The Agent Hunter

The book is out to be reviewed by an individual who will be my fiercest critic - my daughter. She also happens to represent my target market, i.e. someone who loves reading, particularly literary fiction, which I define as a book that requires the reader to engage intellectually with the content one way or another.

It has already passed one critic, who approved it with minor revisions. Once through my daughter's hands, it will be passed to a friend, who taught English for years, primarily for him to scrutinise my punctuation and grammar.

I have found it difficult to settle on the genre of my book. I have been told magic realism might be it from those who have some inkling of the plot. Reviewer number three will know.

In the meantime, I have started the hunt for an agent. I spent an hour in the library going through the The Writer's Handbook, made a long list and checked them out on the internet.

The latter was an interesting exercise; one agent who I liked the sound of had a site which was up and running except for the list of authors they represented - it was still 'under construction' (it would be one of the first pages I would construct were I they). Another hadn't updated their site since 2007. Another just had a single home page stating they were literary agents. And one I really warmed to has no web presence.

Given the importance of network marketing these days, it is a concern.

When Cyclists Give You the Willies.

Yesterday, while wrestling with the edit of my last chapter, I was disturbed by the sounds of whistles, merry cheering and the sounds of people having fun. Out on my balcony, I looked down to discover a sea of bottoms.


It was the Brighton Naked Bike Ride, one of a series of similar events that take place in cities around the world in June to alert motorists to the fragility of the human body and the vulnerability of cyclists.


A poignant and timely reminder as a colleague at work was very nearly killed a few weeks ago when he was knocked from his bike by a lorry at a roundabout and the rear wheels ran over him.


He has had several operations on his legs, his left in particular, and the consultant is hopeful that it will be capable of 'load bearing', in other words he will be able to walk but how well remains to be seen.

I used to cycle to work regularly when I worked in London - it is the quickest way to commute - and on most journeys there was a near incident of one kind or another, cars pulling across in front of you to turn left with no warning, people in parked cars throwing open their doors without looking - that kind of thing. It seems unnecessary to say cyclists need to keep their wits about them; however, the number of people I see on bikes wearing headphones is frightening. How can they concentrate on what is going on around them if they are listening to music. Hearing is a key sense when cycling, it acts as a form of rear view mirror in alerting you of any unusual activity behind you.

I hope my colleague makes a full recovery. No one from work has been allowed to see him as yet but it is hoped someone will be able to do so soon.

Don't Write: Read

My advice to anyone who intends writing a novel is don’t start. For the sake of your family, your friends and your sanity, don’t even think about it. Take up something more life enhancing, like a five-year period of solitary confinement in a dungeon.

I have spent the interval since my last post editing my first draft. My head has been in a very dark place with no light to illuminate the way, and no glimmer that might tell me if I am in tunnel or a cave. So overwhelming has been my obssession, I don’t believe I’ve heard a single word anyone has said to me during the intervening period. I have found it very difficult to switch off. Even as I write this, I am thinking about two small holes that need plugging.


Still, it is finished all bar the last chapter, the most difficult of all, and I am taking the briefest of breaks to come to it refreshed.

Editing has been an interesting exercise, very different from drafting the original MS, more technical, in terms of pace, structure, use of language, et cetera. I wrote the first very sparsely – at times it reads more like a film script than a novel –with few adjectives or adverbs. It was intentional; I concentrated on developing the character of the protagonists purely through their voice. My motto: show, don’t tell.

There is another reason for the leanness of my first draft – it concerns my ambition for the novel. I will not clarify here because, if it ever is published, I want readers to decide without my explanation.

Much of my editing has concentrated on giving the reader a sense of time and place, and to create a soundtrack for the novel through language.

I found this article by Tim Clare, How to get a book deal, via Lynn Price, via Sally Zigmond (welcome back, Sally). Tim’s journey to write his book was more fraught than mine. He ends the body of the article with five points on What not to do; A beginner’s guide, the first of which is; ‘Don't believe you dilute your vision by reading others' work.’

When I was editing, I scanned pages of three authors whose tone of voice was closest to the one I wanted to achieve. These I had to hand, so every time I became stuck on a technical issue, I would look at their work and analyse how they resolved a similar problem. For those who fear reading other people’s writing will prove more contagious than swine flue and infect their own style, think of it in terms of painting.

All artists, or those who paint in oil, study other artists to learn technique, style, structure and so on. They will go so far as to directly copy others’ art to get closer to the experience of the individual they are emulating. When it comes to the creation of their own work, they have a wider range of tools available to realise their personal vision.

The same is true for authors. The more technical facility you have, the better and more individual an author you will be.

Mind Massage Music Please.

I cannot write in the absence of sound. It would be an impossibility, anyhow, given that I live over a main shopping street. However, that is not the point.

If I do attempt to compose in silence I cannot concentrate. My mind wanders away to chase one butterfly after another until it is over the hill and faraway. It needs a background noise to fight against, and it is only in this contest does it succeed in focusing on the matter in hand.


The sound I choose varies according to my purpose. If I am creating the story, in other words, in the process of developing a passage where there is a need for lateral thought, I like the sound of the human voice, so I will listen to a radio drama. I find the voices in the background promote associated thoughts and ideas for my own work.

If I know precisely what is happening on paper and it is only a question of setting it down, or if I am redrafting my work, as now, voices are too diverting - their words clash with mine - so I listen to music.

The music I find the best aid to concentration in these circumstances was discovered after much experimentation while writing my MA dissertation.

It cannot involve the human voice for aforementioned reasons. Neither, must it be too strident or explosive for similar reasons. Rock music is out.

Step forward Joseph Haydn with his violin and cello concertos. They are gentle, soothing and upbeat, subtle and intelligent. They massage the grey cells.

I would love to find more music with similar qualities. Unfortunately, I am something of a dunce when it comes to music. At the moment, I am listening to Handel's last opera, Admeto, on BBC Radio 3. It's not doing the job. Too much emotion.

Any music buffs out there have any suggestions?


(Image: http://www.cybernation.com/victory/successgalleries/concentration.html)

Saints & Sinners

I had a long conversation with my ex earlier - dear Sue. We were discussing elder daughter, Rebecca, who has a very exciting project to participate as a film researcher in what sounds to me a complex production where, as Rebecca says, her ideas and her creativity are valued.

Her boss, with whom she has worked for a couple of years now, is a man I would love to meet. He is, according to Rebecca, a workaholic who has always encouraged and helped her. He did his best to help her to take on this temporary job - even to the extent of negotiating a very respectful daily fee for her.

As I said, I have never met him but I would dearly love to.

(Like me, he is a fan of Manchester United, though, unlike me, has the money to follow them wherever they travel in search of silver. But that is by the by. And in case I hear sighs, the reason why I follow the fortunes of Manchester United is because I went to a Jesuit boarding school in Lancashire from the age of seven, and most of the boys were from Manchester, so supported what was, in those days, the predominantly Catholic United team as opposed to the Protestant City team.)

As I said to Sue, the creative world seems divided into the those whose egos are so big they cannot look beyond searching for their own image on any reflective surface. And those who will make every effort to promote and encourage others.

Rebecca, as she recognises, is very fortunate. Also, very excited. Fingers crossed the project works out. It is only for three weeks.

On a different matter, yesterday was a brick wall in terms of editing my book. Not a word written or revised. Today, will be different as I think I have a resolution to the block.

William Caxton, Where Are You Now That I Need You?

On this gloomy and wet morning when even the gulls look miserable, I am feeling very positive.

I have restructured my MS, printed out the first chapter, gone through it word by word and identified the holes.

It has been an interesting process. First I read the whole in one go to get a feel of how it held together, marking any obvious weakness with a cross. Next I read it page by page with the eye of a critic. I have edited others' work before and found it easier than I thought. I just pretended someone else had written it. I patched and repaired as I went along in longhand.

Today I will be transferring my notes to screen. And that will be Chapter One.

My only gripe is the speed and cost of printing. It took an hour for my appallingly slow printer to spit ink on fifty-four pages. Eventually, I want to make three copies of my finished MS to send to three carefully selected individuals who have kindly agreed to critique it before I give the book its final polish. That means printing one thousand plus pages. Even as I type this, my printer looks faint.

How do others manage to produce hard copies of their work? I am hoping I can do a deal at the place where I work. Tuppence a page if I supply the paper sounds fair. Doesn't it?

Heavy Breathing

I love words. I am a writer, now an author, so I would do. I love their history, their origins, how their meaning has developed over the centuries, sometimes to come to represent the very opposite of that which was their original intention. Wicked!

Henry Miller, whose works I swallowed in huge indigestible lumps, hungry for their flavour, envious of their energy, prior to my entry to Sussex University, famously used to visit his local library in New York on a daily basis (I forget which, it is probably the equivalent of the British Museum) to look through a dictionary to find a word unknown to him at the time that he would then employ the next time he set pen to paper. He lived on words.

I love Miller; he helped me get my pass into Sussex. His works are full of bombast, lies and, occasionally, truth but, as earlier stated, spark and sizzle with energy. He must have been an exhausting individual to have been associated with, one that sucked all the oxygen from the room.

I met his equivalent when living in Paris. Not his equivalent, but an American disciple. He had been a director of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago, world-renowned, cutting edge and stuff like that, who was doing his Henry Miller thing in Paris.

He directed an am/dram version of Pinter’s The Homecoming. It was staged in a tiny, ancient and venerable lecture room of a Parisian university, I forget which, with a minute balcony. You could well have been back in the days of tricorn hats and Madame Guillotine. The lighting consisted of one naked bulb shaded with a piece of greaseproof paper. The actors were on stage when sitting down, off stage when standing behind their chairs.

I had never seen a staging of or read The Homecoming and, essentially, this was a glorified reading, but I remember to this day the power of that dramatisation.

This quote is lifted from Wikipedia:

Considering the play while surveying Pinter's career on the occasion of its 40-anniversary production at the Cort Theatre, in The New Yorker, the critic John Lahr writes: "'The Homecoming' changed my life. Before the play, I thought words were just vessels of meaning; after it, I saw them as weapons of defense. Before, I thought theatre was about the spoken; after, I understood the eloquence of the unspoken. The position of a chair, the length of a pause, the choice of a gesture, I realized, could convey volumes.” [sic]

I love words. But I am wary of their power. We are strange creatures insofar as we are unique in our ability to employ abstract sounds to convey meaning. I accept every creature uses sound to declare a territory or invitation to breed – a terrorcity, a fuck-off-out-of-here-you-are-on-my-land-unless-you-can-have-babies declaration – yet are we so different? Isn’t that what The Homecoming is about?

Words are circumcised, they land in our ear gentle and pleasing, disguised of the outrage of the act of circumcision. Words are brutal as an act of rape, overreactions to the act of circumcision. And what do I mean by this concept of circumcision other than circumscription. It may strike you merely as a play on words, but one function of words is to play one on the other.

Out of a misguided politesse, we employ words to disguise what we mean though we will, with tone and tenor, do our utmost to insinuate our venom.

[I can hear the tut-tuts of those who believe themselves to be totally altruistic in their every utterance. Or, those who forgive themselves for wilful thoughts because they believe they are absolutely justified. Hey-ho.]

No utterance is innocent. Every one is fully laden with e-numbers. It is for this reason we find the written and spoken word so fascinating. Words betray us. Words allow us to peer through the physical presence to the insecurities of the person we believe we identify with. I can hear tuts. My interpretation of others’ words is moulded by my own psyche. But that is the truth of words. We, we alone, listen to what we hear; we alone interpret what the words mean. Our interpretations are pebbles in a pond of our own making, ripples that disrupt, or are disrupted by, the surface of our own consciousness.

My understanding is a dangerous view of this most fundamental intercourse; yet history, in a collective sense, bears me out.

It is not so much words, their classification, categorisation, annexation, seclusion, and exclusion of true communication that I love, but their failure in what they, or we believe, they achieve.

We tell stories – all of the time. Truth, as Geoffrey Bennington locuted in his inaugural professorial lecture, is the sight of a fish flashing in the water: to capture is to kill: to glimpse is sufficient.