CRAPPY AUTHOR BEHAVIOUR: THE LAUNCH

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

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

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

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

But rude author did neither of those things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHO KNOWS BETTER? READER OR WRITER?

Interesting piece on BookBrunch here. The woman who button-holed Trevor Dolby is making the same mistake as some unpublished authors - believing that there's some kind of conspiracy amongst agents and publishers not to publish good writing. (Er, hello, can someone please suggest a single sane reason why such a conspiracy might exist????) It's another deluded idiot symptom and will get her nowhere. (Understandable though her frustration is, and I really mean that.)

Such people also seem to think that no agents or publishers would know a good piece of writing if it came up and spat at them. No, sorry, it's we the authors who are the last people to be able to be objective about our own work - though we need to try - and the sooner we accept that the opinion of our desired readers, including the professional and multi-experienced ones, matter more than our own, the sooner we will become published and enjoyed by the reading public.

And here's the thing: all the agents and publishers who rejected me during my now well-documented and shameful 21 years of failing, were RIGHT. And I am even grateful to them. (Though at the time, I'd probably have stuck pins in a few publishers' wax models if I'd been any good at fashioning passable likenesses in wax.) See, I believed I was good enough a writer - which we have to believe, in order to keep going, don't we? And yet at the same time, we also need to recognise that there's something about what we're doing that isn't yet good enough. That's the dilemma, the razor-edge we have to walk along. And all that is why I'm deeply grateful (and not even through gritted teeth) to all of them for not publishing my substandard stuff.

I don't know about you, but much as I desperately need to be published, I more need to be read and enjoyed. We don't write in a vacuum, or even in a nurturing bubble occupied only by our family, undiscerning friends and pets: we write to be read and heard. Don't we? Therefore, we simply have to listen carefully to those who might read and hear us and those who might have a fighting chance of taking our words to the wider audience.

And if no one wants to listen to our words, then we should either shut up or write better.

Woah, crabbit or WHAT today??

TIPS FOR SUBMISSIONS - PART 3 - RULES

For those of you planning a submission to an agent, or wondering why your previous submissions haven't got anywhere yet, here's a quick nudge in the direction of some very useful and common questions and answers on lit agent Rachelle Gardner's blog today. It's also worth looking at other bits of her blog, such as her submission guidelines. Different agents will have slightly different preferences (for example, she is happy for you to submit simultaneously elsewhere, whereas some are not) but it's worth reading lots of different guidelines because then you get a real sense of what agents in general need. You'll see many common themes, the main one being how overwhelmed they get by volume of slush, and how keen they are to be bowled over by a brilliant idea/book.

Your aim when submitting work to any agent or publisher is:

• to make their day far better than they thought it was going to be when they got up and saw that it was raining.

Your aim is NOT:

• to end up way down the slush pile with all the dross written by arrogant fools and deluded idiots (not forgetting the sweetly but hopelessly misguided and also the ones who can actually possibly write but haven't yet written something that someone outside their family would want to read). Because that is a seriously enormous slush pile.
• to make them grind their teeth
• to make them yawn
• to make them wish they were anything but an agent
  

So, how do you make their day? You do this by:

• offering them a proposal which even from the cleanness of the envelope and tidy way you stuck the stamp on, proclaims (but modestly, not in a shouty way) that you are efficient, decent and that you want the process of opening and reading it to be a beautiful one for the agent (or, indeed, publisher)

And by presenting them with a query/synopsis/sample/proposal which:

• shows that you understand the market in which you are writing
• (if fiction) describes a finished book
• is perfectly written and constructed from the first line of the covering letter to the last line of whatever you are including
• presents you as rational, modest, talented, amenable, NICE, intelligent, willing to learn and with a career ahead of you (but doesn't SAY any of these things - "show, don't tell"...)
• is simply a fab idea for a book, written with such a well-controlled and/or (preferably and) fresh voice that the recipient will be droolingly desperate to read the whole thing - that above all is what will brighten their day.
  

Agents get REALLY endearingly excited when they find The Right Book. (They won't tell you what it is before they get it but they know it when they see it. Don't blame them for that - you're exactly the same as a reader.)

Of course, following submission rules is (or should be) the easy part. But you'd be amazed how many writers simply ignore them when submitting their masterpieces. Writing a brilliant book brilliantly is the hard bit. But you'd also be amazed how many people think it's easy. If you think writing is easy, I strongly suggest that you think again, because you almost certainly haven't done it well enough ...

And on that typically crabbit note, I'm off to try to write something myself. In an unusual attempt to be a disciplined writer, I have today made a time-table for myself. A set of rules for the day. Let's see how good I am at following my own rules ... Now, what's the first task? Ah yes, make coffee. That, I can do. Second task? "Write. For an hour. Without looking at the internet." Now that's hard.

But worth it.

NEGATIVE REVIEWS - SHHHHHH

You know how the Norwegians (I think it's Norwegians?) have hundreds of words for snow? Well, in Scotland we have numerous gorgeous words for the various things that we like a lot, such as insults. I notice we also have a lot of words for bad weather and being drunk, but I can't think why that should be - I can only think that an English person wrote the dictionary and was introducing outdated cultural stereotypes. But there's one beautiful and useful Scots word which doesn't fit into any of those categories: stushie. A stushie (sometimes also known as stromash) describes an argument held in public, which a whole load of people get themselves involved in. (This is something we never actually do but we often observe south of the border, of course, which is why we need at least two words for it.) It's the slightly more civilised equivalent of a street brawl. And there's one going on here right now

Essentially, a self-published author who was lucky enough to be reviewed in Scott Pack's blog but unlucky enough that the review wasn't 100% brilliant, (and why should it be? It's a review, not an advert) has not done the sensible thing (stay silent and understand that no one will notice, especially since it wasn't a particularly negative review ) but the unwise (but, I argue, very human and understandable) thing (react, thereby ensuring that everyone will notice it and only remember the negative bit.) Sorry, too many brackets there. (I think I have a serious bracket habit. There are worse faults.)

And while I agree with the general tenor of the messages, which are mainly telling him how silly he is, I actually want to do two things here:

1. Sympathise with his feelings (although I would certainly have advised him not to respond) because it's horrible to get a negative review. It goes to the very core of oneself as an author and is the type of public humiliation which most other people don't have to deal with (though they don't get the public acclaim either.) My sympathy is limited in this case because actually it was a very anodyne and perfectly valid review - but I'm extending my sympathy to encompass all recipients of negative reviews, generous person that I am.
   
2. Use it as a useful cautionary tale for you, to prepare you for that moment which is a rite of passage for published authors, and self-published ones if they are very lucky, when you read a review that is not quite as glowing as the one your mother would have written for you.
   

Sympathy for recipients of negative reviews
It is rawly, utterly, searingly gutting when the work you slaved over and made as brilliant as you could is received negatively, in public. The fact that the negativity may be slight cannot initially register with the author: one drop of lemon juice on a cut feels no less painful than five drops of lemon juice. The author in this case is also self-published - this means he is having to deal with "No one wanted to publish me" along with "and now a reviewer doesn't think I'm the bees knees either". You can't not take it personally. Rationality goes out of the window. People such as me telling you that you're lucky to get a review, that it's "just one opinion, right?", that there'll be good reviews, that no one will notice or remember - none of that makes sense in the early moments of reading that bruising review.

In the old days (ie before the internet) a bad review disappeared with the rubbish the next day; no one who hadn't read it would ever see it again. Now, of course, it's THERE FOR LIKE EVER. It is googlable and forwardable and printable and cut-and-pastable. Schoolkids will find it when they do a school project on you. People will blog about it and link to it and really they might as well just put you in the stocks and throw rotten tomatoes at you.

But, somehow, for your own sake and no one else's, you have to avoid reacting, at least in public. Oh, in private, no problem: stick pins in the review (or wax model of the reviewer), burn it ceremoniously while chanting ancient spells, flush it down the toilet. But in public ... rise above it. The moral high ground is a damned fine place to be and the view is spectacular.

The lesson - learn, remember and store up for future use:

1. Be grateful for ANY review, especially on a well-respected blog or newspaper. MOST books get no reviews except when the author's mother writes a thinly disguised one on Amazon. (And it has been known for a publisher to do this too - don't trust Amazon reviews. Oh, and by the way - don't post any anonymously yourself: there was an incident a few years back when all the anonymosity disappeared from Amazon Canada's reviews, causing a few blushes amongst some well-known authors ....).
2. Recognise that not everyone can like your book, or like the same aspects of it, and reviewers should be allowed to say so, as long as they do so with integrity. A good book will get a variety of responses. You can choose to ignore any review, especially if you don't respect the reveiwer or if you feel that his/her taste is simply different from yours, but you might actually learn something from the content. That's up to you. It's your right to ignore it or believe it, though there's a school of thought that says if you believe the good ones you should believe the bad ones ...
   
3. Focus on the positive bits (supposing there are some) - I know an author who had a review which went something like, "this is an inferior book from the author of the utterly suberb *****" and she used the "from the author of the utterly superb ****" on her website and other places. A negative review is a bit like falling off a horse except that you don't break your arm. Pick yourself up and carry on. Perhaps someone else will leap to your defence on Amazon/wherever - fantastic. But if it's your mother, do give her some lessons in disguise.
   
4. Don't react. I don't know: go and buy some shoes or something. Wine and chocolate are two other justified and proven strategies. Of course, you have the right to respond, but you'd be foolish to: it will get you nowhere. And for goodness' sake, if you write an email or blog post, don't click Send. Sleep on it and then bin it. I tend to stick pins in less than mother-like reviews and imagine the reviewer dressed in huge pink underwear with a tea-cosy on his head. This is very helpful, I find.

Everything's a phase. Believe it or not, your negative review will fade from your memory like a bruise. In fact, the person who gave me my only really bad review is now a friend - we never talked about it and I haven't a clue if she/he can even remember writing the comments that had me spitting tacks (privately, of course - moral high-ground, not clicking Send etc etc). And sticking pins** in a wax model doesn't seem to have done any harm either. Well, not that I can see. Mind you, the pink frilly underwear could be covering that up.

**PS For those of you who are sensitive to ideas of modern witchcraft, I am not nor have ever been a witch, nor have I never stuck pins in anything other than a pin-cushion, nor could I be bothered to. I was speaking merely metaphorically. I do a pretty effective line in cursing though.

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.

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.