Representation

It’s been quite a week. First came the news I’d reached the shortlist in the flash fiction competition, and then the conversation with the agent who had read the full manuscript for the novel. I’ve been sitting on exciting news since Thursday, hardly able to trust its reality, terrified it would be snatched away, but now that I’ve signed the relevant documentation, I can share it: I have accepted an offer of representation!

It’s been a long journey. I first embarked upon the quest for publication in 2006 with a novel that I shelved several years later. Two full novels later, various concepts that never made it to completion, and six drafts of my current project later, I’m now a client at DKW Literary Agency under the representation of the lovely Camille Burns.

This is a bigger step than I ever believed I would take. Secretly, I expected, when I quit my paid job last summer, to be back in some sort of educational setting (probably tutoring) part-time after a year out without any glimmer of hope. I wouldn’t give up, but I’d shelve the current novel (having exhausted the list of agents that I thought might take an interest) and write a new novel, to begin the long process again. I have a novel already conceptualised, that I was planning to draft in January 2024. I was working to a five-year plan that would eventually lead to self-publication of several novels. It would be a route into publication, and maybe I would find some success, but it would not be my dream path…

However, gaining an agent means I have access to the traditional route into publishing and all the benefits in terms of connections and industry experts. Just in brief conversations with Camille so far, I’ve received feedback that I’ve never received elsewhere that has been transformative for the novel (and right now I’m planning out a major redrafting of the final third), and her works have also made me consider areas of publishing that I’ve never considered, things like overseas and translation. I don’t know if my novel will ever have the level of success to require those kinds of services, but I know that it’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t have occurred to me if I were going it alone.

This has all come about because of the Bradford Literary Festival sessions where writers could pay to meet an agent and receive a critique of their work. Meeting an agent face-to-face, in a setting where that agent was paid to consider your work (rather than look for excuses to skip over it since they have another thousand hopefuls to also consider that day), really did make all the difference. And it makes such a big difference to have someone who is really enthusiastic about your writing, who believes that what you’ve written deserves to be read. If you are reading this as an aspiring writer, I strongly encourage you to check out Jericho Writers – a website that facilitates conversations between writers and agents, similar (if more expensive) than what I was lucky enough to be involved in at the literary festival.

Telling people that I have written a book is often a process of ‘expectation management’, since people who don’t know the industry often believe that reaching ‘the end’ means the book will be published the very next day. Even with an agent, it might be years before a publisher takes interest in this novel, if at all. However, it’s a palpable step, and I’m very excited to see where this road will take me.

As always, I can’t thank enough the fellow writers on Critique Circle, who’ve always given me such valuable and thoughtful feedback on my work. And thanks to everyone who has celebrated my small successes over the last twelve months: I’m so grateful for all your support.

Buns for Tea

 

I have exciting news: I can finally call myself a published writer!

This month, I reached a shortlist on The Bi-monthly FreeFlash Fiction Competition, which results in publication on the website and a small prize of £20 (minus the £3.50 entry fee, of course). A real earning from my writing! The story itself is only 300 words, so it ends up at about six pence per word. But the validation is priceless.

The shortlisted story is called ‘Lost Property’ and can be read here. Warning: it is a very dark story exploring how aspects of modernity may enable predatorial behaviour.

I should also give a huge shout out to all the critters on CritiqueCircle who gave feedback on an earlier draft of this story. I made a lot of substantial changes based on their input before I entered the story into this competition.

Write, edit, submit: the strategy is beginning to work.

The results are in...

 I have a small bit of news: I can now say I’m a longlisted writer.

A short story I wrote earlier this year called ‘Another Man’s Treasure’ made it onto the Frome Short Story Competition Long List 2023. You can click here to see the list, but it’s nothing exciting - it doesn't even say my name.

However, a longlist is a glimmer of hope. It means that a judge liked the story sufficiently to recognise it. It doesn’t mean that I’m published, though it does mean that I can try the story elsewhere to see whether a different judge in another competition would like it more.

It also means I can add this to my writing CV to hopefully make me stand out a little when querying agents for my novel. I don’t know whether I will have any success with the agent who is currently reading my full manuscript. I have to be prepared to be back in the usual position, with no agent, trying to reach out to others across the cybergulf. But if that’s where I am in a few months’ time, at least I’ll be able to tell agents that I am a longlisted writer.

How to Meet an Agent

 I have a little news: an agent has asked to read my full manuscript.

This is a tiny step that has never occurred before. It’s still very early days because the agent may read the entire novel and decide it would be too hard to sell. I’ve accepted that. However, she has promised to give feedback, so even in that scenario, hopefully her advice will make it more attractive to other agents. She’s already given me some excellent feedback on the opening chapters that I’m working to implement before I send it back to her.

Getting a full manuscript request has always been the stumbling point, the point at which I put my novels on hold and write something new. In some ways, the last ten months have been harder than when I was submitting to agents in my teens. Back then, I received a nice piece of paper with a generic rejection after a long wait. These days, the best I have received is an email, and in most cases, nothing at all.

It turns out that submitting work to the slushpile (the inbox of an agent) isn’t the best way to approach an agent. The route into communication with this agent came from a very different avenue: my attendance at Bradford Literary Festival.

I don’t know how typical this is of literary festivals, but I should note here that Bradford Literary Festival 2023 was an amazing event for emerging writers. They had many sessions which were pitched to unpublished writers, and as well as offering encouragement, real stories and practical advice, they also had a 1:1 event to meet an agent.

I booked onto this event through luck. I had no idea it was happening until a writing buddy on Critique Circle told me that she was doing it, and then I was lucky enough that I was in the country to attend, because the day before we arrived home from a holiday in Europe. Anyway, after wrestling with my own insecurities briefly (the terrifying prospect of receiving verbal feedback), I decided to go for it, because that must be the attitude to make something happen.

I had no expectations for the event. The website description simply said it was a chance to receive feedback from an agent. I thought it would be helpful to know which elements of my pitch were off-putting, and more specifically if the novel concept itself just wasn’t saleable and I should work on something else. So, it was an amazing experience to be told by someone in the industry that my writing style is good. It’s a huge validation of all the efforts I’ve put in over the years.

A third piece of luck I should mention is the agent I originally booked to meet was unable to attend, and the agent I met replaced him. From researching her, I was already happy, because her bio expressed her interest in Young Adult, while the original agent (from a pick of three not yet booked up) seemed only partially suitable due to his interest in Adult Fantasy.

The lesson I have taken from the festival generally is that this is a much better way to get in touch with agents. Meeting them in person begins a dialogue, allows them to see your passion and understand your aims much better than a sentence or two bio in a query letter ever can. Another statistic I learned from another session at the festival is that a big agent receives 700 to 1000 submissions every week to their inbox, of which they might accept just two new clients a year. I always knew the chances were slim, but statistics like that really hammer home just how infinitesimally slim the odds are. A really good question was asked in the general agent meet, when they referred to how most of their clients are not unsolicited. Someone asked how they find new writers, then, if they don’t find them in the slushpile, and the answer was: events like this one.

If nothing else, I know to look out for future events which involve agents. And that my writing is good.

Drafts and Redrafts and Redrafts

It’s been a busy few months, especially November, which became my editing month (as opposed to NaNoWriMo, which traditionally turns November into the drafting month). Each day my target was to edit one chapter, from the feedback I received on Critique Circle. I knew that I had time to edit the entire novel if I stuck to that target, and I managed to speed up towards the end (sometimes able to edit two chapters per day), meaning that I finished the entire draft on 24^th November.

So, as a reward for ‘gaining’ time, I can now give the blog a little attention…

This is the fourth draft. When I talk to people about the process, people fall into two camps generally: those who don’t understand drafting and those who wonder how you ever stop drafting. So, this blog can be about the drafting process.

Stephen King’s memoir On Writing compares the drafting process to excavating a dinosaur skeleton. The skeleton is the fragile story concept, and each draft is about trying to reach it without destroying the entire thing. He completes a novel in four drafts, if I recall the details correctly.

My process for this novel can be more aptly compared to swinging a wrecking ball and then collecting the rubble for the basis of the new building. There was nothing fragile about the movement between the first and the second drafts, which I suppose was because the skeleton was far from exposed after the first draft, buried in a primordial sludge of misdirection and misjudgement. A necessary sludge, I should note – because without a first draft, you can never go any further.

That hopefully explains why drafting is necessary. From the second draft, I received feedback from people on Critique Circle. Feedback comes in all forms, but the best feedback allows me to reconsider elements, and key world building elements came to light in this draft, which again significantly altered the novel.

Perhaps it’s better to think about redrafting as a series of earthquakes. Draft one to two was perhaps an 8 on the Richter scale, whereas two into three was more of a 7. From the feedback on draft three, the impact of the seismic shifts has significantly decreased. There was one major character decision that altered things, but overall, it was probably more a magnitude 5 shake up.

It's too soon to know what it’s like while the dust is settling. At the end of every draft, I inevitably think ‘yes, this is it!’ and then realise later (through reading myself or letting others read) that there are still major problems. However, I feel confident from the diminishing damage reports that it is moving towards its final draft.

My plan going forward is to submit to CC what is known in the industry as a ‘betaread’. The purpose of this is to receive overall feedback, which is different from CC’s usual week-by-week, chapter-by-chapter process. It should help me to know how well the novel as a whole is working. CC only brought this function in part way through this year; it may have been helpful, probably, at an earlier stage in the drafting process – something I will consider for future novels.

January 2023 will be the beta month, and from that feedback I’m hoping to be finished with this novel by the end of February. I feel like there are no more substantial changes to be done, though I’m happy to be proven wrong. However, if the Richter scale continues to diminish, I think the February draft (number five) will be the final one.

I’ve also been putting my ‘gained’ time to use to research short story competitions (the plan for 2023), but I’ll say more about that in another blog.

Submission Time

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but I’m now at a stage where I am ready to submit my novel to agents.

An amusing digression that highlights the passage of time: back when I submitted a novel in 2011, the convention for indicating italics in a manuscript was to underline. Naturally, I imitated this with the current novel submission, and then thought to myself, when preparing the emails, this is a hangover from the typewriter era that probably no longer exists now that everything is digital. A little research proved my speculation to be correct.

Nothing much else has changed. I wish I were in a stronger position with my ‘Writer’s CV’ but perhaps next year, I might be able to do something about that (more on that in a future blog).

Anyway, the current novel has been through three redrafts to get to this stage and is now entering its fourth draft. The feedback I have received so far from Critique Circle has confirmed that the fourth draft is more a refinement of the third, rather than a complete rewrite. This gives me the confidence to feel I can submit the first three chapters to agents to see if they are interested.

The wait time for a response from an agent varies, though the shortest promises a 6–8-week turnaround. At this stage, they will either reject you or ask to look at the full manuscript. I’ve never been beyond the stage of a simple rejection, so that’s currently what ‘success’ will look like for me.

I plan to use the interim period to keep working on the refinement of draft four. I’m in the process of digesting the feedback, although I won’t have the full picture until the beginning of November. However, the feedback so far has given me plenty to work on, week by week.

Another thing I plan to do is continue reading current Young Adult Fantasy to find new agents to query. I have compiled a list so far of about eleven agents, which is relatively small still (ideally, I’d like to submit to twenty agencies). My usual process is to let the book guide me to the agent, so it does take time to widen the net. However, the pleasure of this is being able to discover new authors.

What chance, realistically, do I have? All I know is that my current novel is my strongest to date. Should I receive twenty rejections over the next six months, I have various alternative options to consider, so it won’t be the end of the story.

How NOT to be a writer

It has been a long time since my last post.  Seven years, to be exact.  Much has changed in my life since the previous post, such as a stable teaching job and home ownership with associating interests like cooking.  One thing has not changed: I'm still no closer to achieving my dream to be a published author.

The progress over the silent years can be summarised through a series of snippets from letters of introduction that I write for new school groups each year:

September 2014: "I was busy writing a new story in the summer, and managed to reach 19,000 words. That might sound like a lot but it’s barely a quarter of the novel!"

September 2015: "This summer, I managed to write about 18,000 words of a children’s fantasy novel, taking it to about 37,000 words."

September 2016: "This summer, I managed to write about 24,000 words of a children’s fantasy novel, taking it to about 61,000 words."

September 2017: "This summer, I managed to write about 28,000 words of a children’s fantasy novel, taking it to about 89,000 words."

At this point, I should note, I am starting to worry about the length, as shown in a follow-up clause: "...but it's only about three-quarters complete!"

September 2018: "This summer, I managed to write 37,000 words, in order to complete a children’s fantasy novel that I’ve been working on for five years. The entire book is a bit too long right now (126,000 words), which is longer than the third Harry Potter book, so now I need to edit it to make it shorter!"

September 2019: "This summer, I have been editing one of my books, because I need to make it shorter before I send it to publishers. It’s a fantasy story called Spirit Bound and the first draft was longer than the third Harry Potter book. So far, I’ve edited the first fifth of the novel and have cut 4,500 words, so there’s still a lot of work to do!

This final letter doesn't truly reflect the level of despair I felt at the beginning of that summer when I realised, on reading the entire novel, how much significant structural work needed to be done in order to make the book more akin to its "true" conception.  A decision was made in 2014 to introduce an antagonist, which resurrected this novel and allowed me to keep working on it to the end of the completed draft.  In that sense, it was a good decision.  But even as I wrote it, I knew the antagonist came across as superficial and would need to be removed.  The bloating of the word count simply solidified this conviction (for those of you not familiar with the YA market, the upper word count for first time writers is 90K).

It was incredibly demoralising to reach the end of the summer holidays in 2019 and to know that I was only a fifth of the way.  To know that it was likely to take me, if I continued at that rate, another four years before I had a draft I might feel happy to present for micro-editing.

I tried to commit more time to my novel.  In the autumn term, I determined to free up at least one day a week to my writing.  I succeeded, to a certain extent, and managed to rewrite another 20,000 words.  However, as the spring term arrived, the precarious balancing act started to tip.  I dedicated too much time to writing in the Christmas holiday and, as a result, struggled to keep on top of the neglected planning for the spring term.  I abandoned the Sunday of writing but even this didn't free up enough time to feel 'on top' of things again.  I began to grow sick, from stress and insomnia.

Then something strange happened.

Coronavirus.

In a matter of weeks, as death tolls around the world began to creep up, the UK government took the decision to close schools and ask teachers to work remotely.  Overnight, my work load more than halved.  To explain, you should understand how the work can be divided into three main areas: planning lessons, delivering lessons and marking work.  With delivery gone and marking (sadly) dramatically reduced (as few students were submitting work for feedback), I could actually finish the school day at the normal time, rather than working into the evening and all weekend on planning, which for me, has always taken almost as long as delivery.

Suddenly, I could rewrite about 1000 words a day.  By the end of that first week of lockdown, the rewrite had reached 51,000 words.  I believed the final count would be somewhere between 90-100,000, and so, unlike most people, who anxiously watched the news wondering when the lockdown might ease, I watched for the opposite reason, knowing that if it could just last for about seven weeks, I would have enough time to finish the rewrite.

The associated guilt, I should add, was huge (and still is), to know that I was benefiting from something so terrible, which was (and still is) causing so much loss and grief to so many people, whereas I was feeling more well than I had for this entire year, simply because I could breathe.

This brings us to the present moment.  We are now at the end of the sixth week of the lockdown and I have completed the novel rewrite at 101,000 words.  It is still too long, but I feel the new version fixes the structural problems of the first draft.  I also believe there is room to cut 10% when the prose is sharpened, which will hopefully take it to nearer the upper YA limit.

Steven King wrote in his memoir about how he abandoned his teaching career because it was incompatible with his writing needs.  I can understand this.

All I ever need is time.  The last six weeks (in spite of the guilt) have been idyllic: long periods of creative energy punctuated with walks into the countryside (around our surprisingly rural home).

Moving into the next phase might be more manageable, even when the lockdown does ease.  Editing is a less intensive process, and easier to compartmentalise.  As the restrictions start to lift, I might be able to manage to dedicate an hour a day to the editing process (which involves renewing my membership at the online writing circle Critique Circle).

One day I will resolve this tension between earning money and writing.  For now, this is definitely not how to be a writer.