The Loneliness of the Long Distance Rejection Letter

Today I received a rejection email from Sheil Land Associates exactly 6 months and 4 days after I first submitted my work to them. The email was obviously copied from a standard template and was signed by someone called SUBMISSIONS, a terrible name to inflict upon a child, but it did finish with the comforting news that my work would be recycled - as firelighters I assume.

I can't be hard on poor old Submissions because he'd already rejected me, for the same work, 3 months previously which indicates a worrying level of overwork on his part. However this duplicate rejection (so good we said no twice) reminded me that I'd planned to give a brief account of my hunt for an agent for the edification of those amongst you who plan to follow suit.

Between the 15th of July 2009 and the 5th of August I submitted sample chapters to 43 different agents. I received 9 requests for the full manuscript and from amongst those 4 requests for a meeting. I was rejected 32 times with the latest, not counting our confused Mr Submission, arriving 4 months and 9 days after submission. 10 agents have never bothered to respond and will remain nameless bastards until I'm rich enough not to care about who I offend.

In the light of my experiences I recomend the following method...

1. Write a really good manuscript.
2. Compile a list of agents using such sources as the writers and artists handbook.
3. Before submission call each agent to determine that they're open for submissions.
4. Make your submission following the guidelines given by the agents.
5. Try to make 5-10 submissions a week and keep submitting until every single eligible agent in the world has a copy.
6. Wait for the rejection letters to roll in.
7. If after six months you still don't have an agent return to step 1 and start all over again.

Good luck, I've done it so it can't be that hard.

My Malignant Ocelot

As reported in a previous post I finished my contribution to world culture at the beginning of July. For a couple of month my manuscript scurried hither and yon from agent to agent flaunting itself wantonly in an effort to get noticed. I am pleased to announce that after flashing its chapters at random strangers it has finally managed to secure the services of an agent. I am now signed with Zenos Literary Agency and thus stage two of masterplan is completed - now it is time for stage three; getting a publisher. Something that I am deliriously happy to leave in the hands of Mssr. Berlyne and Parker.

More Blake's 7

Amazon are already taking pre-orders for The Dust Run/The Trial, the latest addition to the Blake's 7: The Early Years audios. This one, featuring Carrie Dobro as Jenna and is written by the fighteningly fecund and swift Simon Guerrier.

As readers of our production blog can discover script editing is not the non-stop round of glamour and excitement that you might imagine it to be but it's always a thrill to see the covers out there in the world.

Writer's Block

I just found this in the Xmas 1995 edition of Ansible...

... the infallible Robert Sheckley cure for writers' block. He said he tried a drastic exercise to get things flowing again (an enema for the muse, as Nick Lowe liked to say): making himself type 5000 words a day, any words so long as he met the quota, grimly bashing out stuff like ... Oh words, where are you now that I need you? Come quickly to my fingertips and release me from this horror, horror, horror ... O God, I am losing my mind, mind, mind ... But wait, is it possible, yes, here it is, the end of the page coming up, O welcome kindly end of page....

After days and days of this, Sheckley made the great discovery that it was now actually easier to write a story than go on suffering. And so he did, quite quickly and happily. I have passed on this sure-fire advice to several aspiring authors who believe there is a Closely Guarded Secret to it all, but none of them ever thanked me. (Incidentally, it was Robert Silverberg who, when once asked if he'd ever had writers' block, said: 'Yes -- it was the worst ten minutes of my life.') [3/93]

Setting yourself a word target, say a Greene a day, is a very useful way of making progress, even if it is, as James Swallow says, like grinding your teeth down on a concrete block. If procrastination is more your game then you can certainly do worse than work way through the entire Ansible back catalogue - interesting, fun, rewarding and very, very time consuming.

Andrew Cartmel is a Sound Fellow

Also the best script editor I've ever worked with, writer of comic plays (my favourite kind), has lent me money when I was skint and is soon to be a famous overnight success.

He also has a new blog at this address.

At Last Someone Has Died!

The Evil Monster Boy has just shouted this, apparently the 7 minutes of build up in today's Miss Marple was too long for today's youth.

Jan Chappell is.......

...playing a Cally in Blood and Earth my latest epic from B7media. It's going to be on the same release as Flag and Flame, also featuring our favourite clone freedom fighter, written by Marc Platt who has been revived from cryogenic stasis purely for that purpose. It will be released on August 24th but you can preorder it now from the B7media Website.

My Magnificent Octopus

Finally, 134 days, approx 105,000 words (with a 10% discard rate) later I have finished the first draft of my novel. That's 837 words a day - which is fast for me.

I'm not going to reveal any plot details except to say that it's a contemporary fantasy set in modern London. Over the next month or so I shall be hawking it around literary agents in the hope of getting a bite, that done the, at this moment hypothetical, literary agent will hawk it to publishers in the hope of getting it published.

So while this process starts its back to the day job, Blake's 7 and Terra Incognita; Chapter Two; In the colonies a trench was a small hole in the gound, two metres by ten was considered a handy size, five by thirty if you were feeling ambitious. On Earth they didn't do it that way at all...

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Just back from seeing the Evil Monster Boy in his school's production of a Midsummer Night's Dream. It was done in the promenade style where the audience walks from scene to scene and I could tell that the cast were having a lot of fun. Predictably the school extroverts were cast as Puck and Bottom but Oberon and Titania managed to carve out some space for themselves. Of the Athenian lovers props goes to the young woman who played Helena as a stocky spitfire all sad romantic longing crossed with barely suppressed rage at the unfairness of it all.

While I was waiting for the Evil Monster Boy to get changed I suddenly realised that I'd once played Sly in a performance of The Taming of the Shrew with a cast that featured, amongst others, the future Mrs Brown, in that very same hall. I wonder how my son's cast will fare in the next 25 years.

In Studio Today

We're recording Blood and Soil today - the latest in B7's prequels it follows the adventures of one of Cally's predecessors in a time before the Auron came into conflict with the Federation.

Last Line Meme

James Swallow stole an idea from someone else and I'm stealing it from him - although I have fewer last lines... (I had to include short stories to make up the numbers.)

Remembrance of the Daleks
'Perhaps,' said the Doctor. 'Time will tell - it always does.'

Transit
'Here I come, Doctor,' shouted Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, 'ready or not!'

The Also People
But if Tsuro heard the clearing he made no sign and soon he was gone from sight.

Gone Fishing in Short Trips: Time Signiture
'One can but hope,' said the Doctor and began to work the controls.

The Evacuation of Bernice Summerfield Considered as a Short Film by Terry Gilliam in Missing Adventures
'No,' said Benny. 'I'm travelling on my own.'

Genius Loci
So I will keep this diary as my light in the darkness and I will live so that when I'm asked the question I can say, 'I don't know about the rest of it but, by the Goddess, I was loud and drunk.'

Adelaide Hall

Today's deliberately cryptic post features Adelaide Hall who was born in Brooklyn but enjoyed an incredibly long and successful career in London. In my book a woman named after a lost river searches a steamer trunk for a 78 recording of Adelaide singing Duke Ellington's Creole Love Call - does she find it? We shall see.

The Last Bit

I'm looking at the last 26,000 to 30,000 words of the novel I'm writing. It's become a bit of a slog and I'm going through the phase where you think everything you write is shit but at least I think the bloody thing is going to be finished soon. Until then I will leave you with this to ponder; what do the Royal Opera House and the Prospect of Whitby Pub in Wapping have in common?

Back On The Menu

Just a note to say that Terra Incognita or Bernice Summerfield; Terra Incognita Bernice Summerfield as, no doubt, Amazon will list it - is back on the menu. I'm hoping to have the book finished by the end of October 2009 or April 2011 at the very latest. I know that the six people that read Genius Loci are waiting with bated breath and I hope that the book doesn't dissapoint.

Writing Bits: Just Say No

Today's blog has been brought to you by the TV series Castle and the letter N.

There is always a temptation to allow the logic of a story push you into an unnecessary scene. A good example of how this can be averted is demonstrated in Andrew W. Marlowe's script for the pilot episode of Castle.

The series premise, that playboy author Richard Castle will team up with no-nonsense NYPD detective Kate Beckett and solve crimes, is obvious to the audience from before the end of the teaser, thus the only question is how smoothly Marlowe can acomplish the pairing without straining the audiance's willing suspension of disbelief.

Thirteen minutes in (1st turning point for you structure fans) Castle uses his friendship with the Mayor to wheedle his way into the investigation. Now at this point logic dictates that Detective Beckett will object and that, because she is part of a disciplined service, she will take that complaint to her superior - Roy Montgomery. The audience expects it, I was expecting it and indeed Beckett even says the exact line that everyone was expecting...

BECKETT: Sir, can I talk to you for a minute - in private?

Logic dictates that Beckett should then talk to her boss and lay out the reasons why her working with Castle is a bad idea only to be over ruled and sent off with a flea in her ear. The trouble is that the resulting scene wouldn't have any real plot or character function - the series focus is squarely on Castle and Beckett the friction should be between them not frittered away on supporting characters. Any such scene will be at least half a page long, probably a whole page and that's out of a 42 minute show.

Several solutions come to mind:-

a) you could write the scene so brilliantly that nobody cares that it's slowing down the plot.
b) have the scene happen off screen and reference it in a couple of lines of dialogue.
c) have it happen on the other side of a glass door so that we can play off Castle's reaction.
Or d) which is Marlowe's solution...

BECKETT: Sir, can I talk to you for a minute - in private?

MONTGOMERY: (Closing door) No.

There you go, no scene, no loss of momentum, Montgomery is shown to be in charge and have a sense of humour and the whole audience is on Kate's side because who hasn't been put in a bad situation by their boss(1).

Now stop procrastinating and get back to work!

(1) I do not want to hear your boss stories, your boss stories will be moderated.