Alas, so true!

Emma

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Oops! That was a reply to your earlier post!

you have done an MA and a 15 year/7 book apprenticeship

This is true, of course. It's hard to say from where I've got to without sounding as if I'm kicking the ladder out from under me, but maybe that - or the equivalent - is what it takes.

I do think the best time to do a Masters isn't when you first think 'I want to be a writer', but when you've struggled and struggled, and reached the end of what you can do on your own. Why waste all that money and teaching on the nursery slopes of your development of a writer, when you can work out the basics on your own. And I'm sure that when editors and reviewers are wary of the 'MA novel' - and they are - it's from reading too many writers who've been born and bred in the sheltered waters of academe, not the battle-hardened old storytellers like me, doing the MPhil after I'd found myself as a writer, just to get help from that outside eye which by definition we can't apply to our own work.

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Meant to say, Dee, thank you for the compliment! Much appreciated.

To be honest, I don’t know what it takes to get on an MA course, but I'm sure I don’t have it in terms of time/money/qualifications. I never went to college or enyfink. But what I have done is accept that a professional edit should be a routine part of the process of offering work for publication. I believe this is where many aspiring writers are at fault; that they don’t see the need, or understand the difference it can make to their chances. OK, it might be hard finding the money but, if we want to be professional writers, we should build it into our budget in the same way we build in Christmas or a holiday. And, if we’re successful and start earning, it’s tax-deductible.

Dee

What's this? People saying nice things about MNW? I hope Robert McCrum doesn't find out.

I don't really have much to add to what has been said above, except for the fact that I may well be the most rejected author in the world. My wife claims that I have written 8 novels. I think she's including a very slight novella and a series of themed stories, which I would not count. She's also possibly adding one just to wind me up, but my recollection is worse than hers. I would revise the figure down to 5-7. There's no point being too definite about these things.

I felt for a long time like I was on the outside and I would never get in. But, strangely, other writers getting published, whether they were somebody famous or somebody's son, neice, lover or cleaner, didn't really get to me. Whether I got published or not would be down to me and what I produced. About the worse moment in my unpublished career was when my agent said 'Your name is meeting with resistance'. Ie, people had seen stuff by me and wanted NEW WRITERS. I, or my manuscripts, had been around the block a few too many times. That was when I decided fuck them and wrote Taking Comfort, closely followed by The Gentle Axe.

I'll admit I did kind of get annoyed by all those comedians who put out novels, but then I realised that all of them were writers too, who had spent years writing scripts and sketches and routines - and testing their material in front of audiences, so maybe that was why they had managed to produce something that delivered on the promise of their fame.

Anyhow, to return to topic, on the who you know front. I met my US editor recently (sorry if that sounds like I'm showing off, but there is a point in bringing him in). He told me his wife is a writer, who has had some success with non-fiction, but whose true vocation and love is fiction. But she has not been able to publish her novels. She has a lot of friends, who are his friends too, who are writers, most of whom on the wrong side of a publishing deal. 'Don't they pester you all the time to publish them?' I asked. He pointed out that it would be impossible for him to do so, and actually he thought the connection was more harmful to his wife than helpful, because she understood too much about the industry side of publishing - ie just how damned hard it is to get a book published, and this in some way inhibited her now. His final comment on the subject was, 'You should make friends of your authors, but not authors of your friends.'



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Just to clarify what I mean about his wife's understanding of how hard it is to get published - she had seen the battles he had had to fight for manuscripts and writers he loved, she knew how many people within a big organisation have to get behind a given book, etc... It's best, as a writer, never to think about these things. To be blissfully unaware of how it all works.

Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing I meant when I said 'or the equivalent'. An MA isn't for anyone, and I'd hate to think that it became some kind of necessary qualification for a writer. Indeed, my plan if I hadn't got onto the MPhil was to head off to The Literary Consultancy or whoever. I think you're right that it's partly about taking ourselves seriously as writers. Any professional has to invest something in their own training. Also being professional is about understanding the writing process enough to realise that by definition, even the best writers can't read their own work as others will.

The most fruitful moments of my MPhil where when someone said, 'Why did you do that? It justs wastes time' and I'd say, 'Because... ' and they'd say, 'Okay, but I didn't get that.' And then I'd go away and decide whether to cut it, or to write it so they did get it. You just can't do that to your own work.

Having said that, when I've heard negative things about the manuscript assessment agencies, it's usually because they just read it as a editor would when deciding whether to publish, and what they say in the report isn't something the writer can jump off from. They need to understand what the writer's trying to do in the first place, and help them to do it so well that the book's irristible. It doesn't work to say 'it's too long, this genre shouldn't be more than x thousand words' unless they're prepared to try to unpick where the longeurs come, and give some help as to what to do about it. Now I'm doing work for one of the agencies, I realise it's an interesting and not an easy exercise.

Emma

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Goodness, this busy thread! I was answering Dee, needless to say.

But this, Roger

Whether I got published or not would be down to me and what I produced.

is how I've always felt. I'm no more bothered by celeb books than I am by show-jumping successes when I'm riding (not specially skillfully) across the Brecon Beacons - I'm doing what I want to do, and it's THAT that I want to do better.

Your editor's wife's situation sounds very recognisable to me. Anyone publishing friends who wouldn't make money isn't going to be in their job very long. Though I suppose it's probably true that their work gets read with a bit more attention.

I agree, I see a professional edit as an investment, training almost ... professional edits on my MS haven't just helped me improve the novel but shown to me my various weaknesses.

I've only been writing for three years, so next to 5-7 novels and fifteen years, I recognise I'm still a fledgling and would be pretty damn lucky to get a novel picked up yet. But I do believe that I will one day, because

I'm still here

... I thought if my first novel was rejected (it was) I'd give up writing. To my astonishment, I didn't. We don't, do we?

And I think the commitment, energy and passion we share for writing will mean that if we don't have contacts who can more easily get our work read (and who can blame people when they do that? We would, wouldn't we?) we'll just do it the harder way; or if we can't find traditional outlets for our writing we'll produce new ones, see the flourishing of self-publishing and small publishers, which I suspect if it continues (and how could it not?) will anyway cause a rethink in mainstream publishing.

And yes, I'm a hopeless optimist, but as someone once said, optimists and pessimists are right about the same amount of times, but optimists have more fun - and I suspect in the end succeed more often.

And anyway, we must all be optimists, or we'd have given up long ago.

Andrea

About the worse moment in my unpublished career was when my agent said 'Your name is meeting with resistance'.

Oh, Roger, I know a little about this feeling! My agent recently had to tell me to stop writing picture books for a while because, after a few agonsingly close deals, editors were beginning to get a bit sick of me (agent put it much nicer, of course). So I've been concentrating on longer fiction ever since, and will do so until I need a Plan C...

I suppose I should be in that category of 'people who know folk in the industry' as I worked within its walls for a few years, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that all my success stems from joining this site and finding the motivation to really get on with it. When I approached my agent I didn't say, 'I know this, that and the other person', I said 'here's my novel, what do you reckon?' And yes of course my commitment to writing showed in the fact that I could tell her I'd been writing commissioned children's books for several years, but there was no point when we sat down and swapped 'names'.

Finally, one of my closest friends is a commissioning editor of a large children's fiction publisher. She read my novel. (I didn't send it to her; she went behind my back and asked my agent for it.) Said she loved it. Said she missed her train stop and ended up miles away from home because she was so engrossed. But did she publish it?

Naaah.

Emily

Yes, Andrea & Myrtle - which just goes to show that what I'm saying about mainstream publishing has much truth about it. It's a sorry state of affairs and is in dire need of a good shake-up, as you say.

But by then I fear we'll all have gone off the whole idea, and gone and sorted out our own publishing thing anyway - for which well done, us.

A

Well, for the record I'll stress again that I didn't know anyone in the industry (and I've no MA). I was a secondary school teacher in Shropshire when I got published, and very shy, and from a completely ordinary background. My only 'connections' were the ones I made myself when I started to write.

It took me about ten years and four mss to get a contract, but even if I'd never got anywhere I'd still be writing because it's an activity I just love, like watching wildlife.

Then you've been very lucky indeed, Kate - and good for you too!

Others, however, with equally good credentials aren't going to be so lucky. However many examples from each "camp" we have, the situation remains the same - mainstream publishing is not the answer for everyone, and isn't ever going to be. It simply isn't set up like that. I soooo wish I'd had someone to tell me that when I started off six years and five MSS ago - it would have saved a great deal of unnecessary stress.

A

if I'd never got anywhere I'd still be writing

I recently admitted to myself that this is the case for me (from the unpublished side of the fence), and it was/is the most frightening, exhilarating thought.

Yes, well I think we’re all still writing, those of us who’ve got nowhere yet, because, like I said in another thread a few days ago, we’re not hard-wired to give up.

I wonder if anyone on here has stopped trying to get published, and if they're still writing.

Dee

Lucky in what respect, HollyB? I appreciate publishing is bloomin' difficult to break into - I had ten years on the outside, tapping at the window, crying at the lock. But the breaks I got I largely made myself.

Had I not subbbed in 1996 to the literary ezine, I wouldn't have attracted the attention of my first agent (and I probably got that because I had an enquiry from a publisher who read the story). Had I not entered the Real Writers comp I wouldn't have attracted the attention of Lynne Patrick or Merric Davidson. Had I not taken with me on my Arvon course the outline of my novel, I'd never have roused Katherine Frank's interest. I got my Arts Council grant (and Leslie Wilson as tutor) because I applied for it. The only freaky piece of luck I had was that my first agent knew Peter Straus who was able to get me a very good deal, but I already had an offer on the table from Hodder at that point.

I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, that's now why I'm listing these stages here. But I don't want anyone to think my novel getting published was simply a blinding flash of luck. That's not a correct representation.

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...that's noT why I'm listing these stages here...

(It's late and I'm packing for next week.)

That's right, Kate - we make our own luck and you worked for and well deserve every bit of the wonderful success you've achieved.

At the same time, I agree with Anne that

mainstream publishing is not the answer for everyone, and isn't ever going to be

Those little successes, competition wins etc, that slip in well below the radar of mainstream publishers and agents can yet give vital encouragement and a reason to persevere.

Frances

Oh yes, I wholly agree with that.

Ah, but you can still do all those things, Kate - and not be published by the mainstream. So yes I still believe luck plays a main part, no matter how much of a genius or hard-grafter we are.

After all I've gone on all the courses, talked to all the people, entered all the competitions (and sometimes done well in them), got off my bottom and hard-grafted it, attempted and gone on attempting to make my own luck at such a rate that sometimes it feels as if my head is about to explode, and done everything in your list to the best of my limited ability and more - with zilch response. That's the way the cookie crumbles, I'm afraid.

But I like to think that if I do ever - for some brief second of time - get beyond that terrible glass ceiling, then I'll put it down to luck, not skill or sweat. Because that's what I believe it is.

I do appreciate that this might be an opposite view to that held by a lot of people, but it's something I've come to believe after a lot of work, several baptisms of fire in this business and heaps of observation.

A