If you want to 'get in touch with your feelings' fine, talk to
yourself. We all do. But if you want to communicate with another
thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in
order, give them a purpose, use them to persuade, to instruct, to
discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down,
and then cut out the confusing parts - William Sabre
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and
original in your work - Flaubert
Presentation
Obviously, present your material well. Don't underestimate the value of
this. Sending out poorly-printed documents that cause eye strain,
curled-up pages or typescripts that have obviously been through many
submissions and suffered for it, means that when an agent is choosing
which manuscript to pick up next, yours may not be the one that looks
most attractive.
Basic skills are not enough. Learn the tools of your trade
properly. It is a trade and it requires a serious
apprenticeship. With so many people acquiring computer skills,
your submission will compare unfavourably if you are still using a
typewriter, or if you haven't bothered to read your manuscript
through to check for typing and grammatical errors. Beware of
using a computer's spell checking tool too slavishly. An author
I know told me that when checking a document this way the computer
stopped on the word 'fulfilment'. This was actually
a mistyping for the word 'fulfilment'. The computer, though, suggested
substituting 'fulmoviement'. Machines don't think, people should.
Publisher or agent first?
Before deciding on a submission to
an agency, consider the following.
If you are writing on a specialized non-fiction subject and you can
identify
likely publishers easily, it's quite sensible to go direct to them.
If you're writing poetry, it's quite easy to identify those few
publishers that publish poetry and it's extremely unusual to find
agents who represent poetry, so again it's sensible to submit direct
to publishers.
If you are writing in specialized categories of fiction where it is
necessary to conform to fairly strict publisher-given guidelines,
such as Mills & Boon romances or the erotic novels published by
Virgin and some others, then again you might well choose to submit
directly to the publisher. The publishers of these kinds of series
are not only very specific about what they want (storylines, length
etc.) but tend to be relatively inflexible in the terms they offer
authors. They often insist on sticking to their own standard deals,
which usually require the author to surrender world rights in all
languages to them. This can mean that there would be little
leeway for an agent to negotiate and improve on a deal offered by
them.
If you are writing general commercial fiction of the kind published by
dozens of publishing companies, I would advise you to try agents
first. Few general fiction publishers will read unsolicited
manuscripts. Of those that do, some shy away from taking on
manuscripts that need editorial work. Quite a lot of editorial work
is done on first novels by agents these days, and in my experience
agents tend to answer their unsolicited submissions rather faster
than most publishers do.
The obvious answer is to offer your material
when it’s ready. But how can you tell when the material stands the best chance of
pleasing an agent? Should
you offer a synopsis and sample chapters? Should you write the whole of the first draft – or revise
and rewrite until you can’t face it any more?
When to Offer
It’s very difficult to make a proper
assessment of this when you are so close to your own material.
I would suggest the following:
- Improve your material until, in your
judgement, it’s as good as you can make it.
- Research the potential agents as thoroughly as you can.
- Then seek to manipulate your potential agent as best you can by making a professional
presentation and approach.
Copyright © 1999 Carole Blake
About
Carole Blake
