… As I anticipated you write very well and the atmosphere you convey was sometimes all too dark for this reader. However, that merely shows that you know what you are doing. Nevertheless, I have no direct experience of handling fiction in this area and don’t have enough confidence in my ability to find a publisher for you to offer to read the complete work.
I don’t know how best to advise you. You could examine the shelves of your nearest large bookshop and/or library and make a note of which publishers are producing work in the area, however vaguely, of the novel you have written and then approach those publishers direct.
I’m sorry I can’t offer to help you.
And from one of the busiest, most respected agents in the UK as well. She replied within a week of receiving my manuscript. Not the sort of reply a first time novelist is used to. It’s usually just a postcard that says ‘NO’.
13 chapters. 125,327 words. Two and a half years. And several grisly deaths, naturally.
How better to quietly celebrate actually finishing a novel for the first time, than listening to Together in Electric Dreams, drinking a can of Becks lager and gnawing a slab of chocolate?
He felt the indifference surrounding him - the hard seat of the pew, the flagstone’s chill leeching into his heels and toes. He no longer looked to the statues above, no longer watched the unattended altar and wondered. He simply stared on at whatever his eyes encountered, no longer even asking for answers, no longer waiting for a response. No longer waiting for anything. Just waiting.
Chapter 10 is done. It’s done. It’s done, it’s finished - the last of the ’safe’ chapters before we get to the series finalé crunching three parter. This particular chapter has taken me over two months to write out in full. About a week of that was doing the last scene alone, the last few days were spent on the last three sentences. Not that the last scene was particularly difficult other than the fact that once I’d finished it, I’d have completed another chapter. I seem to have huge issues with closure. As soon as something ends I don’t seem to want to acknowledge it, as if it’s already over anyway, so why bother going that last mile? As I’ve said before - mostly since starting this particular noveltwo years ago - the more you write the more you find out about yourself.
Nanowrimo? You have to be kidding. I’m still trying to finish what I started for Nanowrimo 2005 and have the whole of the eighteenth century to do before the end of the month.
I do wish I’d got my postcard back though. If any one happens to be passing through Granville Island Market in Vancouver any time soon, please go and see the mad postcard woman in the mall for me. It’s the black and white photo of the little girl, clutching a pig and laughing. You’d make it into my will (assuming you’re the sort of person who feels they could benefit from a collection of broken watches and a few fuzzy videos of Star Trek: The Next Generation taped off the TV. Still, it’s possibly still a fair exchange for a postcard.)
I keep looking at the letter and feeling perhaps inappropriately excited. I feel like I should be ticking something off a list, or running a line through the agent’s name with a big fat black marker pen. As Adrian Mole said on receiving the response to his first submission, “it’s a very nice rejection letter.”
It was one of my favourite postcards as well - the one of the little girl holding a pig and laughing her little socks off. I bought it in Granville Island Market two years ago. I do hope I get it back.
Well. So. Ta da. I’ve done it. Yeah. I’ve finally finished my synopsis. I have actually made a submission to a literary agent. Crikey. And it only took two months as well.
I don’t feel relieved, I don’t feel elated. I do still feel a little tired, having gone almost 40 hours without any sleep, but mostly I feel terrified. I’m convinced I made a mistake somewhere in the submission. I’m suddenly possessed with the certainty that really it’s not a terribly good novel at all. I’m now almost certain I spelt my name wrong, or put a kiss after I wrote it. As soon as I dropped the envelope into the post box, all I wanted to do was stick my arm in and pull it out again.
But that’s a good sign, isn’t it? It’s certainly not a bed made for hubris.
I’ll be away for the next ten days, halfway up a mountain and permanently halfway through a cup of black coffee, listening to David Bowie and thinking about schizophrenia. Hopefully by the time I get back, my little laughing girl with her pig will be waiting for me.
I’ve been doing this synopsis for the past two months now, ever since I left work. The first hurdle was in sitting down to write it. The second was trying to stop crying when I pasted it into Word and found out it was eighteen pages. The third was trying to edit it down to ten pages and getting only as far as fourteen. The fourth was having a tantrum, realising it wasn’t working, and trying to rewrite the whole thing in five pages. The fifth was in calling the inevitably ever-persistent sixth page all names under the sun as it refused to be flushed away, more self- assertive than a retrovirus. The sixth is today, having discovered one of the agents I’m targeting (that is if they’re still in business by the time I get this finished) requires a three page synopsis rather than a five.
Have you ever tried to reduce a 110,000 word novel into three pages? It’s like asking Lisa Riley to wear a bikini. If it was meant to happen it would, but since it isn’t it just looks wrong and unnatural and watching the process makes you want to cry. I need an underwriter so I can do what I quit full time work to do in the first place. The longer I spend trimming the fringe of this novel rather than curling its locks, the more it becomes an unwanted child. “I’m going to quit my job so I can write synopses, again and again.”
I need more coffee. Instant coffee turns my stomach but so does editing. Let’s put the kettle on, put another Kirsty on, and pluck a few more feathers off this albatross.
After months of procrastination, temps perdu, illness and alcohol abuse, Chapter 6 of Beasts of the Field has finally been completed.
8,663 words
17 (A4) pages
This brings the novel in its current state up to a ridiculous 63,784 words at barely halfway through the total 13 chapters.
So much for that Nanowrimo goal of 50,000 words. This is going to so be over 100,000 words at least when it’s finished, and that’s not the sort of volume any agent’s going to be keen to shift.
It needs a final read through, but there’s no way I’m going to attempt that now. I feel like I’ve just given birth. Or would do if the “labour” hadn’t lasted the worse part of four months.
Several of my friends have kindly asked to read an extract of the story I am in no way going to reach the 50,000 word deadline of before the contest ends tomorrow, let alone finish.
But, before the New Year, when I will hopefully (and finally) complete a fully fleshed out novel, here is an extract you have all so kindly requested:
Sorry it’s probably not what you were expecting, but it is an extract, I assure you. Thanks very much for your kindly encouragingments, and for those of you who repeatedly told me to f**k off and write when I was lounging about wasting time.
Hopefully by this time next year, I’ll have several more substantial titles to my name. I do love adventures.
