...it can be done.
Another rejection today (they are coming in thick and fast).
But this one one was printed with my name handwritten in at the top (and spelled correctly) and an apology for it being a standard rejection.
It will have taken that agency no longer to produce than an illegible scrawl, yet it showed a level of courtesy that helps soften the blow (although I had no real expectation that this particular agency would take me on, but you don't know until you try - and I'm nothing if I'm not trying).
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Sigh
Another rejection today from an agent. Well, I assume it is a rejection. My submission came back exactly as I sent it with the addition of an illegible scrawl (some of it crossed out) across part of my covering letter. Hence the sigh. For all I know it could be an offer to represent me.
Now, this makes me cross. And it is not the first time I’ve had this in a long career of writing. It makes me cross because, as a writer, I am forever urged to be professional, to take great care over my submissions to agents and editors, to be clear and concise. That, I am forever being told, is the way to impress and the way to get on.
Fine.
But tell me.
Why the hell should I play that game when some of the people I am contacting apparently don’t give a rat’s arse about their own presentation? What message does it send to authors and publishers?
Well, all that scrawl told me is that the agent who wrote it has treated me with contempt. If they did not like my work, fine. I am well aware of how subjective this game is, especially when it comes to fiction. But it wouldn’t cost more than a few pence per copy to type and run off an A5 letter. That and a signature would at least let me know the work had been rejected.
If that piece of scrawl is an acceptance… Well, sorry, but there is no way I would wish to be represented by someone who cannot make the effort to ensure their message is legible, who cannot be arsed to be clear, who cannot even make the same effort I did in approaching them.
I might be a ‘nobody’ (after all, I’ve only had ten books published – one of the novels with glowing praise from two of the world’s best sellers in the genre); they might be a ‘busy and important’ agent (possibly); but that is no excuse for not observing the common decencies of human communication.
This is pretty much the written equivalent of a conversation I once had with an agent. I phoned them to see if they were accepting submissions. The person I spoke to questioned me about my writing background and then asked me to tell them something about the book I intended to submit. Remember that. They asked me to tell them. So I did. Well. I started to tell them. I wasn’t long-winded. I didn’t have time. I’d been going for less than a minute (and wouldn’t gave gone on for much more), when they sighed very loudly and hung up on me.
Perhaps I have a lousy telephone manner. Perhaps I use the wrong kind of paper to print my submissions (and I know for sure my letter and synopsis could be better – those are things that can always be improved and I work on them all the time). But there are times I get heartily sick of the whole business, because whilst there are a lot of good people in publishing (most of them authors), it is riddled with arseholes – hence all the shit it produces.
Now, this makes me cross. And it is not the first time I’ve had this in a long career of writing. It makes me cross because, as a writer, I am forever urged to be professional, to take great care over my submissions to agents and editors, to be clear and concise. That, I am forever being told, is the way to impress and the way to get on.
Fine.
But tell me.
Why the hell should I play that game when some of the people I am contacting apparently don’t give a rat’s arse about their own presentation? What message does it send to authors and publishers?
Well, all that scrawl told me is that the agent who wrote it has treated me with contempt. If they did not like my work, fine. I am well aware of how subjective this game is, especially when it comes to fiction. But it wouldn’t cost more than a few pence per copy to type and run off an A5 letter. That and a signature would at least let me know the work had been rejected.
If that piece of scrawl is an acceptance… Well, sorry, but there is no way I would wish to be represented by someone who cannot make the effort to ensure their message is legible, who cannot be arsed to be clear, who cannot even make the same effort I did in approaching them.
I might be a ‘nobody’ (after all, I’ve only had ten books published – one of the novels with glowing praise from two of the world’s best sellers in the genre); they might be a ‘busy and important’ agent (possibly); but that is no excuse for not observing the common decencies of human communication.
This is pretty much the written equivalent of a conversation I once had with an agent. I phoned them to see if they were accepting submissions. The person I spoke to questioned me about my writing background and then asked me to tell them something about the book I intended to submit. Remember that. They asked me to tell them. So I did. Well. I started to tell them. I wasn’t long-winded. I didn’t have time. I’d been going for less than a minute (and wouldn’t gave gone on for much more), when they sighed very loudly and hung up on me.
Perhaps I have a lousy telephone manner. Perhaps I use the wrong kind of paper to print my submissions (and I know for sure my letter and synopsis could be better – those are things that can always be improved and I work on them all the time). But there are times I get heartily sick of the whole business, because whilst there are a lot of good people in publishing (most of them authors), it is riddled with arseholes – hence all the shit it produces.
Monday, 23 February 2009
Rehab
This might be a joke. It might not.
I am an addict. I am addicted to writing. And to reading. The reading bit I can cope with (apart from the times I pick up a book that is poorly written and rant about how such a piece of garbage ever made it into print). It is the writing bit I have problems with.
And today I am desperate for a cure. I want to be free of the compulsion that drives me to sit down and string words together. Not because this is inherently bad or detrimental to my health per se. I want to be free because it eats me from the inside out. It uses up all my physical and psychic energy. It uses up vast amounts of my time. It turns me into a boring and increasingly bitter husk. Because writing isn’t the end of it. You then feel compelled to expose it to other people.
I have fine friends who tell me they love my writing and to them I am eternally grateful. There are agents and editors who tell me my writing is good, but in the current climate… (this being the latest phrase of choice) they are not taking on new clients/prepared to take a risk on unknowns.
You get to the stage where you wonder what the point is. Why string words together if no one is going to buy them and see them (and make me enough money so I don’t have to choose, for example, between heating a room or running the dehumidifier to keep damp at bay – that bit’s not a joke).
This may seem like an awful whine. Maybe it is. But I have always worked hard. I have always lived well below the official poverty line. I never bought into the system that is now crashing about people’s ears. I don’t mind being ‘poor’. I just want to get rid of the voices in my head that keep me on this soul-destroying treadmill.
But, of course, there isn’t a cure. Like every other writer who suffers from depression, I have to sit this out, tell myself that writing is a therapy and will make me happier, suppress the urge to moan about things, and just get on with it.
My best hope for today is that this post might dissuade people from thinking that writing is [a] easy and [b] financially rewarding (the average annual earnings of a writer in the UK have crashed from the princely sum of £7000 to £4000). If you are hooked already, you have my deepest sympathy. If you are dabbling, step away now before it is too late.
I am an addict. I am addicted to writing. And to reading. The reading bit I can cope with (apart from the times I pick up a book that is poorly written and rant about how such a piece of garbage ever made it into print). It is the writing bit I have problems with.
And today I am desperate for a cure. I want to be free of the compulsion that drives me to sit down and string words together. Not because this is inherently bad or detrimental to my health per se. I want to be free because it eats me from the inside out. It uses up all my physical and psychic energy. It uses up vast amounts of my time. It turns me into a boring and increasingly bitter husk. Because writing isn’t the end of it. You then feel compelled to expose it to other people.
I have fine friends who tell me they love my writing and to them I am eternally grateful. There are agents and editors who tell me my writing is good, but in the current climate… (this being the latest phrase of choice) they are not taking on new clients/prepared to take a risk on unknowns.
You get to the stage where you wonder what the point is. Why string words together if no one is going to buy them and see them (and make me enough money so I don’t have to choose, for example, between heating a room or running the dehumidifier to keep damp at bay – that bit’s not a joke).
This may seem like an awful whine. Maybe it is. But I have always worked hard. I have always lived well below the official poverty line. I never bought into the system that is now crashing about people’s ears. I don’t mind being ‘poor’. I just want to get rid of the voices in my head that keep me on this soul-destroying treadmill.
But, of course, there isn’t a cure. Like every other writer who suffers from depression, I have to sit this out, tell myself that writing is a therapy and will make me happier, suppress the urge to moan about things, and just get on with it.
My best hope for today is that this post might dissuade people from thinking that writing is [a] easy and [b] financially rewarding (the average annual earnings of a writer in the UK have crashed from the princely sum of £7000 to £4000). If you are hooked already, you have my deepest sympathy. If you are dabbling, step away now before it is too late.
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Oh, what the hell. Here's waving at you.
I'm writing another novel (yeah, all right, hardly a surprise is it). I had intended to plunge straight into The Mirror That Is Made, which is the second of Charlie Cornelius's books. But it requires extensive research. I'm doing some of the background at the moment, but I'm going to need to do some very specific stuff as well. And at the moment, the money and the energy just aren't there (it will involve travel).
So, to avoid wasting endless hours playing games, fretting over how the submissions of Thin Reflections are doing, or getting into sickening and socially reprehensible habits like dusting, I decided to write a book. The ultimate in procrastination, if you like.
Charlie Cornelius exists in other planes of reality (how could she not). One of her alternates, is a young woman called Jeniche. She lives in a city and makes a living by relieving the rich of all those pretty trinkets they don't really need and selling them back to jewellers, who break them up and use the prcious metal and stones to make more pretty trinkets to sell to the rich. A great deal more honest than being a banker (cheap shot of the day).
I have nothing invested in the book other than having fun in writing it (well, fun is a subjective word, but I have no intention of getting angsty over the thing). It is a fantasy adventure. It might have wizards (but, probably won't), there will be mysterious happenings and Jeniche does, of course, have a mysterious past. So mysterious I certainly have no idea what it is. I've also a rough idea for a second book, which makes a trilogy inevitable, really.
And, yes. I am having fun with it. I'm also learning things about writing, trying new ways of doing things, and desperately (bugger) trying to avoid words that end with -ly.
I'm not doing too badly with it. I started on the 31 January and then stopped for just over a week. Now I'm back with it and have about 11,000 words on paper, aiming for a modest 70,000. Who knows, it might even be saleable when it's finished.
So, to avoid wasting endless hours playing games, fretting over how the submissions of Thin Reflections are doing, or getting into sickening and socially reprehensible habits like dusting, I decided to write a book. The ultimate in procrastination, if you like.
Charlie Cornelius exists in other planes of reality (how could she not). One of her alternates, is a young woman called Jeniche. She lives in a city and makes a living by relieving the rich of all those pretty trinkets they don't really need and selling them back to jewellers, who break them up and use the prcious metal and stones to make more pretty trinkets to sell to the rich. A great deal more honest than being a banker (cheap shot of the day).
I have nothing invested in the book other than having fun in writing it (well, fun is a subjective word, but I have no intention of getting angsty over the thing). It is a fantasy adventure. It might have wizards (but, probably won't), there will be mysterious happenings and Jeniche does, of course, have a mysterious past. So mysterious I certainly have no idea what it is. I've also a rough idea for a second book, which makes a trilogy inevitable, really.
And, yes. I am having fun with it. I'm also learning things about writing, trying new ways of doing things, and desperately (bugger) trying to avoid words that end with -ly.
I'm not doing too badly with it. I started on the 31 January and then stopped for just over a week. Now I'm back with it and have about 11,000 words on paper, aiming for a modest 70,000. Who knows, it might even be saleable when it's finished.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
I'll be glad when this year's over
By god, it's dusty in here. Cobwebs in the corners. Woodlice partying along the skirting board.
I have, to put it bluntly, had a bastard couple of months. I have been writing, but not felt much like coming in here and waving it about in public - so to speak.
Not only have I lost my brother, my beloved little cat was discovered to have had a tumour - the sort that you know nothing about until it is too late. We had her put to sleep and she now rests in our garden.
Given that she was my constant companion over the last seventeen years, especially since I became ill, the loss of her has been hard. So, here's to Catkin who was with me when I got my first contract and who was with me with every book I have written since.
I have, to put it bluntly, had a bastard couple of months. I have been writing, but not felt much like coming in here and waving it about in public - so to speak.
Not only have I lost my brother, my beloved little cat was discovered to have had a tumour - the sort that you know nothing about until it is too late. We had her put to sleep and she now rests in our garden.
Given that she was my constant companion over the last seventeen years, especially since I became ill, the loss of her has been hard. So, here's to Catkin who was with me when I got my first contract and who was with me with every book I have written since.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
25 things...
I am not, in the usual run of things, a meme/list person. I mean, have you seen The Guardian's feeble attempt at 1000 books we should all read? Pathetic. How can you have a list of must-read crime books without a mention of Margery Allingham? And that's not just because I like her books. She has long been acknowledge as one of the four queens of crime fiction and was certainly the most inventive of them. Anyway, before I go off on a rant about lists and lazy journalism/TV programming, I did this one as it is entirely subjective (it's 25 random things about me), endlesslessly fascinating (remember the 'about me' bit?), and it gave me something to do instead of taking a 9lb lump hammer to my intransigent computer.
Also, I'm supposed to tag 25 people, get them to do the same. Well, I'm not. If you want to do this, fine, but I'm not tagging you otherwise the whole universe will soon be listing 25 things about itself and we'll never get anything else done.
Graeme…
1 – rarely goes a day without listening to some Hawkwind.
2 – is to computers what icebergs are to Olympic class passenger liners.
3 – used to have waist length hair (man).
4 – loves Barbara (yes, Catkin, and you as well; and Tilly).
5 – was a horse in Equus and thus one of the few people in Birmingham not to see Jane Wymark remove her clothes on stage.
6 – venerates the hare.
7 – wishes Boudicca had won (it was close).
8 – prefers, on the whole, the company of women.
9 – did inhale (man).
10 – believes that writers are magicians.
11 – recognizes his success as a writer, but would not refuse more.
12 – is blessed with all the friends who live in his computer.
13 – has myalgic encephalomyelitis and fibromyalgia.
14 – likes green and silver (and is partial to Green & Blacks).
15 – is vegetarian.
16 – dislikes politicians.
17 – still remembers his first proper bike with great fondness (cheers, Alan).
18 – was approached, when 17, by a band who wanted him to be their manager.
19 – underwent the first stages of recruitment to MI5, but withdrew.
20 – would like to be slim enough to wear waistcoats again without looking avuncular.
21 – has lived on a farm.
22 – used to do tapestry until polyarthralgia made it painful to hold the needle.
23 – is a Druid.
24 – will be coming back.
25 – wrote this listening to Live Chronicles (it was Hendrix live at the Fillmore East when I originally wrote the list).
Also, I'm supposed to tag 25 people, get them to do the same. Well, I'm not. If you want to do this, fine, but I'm not tagging you otherwise the whole universe will soon be listing 25 things about itself and we'll never get anything else done.
Graeme…
1 – rarely goes a day without listening to some Hawkwind.
2 – is to computers what icebergs are to Olympic class passenger liners.
3 – used to have waist length hair (man).
4 – loves Barbara (yes, Catkin, and you as well; and Tilly).
5 – was a horse in Equus and thus one of the few people in Birmingham not to see Jane Wymark remove her clothes on stage.
6 – venerates the hare.
7 – wishes Boudicca had won (it was close).
8 – prefers, on the whole, the company of women.
9 – did inhale (man).
10 – believes that writers are magicians.
11 – recognizes his success as a writer, but would not refuse more.
12 – is blessed with all the friends who live in his computer.
13 – has myalgic encephalomyelitis and fibromyalgia.
14 – likes green and silver (and is partial to Green & Blacks).
15 – is vegetarian.
16 – dislikes politicians.
17 – still remembers his first proper bike with great fondness (cheers, Alan).
18 – was approached, when 17, by a band who wanted him to be their manager.
19 – underwent the first stages of recruitment to MI5, but withdrew.
20 – would like to be slim enough to wear waistcoats again without looking avuncular.
21 – has lived on a farm.
22 – used to do tapestry until polyarthralgia made it painful to hold the needle.
23 – is a Druid.
24 – will be coming back.
25 – wrote this listening to Live Chronicles (it was Hendrix live at the Fillmore East when I originally wrote the list).
Monday, 12 January 2009
Passing through
What with everything (to which can be added a chest infection and a touch of food poisoning), I haven't felt much like posting, writing, or doing very much at all except vegging in front of the TV with some DVDs and reading.
So, nothing really exciting to write about.
Thin Reflections has picked up a few rejections (so nothing unexpected there) and I'm getting my strength up to package a few more submissions. Given the current climate, caused by all those useless wankers (sorry, bankers... no, I got it right first time) who wouldn't know a book if I smacked them round the back of the head with one, I doubt anything other than the usual, sure-fire garbage is going to be picked up by the 'big-players'. You know the ones; all those corporate suits wondering why the market for z-list celeb, ghost-written shite has dried up and moaning that nobody writes any decent (that is, money-spinning) books any more. I will not be sorry if they crash, burn, smoulder, and blow away on the wind. They will have caused their own demise. My only sympathy, really, is with mid list authors and all of us who aspire to that exalted position. But maybe, just maybe, all those hardworking independent publishers and book shops will come back into their own and we will see a book market that puts a great deal more emphasis on the product than on the profit margin, bonuses, and shareholders dividends.
You can tell I'm feeling better - back to biting the hand that might (well, probably never will) feed me.
Here's hoping you all get that book finished, snapped up, and in print this year.
So, nothing really exciting to write about.
Thin Reflections has picked up a few rejections (so nothing unexpected there) and I'm getting my strength up to package a few more submissions. Given the current climate, caused by all those useless wankers (sorry, bankers... no, I got it right first time) who wouldn't know a book if I smacked them round the back of the head with one, I doubt anything other than the usual, sure-fire garbage is going to be picked up by the 'big-players'. You know the ones; all those corporate suits wondering why the market for z-list celeb, ghost-written shite has dried up and moaning that nobody writes any decent (that is, money-spinning) books any more. I will not be sorry if they crash, burn, smoulder, and blow away on the wind. They will have caused their own demise. My only sympathy, really, is with mid list authors and all of us who aspire to that exalted position. But maybe, just maybe, all those hardworking independent publishers and book shops will come back into their own and we will see a book market that puts a great deal more emphasis on the product than on the profit margin, bonuses, and shareholders dividends.
You can tell I'm feeling better - back to biting the hand that might (well, probably never will) feed me.
Here's hoping you all get that book finished, snapped up, and in print this year.
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