Telling Write From Wrong (Part 14)

Finding An Agent Is Just Peachy

Photograph copyright: DAVID McMAHON

These are two long overdue replies to two bloggers who are in the middle of writing books. Deborah Gamble hasn't found an agent yet, but she gave us a sneak peek of her work at Don't Run Away With Cows Unless Of Course .... She wrote:

Can you tell all the rejections from agents are already getting me down?

Debbie, all you need is one agent or publisher to say ``I like this.'' And then your whole world changes. Let's be perfectly frank, there is no better motivation than having someone who is keen to publish your work. I was just lucky, because I stumbled into a publishing contract with Penguin even before I had an agent.

But I take heart from your sentence, ``Pity party over''. I know you have thrown yourself into continuing with your manuscript. You have already got people (including me) signing up to buy your book and that can only be a good thing. Don't let the rejection slips get to you. Legend has it that one US writer used the hundreds of rejection slips as wallpaper - and used that as his inspiration.

I also heard from Anne Creed at Novel Struggles. She said:

The best way you can help is with encouragement and insight. Right now I'm trying to brainstorm scenes and other pre-writing preparation before I start. How do you get started - and how do you continue? All advice is much appreciated.

Anne, I find your pre-planning extremely interesting, because I work very differently. I don't sit down and plan a chapter to the nth degree. I know which charcters are going to be in the chapter, where they are and what they'll be doing, but I just write the story as it unfolds in my head. In my case, the best creative instinct comes when I sit in front of my keyboard and one idea just leads to another and one sentence just leads to another.

A lot of film directors work just as you do - by ``blocking'' every sequence before the cameras roll. It works for them and there's no reason why it won't work for you. But if you find you're getting bogged down because you can't brainstorm a whole scene, try writing instinctively. I'd be really interested to know which approach works better for you.