Bookworm

There is a place in the city centre that sports a most peculiar plant sculpture. It is Lincoln Square and the sculpture, in Diana's garden, is one of a bookworm.



I thought it was very appropriate indeed when I walked past it after I posted my further book sample to my potential agent. I secretly kissed the envelope before I passed it over for stamping and it is true that, no matter how much or how often I tell myself that I should not think about it, actually, I do. I hope The Bookworm will bring good luck. It would be so funny to be able to tell one day that I stood infront of him after posting a seminal envelope to a seminal person. I so hope the seminal day was today.

Cautious Optimism

When I read the news and come across cautious optimism splashed across the screen, I always snort. I snort because I think that you're either an optimist or a pessimist and that you cannot be a cautious optimist. Why is it that we never hear of cautious pessimism? 'There is cautious pessimism about the current state of the economy' never ever makes it into print, even if what it means is exactly the same as cautious optimism. It means people, we just don't know.

And so it was for me until this morning, when I received an email that I had to re-read fifteen times in an attempt at making sense of. This read:

"Dear Steph,

Thank you for sending us a proposal and sample writing of your book which we have now read. We’ll be pleased to read more of it if available (the complete book or 2-3 full chapters). Please send the material to the address below.

Best wishes."

You will agree that this is most defintely not a rejection. I do not read any no, either on the lines or between them. Neither do I read any sorry, or any but, or any did not love it enough or any not for us or any best luck elsewhere. Because all of the above means no in real life, one is safe to assume that whatever does not use one of the above expressions or combination thereof means yes. Or, does it? And here is where I felt a surge of cautious optimism frothing up from my stomach all the way to my mouth and was prompted to fire a rabid email to my friend Paul the editor who replied with:

"It means, why are you not at the post box delivering the letter to its innards as at now?"

Thank You For Reading (Or Not)

Unless you’ve come across one of her books; unless you tread bookstores with the same hunger and thirst a revolutionary Parisian used to raid a bakery; unless you think of your life as an introspective journey that has taken you around the ages while still being sat at the same table in the same old cafe, it is unlikely that you will know who Dubravka Ugrešić is. I can tick of all of the figurative boxes above, yet, I didn’t find Dubravka’s work by word of mouth or printed matter, I found her because of a very peculiar book.



I recall when our encounter took place. It was during my slow and painful return to work after my sick leave years ago, when I could browse bookstores in the afternoon, mid-week, without the lunchtime sword of Damocles hovering above me like Mancunian thundering clouds. I was in Waterstone’s Deansgate, where a table was neatly stacked up with the latest Shakespearian edition, next to this intriguing title, Thank You For Not Reading. I had yet to start approaching agents at the time. I lived an uncracked clean state of optimism and ignorance which, usually, go hand-in-hand insofar as the working life (or life in general) is concerned. Still, those five little words framed under the vintage, good-looking lady, somehow rang prophetic bells in my then empty head, clear as it was of the preconceptions of so many agents being surplus morons and of the publishing world being sales-, and not quality-, driven.

Dubravka can be defined as an academic writer, where academic means a thinker who does not limit herself to skimming issues (that’s what most journalists are for these days). She deconstructs the sub-text(s) and re-assembles the parts in ways often surprising and always spot-on. Using academic as a description of anything often raises eyebrows, especially so among those whose eyebrows don't sit very high to begin with.

It’s academic... I have heard this hateful expression in a multitude of instances in the business world. Middle managers and senior managers relish in the opportunity of pulling this out of the drawer and throwing it onto the meeting table with the same quiet pride and countenance of a poker player laying down the winning hand. I suppose in their minds saying ‘yes, but, all of this is academic’ highlights their supposed great thinking skills high and above the debate in order to be able to solve it.

The sub-text of ‘it’s academic’ is that the academia only ever debates, it never provides suggestions or solutions to the debates that rage within itself. It is easy (and simplistic) to think in this misguided manner, for few people realise that the greatness of studying philosophy, for example, resides in the knowledge that this provides of the understanding of mankind’s evolution. One needs a greatly analytical mind in order to be able to grasp, understand, de-construct and utilise the meanings of works as old as mankind itself. Except a philosophy graduate is currently considered an un-employable opium-filled dreamer who is about as useful to the working environment as a painter or a writer. And here enters Dubravka in what I like to view as an excellent defence of the gift of creativity.

“While one person’s self-esteem wanes, another’s grows. That is, presumably, how the commercial world is arranged. I say ‘presumably” because I don’t know much about it. But I do know something about my own kind, about writers. If a writer isn’t sure that he or she is a writer (and real writers never are), then the sense of his or her own profession isn’t real either. So how can such writers charge money for their literary efforts? With difficulty. So the publishing industry profits from the low self-confidence of its producers.

“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a writer.”
“I don’t mean that... we’re all writers in some ways! I’m asking what you do, how do you pay the bills?”

A real writer always has problems with low self-confidence, is always consumed by doubt, even when he or she is publicly acknowledged. By winning the Nobel Prize, for instance. Especially then. I once met just such a Nobel laureate, so I know what I’m talking about. Someone with low self-esteem is like a punching bag that anyone can use; whoever passes by gives it a punch. A real writer feels guilty and thinks that what he’s doing is unimportant, or useless, or privileged (although he’s not paid for it), while other serious people work. Such writers are always in awe of physicists, carpenters and surgeons, and can always be crushed with the greatest of ease, like a worm or a fly”.

So what do you do in order to be less wavering in your quest for high self-esteem? You seek agents. I do not think writers seek agents because, first and foremost, they want publishing deals. Writers seek agents because individuals depend on one another for self-validation throughout life. Think about this: I could be the most self-sufficient and self-confident of writers with the deepest understanding of the publishing industry there is. I am likely to still be the same confident person after ten rejections from agents. I may even be the same after thirty. But some very fine lines may start to appear on my conviction around rejection number fifty. Or number one hundred. Or, if I am a true stoic, around rejection three hundred.

I defy even the most capable professional out there not to start even a fleeting introspective questioning once three hundred people act like he isn’t as good as he thinks he is. Because we depend on others to define ourselves as individuals, the work of the writer is one that can easily be relegated to the bottom end of the hobby pile. Yet, it is worth hanging in there and fending off the paranoia because:

“In the world of the jet set, wealthy party-givers, socialites, star-editors, star-agents, star-publishers; in the world of the media conglomerates, where publishing itself is only an incidental business which doesn’t make much money; in the world where the one-time fee of a catering-artist (a cook) exceeds the advance of a serious writer several times over; int he world of TV stars; in the world where the memoirs of Monica Lewinsky get a thousand times more publicity than the collected works of Marcel Proust; in the world of the powerful, in other words, things happen differently. Exactly how, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been there.

[...]

Some time ago , I found an agent with a PhD in classics from Yale. Encouraged by his references, I sent him my manuscript. After a while, a letter arrived:

I have read your manuscript. It is an elegant, unusual, and unconventional work. In other words, it would be hard to find American publishers who would buy such an essentially “European” work. As a lover of European literature, it is hard for me to acknowledge that the battle against the resistance of American publishers (and readers) to European prose is in vain. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare. I would like to be of more help and to be able to respond more optimistically.
With great respect, cordially yours,

At the same time, a letter arrived from a French agent:

I have not read your manuscript, but I do not doubt that it is an exceptional literary work. However, it would be hard to sell it at this time to any West European publisher. East Europeans are no longer the trend, which is of course sad, but true. If Solzhenitsyn has problems finding a publisher, there there is nothing we can do but wait for happier times.
With warn greetings,

At the same time, a letter arrived from my former Croatian publisher:

Hey, you’ve been on the blacklist for ten years, it’s natural that your readers have forgotten you! Not more than a dozen people would buy one of your books together. No one reads local writers anymore. They hate anti-regime writers, while regime writers make them sick. Books are expensive. It comes to the same thing, one way or another. Only the Croatian edition of Mein Kampf has sold really well. So there you are.
Yours,”

Am I being all doom-and-gloom these days? Will this place soon turn into Domestic Mess - A Bitter and Sour Slice Of Life? No it won’t. No it isn’t. My readership has grown from zero a month back in January to almost ten thousand a month. You may not have noticed this, but there is a little counter at the bottom of this page telling you how many people have visited since I installed it for all to see, on June 23rd.

Out of these (almost) ten thousand visits, many of them will be knitting and crocheting people, others will be people interested only in food and cooking, others are real-life friends who can now gain an insight much more accurate than any afternoon spent with me could provide them with. And then... others will be writers who are well-read and well-educated, who know what they are doing and where they are going, except their self-esteem is non-existent.

When I wrote this, I didn’t write it in order to have a dig at agents. If I wanted to have a dig at anything or anyone, there would be venom dripping off your screen because a certain type of criticism is fun to read and even more fun to write, yet, it is not subtle nor long-lasting. I wrote The Agent Fairy in order to encourage and, yes, even inspire creative people to have more faith in their capabilities before those three hundred rejections come through the door. And if you still have to ask yourself why your work is so little valued, why your gift of creativity is unrecognised and scorned, or why everything is shit, do not waste your time with this (although it will give you yet another example of shit itself), read this instead:

“ [...] “While the price of gold is more or less stable, the price of shit has seen astronomical growth in the last thirty years. And it’s still rising” [...] The transmutation of shit into gold is nevertheless no simple thing, for if it were we would all be rich. You need institutions, galleries, media, a market, publicity, interpreters (those who will explain the meaning of the artistic gesture), promoters, art dealers, critics, and, of course, consumers.

[...]

There is, presumably, something in the very nature of shit that makes it so loooooved. And however much the theoreticians of popular culture try to explain why shit ought to be loved, the most attractive aspect of shit is nevertheless its availability. Shit is accessible to everyone, shit is what unites us, we can stumble across shit at every moment, step into it, slip on it, shit follows us wherever we go, shit waits patiently on our doorstep [...]. So who wouldn’t love it! And love alone is the magic formula that turns shit into gold”.

Building Platforms

Today was all about building platforms. Not these platforms,



but these.



Paul, an editor I've known for years, is quite possibly the only person that knows all of the ins-and-outs of my writing and my work aspirations. I told him that three months into the search for an agent, I still have not found one.

'So?', he says.
'What do you mean?', I say.
'I mean, so? A-aaand?', now he stares.

I am swallowing hard, already hating myself for having steered what was a perfectly pleasant discussion about horses and rain down the sore path of proposals and sample chapters.

'Well, so, I was... wondering... if... when...'
'What were you wondering about?', he keeps on staring, while I say nothing, just sit opposite him, wondering why I am feeling so hormonal about absolutely everything.

'How many rejections have you got so far?'
'Sixteen.'
'So you counted them? Did you keep them?'
'I didn't count them, I keep track of them in a spreadie, with dates and things and everything. I keep them so that when I get The Deal I can frame them and put them all up in the dining room'.
'Sounds good. Out of these sixteen, how many were sent to unsuitable agents?'
'Like? Agents that?'
'Agents that do not take lifestyle non-fiction, that's what you write, right?'
'Lifestyle narrative non-fiction yes. Humorous lifestyle narrative non-fiction', I specify.

'So how many do not take this stuff out of these sixteen?'
'I am not sure, it's hard to tell when they reject your stuff on the basis of a letter alone sometimes'.
'A-ha, that's the best indication! If they bin you at the letter, then they are usually the wrong type of agent. So how many?'
'I think six.'
'So that makes only ten rejections so far, that's not many you know'.

'Well yes, no, it's not many but... how about the agents that called me and talked to me and then rejected the prop and the sample? The work isn't crap I swear, I know that'.

He stares, waiting for more, waiting for what, I am afraid to say, is the truth.

'They talk about platforms or lack thereof more like. I haven't got one because I'm not on the tellie, I am not a WAG or I haven't been on Big Brother and I ain't gonna go any time soon...'
'Steph you're a moron'
'Right'
'You've got a blog?'
'Right, yes, I have'
'What do you talk about in there?'
'My animals, knitting... stuff... work... life you know'
'That's why you're a moron'
'Right'
'You should write about work. More about work'
'But I do'
'But not controversially about work, am I right?'
'Well no. I just talk about... about not liking it very much.'

'Start bad-mouthing people. Trash them in the blog. Tell everyone what it is that makes you miserable about it. It's not just the work, surely? It's usually the assholes associated with work. Spare people the violins, the way you feel about work. Tell them the shit, that's what they like to hear'.
'But... that's unethical. I cannot do that'.
'And that's why you are a moron and you haven't got an agent and you haven't got a platform. How did all the other shits out there get really good publishing deals when they were also keeping blogs? By talking about work in certain ways. Or about sex'.
'Well, that's even worse, I ain't got a porn-like sex life you know'.
'Nobody does, these people make it up. And they sell. Build your platform! Generate fucking scandal around yourself! Who is gonna care otherwise? They want you all packaged, you, the work and the platform!'

I left Starbee with leaded legs, defeated, offended, a sackful of rattling snakes flapping in my stomach. I pit-stopped at Waterstone's in order to cheer myself up with a little something (by Umberto Eco this time). On nearby shelves, I came across trash by Jordan and shit by Jade Goody. It's bad enough to see 'autobiographies' of mediocre footballers, but I can tell you that, with an almost finished PhD on my shelf, seeing 'works' by a dim slut and an ignorant maggot as I try to secure my own work is somewhat... surreal, even when I know these books have been ghost-written or co-edited, which, really, are elegant ways to say they weren't written by their supposed authors. I know these are books written by people who can't write for people who can't read but the substance remains: these in the shops, my proposal still doing the rounds.

Good job I didn't think about mentioning them when I was with Paul, else he would have cracked his mug on the table and gone: 'Ex-aaa-ctly' in trumpet-blowing splashes of self-validation for his own argument. And that's why I am a moron and Jordan and Jade are not.

The Agent Fairy

Today I heard that a friend of a friend, an already published children's author, is ditching her agent. As she was talking, I spaced out, the three little words 'ditching her agent' hopping from ears to brain to eyes where they stuck, like blinkers, as I cut all else out. What did she mean 'ditching her agent'? It means nothing to me. Authors look for agents, write to agents, talk to agents, long for agents, pray for agents, beg for agents, they do not ditch agents, right? This is the stuff of oxymorons, as available as a reliable plumber or a tall Tom Cruise; as real as Beverly Hills without cocaine or beauty adverts without digital imagery. Yet it's all true, I heard of a published author who is ditching her agent. Said agent, a supposedly reputable one going by the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook and make of that what you will, has exhausted all of her contacts in the chick lit arena, a grand total of nine. When I short-listed my agents I crossed out very many; I write lifestyle narrative non-fiction which can mean one permutation of very many different styles. Not all non-fiction agents represent this type of non-fiction, even when they supposedly represent all non-fiction. There just cannot be one agent that represents ALL non-fiction, you'd think an agent should know that's impossible? But, as usual, I digress.

This author I am speaking of is writing chick lit and her agent has a total of nine contacts in the business. Blimey, chick lit is not lifestyle narrative non-fiction. Heck, it is not 2nd century Bulgarian religious poetry. Surely there must be more publishers to tackle for chick lit than nine? As I was driving through the countryside on the way to horsey, I reflected on this point. I thought about the market and its requirements. You'll find agents that tell you it's difficult to publish your book in the current climate, but judging by what I see in Waterstone's I would say it's not that hard to publish anything at all these days, for anything goes, from supposedly inspirational diaries to memoirs of misery. I thought about the dumbing-down of popular culture in general, something that I feel super-qualified to bring into the picture as I am finishing a PhD on it, but then I always defend popular culture, for I appreciate its potency and know that it cannot be reduced to mere idiocy. I also thought of the agent as signifier of success, as the speed-lane to a profession that most of us regard as the Holy Grail of all professions, the profession that so perfectly fits the old adage 'find a job you enjoy and you'll never have to work one day in your life' (thanks Mr Confucius), at least for me. This is what I thought an agent was, and was for, until I started contacting a few. Immediately life appeared in front of me as seen through the lens of clarity, my own preconceptions about agents distorted and burlesque to begin with.

The consensus is that without an agent, one cannot get a book published. Aspiring authors re-focus from publication to representation and leave the quest for the publishing deal to the agent. Books, articles, forums, writing groups are all adequate sources of information regarding the 'how to approach an agent' issue. Yet, reading through the checklists often left me wondering whether agents were a different breed of professionals, professionals one should approach with water-marked, headed parchment, laser-printed DO NOT BEND envelopes and Smythson business cards, professionals impressed both by style and substance. I have both (and modesty, as you can tell) and have recently begun a ride that has prompted me to post this, hoping that it will help new writers to re-evaluate themselves and their work. Stick with me to the end and you'll see why.

What does rejection mean? The word rejection goes hand-in-hand with writer as much as 'pop/stop/Pringles' or 'love/hate/Marmite'. Do a little bit of research and you will find that even classics have been rejected countless times. I find that starting on this can be both depressing and re-assuring. This is because zooming in on agents' (and publishers') ineptitude at recognizing quality in its rough state is a worrying prospect, yet, at the same time, it makes authors feel like they are in good company and we all know that a trouble shared is a trouble halved, right? Wrong.

Wrong because the sub-text of rejection is that there must be something awry with the submission itself. Writers beat themselves up about this all the time when, effectively, they are blindfolded in a darkened room, trying to put together a jigsaw they can find no pieces of.

I got a rejection letter but I don't know what I need to change in the proposal…

I got a rejection letter but it didn't say very much…

I got a 'with compliments' rejection slip and that was that, so I am re-writing my introduction now…

I didn't even get a reply which, really, is a mute rejection. So I am re-writing the spec letter…

And so on forever. What articles, books, forums and countless other outlets always do is looking at the rejection from a bottom-up point of view, where the author is a quivering, fearful and often shy wreck waiting to be slashed into by the agent's knife. Often, one ends up reading rather entertaining stuff sent in by writers and divulged by agents. I am not entirely sure what the agents' purpose is on this one, if not showing what a hard, gripping life they do lead, leafing through crap for a living. So I recently chose to look at the problem from the top-down, for a rejection is more likely to tell me something about the agent, and not so much about my proposal or my letter.

Consider the rejection that came from the agent who wrote:

'The proposal you mentioned was not included in the letter, but I can tell you that it would not be something that I can represent anyway'.

This is an agent who cannot distinguish a speculative letter asking whether the agent would like to see the proposal, from an offer to read an enclosed proposal. Next!

Consider the rejection that came from the agent who wrote, following promising phone conversation:

'I am afraid this is not really for us. I hate to disappoint you and I really hope I am proven wrong'.

Come on, are you kidding me? Why would someone hope to be proven wrong when turning down an author? So that they could later kick themselves silly when said author is doing really well at racking them while represented by someone else? This is one of the many agents out there who does not even catch the contradiction within a stock-reply that they really ought not to give. If you find an agent who uses clichés in rejection letters, or any letter, be grateful it is not your agent. Next!

Consider the rejection that came from the agent who compared a popular culture critical work to the Dummies guides. Does this agent not grasp the difference between TIME magazine and Heat? Would he compare Umberto Eco to Dan Brown? Does he even know the difference? Next!

Consider the rejection that came from the agent who thought said popular culture critical work was a health title and that on that basis he could not represent it. Next!

Consider the rejection that came from the agent who was interested in a book about an English king and later copped out with:

'I found it really interesting but I am afraid I just cannot get my head round historical fiction'. Next!

Or how about the agent who rejected an 'autobiography' of someone who has been dead for 556 years on the grounds that the agency only represents fiction writers? Who did she think wrote the book? Next!

Or the rejection of an historical novel whose ending was deemed as 'too sad' and should have been changed, throwing historical accuracy out of the window in favor of a happily-ever-after scenario? Next! Next! Next!

I am not suggesting that an author should become a nuisance to an agent who does not, for any reason, feel passionately about the writer's work; that would be career suicide. But I do take exception to agents who place themselves on the proverbial soap-box when they only have nine contacts. I take exception to agents who want a perfectly packaged work from the word 'Dear' and who are not prepared to work with the author as it was customary years ago. I take exception to agents who do not even read perfectly presented material and return it without a word because they are the only busy people at work. I take exception to agents who do not take leaps yet seem quite comfortable representing mediocre work on the basis of a friend's recommendation. I take exception to a lot of other agents, and I am certain you have your own reasons to take exception to lots of them as well.

Fact is, we need to take ownership of our work. We need to know better. We need to be able to make the judgment on our own writing. We need to let go of the misguided assumption that The Agent Knows Best, that the advisory service knows best. Recently, a friend submitted a sample to two services; one recommended one course of action, the other recommended exactly the opposite. This is symptomatic of a great disease: when writing, we are treading into the eggshell-covered no man's land of subjectivity where one person can say all and its opposite and still make sense of it. It is of paramount importance that we, writers, can make that judgment unaided, for only this will be our salvation.

This quest does a disservice to us all, but especially so to the less experienced writers who write and talk about agents as if they were the be-all and end-all of the writing profession, as if they had more understanding of writing or of how the world spins around than you or I have. Remember that there are agents (and editors of course, but first, agents) who allow 'the huge monk' or 'the fact that' to go into print. While I personally would not write a work off because of these two lapses in judgment, I would expect, require and demand a capable agent to work with the writer in order to ensure that s/he becomes a better one. By the same token, an agent should be willing to receive new submissions, never too busy for a new proposal. This would equate to being too busy to expand one's horizons, to learn about new trends and perspectives; it would equate to a refusal for personal growth that I, as a person, would never be able to live with. I certainly would have little faith in an agent who can live with the refusal of intellectual stimulation and curiosity.

I do not operate under the ill-advised supposition that there is a lot of talent out there. Actually, there is not. There is an awful lot of trash piled high on agents' desks. But while there is not a lot of talent from the writers' side, I can tell you there is even less talent from the agents' one. Out of the seventy I should tackle for my work of non-fiction there are probably five or less who could take it on and successfully land a deal for it. Whatever you do, do not let your work and your self-respect be crushed into doubtful resignation by an agent's rejection that indicates s/he cannot distinguish a letter from a proposal or fiction from non-fiction. To elevate such a person above yourself would pay a disservice to intellectual development at large. If you are the writer whose output needs a lot of re-work, by all means re-work it until you're at the stage of being able to suss yourself by yourself.

In his ebook about the query letter (which I cannot recommend enough, although I would advise you, as a writer, to know the difference between 'it's' and 'its'), agent Noah Lukeman writes that 'Writers will think of — and try — anything, and for that, I salute them. I salute their creativity, their ingenuity, their energy, and most of all, their optimism'. It seems a good time to salute agents. I salute their ignorance, their thoughtlessness, their incompetence and, most of all, their self-importance.