Submissions

I've finally got around to doing it.  Why are submissions such a painful business?  Of course it's disappointing when an agent doesn't want one's book, but one recognises perfectly that just as not every man wants to marry you, not every agent wants to marry your novel.  So one doesn't feel rejected (well, I don't nowadays), but it's the faffing about involved in each submission.   I seem to be drawn towards some sort of magical thinking, that if I could somehow sense the agent's taste and structure the submission accordingly... no.  There's also the feeling "What happens when I've got through all the agents in the UK?"  And then you have to remind yourself that actually, I've only been rejected by 5 - and two of them, especially Simon Trewin, were really complimentary about the book and writing, and one of them was a totally inappropriate agent who wouldn't have been in my top 30 - had I not met her at a party and been advised to ask her by a retired publisher who really should have known better!

So the next submission should go off tomorrow, and for once I am including a cv which will need the link for this blog.  I suppose this represents some progress.

For the first time I've had to include a CV of my writing, and realise looking at it, what a very peculiar literary non-career I've  had.  I totally failed to become literary editor of the New Statesman, I didn't even do any reviewing for the quality papers, I've never had any connection with the London Review of Books or the TLS (although I know someone who writes for it occasionally, and M is distantly related to Stephen Spender).  My screenwriting experience has been absymal despite meeting Victoria Glendinning at a party (there is a connection).   What I chiefly noticed was a of history of discouragement and interruption.  I always knew I'd get around to it eventually, and now, finally, I have.   I have written more in the past two years I guess than I have in the previous 30.  I have stopped being discouraged by rejection, I feel absolutely confident now that I can write, can invent, can do dialogue and character.... and that I will get published. 

Somehow writing The Formative Year has done something.  I finally completed a novel without it getting boring for the first time since I was 22.  There was something so great about finishing it - even though I knew it needed a massive restructuring.  And it didn't get its current opening paragraphs until version 7 or 8... I could re-write it every time I submit - that's the trouble with it.  Dear A says she fears it will lose spontaneity - yes, but I think it is better written than the first version.

Oh, I just had a look at the first version.  It seems better - maybe because it's single spaced.  I notice I have changed Leo's wife's description from "quiet, pretty, Irish perhaps?" to "quite pretty, Irish perhaps?".  Was that just a typo?  Or a deliberate comment.  Perhaps I shouldn't go back and look again.   Actually the first draft wasn't, because it was - wait for it - hand written in a series of tiny note books....who says that craft is dead?