A long dark coffee-time of the soul (or, how I found a literary agent)

I remember greedily hunting down as many of these kinds of stories as possible when querying for the first time, so perhaps someone else will find my data points useful. Warning: this is a little bit long and has some of my usual swearing.

Let’s start with a caveat: I’m not the kind of person who grew up wanting to be a writer because I sort of figured out at the age of 11 or 12 that writing was a Bad Idea. Everybody wanted to do it, most people sucked, and the few who didn’t suck barely made any money. Before writing could ever be a goal or aspiration, I had already consigned the idea of writing to the metaphorical bin.

Mostly, I just really liked reading. Actual books, reviews of books, and forum discussions of books, all of it. I considered myself (and still do) more of a reader. Writing is only what you vomit out after swallowing too many novels.

Life rolled by. High-school, university, two degrees, a random sampling of jobs, a decent partner, then a sort-of shotgun wedding. (Look, it WAS love, but I also needed the visa. Don’t @ me, bro.) I started writing for fun in my spare time, because although I’d never really wanted to be a writer, I still enjoyed doing it now and then.

Then we hit the Year of Ridiculous Fucking Bullshit, the first of many in a series. I got pregnant, lost my job due to that pregnancy, and our house buy fell through. The Immigration office fucked up my permanent marriage visa and suddenly I was also an illegal alien. Enter a hard pregnancy, bad birth, “mild” PTSD , a daughter who never fucking slept, two and half years of immigration wrangles and a lot of bad times that don’t deserve space on this page–and that wraps up my late 20s.

I also couldn’t go back to work. Initially because of the immigration status, then later a lack of childcare, and finally a lack of confidence; in other words, by the time my external reasons had cleared up, internal ones had cropped up.

In that long dry spell without books or my occasional hobbyist scribbles, I started to miss writing. Literally I was missing something I’d never really had. The worse things got, inside my head and outside our house, the more that writing itch dug in. Half-formed ideas and characters refused to go away. Stories nagged me at night. I guess I’m a late bloomer, in writing as in everything else.

What actually gave me that final push into writing was… baby slings. No, for reals. Collecting and geeking out over baby slings is like, a thing worthy of big internet communities. (Shut up, everybody needs a hobby.) What started out as a necessity with a small clingy child, blossomed into a mild obsession, like everything I’ve ever been interested in. In four months I knew enough about textiles, fabric, weaving, and general baby wearing that I could have qualified as a sling consultant. I didn’t bother, though, because I knew I’d lose interest in time.

But I started thinking–look how much I learned, through sheer enthusiasm. What if I’d spent those months learning writing? How much would I know about the craft of books, if I’d put my mind to that, instead? The itch of writing continued to grow, as my interest in slings and weaving waned.

By the summer of 2016, after we’d tentatively found our feet and Child #2 had arrived, the itch of writing had become a burn. It started to really bother me that I might live my entire life and never write any of this stuff down. I wanted to finish something, anything, because I don’t finish things; I’d left a trail of half-arsed jobs and interests, flirted with but always, always abandoned eventually.

“Just do it,” my partner said, at last. Probably exasperated with my hemming and hawing. “You’ll never be happy if you don’t at least try.”

He had a point. I set myself a time-frame of two years to ‘give it a go’ and see what happened. With hindsight, I realise how laughably short 2 years is in this industry, but back then it seemed a vast quantity of time.

Once that decision was made, it was like ten thousand different doors, locked shut my entire adult life, had suddenly blown down. At 25 I could barely write a birthday card now, at 29, suddenly a whole damn book poured out. I had no idea what I was doing; I wrote. I had to google every aspect of craft; I wrote. I wanted to finish; I wrote.

Desperation provides a beautiful kind of motivation. I ratcheted up wordcount in the frantic months of July, August, September, October; breaking in November to help my partner finish setting up his business; then picking up again and finishing in mid-December. Great! I was done!

I showed my first ever wobbly draft of a novel to my partner. He read 200 words and said, with a grimace, “Is it all like this? I want to stop already.”

Well. Nothing’s perfect on the first try, right?

Good thing I’m very thick-skinned. We talked about how and why it didn’t work. Then I rewrote it. Just the beginning because, DUH, the rest of it was fine. And thus began a critique relationship that continued for months. Every chapter my partner read, needed a rewrite. The whole book was overhauled and it was better. Sort of.

Time for some beta readers.  I must admit, I have a laugh every time some writing website recommends getting “one or two” sets of eyes on your work. I had around 24 beta readers for Origin of Sight (I’ve lost count exactly), and I needed every single one.

I had so many because the first fourteen readers in a row could not get past chapter 2. Dense, inaccessible, full of passive writing, confusing, no emotion, no character connection, too much world-building, no pacing, no tension, no interest, on and on  and on. Every craft flaw you can think of, and I had it. (And this was after my partner helped edit. Wheee.)

So I kept rewriting. I rewrote that entire fucking book every month, for four months. From scratch, each time. That’s not an unusual experience, I’m afraid. Writing forums are chock full of other writers with similar journeys. Your first book is brutal, and for that reason I really think it has to be a labor of love. Only love and a dollop of delusional hope will get you through that misery. Let the cynicism come later.

Eventually, I got somebody to finish reading the damn thing, flaws and all. I found other writers, and we built a critique group. 9 months after starting to write, I began querying.

Obviously, I was querying way too early. It should be a law of the universe that you’re not allowed to query in your first fucking year. Over the next 11 months, I sent 130+ queries to every agent I could find, and a few small presses. I had zero agent interest, and a handful of small press requests which all ended in rejection.

Writing can’t be learned in a few weeks. I think, when we start out, we all secretly hope that it can, that we’ll dash down a first novel and get launched into publication.  Realistically, of course, you’ve got a better chance of being launched into the sun. Those who fly at first jump, are a rare breed indeed.

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In the scheme of things, writing moved pretty fast for me, overall. But at the time it didn’t feel fast, because the nature of this business is that you are a failure until you’re not; you’re grinding, until you suddenly level up. The grind seemed potentially endless.

A friend described writing as a career defined by long periods of drought and the difficulty is, you start in a drought and might continue without ever finding rain. At the end of one year I turned 30, and was still in drought with nothing to show for it–at least, not to outside eyes. Objectively, I knew I’d learned a lot, and I tried to keep that in mind.

Here’s the main lesson Book1 taught me: there is a difference between sentence-level craft, and narrative shape. I’d practiced sentence-level craft and Origin (that’s Book1) read well–but only on a paragraph or chapter basis. That’s not enough, though, because you can write a story with the most beautiful phrasing in the world and still have it fall flat as a book. You can have fantastic ideas that dazzle the brain but still don’t connect with readers.

As writers, we spend a lot of time honing our sentence level craft and that is very important–to a point. But I’d argue that narrative shape and character-reader connections are probably more important. As a reader, it’s certainly true for me. If I can’t connect with a character, I lose interest in the plot events. If the book doesn’t have a strong story, no amount of beautiful writing will save it. Even if I do love to read beautiful writing.

Building on that, all of my rejections had two overarching themes: we cannot connect to your characters and your story is inaccessible.

Turns out there was a very specific reason for that. Over the following year, as my youngest received a diagnosis for autism and I began the process of getting a similar diagnosis for myself, I came to realise that my struggles to make relatable characters stemmed from my own struggle to relate in day-to-day life with neurotypical people.

In writing terms, I needed to adjust my characters for the sake of readers. I already adjust myself–my behaviours and reactions–to make what personal connections I can, and the same principles could be applied to writing. Much more easily, too, because real life doesn’t have an edit function; writing does.

I suppose in an ideal world, neurotypical people would make more of an effort to relate to neurodiverse people on our terms, but we don’t live in an ideal world. In the end, wanting to be heard mattered more to me than misplaced artistic integrity (if that’s even what you could call it.)

I changed tactics, and mentally reorganised everything I thought I knew or considered important about writing, and prepared to start again. Once more, but with feeling.

Narrative feeling, that is. The goal was to make people feel something, you see.

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A lot of autistic people report a sensation of existing in a control room inside their own head, a silent dispassionate observer of their own lives. Sort of like a mecha pilot, but less emotional. That’s mostly where the idea for Anchor came from. I have always had a “control room” figure that I’m aware of, a disconnection between those parts of myself, and the concept that this self would gain awareness at night in some dream dimension was a long-running bit of fancy.

I took that idea and then I sat down with my CPs, and my partner, and looked very critically at books which ‘connect’ well with readers. First person was an obvious boost; more immediate for most readers. (I’d only written in third until that point.) My new novel would need to be in first person. Sarcasm and extroverted characteristics were popular.  No more quiet, withdrawn characters, then. High concept, fast paced. Okay, so no more philosophy or social commentary. Make it simple, make it commercial; the goal is cheap paperback pulp. No pretentious pretentiousness or self-satisfied delving into phenomenology.

In short, I sat down to write a book that I thought I’d hate, because I was an arrogant coward without integrity who desperately wanted to sell.

In my defense, I don’t actually have any other skills in life, so I did kind of need to make this writing thing work. You know how it is.

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Anyway, I started over with book 2 (Anchor). The idea of doing this again, from scratch, and without any guarantee of different results was totally fucking terrifying. Especially as I read more and more stories of authors on their 8th, 9th, 10th+ books still struggling to find publication; good writers who just couldn’t get a good break. Luck is brutally important in publishing. I didn’t have the fortitude to stick at it for decades, and I knew that. And what was I doing it for? To write a book I didn’t really enjoy or believe in?

But in the end, I couldn’t do anything else except try. Besides, I had more experience, an awesome critique group, and a year left on the timer.  What else was there to lose.

A lot, as it turned out. We didn’t have a good year. My partner suffered from ill health for months (kidney problems). The depression came back, his and mine, not that it was ever very far away. Youngest became steadily more challenging. We bled money and swelled with debt. Life stagnated. I should have tried to get a proper job; instead, I worked on Anchor. The dumb and illogical decision. At least I’m nothing if not consistent. Our ship was sinking and instead of bailing water, I was concentrating on making pigs fly.

In the Geek Feminist Revolution, Hurley wrote: “I’d reached a point in my life where I didn’t know how to do anything else but finish the fucking book.”

That’s pretty much where I ended up. Life was falling apart; keep writing. Nothing made sense; keep writing. No future and no way to dig ourselves out of the endless chasm we were falling further into. Keep writing. All your words are going into a void but at least if they’re down on paper, they’re not eating you up from the inside out.

Besides, my two-year time frame was still running. Shameful as it was to continuing writing when I should have been doing anything else, it’d be even more shameful to quit before the two-year mark and leave writing as yet another thing abandoned. I was acutely aware that if I packed it in now, I probably wouldn’t be trying again.

So… I kept writing. Like the total fucking selfish moron that I was, but whatever. You are what you are. Or, ‘you do you’ as they say on the Internets.

One thing that helped keep me sane was the short stories. I wanted to learn this medium and found it useful for a number of reasons which you can read about elsewhere on the site. I wrote my first EVER short story last July… and got it published. Like, I got paid and everything. I was so ridiculously, naively, smugly proud and I won’t even apologise. Publishing my small story felt like the only good and useful thing I’d ever done.

All in all, I wrote six short stories between July 2017 and June 2018; five of them got published. Sometimes with, in the case of “–Good.”, with kind reviews. But more important than simply being published, the stories evoked emotion and created connections with readers. That great elusive thing I struggled to do, in real life and in my first manuscript, I was finally getting a grasp on.

Somehow, we staggered through that awful year and emerged into an exhaustion-riddled spring. Partner’s health cleared up, and the business tentatively started again. By then I’d sold four short stories and, to my surprise, Anchor was growing on me. I no longer hated the premise, writing, or main character with the fiery passion I initially had, in large part because the novel had changed (against my intention!) into a discussion on topics that interested me more.

I’d planned Anchor to be the kind of novel I thought would sell, ie with as little bizzareness as possible, and not much darkness, but despite my best efforts the novel had turned out weird. Really damn weird. Also, dark as fuck. Oh, well. Another lesson learned: you can’t be something you’re not.

The personal side was unexpected, though. The novel had a lot of me in it. As in, an embarrassing amount of real-life anecdotes. My go-to example is the story-within-a-story of Dylan’s suicide, who was an actual person, although I changed his name. The phobia of drowning was real, for reasons Remy details in her book, and naturally I have strong opinions on healthcare, abortion, general existence, etc., which all made it in. So much for no social commentary.

I have no idea whether shedding my skin for that book was better or worse in the final analysis. But I did it anyway because whatever.

And then summer arrived, meaning my timer for playing Author Pretend had run out. I needed to put the writing on hold and find something more useful (and hopefully more money-making) to do with my time. If nothing else, youngest was needing more and more care.

Still, Anchor was more or less done, and I could at least query it in the background while adjusting back to non-writing life.  I trunked my remaining short stories, started subbing, and sat back to let the rejections roll in.

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My query letter process I detailed in another post (link incoming) so I won’t go into that here. Needless to say, it was a totally different experience from Origin; I got an offer within twelve days of starting to query. Twelve days. I couldn’t believe it. I think I was in shock, in a good way.

Seriously, though. The time-frame stunned me. I hadn’t even finished wrapping up my writing and already my plans to quit had been foiled, in the best possible way. I bought cheap champagne and cried into a glass.

The Call was terrifying (I hate phones) but Naomi was brilliant, and very kind. Same day as the offer of rep came through, I got an email telling me that my last short story submission had found a home. On the heels of that, revisions for another short (sold but not yet published) arrived in my inbox, and those are always great fun to work through.

It seemed I wasn’t done with writing just yet.

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I know how lucky I am. Writing is supposed to take years, multiple books, and a lot of misery (although I think I could make a case for Origin counting as multiple books, since every draft was SO different–but I digress). I know that I’m a product of privilege, with a healthy dose of good fortune.

I listed 130+ rejections, over 200 if you stack in short story refusals, but that’s not a huge amount in this business. People routinely collect hundreds, if not thousands. For years, sometimes decades. So, a big part of me thinks about how quickly everything happened and cringes with guilt because others who deserve it more have been trying longer and harder.

But I can’t control those factors, and besides, it’s not a race to the bottom. In an ideal world, we would all find success. Anyway, this is the path I took which got me picked up by an agent, and maybe it will be of some interest or consolation to someone else.

There’s still a lot more left to do–as I’m writing this, I’m elbow deep in the first round of pre-submission revisions, and the submission process itself will be months or years with, again, no guarantee of success.

That’s okay, though, because there are never guarantees. The only thing you can be sure of is what you’ve already done.

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Maybe this long-winded and rather dull story will be useful to someone else. Thanks for reading, and double thanks if you made it to the end! ❤

 

 

 

 

 

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