The Typo

'What are you doing up there?' my wife asks. Actually, she's shouting, so I can hear her from where I'm standing on the edge of the roof.
I detect a hint of surprise in her voice, probably because I don't usually go up on the roof, and never whilst holding a ream of paper. I can tell she's confused.

I can't answer because I'm hyperventilating and my throat is sore from the hour-long primal scream I emitted when I spotted my mistake: the sentence fragment in the middle of the synopsis that marks me out as a bozo to the six agents I've just sent my manuscript to. Now I won't ever know if the rejections I've received so far are due to my actual story or the typo on the first page of the synopsis.

Everything I've heard about the submission process indicates that agents are looking for any excuse to reject a submission. I can be safely sure that four years of redrafting, mood swings and imaginary conversations with people who exist only in my head have come to squat, all because of a rudimentary mistake in a document I've read hundreds of times and which should be free of mistakes.

I'm running out of agents. These six were the special ones, the ones I'd set aside because the law of averages dictates that the first several dozen would reject my manuscript. I'd made all my mistakes with the other ones, trying to coordinate that magic triumverate of cover letter, synopsis and sample pages, tailoring each submission to the particular whim of the respective agent. I had it bang on - the manuscript is as good as I can get it, the cover letter is snappy and informative, and the synopsis is succinct. All except the sentence in paragraph six, which reads, 'Philpot’s quest is dogged by two shadowy Air Force figures from who are out to steal his secrets and implicate him in an espionage ring.'

Why has this happened? I don't know. I suppose I should blame myself, but at the moment it feels better to assume the universe is conspiring against me. The cat has joined me on the roof and is rubbing itself against my feet. 

'What are you doing up there?' my wife repeats.

'You're home early,' I finally manage to stammer, holding out my manuscript for her to see. Pages 35 -37 flutter free as I fish around in my pocket for a tissue. The cat paws at them as they blow past. 

Five years of my erratic behaviour has hardened my wife to my idiosyncracies. As ever, she knows just how to make things right again: 'When you're finished up there,' she says, propping the ladder back against the house from where I'd kicked it away, 'you can go pick your son up from school.'

As Many Times as it Takes

Another school term starts and the house is quiet once again. I take stock of the list I've been compiling over the holidays of all the things I need to get done once everyone's back at school: follow-up from the Arvon course I attended at the beginning of summer, the short piece I've been working on for submission to a journal, the new manuscript I've been typing up, and of course, my long-term project, An Englishman in Rocket City.

Thanks to the help of Jane Bailey and Beatrice Colin at Arvon, I've reworked the opening of Englishman. I'm still sitting on the first line, however, the part of my 91,000 word MS that has seen the most redrafting, and which contains the idea to which I'm most wedded.

Where to start? Each item on my list feels more like a statement of general ambition with an outcome so wooly as to prompt me to shelve the whole thing in favour of something more immediately rewarding, such as doing the laundry, which at least contains real wool.

And that's what it all comes down to; choosing the task that while reap the biggest reward in the shortest amount of time. The submission to the journal wins hands down as the element of risk is low. If I send it off, I have something to show for my efforts at the end of the day, and if it's rejected, I don't feel like two years of effort have gone down the pan.

This is the danger with a novel - you only get one shot at impressing an agent, and if the writing's underdone, they won't bite. That fantastic opening sentence I cooked up yesterday needs time to cool down.

So, I work on the short piece, which is an account of riding my bicycle up a mountain in France. I did this three years ago, and have written about the experience several times for several different cycling magazines, originally writing my account in the style of a holiday guide, then as an amusing travel piece, and then the basis for short fiction. I've never submitted it, because ultimately it's never been quite right for the market. Now I've found a publication that covers a broad range of cycling-related topics, and I think my newly reworked psychological narrative is just right.

How many times do you redraft a story? As many times as it takes.

Moniach Mhor

Last week I found myself on a train bound for Scotland, on my way to a writing course in the Highlands outside Inverness. At Edinburgh a group of Americans boarded and not so much sat down around me as swamped me. Swamped me with happiness and positive vibes and Karma. They were on their way to a Singing Camp outside Perth. Wasn't it wonderful that they had all bumped into each other in Edinburgh the night before and discovered they were all headed for the same place?

A happy coincidence, I suggested, trying to mask my cynicism.
'There are no coincidences,' smiled the woman from Vermont, 'Everything happens for a reason!' Cosmic.

Did I want to come along? They were very persuasive. There was room for one more. Before the trip, my wife had jokingly warned me to beware of wily Scotsmen who might try to get me drunk on whiskey - the real threat was earnest Americans trying to get me high on life. I was one verse of Kum Bah Yah away from being kidnapped into a singing cult.

I thanked them for their offer of hospitality, clutching my laptop to my chest like a ragdoll. I explained that I was on my way to Moniach Mhor, above Loch Ness, to attend an Arvon course.
'Great!' they cheered, congratulating me, 'wow! Arvon, is that, like, cosmetics?'
'They run courses for writers,' I answered. 'I'm going on a retreat.'

I admitted that the writer's retreat was probably not going to be as much fun as the singing camp; while they were all sitting around their campfire with their guitars, I'd be locked away in a stone house with a bunch of other misanthropes talking about character and dialogue, on a rainswept moor with no internet access or proper ground coffee. Nothing to do but write.

It wasn't like that in the end, it wasn't like that at all. The writing course was fun. The sun came out, I didn't miss the internet, the coffee was good. The other writers were were engaging, intelligent, and not the least bit misanthropic. We even sang a little.

Finding an Internet Bride

'Someday My Prince Will Come' plays on the stereo as I flip one more time through the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook. The majority of agents seem to be interested in either women's fiction or children's, which becomes difficult when plugging an historical comedy about a bunch of guys building rockets.

My experience from the book launch the other night is that you have to find an agent you like. This requires me to be even more selective in my search, and on the basis of some of the agent photos on agency websites, pickings are slim.

It starts to feel kind of creepy, like finding a Russian bride online, especially as I'm looking at pictures of guys - it is a book involving rockets, after all.

Okay, so my prospective agent has to share similar interests, otherwise he or she isn't going to like the book. And I guess they have to look okay; I do not want to find myself in a small room, taking editorial advice from a heavy breather or someone with a leery smile. I want to find someone a little like me, but not too much, someone I trust, with whom I can share a drink, spend time with, who will be a good guardian for my story, and sit back with me and watch it grow over the years to come, and will hopefully produce with me more stories, possibly a series - a family of novels, if you will.

After ten mailouts and three rejections, it's still early days, and two of these rejections were very personalised responses, thank you very much. I don't know what I'll do if I run out of agents. Try America, where there's more of a market for my kind of book. And if I don't find one there? Maybe I can get a Russian bride with contacts in the publishing industry.

The Launch

When people ask me what I do, I usually cough out an explanation along the lines of 'I'm working on my second novel,' because it's less pretentious than saying I'm a novelist (which I'm not), and it implies that when I'm finished with the manuscript, I'll go back into full-time employment. Well, I'm finished with the manuscript, and looking for a job.

I'm reminded of this as I take a seat at the launch of my friend's book, The Sun Hasn't Fallen From the Sky. It's her first, and already she has a deal with a major publisher, radio play, national reviews and an audio book, not to mention strong sales. And of course, an agent, who is sitting up on the stage with her, smiling proudly as Alison reads from her book.

I'm excited and nervous for her, and humbled by her writing. Her words make me wonder if mine are good enough, if my MS is worthy of an agent like hers, or the attention her book is getting. She's in a different stratum to me, and she has an agent, whom I eye greedily.

With one novel published and no agent, I'm a freak, worse than an unpublished author, and one whom some agents incorrectly assume has been vanity published. Published in vain, I want to say, but that's the complementary glass of wine talking. Sometimes, that first book is my albatross.

My own launch was a compact affair in the foyer of the publisher, with a small group of supporters, some balloons and a bowl of crisps, and which ended up in a pub full of ukulele players. This, in contrast, is by ticket only, in a large theatre in the public library, supported by the Propaganda Wing of the Arts Council. It's sold out, too. Alison deserves it, and despite the strong start her book is enjoying, she's keeping the day job, holding her nerve.

Nothing is at stake with the first book, especially when the world wants to read it. When you're writing your first book, you're afraid to take it too seriously, but by the time the second one rolls along, you're afraid not to. You ask yourself if the current story is as good as the last one, and hope it is, because by that point, you've invested so much.

I cheer her on, because I remember what it was like; first holding your book and wondering where it will lead. Listening to her agent and publishing editor speak about the unprecedented response the book has elicited from the media and the public, it's obvious it will take her far.

Afterwards she is beaming, signing books, agent and editor as standing off to the side, chatting, waiting for the queue to disperse. Do I go over and attempt to network? Nope.  It's Alison's night.

Posting the Submission

'No, please, I'll put the stamps on,' I smile plaintively at my local postmaster as we both reach for the disassembled parts of my submission lying on the post office scales.

Last week I watched in suppressed horror as he'd plucked my manuscript through the window and then forced it into the envelope, I'm sure wrinkling the covering letter in the process.

My postmaster, Frank, takes pride in his job and is very good at what he does. He's knowledgeable of postal regulations and attentive to my queries. Handling my carefully prepared submissions, however, is not on his remit.

This is my manuscript: it's taken years to write, during which people have died, societies have collapsed and my son has grown out of nappies and figured out how to operate the dvd player. Several species of Amazon primate have been rendered extinct - their habitat wiped out by the felling of trees in order to keep my hungry printer supplied with fresh A4. Now, on my finest and most expensive 100g Bright Wove paper, the first three chapters of my book are being sent out to agents.

Every word of the synopsis and covering letter has been scrutinised, and I'm finally letting go, sending the proverbial Dove, if you will, out from my ark in search of dry land, or better yet, an agent who will secure me a good deal for some dry land - lots of dry land, which will enable me to leave my job on the Ark and concentrate on ... sending out more doves, so to speak.

My future depends on this mailout, as does the sanity of my wife, who is presently at work with a cold and is relying on me to do something more profitable with my life than make online Ark metaphors.

Frank, the postmaster, wants me to be a success too, because it means I'll stop hassling him with awkward parcels containing SAEs that need extra postage and little post cards that get paper-clipped inside so that agents can acknowledge receipt of my work. We both know that one of them, one of them somewhere, will absolutely love An Englishman in Rocket City, and my quest will momentarily end, sparing Frank the sight of me. But right now, Frank just wants me out of the way so he can deal with the queue of pensioners building up behind me waiting to cash their giros, and the line of unemployed waiting at the till for their lotto cards.

Bemused, Frank surrenders the stamps to me, which I affix to the envelope. My neighbour appears and strikes up a conversation with me, thus distracting me.
'You've put them on crooked,' Frank says. 'I could have done better.'
I smile peakedly, trying to shove my manuscript into the envelope without wrinkling the front page. Frank watches smugly.

My neighbour continues talking; 'was that your boy I saw playing down our way last week?'
I try to hold the conversation while taking care of the second submission. The jobless stare back at me, unaware that I'm one of them.

Postage sorted, I try to lick the flaps down, unsuccessfully. Frank drums his fingers. 'I guess you'll have to let me sellotape them,' Frank says as I hand him the envelopes.

As I thank him and say goodbye, the queue heaves forward. I step outside, relieved. The cold air hits my face and stops me in my tracks: I'm certain that while talking to my neighbour, I may have put Conville and Walsh's letter into Felicity Bryan's envelope. All that careful preparation for nothing, ruined by a moment of civility.

I turn and re-enter the shop, waiting for all giro and scratch card requests to be dealt with. After the last customer from the morning rush has departed, I approach the Post Office window.

Frank looks at me coldly.

'I'm awfully sorry to ask you this, Frank, I'm a complete idiot, but could you possibly get one of my envelopes out of the bag? I'm afraid I may have put the wrong letter in.'

His lip quivers. With a trembling hand, he reaches for his knife. He steps out from behind the window, letter in his other hand, ready to plunge the knife through it and plant it in my chest. He opens the letter along the tape - not as neatly as I would have liked - and hands me the package for inspection. Everything's in order. My relief is overshadowed by embarrassment.

'Obsessive compulsive - that's the best thing I can think to call you,' Frank says, and I'm not sure he's joking.

The Synopsis

I've just spent weeks getting the synopsis for An Englishman in Rocket City in a state suitable to send out.
The punchy, one page outline I started with began to feel too much like the teaser-style atrocity so many agents warn against in their submission guidelines. It expanded to three pages after misreading one agent's requirements, and has since been pared down to two succinct, punchy pages.

The covering letter is also 'go', having pondered over the final closing sentence: do I thank the recipient, when they haven't yet done anything? Do I state the obvious, that I'll be happy to forward the complete manuscript upon request? The whole thing begins to feel like a magic spell, where the precise word combination will unleash the powers of AGENT upon me and lead the manuscript to the far-away land of PUBLICATION. A misplaced word will get me nothing. It will turn me into a frog and my manuscript into the lining of an agent's kitty litter box.

These people are looking for any excuse not to read my sample - the incorrect number of returns between the inside address and the date on my letter could give them just cause to bin my query, or perhaps the additional SAE required by one agent, 'for our response', is the wrong size (I've already included an SAE for the return of my submission, what's this other one for?).

Here's a useful link for anyone considering submitting their work to an agent. I especially like the animation with the bears:
www.jmtohline.com/2010/12/biggest-mistakes-writers-make-when.html