Start Strong, and Carry On

Since last Saturday, my mind has been buzzing with ideas and suggestions about how to make my writing better and more attention-grabbing, and I’m really trying to remember it all before it fizzles away into the arid dustbowl inside my head. I learned a lot from the agents who spoke to us about what makes them take notice of a submission – make your opening snappy, make your first sentence brilliant, don’t overlook the importance of the first five pages – but it was a lot to take in.

This is how my brain feels, right now.
Image: cnn.com

Then I had an idea: compare a current WiP with an earlier version of the same story, and see how far you’ve come – if indeed you have progressed at all. It can be really hard to think objectively about your own work when you’re so isolated from other writers; you don’t know how you compare, where you stand, whether you’re any good in relation to them. So, the next best thing is to compare your current work with what you were doing years ago and see whether you’ve improved.

This, of course, can be a scary prospect.

I’m currently working on a new book, one without a title (so we can call it ‘Mara’, after the main character); it’s based very loosely on an idea I had years ago but which quickly ran out of steam. According to the file, the original work dates from 2006; I couldn’t believe it had been so long. It’s an idea that never quite left me alone, which is why I’m currently working on it again.

In the original version of this story the character was called Molly, not Mara, but everything else is the same. She is a young girl of twelve whose father was lost at sea almost a year before the story begins, and she is finding it hard to cope with her grief. Here’s the opening paragraph of the first version of this story:

Molly wrapped herself tightly in the old tartan shirt that had once belonged to her dad; it still smelled like him, a faint hint of his old aftershave soothing her, making her feel safe. The shirt was red, her dad’s favourite colour, and it was soft and downy against her cheek. Falling asleep had been hard since her dad had died. It had been nearly a year now, so perhaps the scent that Molly could barely detect on the shirt was her imagination, or a memory. She snuggled deeper into it, her forehead wrinkling with effort, praying for the smell to stay with her. Just as she was about to fall asleep, her eyes jerked open, and she glanced towards her wardrobe door. It was open. She blinked into the half-darkness for a couple of breaths, her heart thundering in her chest, before flinging the shirt to one side and clambering out of bed. How could the door be open? She had asked Mum to close it before she went to bed… She shut the door hard, convinced she had woken her mother up with the thump, but there was no stirring from the next room. She crept back over the floor, swaddling herself in the shirt once more, and, checking one last time that the wardrobe door had stayed shut, fell into a fitful sleep.

Right. So much for that.

Now, here’s the opening paragraph of the current version of the book – bearing in mind it’s a first draft, let’s compare the two:

Wait for it, thought Mara. Any second now…
The car swung round the bend, like it did every morning at ten past eight, and the big white arrows appeared on the road, as usual. This way to Fun! screamed the sign, looking even more garish than it usually did. It was covered in pictures of kids laughing as they careered down plastic chutes wearing inflatable rings around their middles, and giant hotdogs danced with knives and forks all the way along the bottom. The South-East’s Best Holiday Destination! it announced, as if anyone didn’t know.
‘That stupid place,’ griped Mum, her knuckles whitening around the steering wheel. ‘If I have to look at it one more time…’ Her words fizzed away into mumbles, but Mara didn’t need to hear. She said the same things every morning as they passed the motorway exit for the waterpark.
‘It’s supposed to be quite fun, actually,’ said Mara, gazing out the window as the brightly-painted sign whizzed by. ‘Some of the girls in my class went – ‘
‘I don’t want to talk about this, Mara. All right? Just, I don’t know. Turn on the radio, or something.’
Mara sighed, twisting around in her seat. She leaned forward slowly so the safety belt wouldn’t cut into the side of her neck, and reached toward the radio buttons. ‘You won’t have to do this much longer anyway, Mum. Bring me to school, I mean. After next week, you won’t have to pass it any more.’
Mrs Fletcher’s head snapped around like she’d been slapped. ‘What are you talking about? What do you mean, I won’t have to bring you to school? Why wouldn’t I have to bring you to school?’ Her eyes were bugging out, and there were two tiny white spots on either side of her nose.
‘I – just – the summer holidays!’ said Mara, her words flapping about like a freshly caught fish. ‘I mean, you won’t have to bring me to school because of the holidays. That’s all.’
Mum licked her lips, and looked back at the road again. She blinked, and coughed a bit, and wiped one hand over her forehead. ‘Just – don’t do that. Don’t talk like that. All right?’
Mara slumped back in her seat. ‘Like what?’
‘You know very well what, Mara Fletcher,’ snapped Mum, glancing around as she got ready to indicate. ‘You know very well.’
And Mara did know. She should’ve thought before saying anything. Mum had been like this ever since Dad had died – always thinking the worst, and expecting the worst, and waiting for the next disaster.
Soon, it would be a year.
Mara wrapped her hand around her conch-shell necklace, and stayed quiet until they pulled into the school car park. When she told Mum ‘goodbye,’ all she did was nod.

 I’m not sure which version you prefer, but I know which one I like better – the second, by a mile. It’s like it was written by a different person. This is the difference that almost eight years (eight years!) can make to your writing. The first version is flat – it tells, rather than shows,the reader what Molly is going through. We get no real insight into her mind, or her relationship with her mother. It’s also riddled with clichés – the scent of a deceased loved one lingering on their clothing, a story beginning with someone falling asleep or waking up (this should, I now know, always be avoided), abrupt transitions from one narrative thread to another (the shirt to the wardrobe door), overwrought language – and, frankly, it’s boring.

Forgive me. I was young and stupid when I wrote this.

The second version – though far from perfect – is more dynamic. It makes use of dialogue. It sets up the important things in an opening scene: the relationship between the protagonist and her mother; hints at a couple of different sorts of conflict, not just the obvious one; the reader is shown the grief they are feeling and the stress it is causing rather than being simply told.

Comparing these pieces of work has illustrated exactly how important the lessons I learned at the weekend are – you really can’t overlook the importance of your opening sections when writing a novel. You need to begin in the right place, hooking a reader into an emotional relationship with your characters just before you yank the carpet out from under them. You have to really work at the opening scenes because that’s the only chance you have to attract a reader’s full attention. Personally, I also believe you owe it to your reader to keep that standard up throughout the book – I’ve read so many stories that start off brilliantly but taper away as they go – but it’s definitely true that an agent, or a potential reader, won’t keep struggling with a book that starts off clumsily.

I recommend doing this exercise (comparing something you’re writing now with something you wrote years ago) because it shows you that, even if you didn’t think it, you have progressed. It’s only natural that you’ll get better as you go, and the more you work at your writing the more polished and interesting it will become.

Even if reading your old work does make you feel a bit like this:

Image: mlp.wikia.com

Bonne chance!

 

A Second Date with an Agent: Things Get Serious

Yesterday’s post was a big hit – it seems there’s a lot of interest in anything that smacks of an insight into an agent’s mind (and I so totally understand!) – so today’s post will recap the rest of the advice we were lucky enough to receive at the Date with an Agent event at the weekend.

I think the first thing I’ll say is this: agents are people, too. Having been in a room with several of them and having actually exchanged actual words with a couple, I know that you don’t have to do a Bavmorda on it in order to get their attention.

I command thee to represent me!
Image: pinterest.com

Yeah. So, you know. No spells or bribes or potions or whatever. Just write a good book and send it to them, and don’t be pushy or weird about it. And also agents are a lot less scary in real life than you’d imagine.

Seriously.

Slushpiles, reassuringly, still seem to be the primary place from which most of our agents draw their clients; despite the fears of some of the participants, the agents assured us that they do read everything that comes across their desks and that – mishaps aside – they endeavour to get back to everyone within a reasonable time-frame. However, part of the whole ‘remember agents are people too’ thing is ‘remember agents are people too who have extremely busy full-time jobs and lives and commutes and significant others and children and bills and all the usual stuff.’ It was mentioned by a couple of them that people still do things like expect them to return calls or emails within days instead of months; if you submit to an agent, you’ve got to be prepared to wait for a response. You’ve also got to be absolutely sure you’ve made yourself as contactable as possible – put your details in the header or footer of every page of your submission, get an email signature with your email address(es), Twitter handle and contact numbers, be active on social media without stalking or harassing the agents concerned – and you’ll find that they’ll respond favourably to your efforts to make things as easy for them as possible.

When asked why they chose to become agents, Simon Trewin responded by saying that he loves the intellectual stimulation of the job, and that he has always had a love of books and words. Polly Nolan loves to work with authors and mentor them, and she takes particular joy in encouraging their stories out – and she’s certainly experienced at doing that, having been headhunted by the Greenhouse Literary Agency last year due to her skill at finding new talent. Sallyanne Sweeney relishes the close relationship between authors and agents – sometimes, publishers and editors change but the author/agent relationship can be a long-standing one. She also loves working with all aspects of book production, from the seed of an idea to a finished product. Madeleine Milburn loves talent-spotting and takes particular enjoyment in doing deals for her authors, and Faith O’Grady not only loves authors and books but also enjoys being part of the process of bringing a book to completion.

A very brave soul in the audience asked the agents about their ‘exit strategy’ – what happens when the relationship between author and agent goes awry? Simon Trewin stressed that he takes on authors, and not books. He, like all the agents, looks long-term at an author’s career but admitted that sometimes the spark between author and agent does fade and when that happens it’s best for everyone to sever the relationship and allow the author to go on to success with another agent. Sallyanne Sweeney described how her agency, Mulcahy Associates, loves to work with agents so long as the working relationship stays happy for everyone concerned, and Madeleine Milburn explained how sometimes it can take a long time to sell a book, and that authors should keep working, and keep writing, to keep their options open while their agent is working on their behalf. Faith O’Grady emphasised this by saying that authors and agents need to be persistent. Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, who organised the event and who is a literary scout (The Inkwell Group), described writing a book as being akin to reducing gravy – she advised the crowd not to let their words get in the way of the story, and to keep editing and working on their stories until the very best and richest content is all that remains.

A lengthy discussion took place about author profiles and social media, and all the agents agreed that social media matters, but so do traditional means of making connections between an author and an audience. Connections sell books. They advised things like writing for your local paper, writing book reviews, having shorter pieces published – all of these things build a profile, and it’s always good to think about ways to find the people who will read your book. Marketing budgets in most publishing houses have been cut back, and so authors who have platforms and who are able and willing to help promote themselves are a good thing from a publisher’s point of view. Twitter is incredibly useful, not just for contacts but for finding out about opportunities and openings and competitions, and so long as you remember social conventions – i.e. do not harass or stalk anyone on social media, for any reason – it can be a very wise move to open a Twitter account. Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin also recommended developing a blog or website, and stressed the importance of including contact information, telling us a horror story about losing the cover sheet from an excellent submission she received, and having to work very hard to find a way to contact the author. Build a rounded, interconnected social media profile, and always bear your target market in mind.

A very good tip we received from Vanessa was to write yourself a selection of author biographies – 50-word, 100-word, 500-word – to suit different purposes. Author bios are not your life story, however; you shouldn’t be waxing lyrical about your lovely dogs and grandchildren, for instance. Write in third person. Be succint. Show your publishing credits and your social media handles. Show a bit of originality and flair. If you have relevant expertise, mention it – if you’re a retired police sergeant who now writes crime novels, for instance. Practise getting out and talking to people, presenting your work, doing author events. It will all stand to your credit as your career progresses.

The fantastic Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, who runs the Inkwell Group and writing.ie, and is a prominent and very successful literary talent scout.
Image: asiam.ie

Vanessa also explained at some length what the process of selling a book entails, and how it affects authors. She described the reality of advances, which is a sum of money paid to an author in advance of sales, which needs to be earned back through sales before royalties – typically less than ten percent of a book’s gross value – can start to be earned. Self-publishing through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) or CreateSpace means that the author earns a far higher royalty percentage, depending on the price they charge for their work, and it is possible for an author to move between ‘traditional’ publishing and self-publishing. She stressed the importance of having your work edited and proofread if you choose to self publish, and how vital it is to engage a professional designer to create a book cover for you. There are several companies which provide a complete package for self-publishing, including Kazoo and Emu Ink.

The day finished with a discussion about an agent’s role – which is to get an author the very best deal possible – and a sobering reminder that signing with an agent is not the be-all and end-all; in a lot of ways, the work begins once you have an agent. We were reminded that most authors don’t write full-time, and on average authors earn less than £10,000 per year from their work – but I’m pretty sure that didn’t put anyone off. We were also treated to a wonderful talk from author Jax Miller, who is a client of Simon Trewin – referred to him through Inkwell – who has had a huge amount of success, rather quickly; not only was listening to Jax speak huge fun, but it also reminded us that sometimes dreams do come true.

In sum: it’s important to remember to be professional in all your contact with agents, do your homework on them and their agencies, and make sure your work is as ready as you can get it before you approach them. They are real human beings whose livelihoods depend on finding new talent and nurturing their existing clients, and they want to find you as much as you want to find them. Judging by the ones I’ve met, they’re also exceedingly nice.

I hope that these posts, today’s and yesterday’s, have been helpful and encouraging, and – as usual – if you have any questions or need more information shoot me a comment, Tweet or email. Basically: keep writing, keep submitting, and never give up hope!

 

Date with an Agent

The only problem with having amazing weekends is the Monday morning which follows them.

Image: sodahead.com

I am a tired lady this morning, but it’s definitely good tired.

This past Saturday, I was privileged to be one of seventy-five unagented writers invited to Dublin Castle to take part in a fantastic event called Date with an Agent, held in conjunction with Dublin Writers’ Festival. Not only did we have the chance to listen to a selection of guest speakers discuss all aspects of the publishing industry in Ireland and worldwide, but we also had the brain-boggling opportunity to meet an agent. In the flesh. One-to-one. For realz.

It was a scary prospect, in some ways: I did a lot of preparation in the run-up to the event, and while I didn’t necessarily use everything I’d prepared (we had ten minutes with the agent, which sounds like a lot, but it zipped past), it was good to have that ‘net’ of knowledge at the back of my mind. I knew I’d feel a little like a pygmy among giants, too, so I was expecting to sit in a corner and wibble gently for the day; however, I found myself talking to a wide variety of people, writers from all over the place with vastly differing life experience and literary interests and several generous, interesting and supportive industry professionals, all of whom couldn’t have been more welcoming.

It was – to use a word which annoys me, but which keeps cropping up in my written and spoken communication lately – awesome.

Chuck Hath Spoken.
Image: forums.marvelheroes.com

The agents who took part were: Simon Trewin of the WME Agency, Polly Nolan of the Greenhouse Literary Agency, Sallyanne Sweeney of Mulcahy Associates (whom I was lucky enough to meet), Madeleine Milburn of the Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV and Film Agency and Faith O’Grady of the Lisa Richards Agency. The day began with the agents introducing themselves and their agencies and discussing the sort of work they represent; then, they took questions from the audience, and every word they uttered was indispensable.

Ever the swot, I took about twenty pages of notes. I’m going to try to distil the wisdom here, but bear with me if it spills over a bit. Ready? Good.

Image: benuambassador.wordpress.com

In relation to beginning the submissions process, the agents were – unsurprisingly – united. Polly Nolan stressed the importance of being able to summarise your book in a single sentence, in which you should be able to identify what you’re writing, and who it’s for; Simon Trewin unambiguously advised aspiring novelists not to write to the market. Faith O’Grady made the useful point that if you, as the writer, have a good grasp of your genre and the ‘type’ of book you’re writing, it will help you when it comes time to revise your work, and Polly Nolan further advised us that no idea is wasted – you don’t need to put all your good ideas in one book. She also stressed the importance of the first five pages of your novel, and how they are vital for grabbing an agent’s – and a reader’s – attention; they can’t be neglected. Sallyanne Sweeney advised us to know our market, and to ready widely in our area, and Madeleine Milburn suggested practising our pitching by taking published books and writing pitches for them, in three or four sentences.

Sallyanne Sweeney discussed how personal taste does play a part in an agent’s decision as to whether to ask for more of a book, and agents will know editors’ tastes which will influence their thinking when it comes time to submit the book to publishers; if an idea has potential but it’s not for the agent to whom it’s been submitted, it is possible that the book will be passed to a different agent within the agency. She made it clear that an agent can’t represent a book they don’t love. Polly Nolan picked up on this by saying that you need an agent who’ll believe in and fight for your book, and they can only do that if they care about it. Simon Trewin mentioned that several editors and agents turned down Harry Potter, but that if it had been picked up and published for the ‘wrong’ reasons, half-heartedly, it may not have become the phenomenon which it turned out to be.

On the important question of who agents like to represent, Madeleine Milburn said that she looks for professional people, those who are social media-savvy, a person who is open to suggestions and who is ambitious. Sallyanne Sweeney made the point that it doesn’t necessarily take social media to establish a ‘brand’; some authors will find social media more relevant than others. Everything you do builds you as a writer, including the competitions you enter and the stories you publish; it all goes into honing your craft. Faith O’Grady likes people who are prolific, Polly Nolan those who are pragmatic and realistic, Sallyanne Sweeney those who bring determination and resilience to their work. Simon Trewin said he has found clients through newspaper articles, as has Sallyanne Sweeney, but that they’ve also been referred to him through literary consultancies like Inkwell. Polly Nolan has had clients referred to her by other authors, and has also found clients through the Greenhouse Funny Prize, of which she is a judge. Sallyanne Sweeney has found clients through personal approaches and referrals, but also through her slushpile, and she says that agents need to be proactive. Faith O’Grady has also approached public figures who seem to have a story to tell, and this has been fruitful for her in the past.

Image: writersliving.com

Phew. I’ve only managed to get through a fraction of the issues discussed, and this post needs to be wrapped up. I’ll revisit this topic tomorrow, maybe, if anyone would be interested in learning more? Let me know. Yet to be discussed are issues like pen names, public speaking, how to write an author biography, the Irish publishing scene, how things like advances and royalties work and – important for some, but not for me – how much money you can expect to earn as a writer.

I hope this has been of interest. If anyone has questions, hit me in the comments.

 

Pitch and Yaw

Over the past few days, I’ve been writing. No great surprise there, I hear you say. However, I haven’t been writing words to knit into my new WiP, which has really been left swinging in the wind, or a new story, or something towards one of the many competitions I’d like to enter. Instead, I’m preparing for an upcoming event at which I’ll have the chance to talk to some very important people about my wee book, and why it’s marvellous. So, I’ve been writing about my beloved ‘Emmeline’ – elevator pitches, synopses, this-is-why-the-book-is-great documents – without, it has to be said, a lot of success.

So, okay. It’s not all bad. I think I have my elevator pitch, for instance; writing that was no picnic. You basically need: your protagonist/s, what they want, and what’s in their way; your antagonist/s, what they want, and what’s in their way; how these two struggles intersect – and all in two sentences. It’s harder than I would have imagined to condense an entire book like this and, scarily, it really gets you to focus on the core of your story. The risk there, of course, is: what if you find out that the core of your story isn’t all that good?

Whoa.
Image: maltimpostor.com

Quite, Ted. Quite.

It’s amazing to think you could write an entire book – eighty thousand words, almost three hundred pages, and only really discover what it’s about when you write a two-sentence ‘potted plot’, isn’t it? But that, of course, is why it’s important to do it. If the core of your plot isn’t strong, or worth telling, then all you’ve done is create three hundred pages of window-dressing around an inadequate idea.

And nobody wants that.

Anyway, I’ve discovered that ‘Emmeline’ is essentially about searching for an idea of home, which was a surprise. I think this is one of the oldest, most basic and most comforting plot arcs in human culture, and it turns up everywhere. It was also something that interested me when I worked as an academic researcher – I remember writing a paper about a character who tried to create a ‘home’ wherever he went, only to have it destroyed over and over, forcing him to keep moving – and so it’s almost fitting that it’s turned up again. Until I wrote this elevator pitch, though, I would have thought ‘Emmeline’ was a quest story – save the world! Outsmart the baddies! – but it seems that, at its heart, it’s about family. I quite like that knowledge, to be honest.

Then, I had to write about the story.

Image: brickcitylaw.com

I tried to do this five or six times, starting and deleting and starting again, until I eventually had to admit defeat. I walked away from the computer. I did other stuff. I went outside and breathed the sweet air. I tried to calm my spinning thoughts. Through all of this, though, I knew that I had to go back and try again, and so it never fully left my mind.

So, what’s it like to write about a story you’ve written? Well.

You know when you meet someone for the first time and you get nervous and start babbling, and you hear yourself talking and you say ‘holy heck, will you just shut up?’ inside your head but you don’t shut up, you just keep talking and with every passing syllable you look more and more insane? That’s kind of how it felt, except I was alone (which made it even weirder.) I started flinging random sentences at the page, including my feelings as I started the book and how I loved the characters and how I felt it was the kind of book I’d have liked to read at the age the characters are, and it turned into a giant mess. There was no direction, no structure, no meaning – and it made zero sense. I suppose it was a tie between having too much to say and not really knowing what was the right thing to say – the thing which will catch an agent’s attention, and which will set my work in its best light.

And then I remembered something vital.

I wasn’t writing a document that was going to be read – I was writing a document that was designed to help me to speak. This is going to turn into a presentation, of sorts; I’m not going to be handing over my written description of the book and sitting, in silence, while the other person reads it. That, naturally, changes the dynamic of the text completely. I pulled on my copywriter hat, looked critically at the mess I’d created, and started again.

I began by asking myself a series of questions. What is your book about? Who is your protagonist? What does she want? Who tries to get in her way? What obstacles does she face? These, and many more, became my new framework. I made my answers brief – a few sentences, at most – and ruthlessly edited if they went over. I imagined myself being interviewed, and how I’d respond (well, how I’d respond if I were being my most erudite, self-possessed and collected self, which is unlikely to happen in reality), and it really helped.

Image: rebeccasbook.blogpot.com

I’m not quite finished the document yet, but at least now I know that I can do it. I hate feeling out of control and overwhelmed, and things tend to get on top of me when I start to lose my grip on what I’m doing. It’s a dark spiral; things pile up, and you can’t keep up, and it gets worse and worse until eventually you have to start again from scratch. I lose my sense of direction and balance, and end up going all over the place looking for something that usually ends up being under my nose the whole time.

The mad thing is, if I’d been doing this for someone else the first thing I’d have suggested is making a list of questions. When it comes to doing it for myself, though, I have to go through all the panic first like it’s a rite of passage, or something.

What a funny little person I am.