Obstacles to being published

Characteristically sensible post here from Rachelle Gardner. There's nothing I haven't said myself, but it's all succinctly phrased and, especially if you are new to the approaching-publishers-and-agents lark, useful.

There are two points that I thought I'd elaborate on:


Pitching several books in different genres. Why not? Because although you can have a wide writing career later, you need to be launched with one book and create the expectation for your readers that if they liked your first book they will like your second. It is simply easier (at first) to sell you as a writer of a particular sort of book than a writer whose next book could be entirely different and for entirely different readers. Therefore the agent (and, even more, publisher) wants to know the one book which is best to launch you with. Don't muddy the waters; don't seem too undecided.

Not being able to name a genre for your book. (Even if that "genre" is literary fiction.) It's the selling thing again, damn it. It is, quite simply, easier to sell a book which fits a genre properly. Put it another way, you need to be able to know which readers are most likely to like your book. Also, readers like to know what they are getting, odd people that they aren't. Humans like patterns, familiarity, expectations. Help them out; humour them. You make life very much easier for yourself if you work with the world as it is, not as you wish it was. Of course, the latter approach is very commendable, but only in the same way that it was highly commendable of the cavalry at Balaclava to charge straight towards the cannons.

As Rachelle says, none of these things mean you can't get an agent or publisher. But they are obstacles. Either remove them or jump higher.

CHECKLIST FOR GETTING PUBLISHED

I believe that if you can say yes to all of these, you give yourself more chance of being published. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee that doing all of them will get you published, because that depends on what you have written, how well you have written it and whether a publisher believes he can make a success of it. And magic fairy dust.

[This is an updated version of an old post, something I'm going to do every now and then because this blog has become so big that it can be hard for you to find what you need. Which is one reason why I wrote Write to be Published. On which subject, do head over and join the FB page and have a chance to win a crabbit bag!]

So, here's my checklist for being accepted by a publisher, in no particular order:

1. Are you up-to-date with what's being published in your genre? Are you a fan of the genre? Can you name, easily, six authors whose books you admire in your genre? I don't know why I said six - I was tempted to say ten, but that seemed a bit tough and seven is not my favourite number. Nine would seem a bit weird. And I could have said eight - in fact, I will. Eight, then.
   
2. Are you writing something at the moment? You should be. And if you've finished something and you're waiting for people to get back to you, you should be writing something else. Writers write and usually get better as they go. (Though, for some interesting reasons, once you're published a few times, this may not happen...)
   
3. Have you got lots of ideas in you? Train your mind to catch and play with ideas. But learn to discard the ones that won't work.
   
4. Are you taking steps to discover all the rules about submitting to publishers / agents? Follow  submission guidelines - they are there for a reason.
5. Are you perfectly professional in your working life? Do you always do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it? (And I do mean in your professional life - I'm not bothered whether you do the ironing when you say you're going to. In fact, if you do the ironing when you say you're going to, you've got too much time on your hands - get writing, for goodness' sake!)
6. Are you beginning to network by joining forums or groups (on or off-line), using Twitter, perhaps blogging or at least commenting on other blogs? Not everyone wants to be in a writers' group or something where you have to share your work (and there's no need - I certainly didn't) but if you join an organisation or sensible webgroup/forum for writers, you will learn a great deal and make valuable contacts. And that you do need. Many people cringe at the word networking - so call it something else then, but still DO it. It's not creepy and crawly unless you are creepy and crawly. Just be friendly, open and sensible.
7. Are you doing writing other than your core WIP? For example, do you blog? Or submit articles or stories to magazines. All writing is good practice and you never know where it might lead.
8. Are you avoiding all the mistakes in the article on Common Mistakes of Unpublished Writers?
9. Are you trying to learn about your craft, trying to improve?
10. Are you open to constructive criticism from an expert? Obtaining and reacting to professional feedback is very important, especially if you've been rejected a few times already.
11. Do you feel gutted and miserable and everything else unpleasant when you are rejected again? If not, you probably don't want publication enough.
12. Do you ooze green poison when you read in the papers of some idiot's 6-figure debut contract? If not, you probably don't want publication enough.
13. If offered the choice between a month on a paradisical island, all expenses paid, travelling 1st class, with silently gliding masseuses attending to every knot in your shoulders, bringing you iced mango whenever you feel like it, and an offer to publish your novel, would you choose publication? If not ...

DELUDED COVERING LETTERS

I am re-posting this earlier post to help those of you approaching covering letters / queries for the first time. Many of you, I know, are old hands at this, but there are new writers coming along all the time and terrible mistakes are being made. I want to save you, honestly!

The covering letter will give an agent or editor the first clues (and they may not look further) that either a) you may have a great book and really know what you're doing or b) you can't write and / or are going to be too difficult to deal with, perhaps because you have completely the wrong attitude or level of understanding. If you make too many howlers in the covering letter, too many agents or editors will not look at your work. There's just too much competition out there for you to be able to afford to get this too wrong. So, while you'll hear of people getting published even after doing things wrong at this stage, that diminishes your chances hugely, especially if your book is not 100% gloriously saleable. Perfection is unattainable, but most of what agents and publishers receive is horribly short of perfection, which is why almost all of it is rejected summarily. I aim only to protect you from this.

WALK LIKE AN EDITOR (AND AGENT)

One skill that authors need to learn is the ability to see into the minds of the editors and agents who will read their proposals. (Another skill is the ability to understand sales and marketing departments, but I'm afraid this skill eludes me. There are some lovely people in them but their minds are beautiful mysteries.)

Since I am neither an editor or an agent, I bring you the words of some real-life ones, so that you can begin to hone your editor-whispering skills.

First, The Top Ten Questions Dutton Editors Ask Themselves. They are somewhat vague, but still a very good starting point. Absorb them till you think like that about your own work.

Second, for something even vaguer, but essential because it's about that all important gut-instinct, here is wonderful blogger and US lit agent, Rachelle Gardner on why she says yes or no to a book. It's worth highlighting the essential part of the post:

"You know how sometimes you're reading a book and you don't want to put it down, and you're really frustrated that it's time to go make dinner or put the kids to bed, and you just want everyone to leave you alone so you can read your book? And whenever you're doing something else, you just want to be finished so you can get back to reading your book?

"But other times you're reading a book, and it's easy to put down. You find yourself distracted. You go check your email, or see what's on TV. Or fall asleep. Not that you can really define anything bad about the book, it's simply not holding your attention. And when you have some time to read, you debate whether to go back to that book or not."

I believe that if we remember that the agent or editor has to love it that much, just like any reader, we will a) improve our work by working harder to capture and hold our readers and b) understand better why a tecnnically good piece of work may be rejected. One thing I tell my clients at Pen2Publication is that we should read our work aloud, imagining that our audience consists of people desperate to go to the beach / pub / bathroom.

Finally, here are two fascinating ones. Lit agent, Janet Reid, lists the reasons why she turns down MSS, with stats. And editor Betsy Mitchell [I think that's the right name!] reveals her own list of reasons for rejection. Some of these reasons are worth a whole blog post each. They may get one, later.

One the the most interesting reasons, I thought, was this one: "Writing quite good, but this isn't the story to launch an author with."

The reason that caught my eye is that it's another facet of the point I've often made: we don't just have to write well - we have to write the right book. Not just the right book for the market, but the right book with which to launch a career, to make a splash, to attract attention.

Open your eyes, writers: think like an editor or agent and you're more likely to hook them. Editors and agents are trying to think like readers, so what you actually have to do is think like an editor or agent thinking like a reader.

If only sales and marketing departments consisted of these readers, things would be so very simple.

PARTY INVITATION

Even though I'm in a really bad mood for many reasons and completely fed up with the snow, I am generously inviting you all to my first birthday party. Yes, on Sunday 10th Jan, this blog will be One Year Old!

I was reading some of the first posts just now, and remembering how I felt getting my very first comments, and how extraordinarily quickly so many of you found me. Echo Freer and Tom Vowler were amongst the first commenters, and you and others are still here. I started with four posts that day, to get the thing going. I remember I had the idea that it would end up being a set of resources, more like a strangely-organised book than a normal linear blog. Well, I have a feeling it ended up being something akin to both. One problem now is that there's so much info on it [more than a quarter of a million words!] that it's now hard to find what you're looking for, and Blogger's search facility is useless for the older stuff, which is why I've had a lot of suggestions to turn it all into a proper book.

Anyway, what's this party, then? Well, it's a blog party, which means we're all going to come visiting YOUR blogs, bottles or chocolate in hand. The reason I'm warning you now is that you may want to do a bit of housework on your blogs and prepare a wonderful, witty and / or wise post for Sunday, so that your visitors can see you at your sparkly best.

If you don't have a blog, you can tell us about your book, if you have published one, or point us towards something that you've written somewhere on the internet. [You may not ask anyone to pay any dosh to read your words - this is a party, not a sales conference.]

When you turn up here on Sunday, I'll tell you exactly what to do, but it will be something like this: I will ask you to post a brief comment [on Sunday] telling us about your own blog / writing, to encourage people to visit you. Then people toddle over in their droves and leave a comment on your blog, and then you visit them. It should be a geat way for you to show people what you do.

NOW, however, I'd like to ask you something else: what would you like me to blog about over the coming year? I do want to focus more on the actual techniques of writing, within all the various genres and more generally, because I do think unpublished writers spend too much time worrying about submission details, rather than the most important thing, the actual writing. But I'm still happy to write about the process of submissions if there's still anything left that I haven't said. Comments below, please.

On Sunday, I will no doubt wax all sentimental about how much I like you all and how I have valued your company, but let's leave that till then, shall we? Today, as I say, I'm in a bad mood. Which is entirely as it should be for the Crabbit Old Bat, but still. Mind you, some remarkably lovely comments about Chicken Friend from that fellow crabby one, Proe, on my last post, have gone some way to smooth my brow. Thank you, Proe, you old curmudgeonely one! I value your compliments almost as much as your regular attempts to stir up my not-so-inner crabbit.

Meanwhile, you might like to read one of the posts from Day One of this blog, so you can see how little my advice has changed over the year... I may be crabbit, but I am at least consistent. Some might say boring. If they were very, very bold.

I hope to see you all dressed in your Sunday best, any time from 08.00 UK time, on 10th Jan! Spread the word - all are invited!

For now, your requests for topics, please.

THE RIGHT BOOK...

Here I am, keeping my promise to you. I know: I've regularly said that the process of becoming published is simple [not "easy", note: "simple"]. I've said it so many times that some of you are in danger of suffering adage-fatigue. But let's say it one more time, all together now:

"All you have to do is write the right book in the right way and send it to the right publisher at the right time and in the right way."

After a recent post where I'd mentioned this again, it became obvious in the comments that there was some understandable misunderstanding as to what I meant by the most crucial part of this.

WHAT THE FLIPPING HELL DO YOU MEAN BY "RIGHT BOOK", YOU STUPID WUMMAN?

First, here's what I do NOT mean:

• a book which sells your soul, a book in which you have cynically or contrivedly ticked the boxes that you think publisher want you to tick, just to suit a market or gap therein. [You are most welcome to do this, and many people do with great success, but it's not what I do and not what many of you want to do. So, it's not what I mean.]
  
• a book which you have written because you have spotted a trend. [NB: the trend while you're planning your book is a bandwagon disappearing into the distance in a cloud of dust by the time your proposed novel is published two years later. So, vampires are out as a viable trend. If you want my opinion, angels are the next trend, but the books with angels in are being delivered to publishers NOW, so you've missed that one already. Maybe it'll be fluffy bunnies next. No, forget predicting trends unless your balls are genuine crystal.]
• any particular type of book at all. [There is no magic answer. Publishers are not looking for a particular book. So, no single particular book is the right book.]

WELL, THAT WAS INCREDIBLY UNHELPUL, YOU FOOL. IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SAY? NOTHING?

Oh no, no, no. When did I ever say nothing?

Here are some constructive thoughts about what I do mean by "right book". [When I say "constructive", please don't think that I'm going to tell you what to write, by the way, just how to think about the writing of it].

• The right book is that simple but elusive thing: a book that readers want to read.
• Publishers are the ones who have to invest the money into bringing your book to readers, and publishers have a great deal of experience in selling books [though of course they don't always get it right - this is art, not science], so they are the ones who have to make the decision. [Self-publishing is a whole other story  -  and, by the way, should be a choice, not a dump-bin for your sensibly-rejected poor writing].
  
• Although publishers need to sell books in order to recover their costs, they do not always look for the next best-seller. Most publishers will aim to have a number of big money-spinners and a whole load of books that break even or don't. Your book must fit somewhere in that range for them, depending on their financial situation, aims, and passion for your sort of book.
• All readers are different, so what is right for one group is not right for another.
• So, you might think, surely ANY book will fit into the above argument?
• No.
• Readers are a funny bunch. All of them. Even you. And me. A lot of us pretend we're very open-minded, but actually we have high and inherent need for believability, cohesion, patterns, flow - all the things which fire our neurons and allow us to reach the goal of all readers: narrative transportation. [I've written about narrative transportation somewhere  -  ah, here. It's my shortest ever post, I think, mainly because it's a link to some clever people who can tell you all about it properly].
  
• And this means we like / need our books to have certain ingredients, in the appropriate measure. [Which I will mention in passing below, though I've covered them all before in posts about voice, pace, structure, beginnings etc].
  
• This means that if you were hoping that I would tell you that the right book is, for example, a book about angels, or a historical adventure story set in Siberia, or a feisty chick-lit story with a wheel-chair bound heroine, or a crime noir novel with three disembowelled children in scene one, then I'd have to say: it could be any one of those or it could be any one of a million other possibilities.
• But that your book must do the following things in order to be the "right book":

1. Engage the reader from page one and never let him go till long after the book is finished. [Narrative transportation again.] We [all of us except the most desperate cynics or people who are forced to read books not of their choosing] choose to read this novel instead of that one because we hope we will enjoy it, nothing else.
   
2. Fit the genre or type of book which the reader expects  -  so it must follow the rules, though not necessarily rigidly, and when it breaks the rules it must do so with reason, confidence and style. Experimental writing is wonderful and commendable, but if the experiment fails, you have to ask yourself why and take responsibility for not having engaged readers.
   
3. Have a voice which is consistent, appropriate, genuine - not seeming contrived, never slipping from narrator to author or one character to another except in ways which follow the rules of voice. [And these rules are not arbitrary: they go to make a book, instead of a person putting some pretty words down for their own benefit].
4. Have something about it which makes it sound like something we'd like to read. This is the "hook" that I've often mentioned. The hook is the brief, fabulously irrestible description of a book which makes everyone want to buy / borrow / read it. Why is this important? Because the right book is not a book which will sit and wait for readers to come to it: in order for it to reach readers at all, in the vast mountain of other books which may also be good, it not only has to BE good, it has to SOUND good. 

Remember: no one is obliged to read your book. You have to make them want to. You think it's hard getting a publisher? You wait till you have to please paying readers, too.

So, have you written the right book? If it sounds good when you describe it to me [or an agent, publisher, bookseller or reviewer] then that is a very good start indeed. But it will also have to be well written, following those rules that are necessary, breaking those which can be gloriously broken with good effect. It has to feel as though it was written by someone who:

1. has a burning passion to engage the reader from the first word till long after the last word
2. has the technical skill to do so

In short: the right book is the book a publisher believes he or she can sell to an appropriate number of its intended readers. And that he can have faith in, loving it himself. Faith is pretty much what it boils down to: you have faith, now you have to make the publisher have faith, and the publisher has to make the readers have faith. The book that does that is the right book.

See, it's simple. But it's not easy. Oh no, no, no. And I never said it was. From the very first day of this blog, back on January 11th, this blog has been headed by that quote from Thomas Mann. Go look. Not everyone agrees with me that writing is hard  -  Susan Hill doesn't. Well, she's lucky. I find it hard. I love it, especially when it's been hard and I eventually crack it. Frankly, if it was easy I wouldn't bother to do it.

So many unpublished writers don't focus enough on the fact that their book may not be good enough yet, preferring to blame rejection on the other stuff, such as not having sent the right number of pages, or having put toffees in with the submission without realising that the agent had a toothache.

Remember how I said in my last post that I once write a covering letter in rhyme? Well, it wasn't the covering letter that got me rejected: I hadn't written the right book.

FAILURE TO BE PUBLISHED: HARSH REALITY

This may seem lazy but I'm going to re-post an old post. This blog has become so big that it can be hard to find the bits you need at the right time. [I will be doing some house-keeping over Christmas]. This post below is one I want to re-offer, partly because many of you are new to the blog and may have missed it, partly because I know there's at least one person out there who needs to be reminded about it, and partly because a brand-new reader has just emailed me to say that after a morning of trawling through my words, this was one that stuck in her mind. [Thank you Kirsty, and do stay with us  -  I really enjoyed meeting you yesterday and was hugely impressed by your questions and attitude!]

Here it is [slightly shortened]  -  and, for the benefit of any of you who wonder why you've followed all my advice and still aren't published, please note that Point 3 is in your hands, not mine...

WHAT DID I TAKE SO LONG TO BECOME PUBLISHED?

First, for those who missed the tragic enormity of this failure, it took me twenty-one years of failing to get a novel published. ALL my adult life failing to achieve the one thing I really wanted: to be a novelist. That's some bruising failure. And bruised I was. Badly. It affected my health and happiness and my sense of self. Luckily [for them] few people knew about my constant attempts at fame and fortune. Unluckily [for him] my husband did. He's still here. Still waiting for me to earn a lot of money, I guess. I'm trying.

I did get some "stuff" published during that time, but it wasn't enough. Educational books and stacks of magazine articles. I still get money from a magazine I wrote for ten years ago which keeps using my articles and pays me every time, with me sitting at home doing sod all - would you believe that today I actually sold "36th rights" for three articles?? Who needs to be a novelist when you get paid 36 times for something you can't even remember writing?

And there was the odd moment of relative success [relative to abject failure], like appearing in Reader's Digest with my photo and being recognised on a bus, and a story winning an expensive pen in the Ian St James awards, and a couple of times almost making it through an aquisitions meeting. But almost is not enough.

Anyway, reasons for my abject failure:

1. I thought I was better than I was. I didn't know what mistakes I was making. This was in pre-blog days, when people like me [as in me now, not me then - me then would have been pretty useless] weren't sharing and telling me what shocking errors I was making.
2. I wasn't thinking of my readers. Couldn't give a toss about them - yep, it was all for me. Moi, moi, moi. Self-indulgent, beauteous prose, right up my own backside, just gorgeous, over-written plotless stuff that gave me shivers of pride, and gave any potential reader a severe case of "where the hell's the plot gone or going and I mean why should we CARE about your drivellingly unlikely character who murdered her husband just because of some arcane psychological problem to do with Samuel Johnson which we are supposed to guess through the boring fog of your however-erudite turgidity?
3. I hadn't written the right book. As in a book with a concept which would grab the agent / publisher with its stupendous hook, draw them into a tightly-written and either original or genre-specific plot, written by an author exuding wisdom and knowledge of the market. (Actually, I thought woman who murders husband because he's fat was quite good hook-wise, but hey, that was then.) See here for my post on this topic. (Not murders of fat husbands: I mean writing the right book.)
   
4. I wasn't following the rules of submissions to publishers, despite the fact that I roll my eyes at you lot for sending toffees to agents and being similarly foolish. In fact, once I even .... but no, I can't tell you that. It's too embarrassing.

And so followed the rejection letters. Because yes, I've had a few. There were occasional ones that said lovely things but gave suggestions contradicting previous ones (like "we feel it's too short" after "we feel it's too long" and "the plot is somewhat avant garde" after "the plot is somewhat traditional"); there were the "not right for our list" ones (unhelpful but true); there was my favourite (though not at the time) which consisted of my rubbish covering letter with the word NO! scrawled across it in pencil and returned to me in an envelope without a stamp even though I HAD included return postage; and there was the one which arrived back the day after I'd posted it, something which defies the laws of both postage and Newtonian motion and I can only assume that the postman was an Orion employee sent to destroy the slush pile before it occurred.

So, if you are now in the position I was in then - one of soul-searing awfulness, when you feel that life will be utterly meaningless if you don't get that contract, when your whole belief in yourself is shaken daily - I feel your pain, I really do.


Thing is, I wasn't good enough. And maybe ... sorry ... you aren't either. But maybe, by listening and learning and improving, you can become good enough. But remember too that it's not just about being good enough - it's about writing the right book at the right time and sending it to the right publisher at the right time. I've said it before. I could even become boring. (If you need a reminder, use the label "right book" on the list of labels to the right.)

The trick, and the one which this blog tries to help with, is to work out whether:

1. you are good enough but haven't written the right book yet
2. you are good enough and have possibly written the right book really beautifully but haven't sent it to the right person in the right way
3. you aren't good enough but could become so, with time, practice and/or help
   
4. you aren't good enough and won't ever be published satisfactorily
   

Thought for the day: actually, a lot of published writers aren't good enough either. Some of you may well be better than some of them. It all boils down to what a publisher thinks will sell. And I've already done a post on Why is crap published? But you're not writing crap, are you? Please say you're not. Though I have to be brutally honest and say that if you ask any agent or editor they will tell you that the vast bulk of the slush pile is crap, of a meaningfully finger-in-the-throat boggingness.

After that brutality and after all these weeks of listening to me seem to know it all, you deserve to know that embarrassing thing I did. I can trust you now. Please don't laugh.

Here goes. Deep breath. Will you still respect me? I was young then. Young and really stupid.

The thing is ...

I
once
wrote
a
covering
letter
in
rhyme
...

People! Don't do it!

ADDED ON DEC 6th:
I cannot say this often enough: writing the right book is far more important than anything else. The right book is a book that a publisher thinks can sell sufficiently [which does not have to mean millions]. If you focus too much on whether the font should be Georgia or TNR, or whether it should be stapled or paper-clipped, you are focusing on the wrong things. Write the right damn book in the right damn way and send it to the right damn publishers in the rightish way and it will eventually be published. And don't tell me you followed all the rules and failed so the rules must be wrong. Nope, because you missed the most important rule: writing the right book. And my whole point in banging out crabbit words on this blog for nearly a year is this:

I do not want you to take as long as I did. But I cannot write the book for you.

Maybe I need to say more about what makes the right book. At last, the Crabbit Old Bat has a brainwave!

Meanwhile, if any of you want individual feedback on your own books or Works in Progress, there is Pen2Publication. I can do quite a lot to show you if you have or haven't written a potentially right book".

WRITE FOR READERS

I have always believed that we should write for readers, if we want to be published. Actually, no, I haven't always believed that: I used to believe I should write for myself. But then I realised that it was this selfishness, this solipsism, this narcissism, that was stopping me becoming published for all those horrible years. Now, I have absolutely no problem marrying the twin aims of writing what I want while thinking always of the readers.

So, it's nice to see someone else agreeing.

This is not about selling out; it's not about diminishing our art for the cause of commercialism. I still write a literary brand of teenage fiction (for teenagers who will probably grow up loving adult literary fiction), make no compromises that I'm at all disappointed about and am still writing from the heart. But I have my eyes and ears open to my readers' reactions while I'm writing. It's just like talking to someone: if you rabbit on or wax lyrical and lose your listener, that's not communication - that's lecturing.

So, think of your reader (whoever you want your reader to be) and you may well find yourself being published. Remember: agents and publishers are readers too.

A PERFECT SCENE THROUGH DIRTY WINDOWS

I read an interesting blog post by one of you  -  Catherine Hughes, guest blogging on the Strictly Writing blog. [Well done, Catherine!] And it got me thinking.

Catherine's right: despite constant advice from me and many others to get your covering letter+synopsis+sample perfect before sending it to an agent or publisher, perfection is not always actually necessary. In other words,a beautiful view may still be recognisably beautiful even if seen through dirty windows. [I should know  -  I have some. I really wish the sun wouldn't shine, as it makes them worse.]

There are plenty of stories of writers being taken on despite the fact that they have not yet produced perfection, or anything like it. My own story is a case in point: my agent took me on, then we made the book better and then she sold it. Catherine provides examples of agents who did deign to read and give good feedback even though she hadn't produced [yet] a publishable book.

So, why am I still right as well? How can Catherine and I both be right? Why do I still urge you to clean your windows before inviting an agent or publisher to look through the glass?

• competition and harsh reality-  every reputable agent and publisher receives many, many MSS every week. Many agents / publishers will very understandably follow their first impressions. [And I mean first, as in first paragraph.] If you have made basic errors which look like carelessness, ineptness or lack of technique, and/or they have just read something else better, yours gets dumped. You want that to happen? So, some may painstakingly read everything (I doubt it); some may have received nothing good that month; but you simply reduce your chances by not getting it right.
• some sorts of error in covering letters matter much much less than others. Some don't matter at all. Experts make judgements that are much more subtle and powerful than simply noticing an error: they use that error to make detailed analytical judgements about you and your command of language.
  
• your book has to be EVEN more brilliant underneath if the dirty windows are to be ignored. Of course, you already think your book is brilliant. And let's hope it is. But there's a Simultaneous Equation going on: for every bit of imperfection, you have to have that much more brilliance in your offering.
• it is getting harder and harder to get certain types of book published, so the more perfect a state your book is in now, the more likely it is to be taken, because the less structural work it will require during editing, and the less of a risk an agent or publisher would be taking with you. If you think the editor will just do it all for you, read my recent post here.
• agents and editors are looking for potential as well as an existing state of publishability. This means that yes, they may well take you on if they see huge potential shining through the grubby glass; but, for all the reasons above, you simply lower your chances of looking like a great writer if you get too many things wrong in the first place. Because, frankly, potential is what you should be honing, before they get to it.
  

On the other hand, there is another way in which Catherine is right. There is, in this business as with so many others, no such thing as absolute perfection. Since there is no such thing as perfection, there's little point [you might say] in aiming for it. One person's idea of a perfect synopsis will not be another person's. [For example, independent publisher Lynn Michell's idea of a synopsis is different from some other UK publishers' ideas  -  see my blog interview with her here. She wants more of a "blurb", whereas some want more detail and chronology. Some agents are happy for multiple submissions; others are not. Some want your CV / writing background; others don't.] So, since your idea of perfection may be rejected as inadequate by someone else, you may wonder why you bother.

In answer to that I'd say that this is not a science but an art. There are several ways of approaching a publisher or agent that work in general and tick the necessary boxes. But there are absolutely some which don't work. Showing ignorance in certain ways will get you rejected; making certain types of error will get you rejected; but most of all, not having a beautiful view through the murky windows will get you rejected.

It's worth noting that Catherine is talking about that very important step of getting an agent / publisher to a) read and b) give encouraging feedback. The question of being accepted comes later and is different. She's right to notice that some agents and publishers will read and respond in unscary ways even if you haven't written the perfect book yet.

But it is also very important to remember that:

1. An expert reader [ie good agent or editor] can tell within a very few sentences / paragraphs how well you can write
2. And whether you've written a publishable book
   
3. Some of those experts readers have more time and patience than others
4. You are trying to attract all of them, whether or not they have patience
5. And you are trying to get published, not only to receive feedback [eg a "positive" rejection]
6. Therefore, I strongly suggest that you work your socks off to get your whole submission package as perfect as possible

Yes, you can make some mistakes and someone still might say nice things. You might even get published, if you have written an irrestistible book and your talent and your book's worth shine through the mistakes. But do you want to take the risk that your grubby-windowed package lands on the desk of a wonderful agent on the day she's just received a beautiful shiny one, or the day when she's feeling grumpy after too many grubby ones?

Don't get me wrong: I'd LOVE love love it if you all got published despite doing things wrong, but I believe you'd get there quicker if you tried to do everything right. This blog is about doing our very, very best to get it all as right as possible as often as possible. Don't let me down, please!

[Catherine  -  just to emphasise: I'm not disagreeing with you. I thought you wrote an excellent piece and I'm very grateful to you for making me think about it some more.]

Note to all: I'm away in Dublin doing talks from Friday and not back till Sunday so excuse my lack of replying to your comments. Please comment, though  -  you usually produce some very helpful conversations between you.

KILLING YOUR DARLINGS - SELF-EDITING FOR SOFTIES

One of my favourite writerly activities is editing my own work. Which is lucky, because it's also the most useful. It's also the skill that I know I've developed considerably since becoming published  -  I am much better at knowing much earlier what needs to go and how to rearrange what's left. I am becoming rather embarrassingly good at killing my babies. When they're misbehaving, anyway: obviously, sometimes my babies deserve to live. Then I dress them up and coo over them proudly (in private).

I suspect that this self-editing skill is very hard to acquire before you've been taken on by an agent or publisher, and before you're published. And thereby hangs the horrible Catch-22 situation: you can't fully learn the art of self-editing until you've been edited, and yet you won't ever be edited until you've self-edited your own work sufficiently to be taken on by an editor.

Don't get me wrong  -  I'm not for a moment saying I now don't need to be edited. Gosh, ask my editor if you're not sure about that. I still fail to spot things and I still need that expert outside eye. I plan to need an editor all my writing life  -  the day I think I don't need an editor is the day I become too arrogant to deserve publication.

Perhaps at this point you are thinking, "Never mind: I've heard that the editor will do it all for me so it doesn't matter if my work's not good enough when I first send it." If so, please a) stop right there and b) read this blog post about that.)

Perhaps at this point you are also thinking, "Pah, editing! Editing is censorship. Editing destroys the cathartic process of writing. Editing destroys the soul of my master-piece." If so, a) prepare to remain unpublished and un-read for a very long time and b) read this blog rant here.

Somehow, if you want to be published (or to self-publish successfully) you have to learn to look hyper-critically at your own work. You have to learn to see it through your readers' eyes (if you want any readers, that is). You have to learn what they will be thinking and which aspects of that you care about. You have to learn to spot, in your own work, the moment at which you risk losing a reader. And that's the baby you have to kill.

Luckily, instead of listening to me become crabbit on this subject, you can read this excellent post here from Editorial Ass. Please do read it because it really is excellent and there's no point in my repeating the advice. And do read the many useful comments below it. Lots of different ways to edit and some inevitable areas of disagreement -  this is not science, but art, remember. But lots of sense and practical advice. Work out what works for you, matched to your genre, as there are different requirements for each.

Edited to add: have just seen this great post from BubbleCow: Tips on Writing a Great Second Draft.

There's a reason why I think self-editing is so hard before you're taken on by agent or publisher: until that moment, you have to think that any negative comment is wrong. It's called cognitive dissonance: the inability to believe something that conflicts with an entrenched belief. Your entrenched belief is that your book is publishable, NOW. If an agent says, "Yes, I'll represent you because I think your book is publishable, but you'll need to change this, this and this," you think, "Hooray! they're right!" and you willingly change this, this and this. But when an agent says, "Sorry, I like lots of things about your book but it's not strong enough because of this, this and this, so I can't represent you," your inclination is to think, "Nah, just an opinion," and send it off to another agent.

Similarly, once you're taken on, you happily allow yourself to be guided because you trust this person. You trust this person because they agree with you: that your book is publishable. So editing becomes easier, you become open-minded instead of stubborn and blind, scales fall from eyes: suddenly you can see into your work like a reader, not just a writer. And self-editing becomes easier.

Trouble is, the actual writing doesn't...

www.pen2publication.co.uk
This may be the time to tell you that Pen2Publication is almost ready to go. I'm going to do a "soft launch" in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, you, my lovely blog-readers, are welcome to visit the website at www.pen2publication.co.uk and have a little look. I've got some great people interested in working alongside me, too, so we'll be able to cover more genres than I could manage on my own. You can email me if you like but I'm not taking clients quite yet.

Off to do some editing of my own work. Hooray!

A TRUE STORY OF A STRUGGLING WRITER

Recently, a commenter who calls herself "Beleaguered Author" and blogs as "Beleaguered Squirrel" (are you sympathising already??), told us this story. Italics in square brackets are my comments. Colours are my usual flamboyance:

"I'm in what I think is an unusual situation. My first book was published by a small-but-respected publisher who subsequently ceased trading. [Gah.] My second book was - via an agent (which I didn't have for the first) - published in a foreign country, translated into their language. Said country are not into making a big fuss of "first time" authors (apparently my first book doesn't count), so it has been rather non-eventish for me. [Not sure if this is a line you've been spun  -  on the other hand, actually, most books are non-eventish and it's all somewhat in the eye of the writer]. No author publicity, no big marketing bucks, and sadly the book hasn't made much of an impact. No reviews apart from two critical Amazon reviews: a one-star and a three-star. Personally I think it was a bad translation (I happen to speak the language concerned) and was pitched at entirely the wrong market. But then I would say that. [You could be right, though. And bad luck with the Amazon reviewers, who may or may not have been drunk at 3am when they wrote those reviews.]

"Unfortunately, at around the time the foreign book was published, I lost my agent. You'll just have to believe me when I say it wasn't my fault, [I do  -  though I'd give the anonymous agent the benefit of the doubt by saying that there are often one and a half sides to the story] as it wouldn't be professional to go into details. Whether they would ever have managed to sell the book into other territories is questionable, but we'll never know now.

"So here I am, my baby is out there but unreadable in its native tongue, and no agent will touch it with a barge pole cos it has already been flogged to death by the original agent. I - egotistic author that I am - am in a massive sulk about the fact that nobody I care about can read the damn thing, and the holy grail of publication hasn't involved a single piece of ego-stroking or validation, and it feels as though it may as well not have happened. [Ugh, this is painful.]


"Indeed, I'm so depressed that I've given up writing altogether. Abandoned the third novel in first draft stage and embarked on a new career.

"Don't worry - I'm not expecting you to tell me I did the right thing by giving up. It clearly shows a lack of backbone and an excessive degree of childish sulk, the kind which would preclude a successful publishing career. [I disagree most strongly.]

"Actually I don't know what my question is. I think it was going to be something along the lines of, "Do you think sometimes a writer just has to admit they are a bit crap, and give up?" [I will answer this.] which is only the aforementioned sulkiness in a very thin disguise... or maybe, "Don't you agree that I've had a particularly raw deal? [possibly but not certainly].You feel sorry for me, right?" - which would be more of the same...

"Obviously what I need to do is either (a) keep going and make each book better than the last, or (b) stop worrying about publication - just write for the sake of it, or (c) acknowledge that I've been writing for the wrong reasons, and have a break until I can think of some better reasons to keep doing it. But stop with all the whingeing.[can you do b) ??? If you can, then you should, anyone should, but if you can't.... a) is what we should all do if we believe in ourselves. Hmmm re c)  -  HAVE you been writing for the wrong reasons? What ARE the wrong reasons? But I'm not interested in your reasons and nor are your readers  -  we only want to know if you're good enough.]


"Hmmm. Thank you. That helped. [Er, really?!]

"Oh! I thought of a question! Here it is:

"Have you come across this phenomenon before? Writers who have a book which is only ever published in one other country, translated, and with no fanfare or success? [Frankly, I haven't come across this. But it may happen. I don't think it's the central issue. The central issue is that you came close  -  more than that, you were published, but it didn't deliver success. We think that success is being published  -  it's not.] Do they get sulky about it too, or am I just outrageously ungrateful? [Oh, trust me: we are all ungrateful because we are not megastars!] So far I'm the only writer I know who has experienced this thing."

This all raises several points, as well as a few tears, and I asked BS if I could use her story to highlight a few things. She agreed.

I asked BS a few more questions but I specifically did not want to know her real name or the name of her books. Because, just for now, I don't want to read her writing  -  despite the fact that it's whether her writing is any good that's the most important question.

I asked what genre she wrote in, because whether it's lit fic or not makes a difference, or whether it's a genre that's easy to sell.

"Genre: That's part of my problem. I've tried to write to a genre, but it just doesn't seem to be something I can do without losing my own identity in what I write. "Contemporary fiction" is the laziest description. [No, it's a good description if it's the right one.] My second was described as a comic thriller, which is vaguely accurate. My first had large dollops of suspense. The second was published in an imprint devoted to "urban fiction". Both can definitely be described as quirky. My third is definitely a comic thriller. They're all for adults."

BS lives in the UK but her second novel was published by a large publisher in Germany. Also, if you'd like more details  -  and it's a moving story  -  she's written about it here.

OK, here's what I think, apart from my italicised comments above.

• BS is serious about her writing, as she should be. The fact that she crosses genres tells me so  -  she just loves to write and is doing it from the heart; plus the fact that she's angsting so much about whether she's good enough. She's not a whinger; she doesn't sound deluded. She got published. From then on she was unlucky, on many counts. Now, her book(s) also may not have been fabulous  -  we don't know. But she got published and what happened then does not sound like her fault. (Unless she's spinning a complex tale and is in fact deluded...)
  
• Stuff happens: books are published badly; some agents and publishers are rubbish (hers may not have been but some are and you won't care when you sign the contract  -  you'll only care when "stuff happens".
• The Amazon reviews hurt. They may be right or they may be wrong. Personally, I think most Amazon reviews, even the positive ones, are suspect and I generally wouldn't trust them. But, when you get publshed you have to take them; you also have to take the fact that they can destroy you.
• listen to this: "the holy grail of publication hasn't involved a single piece of ego-stroking or validation, and it feels as though it may as well not have happened." Publication is often not the way to eternal happiness. You are all embarking on a journey which will contain many hours of heartache. Most of which no one else will ever see. Thank God. Beleaguered Squirrel has been movingly open about it. If you knew what screws me up at night you'd be surprised  -  I am often a mess of angst and failure.
  
• BS is so depressed that she gave up writing altogether. OK, that's awful but I hope it's not true. And in fact we know it's not, don't we? We know that BS will pull herself together and get back on the horse. I twice gave up writing during my 21 years of failure  -  or I said I was giving up. I was giving up outwardly. But I never really gave up. You can't. Not if you're a real writer. I don't know if she's good enough to get further than she already has  -  but gosh, I hope she is.  

Importantly, she asks: "Do you think sometimes a writer just has to admit they are a bit crap, and give up?" Yes, it would often be most helpful if that were to happen. But not if the writer is not crap. Which brings us to the important question: is BS a crap writer? I'm inclined to think that she isn't. I'm inclined to think that she hasn't written the right book yet. I'm inclined to think that she will not give up and that she will one day come up with the right book, if she carries on trying and learning and writing. I'm inclined to think that I've not got very many grounds for believing this but I do know that if I was an agent I would want to see BS's work. 

In fact, suddenly I really want to read it.

Why have I posted this? Why have I revealed the terrible heartache of the long-distance writer? Because you need to know. You need to know how good you have to be, how much you have to want it, and how even when you get it it may not be enough. In fact, if you're any good and if you want it so much, it probably won't be enough. Wanting more, being hungry, being greedy for success, being grasping and dementedly desperate are the things that will screw you up and carry you through. They will bring you heartsong and success and they will hurt you in the process.

That's the horrible paradox of writing.

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Although you're reading this on October 1st, I'm writing it on September 26th , and I've just read this in today's Guardian. You can read it if you like but the point relevant to my post is that today (Oct 1st), 800 new titles will be launched. In the UK alone.

Now, this is obviously more than on most days, for reasons that aren't relevant to my point but which the article nicely explains. My initial point is that in any one week / month a hell of a lot of books are being published. Around 120,000 a year in the UK, though that number is somewhat skewed by odd things like maps and reissues of Chaucer or whatever. And Thomas the Tank Engine books by idiots like me. Sorry.

After a recent post of mine, Marion Gropen, host of the Publishing for Profit blog, added a comment giving the equivalent US figures. She allows me to quote it here:

"Here, we had more than 400,000 new books published last year alone. So, if you took a quite large bookstore (you know the kind that cover most of a block, and have two or three floors), you'd have enough to fill that store 8 times with those new books. And then you'd have to fill it a 9th and a 10th time with the older titles still selling (we call it backlist) and the imports.

"There are 2,000,000 manuscripts floating around looking for a home each year here."

Very scary.

The main point of this post is to ask you to think a bit logically about why publishers often turn books down. (Not often enough, some might say, in view of the fact that such a ridiculous number are published. That, however, is an argument which you will not like and which I will therefore shield you from, kind old bat that I am becoming.)

This is what I'd like you to think about. I warn you: it does not make pretty reading. Forget the depressing (or exciting, if you're worried about books being dead) figures and think of some others.

How many books do you read a month? 
How many books does the average person read a month?

Now, I don't know the answers to either of those questions. But let's guess. I guess I read 3 - 4 books a month  -  I mean properly read, having bought or borrowed from the library. Ignoring people who never read a book, and then leaving aside those at the extreme ends of the reading spectrum, including professional reviewers, I guess that perhaps 3 - 4 books a month is average for average readers? I think I read somewhere that 40 a year was an average and that pretty much supports my guess. (Young children will read / have read to them more, granted.)

So, let's say, for the sake of argument, that a "normal" reader reads 40 books a year. Factor in the fact that a normal reader won't read just any 40 books, but 40 books that tend to fit his or her preconceived ideas of personal reading tastes. So, I'd be unlikely to read chick-lit, or romance, or manga. Factor in some gender differences and some age differences.

Now factor in those 120,000 new UK books every year. And factor in all the 000000s still on the shelves from previous years.

Finally, factor in the fact that the vast majority of those new books are obviously not debut books.

Now take a deep breath, especially if you are unpublished or otherwise struggling to get a contract, AND if you are self-publishing ...

Now tell me why you think that your Work in Progress is so compelling that a total stranger should pick it to be one of the 40 books he or she chooses to read in a year? Not only pick it but pay for it, invest money and time, precious time, engaging with the words you happen to think are worth reading.

Finally, tell me that you don't understand why your book has not been snapped up by an agent or publisher.

But what about all the crap that is published? I know: I've tackled that before, here. Thing is, publishers know that there are plenty of people who love to read what you call crap.

I am very sorry. I should have warned you that this was going to be a tough one. Now, please, pick yourself up, go and have some chocolate and then get back to your keyboard and make damned sure that your beautiful blood- and sweat--stained MS is as wonderful as it can possibly be before you send it out there into such a cruel world. Because it will have to be.

BIG MISTAKE 3: OVER-WRITING

Thing about writers is we're passionate about words. (If you're not, bugger off, please).

Trouble with being passionate about words is we sometimes don't know when to rein in our passion. I admit that I'm guilty of this quite often. There are people in my life who do their best to stop me, and very grateful I am to them.

They are, in no particular order:

• my husband - "Shut up: you're banging on."
• my editor - "OTT" / "suggest omit?"
• my internal editor - "do you really need both those descriptions you're so horribly proud of? Would you consider killing one of the babies? No? Well, I'll do it for you and it won't be pretty."

Personally, I blame it on primary school teachers. (With all respect to them for the otherwise wonderful job they do and all the nasty things they mop up.) See, when kids start to write stories, they're told to use adjectives, and adverbs, and detail, and the five senses; and then they get onto similes and metaphors and other devices. Whenever children use these techniques, they get praised. So they use more. And more. Some children don't and they don't get praise, so they fade into the background and become the ones who don't consider themselves writers. Meanwhile Arabella and George have their stories read out in class to demonstrate the richness of their language and the vividness of their imaginations. And so Arabella and George gorge on more and more adjectives and clever-clever literary devices and get carried away into some kind of ecstasy as they sit in their teenage rooms and pour their hearts out into their diaries by moonlight.

Other kids are asleep, but Arabella and George are floating on moonbeams and diving into liquid worlds and sherbet dreams and the parts of their brains that are good with words become passionate about words and lo and behold, two hopeful writers are emerging.

Thing is, no one tells them to stop. No one tells them that just because an adjective is beautiful, five adjectives are not necessarily five times as beautiful. No one tells them that words are valuable, that they need to be chosen perfectly, that effort goes into the positioning of each word, and, crucially, its removal if it is not the absolute best one for the job.

So, grown-up now, Arabella and George begin to write novels. They write for themselves, because they must be true to their souls. They put everything into their oeuvres, their whole beings, all the power of language that they can muster. They read their work aloud to themselves, over and over again. They make themselves cry and shiver with the piercing anguish of their prose.

One day, they are ready to send their oeuvres off to publishers. They visit a well-known blog, called Help! I Need a Publisher! - though, in fact, they believe that they should really be on a blog called "Help! I'm a Publisher and I Really Need You, You Fabulous Writer!" And they follow all the stunning advice about covering letters and synopses and sample chapters and tailoring the submission properly to the right publisher. They don't even include any toffee, or glitter, or naked photos of themselves, though George is tempted because he has a kind of Byronic air of which he is more than faintly proud.

And they are rejected. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that their work is over-written. Thing is that A & G, potentially talented though they may be, are totally up themselves with the beauty of their prose and they have forgotten that this is not about them: it's about the story / work / book /reader. Of course, we must write from the heart and I would never advise selling out at the expense of the quality of your writing - though you may earn more if you do - but if you put yourself and the pleasure YOU derive from your own words above the work itself and the pleasure the reader will take from it then you may as well talk under water.

Help! How do I know if I'm doing this horrible over-writing thing?
So far, I've suggested a cause and a result, and you'll have gleaned something general about what over-writing is, but I haven't shown you how to spot it in your own work. It's easier to spot in others' work, because it's damned irritating. It's like seeing someone a bit over-dressed for the occasion - you know, when someone has just gone that little bit too far to show off the gorgeous legs and Manolo Blahniks when all we're doing is digging a ditch; or perhaps like wearing two diamond necklaces - very vulgar, dahling. It's showing off, preening, and no one responds well to it. When we find over-writing in someone else's work, we may mutter under our breath, "Ok, ok, you really fancy yourself, don't you?" and it gets in the way of the story that we were trying to read.

And this is the main point about over-writing: it gets in the way. It ends up hiding the true beauty underneath, covering it with glitz and frills.

So, on the basis that you are looking carefully at every word you use, because I know you are, here are the questions I think you should ask yourself when checking your work for over-writing. Ask yourself these things especially when it's a piece of description, high emotion, or when you are feeling particularly proud of yourself:

• have I paced the surrounding sentences so that this bit has enough space to work? So, if my gem is surrounded by loads of other gems, is it going to be noticed? No? So, bin some gems. Give the purple sentence some space. You can't see purple on a background of purple
• have I said the same thing twice? (I do this a lot. I even do it quite often.) Or if not exactly the same then is half my description more powerful than the other half?
  
• have I used three adjectives where one (or a different phrase altogether) would have worked harder and maybe ended up being more meaningful?
  
• is this in fact a bit of action where the reader doesn't want to be held back by description anyway? Will the reader be tempted to skip to the action?
  
• is this actually beautiful or is it in fact absurdly flowery? Am I being like a child who thinks that My Little Bride Pony is genuinely tasteful? Am I being greedy and deluded?
  
• if it is genuinely beautiful, is it in keeping with the rest of the work / section? Am I "in voice"?
  
• have I been guilty of "showing, not telling"? (This is often over-used as a crit - sometimes, telling is the right thing to do, but only if it's the right thing to do. I've written about it here and here.)
• have I overdone the adverbs? Especially in dialogue tags - eg. "she said, resignedly" (because it would be much better and more skilful if you showed in other ways that the person spoke resignedly - otherwise [think about it] the reader won't know how to read it until after reading it and getting to your adverb, by which time [if you're a crappy writer] the reader will have read it excitedly or poignantly or something quite differently.
• if I cut this paragraph by 25% would it be even better? (Yes, it would, trust me.)

One trouble is: over-writing is all relative. What's beautiful prose to someone is self-indulgence to another. You have to work out where you want to be on the spectrum. Michel Faber is my writing hero - his prose is gorgeous, his imagination extreme and his vocabulary and imagery rich and rolling, yet he thinks about every word (or he seems to) and every word works. You have to read every word because there are clues everywhere and you can't afford to miss them. That's how I'd love to write. But everyone's different and I'm not saying other styles aren't just as valuable. Just make sure you're clear about what you want and whether your readers want the same.

I'm currently going through my next novel, Wasted, with my ruthless internal editor's hat on. The novel is done and dusted and my editor wants me to release it for copy-editing, but I'm convinced there are more things wrong with it. One of the things I'm looking for, because I tend to get carried away, is over-writing.

I thought I'd give you three extracts that I picked up and thought about at length:

1. "Their heads tell them that this is fake, ordinary, or has a boring explanation - Farantella is ill or messing around with them."

There's an example of "the cliché of three": fake, ordinary, boring. I realised that ordinary and boring are too similar to be useful, so I changed it to, "Their heads tell them that this is fake, or has an ordinary explanation." No frills, no fancy stuff. No showing off.

2. "For they both feel it: that there is something heavy in the caravan, something thickening the air, a chill breath of strangeness."

This one I haven't finished with. It feels over-written, though it occurs at a moment where I am wanting the reader to pause and savour the atmosphere. But it's that "cliché of three" again, and I'm not sure I'm happy. I'll have to think about it. It may get to stay. Or it may not. I'd rather think of something with one or two phrases, otherwise it looks as though I'm struggling to find the right phrase.

3. "Soon, but not very soon, disentangled but still with the blush of him hot on her skin, Jess goes into her house and smiles goodbye to Jack, standing there, watching her."

This gets to stay. This baby lives. Jack and Jess are passionately in love and every touch is almost unbearably electric. I need to show this, even though I have not described their kiss. I am "showing" the effects of the kiss, the parting of their skin, rather than "telling" you about the kiss. (Frankly, showing and not telling with kissing is often preferable - the imagination can fill in the details without feeling as though the author is being a voyeur ...) So, I judge it not over-written but strong. You may disagree! Of course, all this is about context, and you haven't seen the contexts, but I wanted to show you a little of how I go about trying to be ruthless about over-writing. And sometimes failing.

Do remember that in the end you have to judge this yourself. Some genres require and tolerate greater or lesser levels of prose; different books and different topics require a different treatment.

For example, my first novel, Mondays are Red, is heavily loaded with description, which in a different context you might call over-writing. But it shows a boy waking from a coma, hugely disorientated and with an acquired and exaggerated version of the sensory condition, synaesthesia. So, you get pretty over-the-top description and a deliberately confusing multi-sensory layering - it's a book you either love or hate, depending on whether you can let yourself go with the strange descriptions. Whereas Wasted has whole pages with virtually no adjectives and adverbs at all, completely pared back, interspersed with the occasional sentence suddenly rich in description. The intention there is that you will notice the description much more starkly, because it will stand out.

It's that thing about not being able to see purple against a purple background.

But, whatever you're writing and whoever your reader, it is worth considering whether you can apply these adages to your work:

Less is often more
Flowery is not good - delicately floral is.
Over-writing is in the eye of the beholder - and you do care about your beholder
It requires much greater skill to say something in a few words than in many

And finally, that old chestnut:

If in doubt, leave it out.

If you apply that last one correctly you cannot be guilty of over-writing. It's the most important task of the internal editor: to ensure that every word works and earns its place.

Finally, finally, newbies to this blog, or people with duff memories like mine, may be wondering what Big Mistake 1 and Big Mistake 2 were. They were, respectively, Voice and Pace. And the greatest of these is voice.

Voice defines you and defines your book. It's the hardest thing to teach. Compared to voice, over-writing is a complete doddle. So, no excuses now and no pressure. Go and seek out your over-written passages and where you find them, cut them out. And watch how something much stronger appears.

HOW TO MAKE A PUBLISHER SAY YES

This evening, in the Edinburgh Book Fest, I'm doing my talk on "how to make a publisher say yes". And I decided to put the bare bones of it below, or at least to try to decipher my notes and then turn them into something that will make sense to you.

I've done the apparently same talk for four years now, but each time I say it differently. Each time, I guess I've learnt more in the meantime. Each year, I throw my notes away because I know I'll do it differently next time.

So, this was how I structured my talk for this evening. I'm sorry you're not there, but you at least have the luxury of being able to relax with wine / chocolate while you're reading it. On the other hand, you don't get to experience my shoes. And, writing this as I am a week ago, I can't predict which shoes they'll be, so spontaneous am I.

WHY DOES CRAP GET PUBLISHED? (I won't use the word crap, because you can't do that in front of a captive audience, some of whom have only come in out of the rain and weren't expect the crabbit old bat to be so rude).

This is the question that frustrated aspiring authors ask. Understandably. The answer is simple: crap sells. Every published book is a book the publisher thought would sell. And, since crap sells in shedloads, you have to admit they were very often right.

Getting angry about why crap sells will get you nowhere. Besides, you're not here because you write crap and want to sell it. You're here because you think you've written something damned good and you're wondering what on earth you have to do to sell it.

I can't (or not here) teach you how to write, but I can show you the most common things people do wrong.

TWO COMFORTING THOUGHTS
The awfulness of the slush pile is reassuring - it means that good stuff shines. When an agent or publisher sees a jewel in a pile of crap, he will leap on it with enthusiasm and is quite happy to get his hands dirty in his efforts to retrieve that shiny jewel and clean it up so that the world can see its beauty.

Because the second comforting thought is: publishers and agents are desperate to find good books, great books, books that readers will love. If your book is good, they want you.

A SLIGHTLY COMFORTING THOUGHT
It's easy to get published: you just have to write the right book at the right time and send it to the right publisher at ther ight time in the right way.

BUT, in order to do that

• you must understand what makes a right book
• you must understand how publishing works, how commercial decisions are made
• you must know (and obey) the rules for submitting your work
• 
  

TO THE POINT
"How to make a publisher say yes" is not the best question.
The best question is "why do publishers usually say no?"

WHY DO THEY SAY NO?
One reason only: they think they can't sell it. (If your rejected book goes on to be published elsewhere and even be a huge success, that does not mean that the rejectors were wrong. They may well not have been able to sell it, for reasons which you'll find below.)

Before we proceed, you need to understand about the ACQUISITIONS MEETING (AM). (Blog-readers, go here; people in audience, sit back and listen.)

REASONS TO SAY NO
These fall in two categories.

1. Publisher-related - not in your power to fix
2. Book / author-related - your job to fix

1. PUBLISHER-RELATED (If even one of these three things applies to your book, it will not get through the AM.

1. book doesn't fit their list or their publishing schedule is genuinely too full. It might not fit their list because they've already contracted something too similar; or they've decided not to handle fairy books any more (thank the Lord). If it doesn't fit the list because they don't handle this stuff, that's your silly fault for not researching, but there are many other reasons that you had no way of knowing
2. the necessary investment is too great. Publishers have to pay a load of money months and years before they have a chance of recouping it. They have to budget and if your fabulous wizard series comes along when they don't have the required budget to invest in it over many years, they should not take it on and you would not (should not) want them too
3. the editor is not in love with your book. This may be because the book isn't good enough (in which case it's your problem) but it may be simply personal taste. Don't underestimate the importance of that. Liking or admiring a book is not an exact science. Hell, it's not even a science at all. And the editor must love your book otherwise she/he won't fight for it.

2. BOOK / AUTHOR-RELATED

1. The writing is not good enough - punctuation, grammar and basic techniques mark you as someone in control of words or not; you cannot expect the editor to overlook these; voice, pace and structure are essential to powerful story-telling and readable non-fiction; are you thinking of your reader at all times and have you avoided over-writing? (Those are the commonest faults which will make the publisher / agent say no)
2. Book is not marketable, even though the writing may be good enough - publishers have to make money (they may make mistakes but they are doing it with their money); you need a HOOK - the hook needs to grab the Sales and Marketing team at the AM; you must understand the current market - read current successes in your genre and read them analytically. This does not mean selling out; it does not mean putting commericality before art: it means thinking of your readers
3. Your submission is faulty - (there are loads of posts on this blog about submissions, so I won't go on about it here too much but here are the absolute bare bones and most common errors:

• obey guidelines for each individual agent / publisher
• write the perfect covering letter (a new post is coming up on 22nd August, during my workshop on The Perfect Approach) - you have 15 seconds to sell yourself
• don't do anything wacky or cool
• don't boast; don't say your kids / friends love it
• show knowledge of the market and willingness to work hard for long term career

TOP TIPS

1. every sentence counts and every word within that sentence must earn its place
2. think of your reader
3. read within your genre - but read like a writer
4. miss no opportunity to improve your knowledge of the industry
5. be very careful whose feedback you believe and whose you ignore. Believe experts before friends and writing group members

MOST TOP OF TOP TIPS
Instead of believing that you are hard-done-by and wrongly ignored or that publishers are stupid, accept that the likely reason is that you haven't yet written the right book well enough. Yet ...

FINALLY - regard the rejection of your book as the rejection of your book. Not the rejection of you. Write another one. Because if you can't write another one, you can't be a writer anyway.

(And then, after illuminating questions from the audience, the event chairperson thanks me for being so interesting and everyone flocks to the signing tent where they buy copious quantities of my book and we staying signing and chatting and generally bonding for about half an hour. Then, the chairperson escorts me across the summer evening grass towards the calming cavern of the Yurt, where I strengthen myself with a glass of wine and some dinky sandwiches and pastries. I then go out to dinner with my husband, older daughter and her French boyfriend and younger daughter who is working in the bookshop [putting my books face-out] and I tell them how a very kind blog-reader brought me chocolate and that three people commented on my shoes.)

I'll tell you if it happens like that.

IS THIS WHY YOUR MS WAS REJECTED?

A lazy post today but why expend energy when someone else has done the work? (But please note: that is NOT an excuse for plagiarism, because there is no excuse for that. Plagiarism is copying or stealing and passing off as your own writing. Linking to other blogs is right and proper.)

Take a trip here and see if any of these reaons could apply to you.

IS YOUR WRITING HOT ENOUGH TO LIGHT FIRES?

I read this Very Useful Post on agent Rachelle Gardner's blog last month and now is the time to draw it to your attention if you didn't read it at the time. It gives a wonderful insight into the mind of an agent and what mental processes they must go through before saying yes to your magnus opus.

I believe that if you fully understand this, it will do two things for you:

1. help you when you are rejected, especially after those rejections which are accompanied by a message along the lines of "I liked many aspects of this but in the end I feel I have to pass"
2. encourage you not to submit your work until you are as sure as you possibly can be that it is as compelling and perfect as you can make it

Rachelle's blog contains frequent gems of warm and important advice. Bookmark it - I guarantee you won't regret it.

And if you're thinking maybe she's fussier than other agents, think again. All good agents and publishers make equal demands of the books they agree to take on. There's so much uncertainty in the world of reading that if there isn't passion and certainty in the agent and editor's hearts, then how can they possibly throw themselves behind a particular book? And if they don't throw themselves behind it, it'll be doomed.

Some other blog posts that help explain reasons why your book my be rejected:

• common-mistakes-of-unpublished-authors
• deciphering-your-rejection-letters
• big-mistake-1-slip-of-voice
• big-mistake-2-problems-with-pace
• big-mistake-3-show-not-tell-let-me-tell-you-how
  

But actually, none of those tell it as clearly as Rachelle's post because in the end it's all about hooking the reader. You can follow all the rules you like: if your writing doesn't have the necessary spark and perfection in the right places, it won't light any fires.

I've now had lots of submissions for my Submissions Spotlights, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that none of them is good enough to be published - yet! - though a few contain potential. But you can't expect agent / editor to see through the imperfections to the potential: they need more than that because they simply can't spend the time training you up. All the training and all the practice have to come from you. You can't afford to send anything less than the best.

Hot? It needs to be boiling point before you send it anywhere. Anything less is failure.

BIG MISTAKE 2: PROBLEMS WITH PACE

I promised that I would soon hit you with a post which would improve your writing. Big Mistake 1, you'll doubtless remember, was back in February, when I talked about making mistakes with voice. This Big Mistake "series" aims to point you towards the commonest mistakes in otherwise decent manuscripts, the things that so often stop them pressing the necessary ecstasy buttons for an editor or agent to say "OH YES!"

This lesson is aimed at already decent writers, not those whose writing is at a level of direness which you cannot imagine. (Unless you've seen a website that I recently gawped at. Put it this way: supposing its author decided to go down the vanity publishing route; this would be a) the only way she stands a chance of getting published and b) akin to Medusa paying for some glamour photos to be done as a birthday present to herself.)

Sorry, but I needed to get that off my chest. There are some seriously deluded idiots out there; please tell me you are not among them.

Anyway. Pace is one of the things that perfectly decent writers often fail to analyse in their own work and is, thankfully, one of the easiest things to fix. In fact, so easily might you be able to fix it, that I would not be surprised if this post alone does not propel at least one of you to publication. Go, go, go! If one of you gets published, I will feel like a midwife, which would be rather lovely (in some ways, though not in others). I could get to be at the birth - otherwise known as champagne-drenched launch party.

What is pace? Where will you find it?
Pace is not always fast; nor does it have to be. Pace consists of controlling the variety of speeds with which the action happens and with which the reader reads. And you find it in any book where you keep wanting to turn the page.

Hold onto that thought because it's your ability to make the reader want to turn the page, instead of just turning down the corner of it prior to going to sleep, which is your whole aim as an author. Regardless of whether you write crime fiction or romance, kids' books, comedy, literary fiction or whatever - including non-fiction - you want your readers to keep going. And if you get the pace wrong, they won't.

Clearly, some books move faster than others. Some genres require a faster pace throughout: action stories, thrillers, books for teenagers, chick-lit - all require more foot on the accelerator more of the time, because that's what their readers are there for.

But no readers respond well to a constant fast pace. After all, if it's fast all the time, how do you get your reader's heart racing faster for your climactic scenes? How do you create suspense if every page is a sprint? You must play with the reader. You must think: where do I want the reader to become breathless with anticipation? When will I allow him to relax before upping the pace again? How many times will I do this and how often? If we have a really fast bit here, what happens when we get to the scene later which I want to be even more intense and dramatic?

So, pace is about control. Pace is a tool, one of the most important tools in keeping the reader going. Now, I can't decide for you where your fast or slow bits should come, because I don't know your story-line. (Please don't tell me). Only you know that, and it should be obvious to you. But, once you have worked out which are your big scenes and paciest bits, I can give you some tips for how to control the pace at those times.

Technique 1 - chapter ends
You can change the whole pace of a section (or whole book) by simply changing where you end your chapters. Think of a chapter as a breath. If your chapter depicts a complete episode, the reader starts by inhaling, reaches the top of the breath (the climax of the episode), then exhales to the end of the chapter, at which point he relaxes. And quite possibly turns out the light and goes to sleep. Which is fine - your reader needs to sleep. But, what if you don't want him to sleep now? What if this is supposed to be a fast bit where you want your readers breathless with excitement? Simple: end your chapter mid-breath. So, end it before the climax, at a point where the reader cannot relax. Do that a few times, and you've created a really fast-moving section. You've upped the pace. Try it: go through your book messing around with your chapter ends.

Technique 2 - chapter lengths
Fast sections = short chapters. Simple. Make the reader sit up. Make the reader read another one. Can't stop themselves. Just one more. And one more. And now they're really into the story. You've got 'em.

Technique 3 - sentence lengths
One common mistake of not-good-enough writers is having sentences that are all the same length. (And same structure, but we'll tackle that another day.) It slows everything down (if they're all quite long) and makes it monotonous (even if all short and breathless). The simple rule is: short when you want to increase the pace. Again, it's about breathlessness.

You can also extend the technique to paragraph lengths. So, for a particularly dramatic fast bit, you might have a series of very short sentences, each on a new line. I did this in my next novel (not Deathwatch - the next one, Wasted.) Let me show you, and bear in mind that this is the most dramatic moment of the book, which the reader has been waiting for for a long time:

There is a moment of emptiness. It is a fraction of space, when one thing ends and another begins. Laughter stops, punched in the face, shocked.

Jess’s body freezes.

Breath holds.

One jetski.

It is coming.

Straight.

Towards.

The beach.

Jack is standing now. His back to the sea.

Grinning.

The rider’s face. Laughing.

But then.

Terrified.

Trying to turn.

Screaming.

A spray of froth.

A flash of red.

OK, that's a bit extreme but this is a novel where much of the book has a dreamlike, headachey quality, a thick summer feel with the menace of thunder, and when I need to gear up I use what I call the Ferrari Method - (well, I'm calling it that now) - a super turbo-charged shock to the reader. That particular example shows something else about Ferraris - you can hear them coming, but there's not enough time to get out of the way. The build up of short sentences lets you know, absolutely know, that something horrible is just about to happen.

Alternatively, you could also use Fire-cracker method, where the short sentences come out of the blue, in the middle of some long sentences. Earlier in Wasted, I do this when a pigeon flies through the window ... (Something of which, as you know, I have considerable experience). I give absolutely no warning of this and both my agent and editor commented on this as being the most shocking moment because the reader is not ready. Bearing in mind that there are a considerable number of far more shocking moments, a pigeon is doing a pretty good job if it over-takes human disaster on the shock stakes.

Technique 4 - controlling tense
Now, this isn't exactly a technique but it's something that affects pace in ways which are worth looking at. The easier tenses to handle are the past tenses. No one has a problem with these. Using the present tense is much trickier, and creates its own atmosphere which is (surprisingly?) not always one of greater speed and immediacy. It can sometimes feel detached. So, with the present tense, you need to be even cleverer about controlling pace. I don't recommend the present tense unless you really know what you're doing. There are too many pitfalls and many readers are put off by it.

Whichever tense you are using, Technique 5 comes into play.

Technique 5 - chopping words
When you want a particular section to feel very immediate, you could omit bits of sentences altogether, usually subjects, articles, or finite verbs. Don't do this too much, or it becomes irritating; and if you do it, as I do, it needs to be a recognised part of your style, not something you just inserted for effect on page 178.) Here's a bit from Deathwatch. The bits in red are where I've left words out, deliberately to increase pace. The bit in blue is technique 6.

The towpath was narrow here, backed by a high wall. No escape. She looked behind her. The barge was nearly at this bank. She could just make out the figure of the woman at the helm. Hear her voice but not her words. She didn’t want to hear her words.


She ran, pummelling the air, cold wind in her throat, rain running down her face, pain in her lungs. Straining to hear any sounds behind her. No sound of the boat, not any more. It must be at the bank. The woman would be leaping off. She would be only seconds behind."

Technique 6 - running phrases
That sentence in blue could have been separate "sentences". (Yes, I know, not technically sentences, since they lack finite verbs, but I could have separated them with full-stops/periods). And that would work too. But in some ways this method creates a smoother speed, not a jerky breathless one. Here, the character is running sucessfully - she feels powerful. If I'd made them separate staccato sentences, I'd have created a more breathless and desperate effect, but I'm saving that for later ...

Please don't think I'm setting myself up as in any way a perfect writer. No, no, no. I look all my published books, including the new one which is looking at me accusingly right now, and think, "ARGHHH, why didn't I change that bit or notice this bit?" No, what I want to do is show you how carefully you have to look at your writing at every level, from overall structure down to individual word and punctuation point, in order to be in control of your pace.

See, if you can't control your pace with absolute precision, you've lost your reader. And, published or unpublished, you cannot afford to do that.

Now, on a personal note, I am feeling very much under pressure, and not for any reason you might guess. Last night, I was accosted in a bar (in the nicest possible way), by a very interesting and personable person who asked me if I was Nicola Morgan, "because" she read my blog. We then had a really good chat, but what was disconcerting was that she said she recognised me from my boots. Considering that the boots in question have never featured in this blog (though others have), this was remarkable. Anyway, she said she knew I'd be in this bar because I'd put it on Twitter and on my blog, and she thought to herself, "Hmm, if Nicola is there, she'll be bound to be wearing great boots." So, she must have gone around the bar looking at everyone's feet. I feel a little like Cinderella.

Anyway, if I'm going to be held to account by the gloriousness of my boots, this puts me under some extra pressure, to which there is really only one answer: I'd really better go and buy some more.