Archive for the 'Writing & Publishing' Category

Last week, in Waiting for Publication (Part 1), we were interrupted by a phone call that may or may not have been from your literary agent and which may or may not change your life…. The story continues.

It turns out the call is from your agent. But it’s good news and bad news. The five publishers she sent your manuscirpt to all loved it, she tells you. They all gave such lovely feedback. “That writer can really write.” “Some lyrical passage of prose.” “I laughed, I cried. It was beautiful.” And all these from those mythical names that you see on your bookshelf - Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins… These giants of the book world loved your book!

But.

“But it’s just not for us.” “But we’re not looking for rural romances right now.” “But the main character isn’t quite convincing enough.”

You’ll do anything, you say. You’ll fix it. You’ll make the main character convincing. You’ll change the Dorset farmyard location to New York. Whatever it takes. You’re so close!

But a but is a but.

Your agent resolves to send it out to five more publishers. “They all say they are confident that you will be published and they will live to regret the day they turned you away.”

So you go back to your nail-biting and waiting. They’ll regret it, you think. Yes, they will. You are suddenly Eliza Dolittle marching around your living room imagining all manner of doom for those fools who rejected you. “Just you wait, ‘Enry ‘Iggins, just you wait, I’ll be published and famous one day!”

I know a number of writers who have reached this stage and not got any further. Most put aside the dream of being a novelist and pursue writing in some other way - through poetry or writing creatively for pure pleasure or working on short stories. One writer has reached this stage with five different novels. And he has re-worked each one several times and they’ve submitted them to further rounds of publishers a year after the initial failed stage. Still nothing. And still he perseveres. I think he is on novel number seven now. And it’s about fifteen years on from the day he first started on novel number one.

I remember those phone conversatons with my agent. I remember standing at the window with the phone to my ear and feeling an icy chill creep all over me. I had come so far and now, we had received some beautifully generous let-downs from a number of publishers. How could this be happening? Things had gone so well. I couldn’t believe that I had come so close and it could all just fizzle out.

In my case, I had panicked before the last few answers had come back. Hodder & Stoughton was among them. And they offered me a contract.

There is something mad and tragic about being a writer sometimes, I think. Writer/ blogger Mark Pettus described it as being like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, waiting for the bridegroom who will never come amid the cobwebs and mouldering wedding cake. For me, my “prince” did come and saved me from being a mad old maid and I shall forever be grateful.

If you are a writer and you’d like to share your story of waiting for publication - whether your experiences have been good, bad or ugly - please add a comment or email me. I’d love to hear from you.

Following on from my podcast interview with Lucy Luck, a UK literary agent, and the posts Blind Date with an Agent Part 1 and Part 2, we are now at the stage, where all being well, you have found yourself an agent.

So, all you have to do is sit back and let the agent find you a publisher, right? Not so fast.

It is likely that your agent will ask you to change a few things in your manuscript. Like you, they will want your work to have the best chance of impressing an editor so they’ll want you to polish it till it shines. So your apprenticeship as professional writer begins. Can you view your work objectively? Can you cull your favourite, beautifully crafted prose with ruthless determination? Can you accept that some of what you’ve written can actually be improved?

Throughout these series, I’ve harped on and on about the re-writing and amending and re-working process. Yes, it makes for boring reading - oh no, I hear you cry, there she goes again, banging on about re-writing, enough already. Well, if you’re bored just reading this, then think about how you’re going to deal with actually having to do the re-writing time and time again, long after you excitedly finished your last chapter all those months ago. Aah, you’ll start to think, I was so young and naive back then, so full of energy - I never thought I’d have to go back to this wretched paragraph and this wretched chapter and this wretched character motivation all over again. And again. And again. Shoot me now.

I heard a story about a new novelist who fell at this hurdle. She was thrilled to get an agent - and a pretty prestigious one, too - but when the agent suggested changes, the writer got into a head-to-head row with him. This was her novel, her work, her art, she cried and flounced out of the agency. Well, that was that. Almost seven years on, her novel remains unpublished today.

But, I suppose there is something admirable in that kind of artistic integrity.

So. Assuming you do what it takes to make your novel shine, the real nailbiting stuff begins. You agent will most likely send the manuscript to their top five chosen publishers. And you wait.

Every time the phone rings, your heart is in your mouth. Will it be good news or bad? If you’re very lucky and talented, you might find yourself in an auction situation where two or more publishers duke it out over you in a bidding war. These are the deals we read about in the press and they are generally few and far-between - which is why they make the news. (Do you ever see headlines like “Accountant earns hundreds of thousands of pounds”? No? Well, that’s ‘cos they do so routinely. “Author paid hundreds of thousands of pounds” - now that’s rare. Remember that when you dream of retiring off the proceeds of your first novel….)

For most writers, they will be very, very fortunate to secure the interest of one publisher, who will be willing to pay even a modest sum.

And yet, you wait and hope and bite your nails. You ask yourself: why am I doing this to myself? Why did I ever start this in the first place? You try to get on with your life, love your family, have fun with your friends, focus on your day job. But it’s all useless.

Wait, is that the phone ringing…?

Next week: Will that phone call bring news that will change your life?

The Fusion View Store stocks books, films etc that have been discussed on this blog or that are related to issues and topics I’ve explored in my posts and podcasts. The items will change from time to time as we discuss and explore different books and issues on Fusion View.

I’ve added some Daphne du Mauriers, inspired by my holiday in Cornwall.

Alongside Featured books and films, you can also browse other similar items of interest. There is also a link to the main Amazon.co.uk store.

The store is hosted and run by Amazon.co.uk and any purchases you make will be via their secure system. If you do not already have an Amazon.co.uk account, they will walk you through the process of opening one.

Enjoy!

To visit the Fusion View Store, enter through the door here (external site)

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The store window below gives you a flavour of what’s available but has limited functionality.

If you have any concerns or queries about your experience of shopping via Amazon.co.uk, please refer direct to them. I have no influence or control over their systems or policies apart from linking to them as an amazon associate.

Bestselling novelist and creator of the Caper Court series of legal novels, Caro Fraser, takes time out from her prolific novel-writing to blog for Fusion View. She has generously donated three signed copies of her latest novel, A World Apart, to my prize draw - three lucky winners will be picked at random from the Fusion View email subscription list to win a copy each: find out how you can get a chance to win by clicking here.

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Caro writes:

I suppose it’s unconventional for a woman to write a novel about a man in a mid-life crisis, which is the theme of my most recent novel, A World Apart, but the male psyche has always intrigued me. Having said that, the themes of the novel – lost youth, the sense of unfulfilled possibilities, a longing to rekindle the spark of romantic desire – are common to both sexes.

The dissatisfactions of women seemed somehow too familiar, however, and I found it more intriguing to imagine what it would be like to be a man who finds his sense of identity subtly shifting as he reaches a certain point in his life. Are we just the sum of all we have accomplished, all the relationships we have forged, the children we have reared, and the friendships we have made - or are there other, unfulfilled possibilities within us that we can still explore?

The answer for my protagonist, Mark Mason, is to try to create a parallel universe where he can indulge his fantasies and experiment with lost dreams. Needless to say, the two worlds inevitably collide, with messy results, but Mark finds that he has nonetheless succeeded in creating, in his parallel world, a new identity, a new Mark – Mark II. The question is, which identity will he choose to inhabit from now on? The novel is just one take on an endlessly fascinating question – how many of us are prepared to commit those irrevocable, and often ruthless acts which can change our lives dramatically and forever?

Since writing A World Apart, I’ve completed three further pieces of work: Hanging Fire is an experimental novel in which I, as the author, conduct a dialogue with my troublesome and somewhat recalcitrant main character as she makes her way through the story of her own life. The Girl In The Yellow Dress is a more traditional romantic narrative, tracking the fortunes of two step-sisters from the 1930s to the 1980s. And as a complete change of form, I recently completed a children’s book, in the form of an epic poem, called Songs Of The Three Kingdoms. I hope all three books will be published in the not-too distant future.

Now that my four children have returned to school, peace will descend once more and I’ll be able to start yet another book, for which I’ve been brewing ideas over the summer months.

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You see we writers could all learn a thing or two from Caro - she writes and just keeps on writing. Every time I catch up with her for coffee or call for a chat on the phone, she’s either mulling over the current book she’s working on or she’s just finished a book or she’s working up ideas for her next one. She has 13 books to her name, all written in the last ten years. And she has a large family to run in between all this creativity. Wow!

The result is that her books are everywhere (apart from bookshops) - during my holiday in Cornwall, we found copies of her books in the cottage we stayed in and we saw copies in second hand bookshops and lying around those trendy cafes where they scatter books and magazines for you to read while you sip your cappuccino. I must ask her if it’s weird for her to be on holiday and everywhere she turns, it’s like “Oh, there’s my book. And another one. Oh, and here…”

You can find out more about Caro at her website www.caro-fraser.com

The New Straits Times, a Malaysian Newspaper, has reported that there is 471 million Malaysian ringgit (£117 million sterling) sitting in the official trustee’s bank account which is waiting to be distributed from the estates of deceased Malaysians. The fund has accumulated from people who died before they were able to make their wills and there are cases where their heirs then also died without making wills.

The paper reports “Dusuki Ahmad, chairman of Amanah Raya Bhd, as saying the majority of cases were unresolved because families squabbled over assets in the absence of a will, or because the original beneficiaries could not be bothered to distribute the rest of the estate — sometimes for two or three generations.”

This makes me think of Charles Dickens’s novel “Bleak House” which opens in a shroud of London fog. For generations, the Jarndyce family has been fighting over a will in the case Jarndyce v. Jarndyce and it has become so complex with so many litigants and so many lawyers that no-one knows where it started and where it will end. The phrase Jarndyce v Jarndyce has passed into common parlance to describe court cases that spiral out of control with no end in sight.

Who will be the Malaysian Dickens and write a story of feuding families and generations torn apart by dispute?

I can see the opening chapter now:

“Kuala Lumpur. Haze {substitute “haze” everytime “fog” appears} everywhere. Haze up the river, where it flows among green lalang and padangs; fog down the river, where it rolls deified among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Haze on the Selangor marshes, Haze on the highways. Haze creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; Haze lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Haze in the eyes and throats of ancient Cheras pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; Haze in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; Haze cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his sweating little ‘prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of Haze, with Haze all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.”

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A copy of Bleak House and other books discussed on Fusion View can be found at the Fusion View Store

As part of my series on Getting Published, I spoke to UK Literary Agent Lucy Luck about the process of submitting your manuscript for publication. She gives her advice and answers questions emailed by Fusion View readers and listeners about how a literary agent can help an author, what to put in your covering letter, what’s hot in the publishing world right now and much more.

Listen to our conversation using the embedded player below.

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Or, you can listen to this and other Fusion View podcasts by clicking here.

You can also receive this and future Fusion View Podcasts free via iTunes.

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If you would like to submit your manuscript to Lucy, go to her webpage at www.lucyluck.com - please mention Fusion View in your covering letter.

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To enable as many of my readers and listeners to benefit from Lucy’s advice, this post will headline Fusion View until Thursday 24 August 2006 8.30am (GMT+1) when the next post will be uploaded.

The magic of books is that you can be in two places at once – physically sitting wherever you are, in your living room or on the beach and also, wherever the words on the page take you: Africa, Asia, Narnia, the past or the future.

I’ve been working on Chapter Two of my memoir, Iced Tea and Laksa. Chapter Two is entitled “Makan”, a Malay word meaning food, a meal and to eat. (Yes, you spotted it, there is a them going on here – I may be living in London but I haven’t forgotten my very Malaysian passion for food!). I was sitting in my living room in my suburban house in South London, tapping away at my laptop. It was a hot, muggy Saturday last week. Outside, my poor garden was wilting in the dry heat, a victim of the hosepipe ban in this drought.

In my mind, I was back in my grandparents house in Taiping in Malaysia. It was a hot, glaring morning and I was cycling with my brother and sister, looking up at the puff ball clouds and feeling the blaze of the sun on my skin. I remembered how my grandma would call us for lunch, “Children, come – makan!” and how we’d sit round the table with my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. While my grandma said grace, we would sit quietly, our heads bowed, waiting to say “amen” so we could eat.

And in the meantime, the food would be there on the table, steaming and smelling delicious. Sesame chicken, fried pork with potatoes, fish curry, fried kangkong with chilli. A huge bowl of fluffy white rice. And we would wait, peeking at the food from under our bowed heads, our tummies rumbling, waiting, waiting. When would we get to “amen”?

My partner Angie came in just then, that Saturday in South London. “Shall we have lunch?”

I jumped up from my laptop. “Oh, yeah!”

I was absolutely starving. “What’s for lunch?”

“I thought I’d make a salad…”

“A salad?!” Dry, crispy bits of lettuce that would leave me starving after a whole bowl of munching and crunching?!

I said, “We’ve got that left-over chicken and ginger I made last night.”

“We’re saving that for dinner tonight.”

“Let’s have it now! I’ll make something else for dinner.”

Who can live without a microwave these days? Five minutes later, we sat down to steaming hot chicken with garlic and ginger and fluffy rice. I laughed, “Amen!”

If you are a writer aiming to have your book published in the UK, this is your chance to put a question to a UK Literary Agent.

It can be confusing for a new writer trying to send out their novel for the first time, especially if you are based outside the UK. Should I go via a literary agent or submit direct to the publisher? How do you find an agent? What format should I submit my manuscript in?

I am interviewing an established London-based literary agent for a Fusion View podcast in two weeks time and I am inviting you to email me your question about writing and getting published. I will select the best and most relevant questions and ask them during the interview so that you can get a personal answer from an industry insider.

All you have to do is ask your question, using the form below.

Due to the likely volume of responses, may I request that you ask only one question. Please also include at least your first name and the city or country where you live eg. Shazia from Johore in Malaysia.

The closing date is London time Midnight (GMT +1) Friday 11 August 2006 (Malaysian time 07.00am (GMT +7) Saturday 12 August 2006).

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The podcast of my interview with the literary agent will be uploaded on Fusion View on Monday 21 August 2006 after 08.30am (GMT +1).

While I was writing my recent posts on Giving and Receiving Feedback on your writing, I was reminded of the time I showed my mother the completed manuscript of The Flame Tree.

Predictably, as my mum, she loved it. “It’s lovely, darling. It’s beautiful. You write so well.” etc etc etc. Which is what you would expect - and what I did expect from my mum. So in terms of constructive and critical feedback, it wasn’t much use.

What I didn’t expect was when she started to give me specific feedback on one particular scene. It began innocently enough. “You know that bit where Luke and Jasmine get it together at last? At Luke’s house - after the landslide?”

“Yeah?” I nodded without taking it in fully.

“Well, I don’t think they would wait so long to make love…”

Eh, what? She had my attention now.

“That scene is a bit slow. Not realistic-lah. He wouldn’t be all so gentlemanly, you know what I mean? And she wouldn’t be so shy-shy like that.”

Er, I wasn’t sure I was actually hearing this.

“Yah, they just faced this life and death situation, right? They nearly died, right? People want to have sex after they survive something like that. It’s natural. They won’t be able to control themselves…”

“Um, Mum, er…”

“Yah, he would be just desperate to make love with Jasmine. He has loved her all his life. Now, they are together, they nearly died together, she’s in his house that he built for her - he’ll be full of passion…”

Oh, I didn’t like where she was going with this. She’ll be telling me how they should be doing it next - positions and descriptions and all!

“And, Jasmine, there he is all gorgeous and hunky and sweaty after saving her. And now she realises she loves him. She’ll want to touch him and kiss him…”

“Stop!”

i didn’t have enough hands to cover my eyes and ears all at once.

“What, darling? It’s just human nature I’m talking about.”

My psyche had to be nursed back to health with lots of smelling salts and have its clammy brow mopped with damp flannels.

AFter I had recovered from the trauma of learning all about wild passionate sex from my mum, I looked at the scene again and I knew she was right. I deleted it all and started again. The scene in the published novel is truer and it works a lot better.

I think when I was writing the first version, I had an awareness in the back of my mind that my mum would be reading the book. And perhaps in some way that inhibited me when it came to the love scene. (I challenge you writers out there to write a passionate sex scene while holding in your head a picture of of your mum!) But, when it came to the reality of my mum, she responded to my writing as herself - a woman as well as a mother - and freed me in my turn to be true to myself in my writing. Viva la passione!

As part of my exploration of the writing process, I talk to Terry Bailey, lecturer in scriptwriting at the University of Aberystwyth, where he teaches scriptwriting at undergraduate level and also at Masters level. What are the elements of a good story? How important is structure in a novel or screenplay? Terry outlines the key principles and recommends some good guidebooks on writing and story. I describe how I structured my first novel, The Flame Tree, using post-it notes and a blank wall!

Listen to our conversation with the player below.

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Or, you can listen to this and other Fusion View podcasts by clicking here.

You can also receive this and future Fusion View Podcasts free via iTunes.