Why authors like me shoot themselves in the foot (OR FEET)

    I’m always in a rush. I’m impatient. It would be be too convenient to blame my slapdash, hasty approach on my twenty years working as a news agency journalist, when seconds and minutes mattered on a breaking news story, though it’s tempting to do so.

    My query letters to agents and publishers have too often fallen short, I admit, and I don’t just mean infelicities of syntax or dreaded typos, both of which are mortal errors in the submission process.

    The same goes for the typescripts themselves. Given that the book industry expects authors’ unsolicited offerings to arrive error-free and properly edited, there’s really no excuse for submitting anything less than the polished and pristine.

    Agents and publishers generous enough to open their doors to unsolicited submissions from authors probably receive hundreds of titles a week, many thousands a year. No wonder that an unpaid intern might be given the task of shovelling through the Himalayan slush pile with earth-moving equipment. Nor is it any surprise that many writers fail at the first hurdle: the query letter. If the query does pass muster (an achievement in itself), and the typescript in question is eventually looked at, it will probably be limited to a rapid read of the first three to five pages.

    That much is obvious.

    Why then, do so many authors, especially first timers, make such a mess of things?

    I suggest it might be an illness peculiar to writers. It has no name. The nearest term I can think of is literary egotism.

    It takes immense self-confidence, even arrogance, I suggest, to sit down and write one hundred thousand words. Or eighty thousand. It takes an inordinate amount of time, energy and thought. To push through to the end, to sustain the effort, the writer must surely develop an invincible sense of self-worth, or massive self-belief, an armoured faith against all reason and common sense in the value of whatever they’re producing.

    At least for the duration.

    It has to be a shield strong enough to withstand all the small, whining, subversive voices in the back of the writer’s mind: this is crap, no-one’s going to pay good money to read this, it’s adolescent, it’s infantile, it’s self indulgent, it’s boring, it’s one great big cliché from start to finish, stop this nonsense and get a real job, for Chrissakes.

    Reality, in other words, has to be suspended for the duration.

    Trouble is, the illusion of self-worth takes on a life of its own and carries on long after the writer types ‘the end’.

    It’s now a fantasy. The author is told by family and friends how talented he is. He believes it because he desperately wants to. It’s why he showed his work to them. He thirsts for validation. Maybe he’s told by a kindly aunt it would make a terrific tv crime series. He believes that because he needs to. He dreams about selling the film rights, of a dozen foreign translations, and being shortlisted for the Booker.

    Here’s the rub. It’s almost impossible to edit and rewrite ones own work or see it in its true light while the literary ego is in full gallop and in possession of our luckless scribbler’s dream world.

    I have borrowed a few grotesque examples of what editors have to put up with.

    One of the blogs I enjoy is entitled Diary of a Reluctant Publisher, written by the publisher of Sparsile Books. Here’s an excerpt from one of her posts. I hope she doesn’t mind:

    ‘Your publisher is a person—possibly a grumpy person who is having a bad day—and being met with an introductory letter that reads like a ransom note to the Getty family is not going to evoke their better angels. Establishing some rapport is a good place to start. How about mentioning the title of your book? I can’t count the number of letters that talk generally about “a book I am writing.” Well duh! You are approaching a publishing company. It’s not likely you are writing your shopping list.

By all means talk about your book in a manner that suggests that you have every reason to believe that it is worth publishing, but do try to avoid wandering into fantasy land. Below is a list of genuine demands I have received from writers I have never heard of:

·       I want my book made into a film

·       I would like George Lucas to direct the film.

·       I have an idea and I thought you would pay me a lot of money for it then write the book for me.

·       You may offer me an advance and I will tell you if you are close to reaching my worth.

·       I expect my own publicist.

·       I won’t need edited.

·       Nothing can be cut down in my 3,000-page epic entitled: A History of thresholds and Hinges: Door Mechanics in Post-War Britain

       The more diplomatic ones sometimes phrase the demands as an opportunity:

·       I’m giving you this chance to bid on my novel.

·       This is your opportunity to snap up the next big thing.

·       Behind every great writer is an eager publisher. Call me now.

·       Hurry before I change my mind! (All right. I made that last one up, but it has been implied in a number of proposals.)’

    So what’s the cure for this pathological writers’ illness?

    The obvious one is not to write at all, and get a life instead.

    Beta readers who are brutal enough to spit out the truth will also be a great help.

    My own New Year resolution is to put my next first draft aside for no less than six weeks before seeing it afresh and launching a rewrite.

    Twelve weeks would be even better.

    I won’t even look at it, I swear.

https://www.sparsilebooks.com/