Article here:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1581278,00.html

by Susan Hill describing the results of her first call for fiction for her company Long Barn Books. Not many surprises, but interesting to read it from the horse's mouth.

Emma

Emma,

I thought this a first-class Article. It underlines the vast number of wannabee writers out there and the fierce competition to be faced.

Only two submissions from Agents! I think Susan Hill is right when she refers to 'how' agents may perceive her publishing house... however only two!

Len

I suppose there's not much in it for an agent, if the advance is 'only' £1000, but it's not as if she or her company are an unheard of start-up, so it is a bit surprising.

Her statistics for the ratio of hopeless to promising to possible bear out what you read elsewhere, and however infuriating it is for serious writers trying to get past the 'no unsolicited manuscripts' barrier, you do see why agents and publishers are tempted to say it. (I've posted Jonathan Lloyd's figures on another thread). But I was surprised that she was surprised by that ratio, if you see what I mean. I suppose once you're well inside the trade, as she is, you must lose track of just how many people there are out there writing away.

Emma

An interesting and yet mildly depressing article... I can understand Susan Hill's frustration, but when industry bods start harping on about how many rubbish writers there are out there, as though these people are deliberately sending crap to annoy them, it sounds unkind to say the least. I appreciate that we should learn our craft before expecting the world, however. It's just that until you know that you're not just another talentless wannabe, it's easy to feel disheartened and wonder if the story you're locked into is just another pile of 80k word nonsense waiting to annoy a dozen agents or so.

Sorry, I seem to have put on my paranoid depressive writer's head today.

It really was an interesting article, Emma, thanks for posting it.

Myrtle

Yes, those long, dark Sunday tea-times of the soul. I think if someone worries that their work is total rubbish it's a sign that it isn't, if you see what I mean. The really scary manuscripts are the ones written by people who clearly have absolutely no sense of how words work at all. The people who try and fall short (i.e. all of us) are showing that they have that sense, and are trying to develop it.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to despise you, and just because you're depressive doesn't mean that life is actually wonderful. It's the moments (usually a combination of a particularly thick blizzard of rejections and not enough sleep) when I think, 'Am I just completely wrong? Is is not that I'm not good enough yet? Is what I'm trying to do something nobody except my sisters would ever want to read? Ever?' Not nice.

Emma

Emma,

What one must assume is that one's writing stands head and shoulders above all others (give or take just a few).

The agents who shake their heads and the publishers who return your work are temporarily blinded. They fail to recognise brilliance, individuality, creativity and genius.

I know this is all rubbish but it is a nice thought to take to bed.

Len

Yes, that's a hot-water-bottle thought - cheap, comforting, helps you get to sleep, and is cold and leaky in the morning.

Alas, whenever I've tried the assertion thing, one of two things occur to me: either I'm Gertrude protesting too much, or I'm the Red Queen and believing six impossible things before breakfast. I don't know where real faith in what you're doing comes from. I suspect you can't make it happen by act of will.

Emma

Thanks for posting this article, Emma, very welcome. I missed it on Saturday. I'm surprised Ms Hill had so few responses from creative writing courses, and so few from agents too. Yes, 10-15% of a thousand pounds may not be much, but as said, you'd think if an agent had a writer who was good, they might want to try this route to break them into the market. Anyway, good luck to the winner and the runners-up, and to Long Barn. I was interested in Ms Hill's comment that most of the good books submitted were set in the past. Perhaps the challenge of 'historical' fiction filters out some no-hopers, who give up early on, since it requires a certain objectivity and 'method', and many don't have the necessary discipline? Of course, you can lack the skills needed by a historical novel, and still write well in other modes, but I think it must be a driver in the 'natural selection' mechanism, so that historical novels which stay the course must be at least competent.

Joe

Emma,

Change your hot water bottle!

Fantasy of thought, Imagery of the mind, confidence, hope, even Faith, all play a part in the creative process, but above all the realisation that these are shared by almost every human being and play an important role in what and how we write.

Spend a few shillings more on your hot water bottle and wallow in that world of thoughts, where, unlike that sister world of dreams, you are in control of everything that happens.

Always look to the fact that agents and publishers in their decisions reflect their opinions - yes, informed opinions no doubt but still opinions, and history has suggested that they can be so wrong.

Len

JoPo, thank you for reminding me about SH's point about historical fiction, which I'd forgotten since I read the article. I think you may be right that because it presents particular challenges, more fall at the first post and then give up. It's very obvious that you need to do tons of research (you do for other genres too of course, but it's less obvious!), and most people are also aware that their characters are going to have to talk differently. In many ways it has a lot in common with fantasy and sci-fi - the whole thing of another world, which is strange and intriguing but offers free-ranging opportunities for thinking about this one. On the other hand hist. fict. has to have a reassuring/restricting structure of known fact in a way that others don't.

Do you write hist. fict.? Part of my PhD is a dissertation which I think is going to be about the way that fiction writers (including me - it's a practice-based PhD) use historical fact: everything from using real historical figures, to what the writer does and doesn't try to get right about food and clothes and so on.

Emma

Do I write historical fiction? well, I've tried, in a realistic mode (straight into the sand after six thousand words) and also in short sketch-like comic 'alternative world' type things, nothing of any account beyond mildly amusing. Also a comic novel in mind, set in Restoration Deptford, but it's been in mind for over twenty years! I'm thinking of giving the realistic one (an account of the ramifications of a political assassination) a try, but despite family roots in the area concerned, it's tricky, very tricky. Good story though, so it might be worth going back to see how it plays.

I think historical is very hard - but then all novels are hard, and I might benefit from the difficulties that historical mode brings me. My main problem is a butterfly mind - but of course, that can be an advantage, too, if you only connect, and all that, haw-haw.

I find that ideas for novels aren't the problem - just getting the damn things to 'come out', like some infernal game of patience/solitaire. I have so many abandoned hulks, you wouldn't believe (but I suspect you might). So many, I'm almost tempted to attempt short stories (but I have little talent for those, I'm afraid). But on a positive note, Cape are bringing out a novel I managed to finish, High John the Conqueror, in May next year (under my meatspace name Jim Younger), as I've said at tedious length elsewhere.

Joe

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The PhD angle sounds interesting, good luck with it.

J

If you'd asked me any time between the ages of 6 and 16 what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said a historian, so in some ways I've come full circle. But it's not everybody's discipline - the research can seem positively anti-creative, because it can be so difficult to get through and free of it. Of course you could say that any novel is historical, in the sense that it charts the working out of the past in the present (at least, the present of the novel). My PhD is going on at Goldsmiths', which is pretty much in Deptford, and of course there are all the Marlow connexions too. (Have you seen how many Marlow novels and biogs there are out there?) Restoration Deptford must have been spectacularly louche - all those sailors!

Emma

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Going back to Susan Hill, which I've just re-read, I like her defence of 'commercial' as not being a dirty word, but simply meaning 'saleable', which we all want to be!

This is interesting. I suppose all you can say is, she wanted one book and she found it.

Someone in the business recently said to me it's amazing how many people are capable of writing a book length document (ie, something purporting to be a novel) without considering the need to make it interesting.

One point that struck me was that although agents are quick to accuse aspiring (and deluded) novelists of being naive, are they not guilty of the same fault if they assume that there is an easy way to solicit and sell good novels without having to read all the nonsense they don't want? Have they not heard of wheat and chaff?

Jane

Emma,

I'm fascinated by your PhD subject - and very impressed that you're doing a PhD. How do you find the time? Or are you writing your next novel as part of the PhD? So many questions. I have two strands to my writing - one is contemporary, the other historical. These are completely divided - ie I have never tried to combine them in the same book. For me, the whole appeal of writing historical fiction is imagining myself (imagination-aided by research) into another time. I love those books that tell you what people ate, how they went to the toilet/bathroom, waste disposal methods, etc in the past. It's that kind of every day stuff I need to know before I attempt to write. Did you read The Crimson Petal and the White? It seemed he was preoccupied by bodily functions - and the various ways excretions were dealt with. It seemed to me he was doing a job on the classic Victorian novel - putting in all the bits the Victorians left out. It was one of those 'I enjoyed it but...' books for me. Can't quite put my finger on what disappointed me - a bit loose and rambly like this old post of mine.

At the moment I'm reading Thursbitch by Alan Garner, which is historical, with modern interludes. Not so long ago I read The Inheritors by William Golding, in which he imagines a Neanderthal community confronting homo sapiens (I think). Now there's historical for you.