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Tuesday 19 April 2011

Friday 15 April 2011

Going With The Flow . . .

The locusts have been off school and college all week but they're late risers (some days it's barely worth their while) so I've managed three or four hours writing every morning before they rise and point to their mouths.

There are so many pieces of advice out there about writing. Some of them are useful, some trite, some so idiosynchratic that they're only of use to the people who offer them. But one of the ones generally accepted is re-writing.

Usually I re-read what I've written each day and edit it for style, punctuation, spelling and occasionally delete most of it. But this week I've barely read a word once it's passed my line of sight on the screen. Five days, 15,000 words, all in a rush. And I'm scared to read it now.

Why did this happen? Well, it's the first time it's happened, that's for sure. I write in fits and starts, usually about 3 or 4000 words a week. Sometimes it's easier than others, but this week it's been a piece of cake. I knew where the story was going, already knew the characters, had my research all around me. And it just flew out, unhindered, and felt exactly as I'd imagined it.  But now I'm frightened to read it, in case it's a pile of rubbish. In case I have to rewrite it.

Oh, and another rejection letter in the post this morning . . . next to a proof copy of the lovely paperback edition of Winter Shadow.

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Feeling rejected . . .

After a few years of practice and a good few dozen rejection slips, I began to write more for children. Not because it's easier, or I thought it would be easier to get published. It's not. Unexpectedly though, my first attempt was picked up by Barefoot before I'd collected too many rejection letters.

That was it. Now the floodgates would open and I would get an agent and be free to publish whatever I wrote. Err . . . actually no. That didn't happen. True I have managed two new contracts since then, but finding an agent still seems almost impossible. The old chestnut of it being more difficult to get an agent than get published certainly rings true with me. In fact, I think I might give up trying . . . I've wasted a lot of time and paper and energy in research and submissions and although they do more often than not ask for the full manuscript these days, I'm still no nearer. I can't afford £300 to have a manuscript edited by a consultancy each time, either. Neither can most writers, so stop putting it on your form letters.

So, how does a writer deal with rejection? Well, first off I would suggest that anyone who writes for money would be better off getting a proper job ( not that there are many around at the moment). Writing is just something I've always done. I remember turning up to school early one summer morning just to finish my first chaptered story in junior school (Mr Hanson, thank you very much). If people told me my stories were awful I'd still do it in secret anyway. So when a publisher or agent rejects a manuscript my heart sinks, like anyone's does, but only for a few minutes. I've even had an agent say she loved one of my stories but couldn't see a place for it in the market. Another wanted me to rewrite a young adult novel more ''like Cornelia Funke''. Well, we live in thrall to the market now, don't we? Demand dictates supply, apparently, not the other way round. But I won't write about vampires or wizards (no offence to anybody who does - it's a personal thing).

If you feel destroyed by each rejection, you'll soon stop writing ( or at least submitting). I comfort myself with the thought that many more eminent writers from the past would never be published today because nobody would take the risk.

So just write. Send it off if you think it's good. Let people read it and offer you an opinion, especially people whose judgment you trust. But most of all, do it because you like doing it.