Do you remember that novel I wrote in 11 years? That catalogue of every, last rookie writer’s error? Well, over the start of lockdown I employed the same bloody-mindedness it took to write the thing to rewrite the opening 3 chapters.
I had my eye on a submission package service offered by a literary consultancy with whom I’d had over a decade of dealings. You send in your opening 3 chapters, cover letter, synopsis, cross their palms with silver and they churn you out a report.
I’d been appointed a reader called Anna South. Anna had spent seven years at Penguin UK and was the first person there to read and champion the submission for Zadie Smith’s debut novel White Teeth. Props to Anna.
Well, today I received her report, beautifully formatted on professional, headed paper. I could hardly bare to read it.
Wasn’t I flogging a long-dead horse? Couldn’t I move on from the interminable, Sisyphean undertaking that writing, re-writing and re-writing this novel had become?
I’ll let you decide whether I should.
First the good news.
“My sense is of a book that has the potential…to offer a powerful human drama with a strong narrative arc set against a backdrop alive with a rich panoply of historical detail, that could only be woven together by an author who knows his narrative frame of reference intimately.
“It’s fair to say then, I think, that you’re both a natural storyteller with a marked interest in the complexity of the human character and the way in which life stories progress and develop.”
Is she just saying that because you’re paying her, my wife asked?
Now, the bad.
“If you succeed in getting an agent to read your sample material it needs to be of the very highest quality you’re capable of achieving.
“It takes a stunning first novel (by which I mean brilliantly well crafted, exquisitely written, compulsively readable, unique and memorable – a daunting role call of qualities, I know) to make an agent sit up and take notice. Few agents will sign more than handful of debut novelists each year from the mountains of unsolicited submissions they receive – and I say this not to make you feel downcast but because I think the better informed you are about the challenges ahead, the better your chances of success – so consistent excellence must be your aim.”
The challenges ahead? What? More?
*passes out*
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