
The Illumination of Merton Browne by JM Shaw

Bad Girls is not a teenage book - for a start, the protagonist is too young. The language is simplifed, with short sentences and gentle vocabulary, and there is a great deal of protection by adults. You can see the mesh of the safety-net. It's not particularly relevant to our topic except that it's when you then read Malarkey that you see the great leap that the reader must take, both in terms of topic and safety-net distance, to go from one book to the next. Bearing in mind that the reader of Bad Girls may well be 10 or 11 but that an 11/12 year old could easily be reading and enjoying Malarkey, and you see the leap the reader has made in a very short theoretical time. The main character in Malarkey is 16ish, which, according to the "rules" of writing for young people means that our intended readership is up to 14/15.

But then consider The Illumination of Merton Browne. There is a level of violence (extreme domestic abuse) which goes beyond what we'd be able or probably want to offer teenagers. There's a total absence of safety net. There is a great deal of swearing. The age of the character is interesting too - at the time of writing he has left school and is thinking back to his childhood, relating events which happened mostly around his eleventh birthday, and much of the initial action takes place as he arrives at secondary school, aged eleven. A teenage book would not normally be this retrospective: it would normally take place during the relevant teenage years of the reader (although earlier episodes might well be related) and in fact cover a very small part of those years. So, by having the main character an adult looking back to being mostly eleven, we already skew it for the teenage reader and make it not a teenage book.

However, it's a book which many older teenagers might like - if they could get their hands on it, which they won't in a school library in the UK or US or Australia or anywhere else I can think of. unless the librarian really wants to lose his/her job.

Why have teenage books anyway?
Ooh, I could write a whole post on this, and have already written about it in the Scotsman, but I see they have put it very annoyingly onto their "premium pages" and I'm sure you don't want to pay for it. Anyway, maybe another day. Consider simply that some people still argue that teenage books are unnecessary because readers should do what "we always did", ie go straight from kids' books to adult books. Thing is, (amongst other things), adult books have changed in the last 20-30 years and you simply cannot go from Bad Girls to Merton Browne. Or at least not without experiencing severe trauma on the way.

What you said
Some of you posted comments about eg whether Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books were teenage or not. DanielB and anonymous / tbrosz were talking about whether something was "quite right" / felt properly teenage in those and other stories which we might have thought were teenage. I haven't read those Pratchett books but I have always thought of him as one of those writers who isn't a teenage writer but who writes books that many teenagers love. I'm guessing that it's the "adult perspective" of the story that you are referring to and have noticed. Yes, in my view this would be something which would make them "not deliberately teenage books". And it's once you've identifued the "teenageness" or otherwise that (I think) you can fully understand what teenage really is. And you clearly have!

Another one to think about is perhaps Doctor Who - much loved by teenagers for generations but (you'd agree??) not exactly "teenage"? Like Pratchett? And Children of the Stones?

Which I guess brings me to my attempt at a definition, granted that all definitions break down when you start to pick at their edges, and that there will be exceptions, and that books are just books forchristsake and why should they have to be pigeon-holed ...

The "definition"
I see a teenage novel as a story with a teenage character(s) at the centre, written from a teenage viewpoint, which explores a situation which teenage readers often fear, aspire to, dream about or experience, and which provides an emotional connection to themselves as teenagers now. It has no visible boundaries or safety-nets and may be frightening, cutting-edge, brutally honest, shocking or sad, (but doesn't have to be) but in fact there are boundaries of acceptability and hope:

"it takes them to the edge but will not throw them over."
That's my definition anyway.

Of course, I can't shut up when I should so I feel obliged to give a few extra "rules", some of which I touched on in the previous article but which bear repeating:

• the teenage characters find their own solutions because the story is about them and not the adult secondary characters. Get the adults out of the way. Kill them if necessary (preferably before the book starts, or at least before we get to care)
  
• though some teenage novels are deep and some are shallow (as with adult books), the language does not patronise by trying to be simple
• although the voice is teenage, this does not mean you have to sound like a teenager - see my post on voice. The voice has to be appropriate, a voice they'd like to listen to. ie not a teacher, parent, middle-aged person, sad git, kid
• the protagonist is usually a bit older than the intended readership (this applies to writing for younger children too)
  
• no message, remember - or at least not an in your face one. You're a writer not a teacher.
  
• the pace is likely to be faster and tighter than in adult writing
• a teenager (see my book Blame My Brain for a defence and explanation of the details of this, and for an entertaining read, and to save your sanity if you happen to share your living quarters with a teenage specimen) may be 11 years old, but by the age of 15/16 is off your readership radar
  
• the writer must be aware that the level of literary criticism of plot, structure, language, themes to which the book will be subjected by the young reader will be intense - if you think you're writing for kids and that kids don't know how to tell you what's wrong with your book, you're in for a big shock!

So, Amy-Jane, I don't know if this answers your questions, and the others who contacted me off-blog! In my opinion, yes, you do need to know whether your book is for teenagers or not, but you could be lucky and have pitched it perfectly anyway ...

Daniel and Jane - re the 70s series the Children of the Stones, it's worth remembering too that teenage fiction really had only just got going at this time, all in the US - with SE Hinton's The Outsiders and Paul Zindell's The Pigman (God, that's brilliant and devastating in a simple way that only teenage writing can be) both in the late 60s, and then the fabulously dark Robert Cormier - OMG I am The Cheese* - from the 70s. He, incidentally, was edited by my main editor. (Main? See, I'm so rubbish I need more than one ...). Anyway, I guess the rules and possibilities of teenage / YA fiction were so new by that time that adults still very much ruled the roost. Whereas now, we know who's in charge, don't we?

*title of book, not an existential statement

One other point - teenage or YA? YA is more a US term, though we often use it in the UK too. To be honest, no difference is usually implied between the two terms, though sometimes YA refers to a slightly older teenager, but I think this distinction makes it too complicated and unnecessarily pigeon-holey. Outside the book world, young adult refers to 18-25s (eg in medical terminology) so it can be confusing for people outside when we talk about YA.

In the last post I said you had to be able to reel off at least ten favourite teenage authors or books and some of you enthusiastically came up with your own lists (full marks to you). Well, of course, I have a few more because you can't keep a keen reader down:

• John Marsden's Letters from the Inside
• Alice Kuipers' Life on the Refrigerator Door (though you'll need a lot of chocolate to get your life back on track after either of those)
• Adele Geras' Ithaka - nothing to do with the fact that she reads this blog; I'd just forgotten how much I'd liked it and it's very different from the dark cold ones on my previous list. Adele writes books for many different ages but Troy and Ithaka, which fit my criteria for teenage novels, are my favourite.
  

And now I'd probably better stop talking about teenage books before the rest of you disappear. Next, we'll have How To Be a Lovely Publishable Author. Or something. And relatively soon I'll be able to tell you what topics and dates I'm doing talks on in the Edinburgh Book Festival. You never know, I might just be doing one on teenage writing, so then I'll be able to rabbit on for a whole hour. And there'll certainly be one on How To Make a Publisher Say Yes ... Just think, you could actually come and see my boots in real life.

Have a lovely weekend. I had a near death (not exaggerating) incident on the motorway yesterday and made my first ever 999 call, from a stationary and exceptionally vulnerable position in the middle of an intersection between the UK's two biggest motorways (yes, I know, nothing compared with US motorways but they are Big To Us), having been hit by a lorry which didn't stop to see that it had knocked us off the road. So I am planning to count my blessings for being alive. I think wine and chocolate may well be necessary in extra quantities to get me back to a normal mental place.

By the way, if you ever see a car stopped in an incredibly stupid place, risking being smashed to pieces by speeding cars from six lanes of two motorways, I would ask you to consider that it might not be there on purpose. Some of the drivers that passed us clearly had not worked this out, judging from the way they hooted their horns at us and shook their fists.

Pah! Give me teenagers any day.

COMMON MISTAKES WHEN WRITING FOR TEENAGERS

Quality teenage fiction is my passion - it's what I largely choose to read and what I try to write. If you haven't read any of the best teenage fiction of the last ten years or so, you haven't experienced some of the most cutting edge, dynamic, and well-crafted stories around. Oh, and by the way, if you haven't read and admired any modern teenage fiction, please don't try writing any of it.

Because that's the first mistake: not reading it, a lot, and greedily. You should be able to reel off your ten favourite teenage authors. Which I will now do: David Almond, Laurie Anderson, Julie Bertagna, Ian Bone, Tim Bowler, Kevin Brooks, Robert Cormier, Sarah Dessen, Catherine Forde, Keith Gray, Julie Hearn, Ali Kennen, Rachel Klein ... Yes, sorry, that's twelve but you don't expect me to STOP, do you? And I'd not even got halfway through the alphabet. And the list might be different tomorrow, but the point is that I read teenage fiction, I respect it and I know how it works. All of which need to be the case if you're going to write it, as with any other genre.

Teenage fiction is as broad as adult fiction - there's every style and genre within it, and a book for every reader, whether that reader wants something light or deep. Oh yes, there's badly written teenage fiction too - adults don't get all the dross. But of course, if you want to write teenage fiction, you want to write the good stuff, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this blog, which is for serious writers wanting to get seriously published.

Anyway, you want to know the common mistakes. Or at least, I want to tell you, and it's my blog so I'll tell you if I want to.

Define teenager. Yes, certainly: a teenager in reading terms is not a 13-19 year-old. Your market starts at 11 and finishes not much past 15, though lots of older than 15 year-olds continue to read and love this stuff. I, after all, am a tad more than 15. But by 16, your teenager has either largely stopped reading (perhaps temporarily, until school and exams and peer pressure and all sorts of other pressures have died down a bit) or else has moved onto non-teenage books.


So, remember, your teenager may be 11 or 12, and this is perfectly valid, because in fact their brains have started to become teenage by then. I regret to say that at this point I need to draw your attention to my book on the teenage brain, as I do honestly believe that understanding teenagers is the second thing you need to do (after reading their novels). So, here it is, without even any shame:


So, having pried into their brains and raided their bookshelves, how do you avoid the mistakes which (trust me) most writers make when they think they can write a teenage novel?

DON'TS:

1. Dont think you can teach them anything. Teenagers have an inbuilt early message warning system. You even suggest that your book hopes to teach them not to drink, smoke, take drugs, have sex, be mean to their parents, be loud on buses or hang about on street corners, and you ain't got a reader. Just tell the story; forget the message. They're most definitely not stupid (though, like adults, they may do stupid things) and they will take their own message from it. If they want to.
   
2. Don't get down with the kids. If you overdo the teenage language, a) you'll just look like a sad git and b) by the time your book comes out it will be out of date. I mean like totally out of date. On the other hand, of course you can't sound like a BBC TV presenter from the 1940s or someone who would rather be writing a grammar book. Just tell the story and create an authentic voice that is not you the middle-aged (sad git) author, but just a normal voice that they can be happy to listen to and that won't get in the way.
   
3. Don't start with an "issue". OK, so maybe your book is going to be about death, or drugs, or bullying, but forget that it is: it's a story, with real characters and emotions. The story is king.
4. Don't talk down to them or simplify the language. Although your prose should be pure and crystalline, it can be as deep and symbolic as you like, as long as the story is ... yep, you got it: king. Lots of teenage readers, like lots of adult readers, want beautiful and clever use of language. What most readers don't want is an author who is unpleasantly far up his/her own posterior, and teenage readers are less forgiving than adults - so don't over-write (except the gory bits, which you are welcome to over-write). They want you to get to the point, which brings me to the next one ...
   
5. ... don't hang about. Most adult readers don't really want an author to waffle on interminably or become inebriated by the beauteousness of his/her prose style. Well, teenagers certainly don't. You go off on one for even two sentences too long and they're away, off to do something way more interesting, like watching Lord of the Rings for the 99th time (which my daughter has apparently actually done, but she is studying film. Nice excuse, Rebecca.) No seriously, my personal rule is that I treat each sentence as though my teenage reader really wants to go and do something else, and my task is to prevent him/her.
6. Don't allow an adult to sort any problem out. Adults in teenage novels should be rarely seen, even more rarely heard, and never listened to. They need to be absent, feckless or otherwise useless. They can occasionally offer advice but this advice should be either ignored or wrong. Dead parents are very useful but if your character's parents are not dead, please remove them by some other means. Parents may return at the end to say well done and be proud but that's all they're good for, though parental stupidity can be a very useful plot device earlier on.
7. Don't forget the gate-keepers. The gate-keepers are the adults who have a major part to play in whether your teenage book gets a) published and b) read. So, the fact that your friend's teenage son down the road wants you to write a book in which a mass murderer comes to town and chops random adults' heads off and cooks them on a barbeque before destroying all the nearby schools in a fire is not a reason for writing such a book. It won't get published. It's a fact that most books for teenagers are bought by adults who want their teenagers (pupils or offspring) to read them. So, you have to tread a razor-thin line between what the teenager wants to read and what the adult thinks the teenager should want to read. Shock value can also work well though, because if you get a "parental warning" sticker on your book, this has the rather wonderful effect of making parents say no and then teenagers actually going to find it.
   

Two other things to remember:

Safety nets - in modern books for small children, the child usually knows (or learns to know) that nothing too bad will happen: they don't need a safety net because there's no real danger. In books for older children, the safety net becomes progressively further away: the child worries that something bad might happen but trusts that it will be all right in the end, even if something bad does happen first. In a teenage novel the trick is for the author to make it seem as though there is NO safety net: the worst possible thing could happen. However, secretly, there is a saety net: you will not allow the very worst thing (loss of hope) to happen because you care for your reader. It is my personal belief that you must care about your reader if you write for young people.

Strawberries and spinach - stay with me. Strawberries and spinach are both very good for you. In fact, pretty much the main reason most people eat spinach is because they know it's good for them. Actually, I love spinach but don't mind me - and besides, even when I'm eating spinach a part of me is thinking how incredibly good it is for me. Strawberries are, arguably, equally good for us. I read recently that scientists discovered a chemical in the seeds of strawberries which makes them spectacularly beneficial. But when we eat strawberries we do so for one reason: pleasure. We don't sit there thinking, "Omigod, I haven't had my strawberry quota for the week, now my hair's going to fall out and I'm going to get some disease and it will be all my fault."

My point is that books are like strawberries: we consume them for pleasure, even though they also happen to be good for us. When adults choose to read one book as opposed to another we usually do so because we think we'll enjoy it more, not because we think it will be better for us. (OK, there are times when we have to read a book for another reason, but I'm talking about when we choose a book.) And when I talk to parents or teachers about getting kids reading, I always make this point really strongly: that we must not use the "books are good for you" line, but the "books are for pleasure" line.

It's essential for the writer of teenage books to remember this. So, quit with the teaching and the messages and the wishing that teenagers wouldn't drink and smoke and be scary on buses. Just tell them a wonderful gripping story, of whatever sort you want, in the most beautiful and apt language you can find, with the most interesting and real characters you can dream up.

That's pretty much it. Doesn't sound much different from adult writing, does it? Nope, and it's not. It's usually faster, and often tighter, and frequently incredibly interesting. But most of all it's just great stories, well told, to an audience who give the most fabulously perceptive feedback.

Sometimes, of course, their feedback is less than perceptive ... I recently had a comment from a boy who said that my novel Fleshmarket "started off a bit boring". This is a book which opens with a woman having a breast tumour removed without anaesthetic, in front of an audience and by the end of the chapter she's dead of blood poisoning. Honestly, there's no pleasing some people.

BIG MISTAKE 1: A SLIP OF THE VOICE

I hope you are sitting comfortably, and that you have your most studious faces on because today we are going to get serious. Here begins a series of pieces about the most common things that stop a potentially publishable book being as good as it needs to be. Or as good as you think it is.

Let's assume you can organise words in a better order than a drunken monkey given unwise access to a keyboard, and that your book actually does sound pretty damned fine when you describe it pithily, using a well-crafted hook. Perhaps you've got to the stage of sending off your submission and you've swottily followed all my rules about approaching agents/publishers - including not putting toffee (or even chocolate, even Green and Blacks, in answer to the plaintive but valid question by "Emerging Writer") in the envelope. So, we're saying you really have been a perfect student, that you have even stretched yourself to being polite, charming and modest, and that a quietly intelligent potential emanates from the page of your crystalline covering letter.

Let's suppose that despite all this, a terse rejection letter wings its way all too speedily back. Because it usually does. It may give you very little information, other than the "not right for our List" variety. Yaw-n. Or, if you're lucky, it may tell you a tiny bit more, like "has some merits, but ultimately we did not feel sufficiently strongly about it." Now, that is only a tiny bit more but it's quite an important tiny bit more, because it does actually mean that there were some merits. They're not going to tell you what the merits are, oh no - because that would be foolish of them, opening the door to the torrent of your eager follow-up* letter: "Oh merits, THANK YOU so much for noticing my merits - could you now list those merits, in writing, and preferably capital letters and then I will use them to entice other unwary agents and publishers with the fact that you, O glorious one, think I am utterly brilliant?" And you would then be doing your well-known impression of agog, blushing in anticipation of the glowing praise you about to receive.

(* NO! No follow-up letter! Just crawl back into your hole, lick your wounds, and prepare to try again.)

And no again because what your book's merits are is irrelevant, except as a panadol for your bruised ego. You need to know its crucial rubbishnesses, not its merits. Trust me, you do, even if you don't think you do. You must find its faults, somehow, or you will languish in a state of toe-curling unpublishedness for so long that your toenails will have grown into something like those slinky springs that used to keep me amused for 15 seconds when I was a child.

Them "not feeling strongly" means that the book is not (yet?) good enough in some secret masonic aspect which will not be revealed to you. Because if it was, they'd have to kill you. So, let's begin to extract the answer, which we will do by guesswork because they have offered no clue. Given that you can string some better-than-monkey sentences together and that the hook was so damned brilliant, there are, thankfully, only a small number of things it could be.

The first one of these is Voice.
I'm starting with voice because I hadn't a clue about this when I first wrote a book with a damned good hook that actually did end up being published. One of the early conversations with my agent, as she was signing me on the basis of the first draft of a very imperfect novel, went something like this:

A: Of course, we'll have to deal with those voice slippages.
NM: Oh yeah, right, of COURSE. (Exit far left to find nearest access to Google).

(At this point you may legitimately be asking, "Huh, so how come your rubbish voice control still got you published? How come that agent saw through your huge faults but agents and publishers are rejecting me in their droves?" Well, I can only think that voice was maybe the only mistake I was making and that the agent could see that it would only take a little bit of work to put the slippages right. Agents don't expect you to get everything first time but they have to see potential, and potential can shine through a thin haze but not through a swirling fog.)

A few things about voice:

• When you know about voice it's obvious. It's one of the easiest faults to correct in your writing, if you really have control over your words - all you need to do is LISTEN. And I mean that literally. Read it aloud.
  
• When you make a mistake with voice, it's incredibly obvious to the reader. It jars. It stops the reader engaging with the story because the reader starts to hear you the author, which is not** what he/she is there for, unless it's your mother ...
• Being able to use voice skilfully is one of the things that can mark you as a special or interesting writer.
• But it is also possible to do nothing at all clever with it, and still tell a perfectly good story.
• Voice is equally important in non-fiction. Same rules, same techniques.
• ** I said that the reader doesn't want to hear the author's voice - I don't mean that an author can't develop his/her own distinctive voice that shines through each book, especially the books of a series. I mean that the author's own voice mustn't suddenly slip in incongruously - it's the voice of the book that comes first, foremost and only.
  
• Well what the hell IS it? Aren't you going to tell us?

Yes, voice is just that: voice. Take me - not in that sense: I'm happily married - and you. When you and I speak, our voices sound different and our friends recognise them. We use different words and phrases for a start, but they also sound like no one else except ourselves. The only time my voice might change is when I've got a sore throat or I've mistaken the wine for Ribena. Sometimes (rarely, darling husband) my voice is angry; sometimes (often) it's tired; and sometimes (most of the time) it's really crying out for unparalleled adulation. But whatever my mood, it's my voice.

A book has a voice too. The narrative voice. And this is what we're talking about, over and above the more obvious different voices of each character within the book. It may have several narrative voices if you want and if you follow certain rules. But it will only have several voices for a reason and the writer will control those voices so brilliantly that the reader will instantly know which voice he's listening to and why. A reader, even a reader who knows nothing technical at all, will notice if you make a mistake with voice, even with one word or phrase. So, voice slipping is highly likely to be something that the agent/editor who has just rejected you has noticed, meaning that he loses confidence in you and loses touch with the story. Imagine you're watching an actor on stage and he keeps slipping out of character - you'd be tense and you'd stop focusing on the story. Then you might start to rustle your sweet wrappers or throw eggs.

Let's look (or listen) in a bit more detail. Some books have very distinctive voices. Distinctive voices are the hardest to do - hardest to keep consistent and hardest not to annoy the reader. My current WIP (work in progress) uses a very distinctive voice, which I have to be extremely careful with: it's present tense, 3rd person, letting the reader entirely into its confidence; it's sardonic, ironic and philosophical, occasionally deliberately pretentiously so. Those are all major things to deal with, and to keep it going for the whole novel without becoming irritating or overdoing it. All of my redrafting is focused on controlling and honing the voice.

A novel that comes out this June (shameless double plug alert - it's called Deathwatch) mixes voices: three times we have a chapter where the main character is seen through the eyes of the adult stalker, and at those times it's present tense, slightly off-kilter, slightly obscured, very dark. Most of the rest of the time it's a straightforward*** 3rd person narrative, with more of a modern teenage feel, since the main character is a teenager.

In another novel, Sleepwalking, (crikey, that's three shameless plugs - I am excelling myself today and surely deserve an advance-rise) sometimes I slipped (deliberately, of course) into an internal conversation in an angry girl's head. To make it crystal clear, I used italics for those parts. You can't do that too much - either italics or internal angry dialogue - it gets boring for the reader.

*** But nothing is EVER "straightforward narrative"
Every narrator has a voice too, even if the narrator isn't an actual character in the book. And that's the tricky point about voice: your narrator, even if never identified, exists. In fact, this narrator is what most gives the book its voice. So, when you say "It was a dark and stormy night", (even though you don't, unless you're being ironic, because it's a cliché) you the writer must be aware of who is telling us it's a dark and stormy night. What is the voice of that narrator? Is the narrator on the side of the reader or one character or several characters? Does the narrative voice take the reader into its confidence, speaking to the reader, or is it more detached? How old do we think the narrator is? If you were to do a study of the narrator (even when 3rd person and invisible), what would the characteristics be?

When you read a published book, you won't be thinking of any of this, because you don't get voice slippages in properly-edited published books. (You do in self-published books because self-published authors almost never pay for proper editing, which is absolutely the most stupid omission.) But where you mostly get voice slippages is on the slush-pile. The slush-pile is a veritable morass of voices oozing and sliding all over the flipping place. And there you will languish amongst all the other greasy spaghetti.

How deliberate should my choice of voice be?
Sometimes, when you start a book, the voice doesn't come immediately. It's not easy to begin a new voice, unless it's been in your head for a while. Sometimes it comes naturally, which is the best way, as it will be easiest to maintain. Often, the voice that comes when you start your book is quite different from what you expected. In that case, you have to decide whether to go with it or change it and start again. Often when a new book feels as though it's sticking, it's because you haven't got the voice right. I have an idea for a novel now and I have loads of the characters in my head, several scenes and a whole load of detail, but it has no voice yet, and so it can't even be started. I have no desire to start until a voice is bursting to get out.

In the Passionflower Massacre - omigodIdon'tbelieveit: another plug? - the voice came out exactly as I'd visualised it. Every single other novel I've written has come out differently from the voice that had been speaking in my head. That doesn't matter, as long as it works and is consistent from beginning to end (except, in those places where you have chosen a new voice for a good reason.)

Now, some exercises for you. See, this is not your average blog that merely asks for comments - this is SERIOUS WORK. Oh, and by the way, mark them yourselves, class. I'm on my coffee break.

1. Take the book you are reading and the book you are writing. For each, analyse the voice(s). You may need to start by taking just a couple of paragraphs in Chapter 1. Ask: is it one voice or several and, if several, what tells me when they change? Why do they change? How would I describe the narrator's character simply from the tone of the narration? How old is the narrator? Which of these words apply: light, serious, chatty, modern, fresh, cheeky, sardonic, pessimistic, optimistic, damaged, hurting, survivor, angry ...? Is the narrator my friend? Can I trust him/her? Does the narrator know everything or only some things? (This is partly a matter of POV - Point of View - which is somewhat but not totally different.)

2. Pick one of these characters: tired old lady, bereaved man, baby, toddler in buggy, grumpy man/woman, harrassed teacher, school truant, homeless person, bench/seat, road-sweeper, pigeon, cat, mother with three children, lost child. Then imagine yourself in a crowded place and write a single paragraph in the voice of that person, without actually describing yourself or giving obvious clues as to who you are. Give your piece of writing to a friend and see if they can say what your character is.

3. Now, look again at your WIP - and examine it minutely for voice slippages. If you find any, be for ever in my debt, because that could indeed be at least a major part of why the editor/agent "didn't feel strongly enough". In fact, maybe the rejection letter is a less messy way of throwing eggs.

Later, we'll do the other things that stop a novel being as good as it needs to be. Meanwhile, that has been such a very serious lesson that I really do plan that the next post will be that story of hilarious ineptitude. Well done and give yourself a round of applause!

Meanwhile, a smaller funny story to end on, though an irrelevant one.
I had an email from a teenage reader once, saying, "Dear Nicola, I'm reading the Passionflower Massacre and really enjoying it, even though it's not what I was expecting because I actually thought the title was the Passionflower Mascara." Yeah, and the title is really quite important, in that there is no mascara but quite a substantial amount of massacring ...

Oh, and another one from a school visit, and this identical thing has happened to me TWICE, because I'm stupid and don't learn:

Nice Girl: I really love your books.
NM (swelling with pride as this doesn't happen often): Oh really? Thank you. Which one do you like best?
Nice Girl: Sorry?
NM: Which one do you like best?
Nice Girl: Er, I don't know really. I don't really mind that much.
NM (realising that actually the girl was just being kind and hasn't really read any of them): Well, do you like Fleshmarket or Blame My Brain or ... ? (That's six plugs in one blog.)
Nice Girl (Looking at me as though I'm a total idiot): NO, I like your BOOTS.

Can you believe this happened twice?

Mind you, this is Scotland and we obviously can't speak like normal people. And here are the boots in question.

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.

TIPS FOR SUBMISSIONS: PART 2 - COVERING LETTERS

Having written a previous post with a title containing the words Part 1, I suppose I set myself up for having to write Part the Second, didn't I? Actually, it being such a gorgeous sunny day here in Scotland and the recessionary gloom engendering an unaccustomed what-the-hell type abandonment, I'm going to lay my head on the line or stick it above the parapet or something and say that I am sure there'll be a Part the Third. Scary stuff.

For readers who have recently joined this journey to success, I do suggest you read Part 1 first, because I will otherwise blithely assume that you are up to speed. You will remember that I banged on about how important the covering letter was. Well it is. And this post is going to focus entirely on it.

Oh and by the way, I should warn you: I am majorly in crabbit-old-bat mode today, despite the afore-mentioned sunshine (about which I was in fact lying).

1. Why is the covering letter so important? Surely it's the sample material that's important because surely it's the book and not me that's the main thing?
But if you can't write a brilliant letter, how come you think you can write a brilliant book? If you care so little for your book that you would send it out dressed in thin rags, why should a busy editor/agent care more about it? Or if you think it's so damned fantastic that you need say nothing about it, then why don't you self-publish it and see what happens when you can't persuade anyone apart from your parents to buy it?

Your covering letter is your shop window - it's the only way anyone's going to see what you're selling. Would you walk into a shop that had a load of rubbish in the window? Or a shop that gave you no idea what was in it? Or the wrong idea? And, for crying out loud, it's a FREE shop window. What's not to use? Trust me, only a complete idiot would not try to do the very best covering letter possible. Or someone who didn't fully appreciate the power of words. And if you do not fully appreciate and also bow down in abject worship of the power of words, then you don't deserve to be published.

If you don't believe any of that, believe this: many publishers and agents simply will not read on if you have not a) impressed them and b) whetted their appetites with the beauteousness of your covering letter. So, write a rubbish letter, and your utterly astonishing novel will never be read. Write me a rubbish letter and I will simply refuse to open the first page of your utterly astonishing novel. Your novel can be as secretly astonishing as it likes: I won't be reading it and, anyway, there are many other genuinely astonishing novels waiting for me to read, written by authors who care enough to spend a bit of time writing a little letter.

OK, I think I've made my point. And it's still freezing cold outside so the crabbit mood continues. Why don't I live in Australia? (Ebony, was it Melbourne where you said your chocolate-loving writing group hangs out? I have been known to reduce my already-reasonable speaking fees for warm climates.)

2. What should I put in this amazingly brilliant covering letter then?
You should put you in it, that's what. And your book. The covering letter should be the essence of you and your book, in fact. Distilled, purified, perfect, alive, compelling, capturing you both. My agent told me that another agent told her (sorry, brain frozen and have forgotten name but will get it to you when the sun comes out in a few months' time) that the covering letter should contain the book, the cook and the hook. (qv in COMMON WORDS YOU SHOULD KNOW)

If you look on the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook website (see list on the right somewhere) and click on the advice section, you'll find a sample covering letter. Because the W&A Yearbook is a serious, straight-down-the-line book and because they are giving very general advice, this letter a) technically ticks most of the boxes but b) lacks inspiration or "voice". To be honest, if I was a busy agent or editor I would probably find a surprisingly large number of much more interesting things to do than reply to it, let alone hang around waiting for the postman to deliver a synopsis / sample of such an unzingy-sounding novel. I might find myself suddenly desperate to enter a cream cracker-eating competition or something equally fun.

Good points about that letter: it's short; it's addressed to an actual person; it gives useful facts (eg length) about the book; it identifies what sort of book it is (contemporary, characters downmarket of Joanna T - hmm, sounds fab, I don't think - where was that cracker-eating comp?); it's polite; it tells the recipient a bit about the writer (incl that she has two other novels in mind, which is a useful place to keep them).

Bad points about the letter: it gives absolutely no reason to suppose that the writer can write (other than the ability to string some words together and spell/punctuate - which is a good start but only a start); there's no character, no voice; it makes it far too easy for the editor to ignore it and have a cup of coffee, during which time I am 100% convinced he/she will forget it and go off to find a cracker-eating .... Yes, I know, I'm labouring the point.

I urge you to read this recent post on the excellent and expert Behlerblog. In fact, you should have the blog on your regular reading list. In that particular post, you will see exactly what I mean by voice in a covering letter and a very good paradigm of how not/to do it.

3. Hang on a sec - didn't you once say we were supposed to send sample chapters + synopsis as well as covering letter? That's not what the W&A Yearbook letter is saying ...
Yes. Or even possibly no. Again, the W&A is trying to be very general and careful and to follow all the rules. My more specific and daring advice is that you should either a) follow exactly the guidelines of the specific publisher / agent whom you are approaching, if you are a rule-follower and/or like the rules they give or b) otherwise not. My advice on this is clear: all rules are there to be broken if you are clever and bold enough. Picasso didn't get where he is today (yes, I know, he's dead, but at least he's dead famous) by following rules. So, what I'd do is follow this clear 4-step plan:

1. Closely research which publishers take the sort of book you've written
   
2. You need two envelopes. One bigger than the other, but the smaller one big enough for 30 pages of A4, unfolded. In the smaller one, which has your address and sufficient stamps, but is unsealed, you place the first 30ish pages of your brilliant novel, and the brilliant synopsis (which is ideally one page long and never ever ever more than two - and no cheating by using tiny print).
   
3. You put this smaller envelope inside the bigger one.
4. You also put the brilliant (yep, you're getting the hang now) covering letter inside the larger envelope. This covering letter is so brilliant that it makes the recipient drool and gasp and cry out for more. The letter includes this : "If you are interested in reading my work, please consider opening the enclosed envelope, in which you will find a synopsis and the first ___ pages. However, I do understand how busy you are and that your list might be full - if so, I would be very grateful if you would post the envelope back to me." If your covering letter is brilliant enough and if you have targeted an appropriate publisher/agent, the smaller envelope WILL be opened.
   

4. For those of you who like rules and templates, here's mine: short para saying why you are contacting her/him; para selling/describing/distilling your book; shorter para saying who would the readers/market be, eg "readers who love Sophie Kinsella / Ian Rankin / Steven King (no, NOT all three); short para about you, including only info relevant to you as potential author - eg anything you've had published, other things you've written, how long for, whether any other ideas; snappy end para which shows that you understand the system and how busy the editor/agent is, thanking them etc etc etc and being polite and professional.

5. Are there some things I really really mustn't do in this covering letter? I'm so glad you asked that. Yes, indeedy, there certainly are. First, please do read COMMON MISTAKES and THINGS NOT TO SAY. From that, you will learn, for example, about not being arrogant ("I've written an astonishing book"), or naive ("my grandchildren laugh out loud when I read it to them and are always saying, Oh, please read it again, Grandad"). Essentially, you mustn't be long-winded, boring, old-fashioned, hectoring, whittering, sycophantic or unnecessarily and irritatingly funny, though appropriately and delicately witty is fine if that's what your book is like. You mustn't negatively criticise published writers (unless you are the non-writing celebrity who apparently said she wanted to write a children's book because she thought children's books were all rubbish - and you wouldn't beLIEVE the slating she got on author message boards. If vitriol could be bottled ... Anyway, don't let me get carried away.)

Oh, and although it IS helpful for the editor / agent to know what sort of book / author is landing on the desk, here are some other things which do not go down at all well (except when the agent/editor meets up with other agents/editors and they all fall about laughing while regaling each other about the extraordinarily useless submissions they've received):

• Some people have compared my writing to that of Norman Mailer.
• My novel is Moby Dick meets On the Road meets Lord of the Rings. With, I feel, the occasional hint of an early James Joyce.
  
• This could be the next Harry Potter. But even better.
  

That just about covers covering letters. However, it's really important that you've also read THINGS NOT TO SAY. And I'm betting some of you haven't. No, I'm not psychic but I used to be a teacher and I am a crabbit old bat who is still in quite a bad mood because of the cold weather and chapped skin which makes me look older and drier and grumpier than I'd like to. So, if you wouldn't mind, please go and read it now if you haven't already and then, as a reward for your diligence and patience, you can have some chocolate.



Sorry, not much left, but for me it's a case of Chocolate in a Cold Climate.

CHECKLIST FOR PUBLICATION - CAN YOU TICK THEM ALL?

I believe that if you can't say yes to all of these, you give yourself much less chance of being published and you deserve it less. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee that doing all of them will get you published, because that depends on what you have written and how well you have written it.

1. Have you read lots of the most successful and modern books in your genre?
   
2. Do you admire many of them?
3. Can you say what you love about them?
   
4. Can you name, easily, six authors whose books you admire in your genre? I don't know why I said six - I was tempted to say ten, but that seemed a bit tough and seven is not my favourite number. Nine would seem a bit weird. And I could have said eight - in fact, I will. Eight, then.
   
5. Are you writing something at the moment? You should be. And if you've finished something and you're waiting for people to get back to you, you should be writing something else.
   
6. Have you taken steps to have an online presence, such as a blog? It's a good way to practise writing and communicating, even if it's nothing like your actual work in progress. If a blog is not your scene, at least create a page somewhere, such as on a social networking site - people need to see you. You can't hide away as an author these days, unless your name is Salinger.
   
7. Have you got lots of ideas in you? Train your mind to catch and play with ideas.
   
8. Are you taking steps to discover all the rules about submitting to publishers / agents? As I say several times on this site, there's no excuse for not discovering these basics, such as how much to send and how to present it.
9. Are you perfectly professional in your working life? Do you always do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it? (And I do mean in your professional life - I'm not bothered whether you do the ironing when you say you're going to. In fact, if you do the ironing when you say you're going to, you've got too much time on your hands - get writing, for goodness' sake!)
10. Are you keeping a list of ways to promote yourself - eg blogs, websites, relevant contacts. Do you keep a note of useful people's names and contact details? Do you contact people (politely and having a care for their personal space) on the right blogs and websites?
    
11. Have you joined some kind of community in the writing world and found opportunities to network? Not everyone wants to be in a writers' group or something where you have to share your work (and there's no need) but if you join an organisation or webgroup/forum for unpublished/published writers, you will learn a great deal and make valuable contacts. And that you do need. Many people cringe at the word networking - so call it something else then, but still DO it. It's not creepy and crawly unless you are creepy and crawly. Just be friendly, open and sensible.
12. Are you avoiding all the mistakes in the article on COMMON MISTAKES?
13. Do you feel gutted and miserable and everything else unpleasant when you are rejected again? If not, you probably don't want it enough.
14. Do you ooze green poison when you read in the papers of some idiot's 6-figure contract? If not, you probably don't want it enough.
15. If offered the choice between a month on a paradisical island, all expenses paid, travelling 1st class, with silently gliding masseuses attending to every knot in your shoulders, bringing you iced mango whenever you feel like it, and an offer to publish your novel, would you choose publication? If not ...
    

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.