I’m in the process of submitting a novel to agents at the moment. A fun exercise which means you fail and fail and fail until you succeed and then you don’t have to consider the failures again, presumably until the next time.
It’s all about tweaking the submission (and hopefully, the absolutely marvellous quality of my writing, but let’s take that part for granted given the confidence I’m trying to build up,) until it tips over the line into something someone wants to read more of, and then hopefully sell to publishers for you.
There is a standard process to these things, which is to write the very best piece of writing you can, edit it into an even better piece of writing, then cast it out into the world, with the best pitching submission letter you can put together, selling your skills like a crazed madman, (but not too crazed obviously) and then sit back and hope your first three chapters, and your sales pitch for the whole thing, lure them in and leave them salivating for more.
There is though, a step in between the editing and the pitching, which I haven’t been able to do, because I can’t do it in a vacuum. I can’t do it without other, willing people to help me out, and I’m trying to tweak that, to work around it, but it’s proving really tricky.
You see ideally, I should be letting other writers critique my novel. Other writers who understand what I’m trying to do, and are happy to give up their time and to tell me what needs work, what I need to do to smooth off the edges, or sharpen the spikes, or generally make everything shine.
Ideally they shouldn’t be friends, or family, but objective people who understand what I’m trying to do, who want to like my work, but are willing to point out it’s flaws.
So I’m in search of people at the moment. I’m trawling the web for ways to find critique partners who might understand where I’m coming from and help me get there. It’s like dating, but the disappointments are so much longer and slower and more drawn out.
The conversations about how this isn’t working out between us, are just as awkward.
The clash, when you realise they care more about a sentence being too short than you do, or they don’t like being left without an instant explanation for something you want them to ponder for the next seven chapters.
And you have to be willing to reciprocate, obviously.
You have to like their work, and gently tease out its inconsistencies, identify what they would want to see made better.
It’s so hard. It’s just like dating.
I was never good at dating.
And yet somehow I am happily married, so I have to hold out hope that this too is something I can get through and hopefully find a long term relationship on the other side.
There’s somebody out there for me.
All suggestions for where I might find ‘the one’ are welcomed.
I
Leave a Reply