The Journey to Getting Published

Rebecca Alexander

Three years ago and change, I started a blog, and aspirationally named it ‘Witchway. A Writer’s Journey to Publication.’ Witchway was the name of my parent’s first live-aboard narrowboat. I didn’t know if the publication bit would ever get anywhere close, but it sounded good, and it reflected the fact that I was serious about my writing.

Despite my own doubts and a somewhat meandering wander through writing from poetry to short stories and radio plays, I always came back to novels. But the scale of them is daunting. Am I the only one who starts a novel thinking ‘All that work and I’ve written one percent?’  Not to mention that I then have to rewrite and edit and polish before I can submit it to be sharply edited again by others. I learned that if I write every day, it takes two to three months to produce a good first draft, and maybe another month to deepen, pace, dramatize and strengthen it into a second draft. After that there’s more editing and polishing. 

Three years ago I was more afraid of success than failure. I was becoming an expert at failure. Rejections of poems, short stories, everything. They would be sent out in batches, and would return to flay my confidence at sly, unexpected moments. I toughened up. Then the MA, an absolute Smörgåsbord of criticism and doubt. When you have a lecturer telling you to make radical changes and half a class full of people insisting you change your main character’s name it’s hard to hold onto your confidence, but when you do, it’s stronger for it. Jack stayed Jack, and the historical strand is in. 

Getting an agent was great, but then we sent the edited novel to sixteen editors and…nothing. A handful of ‘no thanks’, but otherwise silence. So I waited, and waited… and nobody said anything. My agent was getting as frustrated as I was, and even sent the book out to YA editors, to receive the reassuring news that it really was for adults. 

Fourteen weeks later, the agent rings. A publisher is putting together an offer and wanted her to answer a few questions. What’s she like with editorial suggestions? She could answer with complete truth: ‘Great, very professional, just gets on with it. On the rare occasions she doesn’t agree she is open to discussion or suggests alternative solutions.’ How prolific is she? ‘Let me send you the book she wrote while she was waiting…’ Has she thought about a sequel? ‘Let me send you the synopsis she’s prepared…’

My agent was excited, I was stunned. I had spent fourteen weeks steeling myself for rejection, I was well prepared for that. I was less prepared for success. While she’s telling me about the publisher – will probably want more than one book, has a good record at nurturing new writers, she has another of her writers doing well there – I struggled with the news. 

But then it started to sink in. I’m going to be published, what seemed like an impossible dream three years ago. My book is going to be published. My agent is ringing around the other editors who still have the book, in case one of them would like to bid for it as well, but I definitely have one publisher putting an offer together. All thanks, let’s be honest, to the Mslexia prize that shone a spotlight on each of us. Others of you are polishing or submitting wonderful novels to editors right now. We’re giving back to the Mslexia team by confirming their choices, as well as making entry into a future competition more desirable to unpublished writers. So, I suggest you get ready for success… and I’ll send more details when I have them!

Love, in a Spectrum - by Jenny Morton Potts

Flinty

Zadie Smith, I read your book, ‘NW’. Congratulations doesn’t cover it. The prose is devastating and personally I love metafiction. It’s good news, the unassailable genius of you. So near to the sun that I can’t see you anymore. I thought I’d worked very hard but now I can see that I’m only scratching the surface, a good clichéd example in itself. 

In my defence, of my draft, it was supposed to be a holiday. First, guests: Keith’s ex ballet legs limp to the boulangerie; Tony’s satnav no match for these rues. Bridge with the Grand Masters, my parents. Mrs 3 No Trump, High Priestess of Manipulation (don’t worry, she likes that title) is playing The Strong Club but she insists I’m bidding Acol. I put it down to the Côtes du Rhône. The next day Mum was sick. We all thought it was the Côtes du Rhône by then. Turns out it was her gall bladder. Gives me all the medical details on the phone and when she’s fully done, says: ‘Let’s not dwell on it, you know me, I don’t like a fuss. How are you?’ Fine, you nearly always say, but you genuinely are, apart from the stake driven between thoracic 5-6. So the voice is only in your head: ‘What do you expect, all that typing, with your history. Which by the way you don’t get from me.’

We used to live here, or nearabouts, Zadie. Flint was born in Gascony and it’s his computer I’m using now for editing. Outside his bedroom door, he slides: shhhwww, against it. Writing about his condition. Don’t see Flint’s face though when I’m describing the autism, the language that almost never came. If I’m honest, I struggle to separate the real from the imagined sometimes. ‘Flint!’ I call to him. ‘Yes, Mum?’ For a split second, I think, who’s that? Suddenly his voice and body belong to a new age. And tall. We could waltz. My father lifted me in his arms to dance, later he told me to stand on his shoes. Only a year ago my child clung to the word ‘Mummy’. My idea for him to lose ‘my’ ending. My ideas always. Teaching him to argue with me. People think it’s strange. Damn right it’s strange. ‘Flint!’ I need to give him more power. ‘Flinty! Say this to me, say, come on, Mum, be reasonable. It’s my computer. You’ve been on it for hours.’ My neuro-typical mind marks the word sequence and I wait for the feedback. ‘Come on, Mum. Be reasonable. It’s taking for hours!’ Pretty fabulous sentences, Zadie. I’m sure even you would admit. ‘You know, Jen,’ my father said when I told them I’d got an Agent, ‘pride’s not a word we use in this family’ – no shit – ‘but we’re really proud of you.’ 

I lived in NW, Zadie. ‘You mean Kilburn,’ people said and I didn’t know the difference, to start with. ‘Maybe, yes, the landlady said West Hampstead.’ ‘I’ll bloody bet she did.’ She came over from Milan to check we were feeding the antiques with wax. ‘I’ll buy the wax,’ she’d said. ‘Big of her,’ my flatmate. And I wasn’t supposed to smoke in that bedroom but I did of course and frantically sprayed Rive Gauche on the curtains when the inspections came, unannounced. 

The French shutters are shuttered tight                                                                                                    The room’s dark but the monitor’s bright                                                                                                    with purpose. 

‘You want a diet Coke? You have so earned it, Flintboy!’ The shhhwww stops. ‘You can get it right now.’ Hear him race down the stairs to the fridge. What kind of mother, Zadie?

Ok, this next bit of prose is tricky, I’m going to explode Chapter 6 Romy, and attempt to catch the bits as they fall. I paste a section and click on Cut when the fucking electricity goes off for the third time. A childhood gang of tears rush me.

Committee of 18 men at Harlsden Working Men’s Club. White men. Average teeth. ‘Huge account for the company.’ My manager is emphatic, ‘Don’t blow it, Jen. And for God’s sake put in some decent expenses. You’re showing everyone up.’ 18 white men to face, once I get past the steward and his Rottweiler (that’s not a metaphor). The Committee smile at me like a nervous choir. I do buy them drinks, boss, but by the time I get back to my car, someone’s shoved the money back in my power jacket pocket. Anyway, I got the account. They treated me like a land girl in their officers’ mess. Extreme consideration is their only defence. Weird b&w war movie without a war.

Outside my son’s room, it’s a perfect Gascon 25 degrees. The lethal 35 degrees has steamed off to another clime. The special ratio of anxiety to excitement blocks circulation. My fingers and toes are cold. Flinty hates the sun, the heat; 25 or 35, it’s not for him. I have more or less re-typed the lost work and save the document. He kisses me without being asked. 

Last summer, the bees were really buzzing. There’s no point in telling him they’re looking for flowers, he’s been stung so many times. Flint put his hands together in front of his face. ‘Please Lord Jesus, let me go inside fill dishes dishwasher, forever and ever, amen.’ Phee and I stare at each other. ‘I think you’re trying to say, agnostic,’ his teacher said. ‘3 + 6 equals?’ makes him gasp in panic. This summer he has forgotten the days of the week, how to tell time.

I don’t have a bridge table and mid back is a contained fire. My father narrows his eyes and says ‘One crub,’ in his inverse Chinese. My hand is total crap and I want to lie back and say all the things we say, Dad, for all the years we didn’t and might not. ‘Look at this bit of the blue sofa. I bought it on Ebay and someone’s actually filled in the cracks with biro.’ Dad looks and Mum says, ‘Are you likely to bid any time soon, Jennifer?’ Keith wants to know why there are ones in the pack. ‘That’s French for an ace.’ He wants to know where Tony is. He’s cross about the ones and the only person he can take it out on is Tony. We say Tony’s probably napping, but we don’t know. Phee and loyal hound are out bonding with the villagers. My Dad and I will soon manage to fit in, ‘Varsava’ in honour of my Gramps who thought saying the capital of a country in its native tongue was partial grasp of a language. My Mum has one eyebrow raised over her glasses; if both go up, it’s all over. ‘Mum, you’re such a destination person. Who’s vulnerable?’ ‘We all are.’ I look at my son who is leaning way over his drawing board, rapt. If the angle doesn’t hold under his weight he’ll crack down onto the tiles. More broken head. Dad disentangled mine, unconscious from the beloved Chopper metal and I cradled his on a Spanish mountain just months back. Nove Nove Nove. ‘That’s Italian for Christ’s sake!’ ‘What the hell is Spanish for helicopter?’ Only Flinty was brave enough to scream, ‘I don’t want you to die!’

Safe in England, I can’t get over your book, Zadie Smith. It makes me want to write my third. I ask Flint to hang out the washing. Before he starts, he says ‘Mister Whatzittooya’ and doubles up laughing. He keeps the peg bag in his hand as he tries to pin the items to the line which makes it terribly difficult. It’s very funny but at the same time, one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen him do.

It’s ok to write about him isn’t it, as long as everyone knows it’s a boy called ‘Raphael’? I suppose it’s just that it wasn’t his idea, was it, to tell people. He says, ‘Of course, Mum. Don’t worry,’ when I ask, but a guilt might be over quicker if I just get on with full immersion now. My partner brings me a coffee and I have the ill grace to tell her it’s not strong enough.

I heard your interview on Radio 4 on Sunday. I didn’t agree with everything you said, exchanged with Esteemed Agent who’d heard you too, joked about the ivy league creative writing class I would take, out in the forest, blindfold. EA thought my class would be terrifying. Flint has almost saved up enough money to go to New York, to buy US breakfast cereals, Count Chocula et al. So we’re looking at empty suitcases for the outward. But we haven’t saved enough, me and Phee. Partly because his art earnings come out of ours.

You spoke of Philip Roth’s ‘black man crossing the street’. My neck was in Toulouse, a chiropractor’s vice, when the planes struck the Towers. He said it was the Empire State Building. He said my body was a catastrophe. When a neighbour said the next day that they had it coming, the Americans, I knew then it was time to come back home.

At some point, during our NYC Tour, Zadie, I’d like to break off from the group and find your faculty. I’d stumble into the lecture theatre, decades late, and the students would scowl. You’d be up on a plinth, though, waving me in. Or else the room is empty and there’s a white message on the blackboard or a black message on the whiteboard: Gone to the forest to evoke neglected senses. Join us? x

Update on progress of shortlisted novel - by Emma Purshouse

Emma Purshouse

Update on progress of shortlisted novel.

I wondered if I should blog about my novel as there is nothing positive to report, and I was worried that it might look as if what I’ve written isn’t much good if I tell you that I’ve had three rejections since the networking event.  But, part of the point of this blog is to track the progress of the shortlisted Mslexia novelists, both the highs and lows, so here goes. 

The three rejections I’ve had were lovely!  People took the time to give reasons for not being interested, and to be honest it was nice to have responses from those who had read my work.  On the down side, and it really has been a down side, the views expressed were often conflicting which has put me in a bit of a muddle.  I had thought that I’d be able to use any constructive criticism I received to iron out things that might be wrong with my work, but if I did what one person suggested I’d be undoing what another person had seen as a real strength. 

After a few weeks of deliberating I’ve decided to make no changes and leave things alone until somebody decides to take a chance on the book (note the optimism there) then see what that person might have to say. 

An unwanted side effect of all this is that I am now very confused about my second novel.  I had been going great guns with that but now I’ve hit a wall with the re-drafting, partly because I don’t want to make the same mistakes that I might possibly have made with my first novel (depending on which feedback I apply).  Aagggh!

As a result I have switched to default mode and spent the last few weeks writing children’s poems to make myself laugh.  I must have needed cheering up more than I thought because I’ve written thirty new ones, so do let me know if you hear of anybody out there that takes unsolicited submissions of children’s poetry or if there are any competitions for children’s poetry. (She laughs out loud at her own joke… There is only one competition for adults writing poetry for children that I know of and that didn’t run this year).  

The children’s writing group that I run re-starts soon (after a summer break) so perhaps I shall try my new poems out on them… oh no… what if they give me conflicting criticism?  If that happens I really will be out of ideas about what to do next.

Mind The Gap - by Kate Fox

Kate Fox

I am performing my poem about Eminem rapping at the court of King Henry the Eighth to an audience of hundreds at the BBC tent in Edinburgh. The audience are laughing at the punchlines and in between, they’re smiling at me. They were already expecting silly, clever wordplay because they’d got tickets for Radio Four’s “The Wondermentalist Cabaret”. The playful punning of the host of the cabaret, Matt Harvey built and fulfilled this expectation. The surreal songs of the in-house one man band Jerri Hart built and fulfilled this expectation. I was introduced as if I was a clever, funny poet and nothing in my appearance or voice contradicted the continuing expectation. I am wearing a 1950s-style dress with green (“Zombie” apparently) airwomen on. My flat Northern vowels sound primed for comedy. A bit Victoria Wood, a touch of Ian McMillan. I hit choruses to bigger waves of laughter. The peaks fall where I think they will and I ride them with my facial expressions. I feel relaxed and playful and expansive.

A week later I am compering a new act comedy night at an established comedy club in Newcastle. There are clumps of young lads off to my right, a table of perfectly groomed, unsmiling girls right in front of me and lots of couples and groups of all ages around the room, mostly in semi-darkness. I expect they’ll wonder why I’m compering. I expect they won’t find me funny, because of my gender or my age or my quirkiness or my nervousness. I’m wearing the Zombie dress again. It feels like it needs an explanation here but I don’t give one. I expect the managers of the comedy club will wonder why they asked me to compere. In between acts I perform a short poem, which I am usually careful not to call a poem when I perform it in a comedy club. I’d already said I was going to be doing poems accompanied by my ukulele and instantly regretted using the “P” word. However, one I did earlier had worked well, even amid my stiff, awkward chatting to the audience. Now as I get to the punchline of the next, there’s barely a ripple of laughter. I am confused. I’ve performed this piece maybe a hundred times and never not had a good response. I look visibly puzzled. Say “Even, that’s dying now, but that always works”. The audience don’t laugh, sensing my genuine resentment and discomfort. For the rest of the (long) night, I am surprised when the audience laughs at anything I say, and do the bare minimum of talking, close my face down.

Expectations and confidence. Context and anticipation. It’s only recently I’m beginning to realise how very much this applies to novel writing and novel publishing too. How much better it is to feel you’re doing the right thing in the right place to the right audience. But...if you’re not, your confidence could falter and lead you into the stiff movements of a Zombie and you won’t feel able to play your way out of it. Ideally you’ll persist. Close the gap between you and audience. But if that’s impossible, at least have faith you’ll meet the right ones in the right place another time.

At the Edinburgh International Book Festival... - By Catherine Simpson

Catherine Simpson

... On the inside looking out.

It’s always pretty good to live near Edinburgh, but when the Edinburgh International Book Festival is on I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Edinburgh is the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature. The City of Literature Trust describes Edinburgh as ‘built of books, brimming with writers and readers’ - and never more so than during these 17 days in August. 

This year I’ve seen the presentation of the £30,000 SMIT Scottish Book of the Year Award to Janice Galloway for All Made Up. All nominees for the prize gave readings; Ali Smith (fiction), Janice Galloway (non-fiction), Angus Peter Campbell (poetry) and Simon Stephenson (first book). All were excellent and the readings were a small masterclass in performance.

I’ve also attended two sessions of the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference; in the first Ali Smith gave the keynote speech on ‘Style v Content’ and in the second Irvine Welsh discussed ‘A National Literature’. Fifty distinguished writers attended the conference alongside the general public and for a literary celebrity spotter like me it was fantastic to see Ben Okri, Melvin Burgess, China Mieville,  Junot Diaz and Jackie Kay, among many others, stand up to make their points.

But my own personal highlight (I’m hoping) hasn’t happened yet. Every year The City of Literature Trust invites ‘emerging writers’ to submit short stories, and 17 writers are chosen to read their stories in the Guardian Spiegeltent; one a day throughout the festival. 

I’ve been invited to read my story ‘Dear Family Member, Friend, Passing Acquaintance’ at 4pm on 27^th August. This happens to be the last day of the festival which is both good and bad. Good because I can go along to see the other story shoppers do their readings and get lots of tips, and bad because it prolongs the agony - I’ve already been on tenterhooks about this for weeks.

Not only do we story shoppers get to read at this fantastic festival but we also benefit from a workshop in ‘Performance and Presentation’ and on the day of our readings we get a pass for the authors’ yurt. This is like being offered a glimpse of the Promised Land. And that’s not all; we are invited along to a New Writers’ Reception and receive a small reading fee. 

I feel like Cinderella after her fairy godmother did that stuff with the magic wand.

But I’m also terrified and cursing myself for ever submitting my story and vowing I’ll never do anything as stupid again. Of course I know I’ll laugh about this. One day.  Afterwards.

Oh, and there has been another small festival highlight – I bumped into Dame Jenni Murray and took the opportunity to thank her for judging the Mslexia Women’s Novel Competition for which I was shortlisted. 

She grinned at me and told me, ‘Well done.’  

Recognition and a Recommendation - by Victoria Gosling

Victoria Gosling

Reading Reb’s post last week, I felt a real shock of recognition.

In the beginning I wrote for myself; I didn’t have an audience in mind. Then, writing my first book, I was thinking of a very particular audience, a readership of one in fact, who I envisaged leafing through the manuscript, hopefully laughing at the jokes and understanding what it was I wanted to say. It felt companionable and got me through the long writing and redrafting process.

Then I got an agent, lots of people – editors included – read that book and passed on their feedback to me. Writing the second, as Reb says, I was haunted by those readers, and second guessing them and myself on a daily basis. I still don’t know what to think about the result. It’s still sitting in the drawer, and for the moment that’s where it’ll stay.

I begin a new project, or several it seems. I know it helps to think quite seriously about questions like Where would this book sit on a bookshelf? To whom would it appeal? But then if that cripples the writing process, it has to go.

Last week I was off hiking high in the Alps. As I put one foot in front of the other under clear blue skies, surrounded by glaciers, white eidelweiss and purple gentians, the stories I want to write unfolded gently in my mind. As I scrambled over rocks and down fixed-lines, it seemed so simple, so clear, and I fantasised about finding a cottage up there and squatting in it amongst the mountain goats and murmeltiers, till a manuscript was completed.

Now I am back in Berlin. 3 jobs, lovely friends, endless distracting delights – and  I can feel the clarity shrinking like snow under the August sun. What is the remedy? Is there one?

I hope to find it, and will be using Dorothea Brande’s seminal book BECOMING A WRITER to aid me. Originally written in 1934 and with pleasing references to typewriters throughout, the author shows an acute understanding of the psychology of writing: how to access the unconscious, how to overcome resistance to writing and how to write unselfconsciously. 

I always thought ‘How to…’ books were the last refuge of the desperate. I was wrong. And if that’s not enough of a recommendation for you, a writer friend who took 10 years to finish his debut novel credits BECOMING A WRITER with helping him complete half a draft of his second novel in 6 months.

Are you tempted yet?

Second Albums - by Rebecca Alexander

Rebecca Alexander

Having done so well with Borrowed Time, and getting pretty close to publication (still waiting, four editors still thinking about it), I’m close to finishing the book that I started in January. Of course, what I mean by finishing it is completing a draft where the contemporary strand is in second draft and the historical is in first, but all the elements are there.  But I’m noticing a real change in the way I’m writing it.

Borrowed Time (now The Secrets of Life and Death) was easy to write because I didn’t expect anyone to read it. I never expected to send it into a competition, and when I did I didn’t expect to have to send the whole thing. So I wrote it for me. There was no time pressure past the first 20 thousand words, which I intended to use for my MA. 

The next book, A Baby’s Bones, has been written very self-consciously, as if my agent and some shadowy editor are looking over my shoulder. Maybe tutting. It’s been a process full of interruptions, as I have had edits to do on Secrets. The expectations are higher from family and friends and fellow writers. There also seems to be an expectation that I will work on a sequel to Secrets – even though it seems a bit daft to me if I don’t sell the first book. 

Unlike last time, I am committed to handing my baby over to be criticised, edited and possibly rejected. Last time, if I chose, I could just put it in a virtual shoebox and shove it under a virtual bed on my hard drive (where my other books lie). This time people are waiting to critique it. The pressure is getting to me a bit.

When I found out I had been shortlisted for the Mslexia prize, I was on a high, and the excitement built up through being a runner-up, finding an agent, and sending the manuscript out. Then meeting eight other amazing women writers  at the networking party. Then, home. Breathe out. And out… I have deflated like a balloon since. In fact I’m flat, and feel there’s nothing left but more words. I seem to have lost some of my confidence in the words even as I write them. 

I sent a few chapters of A Baby’s Bones to another competition and it was shortlisted (so I must be doing something right). But I still look at the words and wonder how on earth I turn the raw material into something a stranger would want to read or even buy. I suppose that comes with experience. But you know what they say about second albums…

Rebecca Alexander's blog can be found here.