The Holding Pattern

This is the sucky bit. The first three chapters of my manuscript are with an agent. I must wait.

Back in the day, agents were used to being approached on an exclusive basis but this is no longer the rule. That said, I have approached this agent on an exclusive basis. They don't know that but I doubt it would give me much of an advantage even if they did. What I need to decide is whether to leave my book with them for six weeks before approaching another agent or whether I should just get to work sending parcels to agents every week or so. Any thoughts?

If I were to take this approach, it would probably make sense to send out three submissions every couple of weeks. Small problem: I can't afford the postage.

Operation Sh*tstorm Returns

The need to get a publishing deal is huge. This is the main factor in my wanting to send out work to as many agents as possible.

The full-time job that Mr W was offered still hasn't started. Meanwhile, he's had to give up part-time work elsewhere because the council fined us for it (the work was all above board. He told them about it in advance.) He earned a little over £30 and they fined us £90 for it which has to come out of our budget every week! Our housing and council tax benefits have also been reduced. The upshot of this is that we now have enough coming in to pay for rent, insurance, lighting and council tax but no money for food, heating or anything else.

'Heating?' I hear you say 'but it's June.' Well, yes it is but the heating - as long-time readers of the blog will know - emanates from an oil-filled tank behind the house. This oil is responsible for heating everything - including the water. No oil: no hot water. If you click on 'Operation Sh*tstorm' you can follow the drama so far on this front.

The oil monitor has only two bars left. The cost of oil has gone up. The cost of a minimum drop of oil will be about the same as a month's rent. Can't be done.

In all likelihood, we won't be able to buy any food this month but my stockpiled rice is doing well and we have many peas. Hubby has made some chicken stock too so we won't starve. Calories are surprisingly easy to come by. Sugar's cheap. It's entirely possible to maintain your weight on not much money and we're both well-cushioned enough to sustain a drought. Starvation's not a worry. The worry is malnutrition. We're almost definitely both suffering vitamin and mineral deficiencies and we can't afford multi-vitamins. There's hardly any iron in our diet for instance.

Right. I'm going to stop talking about that before I get depressed. The point is: the money I spend on postage, paper, ink etc should be going towards food and oil. It comes straight out of our food budget. It's a huge gamble. It feels so arrogant and selfish of me to think that I can somehow work us out of this poverty with my writing. How the heck do I know whether it's any good? It just seems like the only option. How did J K Rowling afford to sit in a coffee shop all day writing? I'm a million miles from being able to spend money on something as frivolous as going out for coffee.

Could be Worse...

Thank goodness we moved house. The last place we lived in was fire damaged, had wood worm and there was a black bucket at the end of the bath which supplied the water. The place was constantly damp and generally falling to bits. The place we moved to had no carpets or curtains but it's gorgeous. It's really hard to believe how poor we are when you walk round this place! It was pretty easy to believe at the start as we couldn't afford carpets and I had to make curtains. Since we couldn't afford proper fabric, the curtains I made were not impressive. Eventually, we resolved our floor and window issues with the help of some astounding bargaining tactics and lots of free carpet fitting thanks to my husband's step-dad. Now it's amazing.

Back to the point. Given our financial constraints and the long cold-bath summer which stretches ahead of us before the onset of another hypothermic winter: should I send chapters to other agents or just wait?

The Holding Pattern

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Only Two Days and a Few Hours!

I'm starting to wish I hadn't made this deadline public. Had to really though didn't I? It helps to know there is a literary mob waiting to beat me up verbally if I don't stick to the plan :)

Am I going to make it? Of course. I'll make the deadline because I always do. Never quite sure how it happens but it does. The question is: will I make it?

A number of publishers have been jolly nice to me of late and that's surely no bad thing but it's not necessarily more than a pleasant thing either. If my work isn't up to standard then no amount of friendly chat will save it from the bin.

Is it? My work, I mean, Is it good enough?


The Hoops

So far I've jumped through the following hoops:

1/ Learnt English

2/ Had car accident, fallen into coma, emerged from coma unable to speak

3/ Learnt English again

4/ Got Degree in English

5/ Did lots of research about publishing and novel writing

6/ Written novel

6/ Written sequel

7/ Set up online presence

8/ Built up following of writers, readers, publishers, agents, editors and other media people and a couple of celebrities

9/ Got feedback on my writing from best selling authors

10/ Edited both books. Re-edited first book.

11/ Got agent.

Ha! Fooled you! Didn't get to point 11 yet. This is the bit I'm scared about. The rest of it was in my control but the next bit is not. It's a big, black hole of potential disappointment.

Over the last year, I've taken to reading a few novels by authors doing very well in the 'contemporary commercial women's fiction' category - which is where I think my two books would fall. Some of their work has been great but on more than one occasion I've stared at a page for many minutes, unable to go on, thinking:

'What? That's not right! How on earth did they manage to get THAT published?'

There is one book in particular that sold incontinently well and I could not get past the first chapter for months because of one horrible sentence. It was just ghastly. I'd love to quote it in all its ghastliness as I'm sure you'd agree but it wouldn't be fair to the author so I won't. The thing is that I know this author would have no problem churning out this substandard level of text for huge sums of money for the rest of their life. Maybe their own sense of pride in their work will cause them to improve but even if that doesn't happen, publishers will be happy to continue publishing them.

That isn't something I'd want. I want to be REALLY good. My dream is to find an agent and publisher that take me on because they believe in my work but they won't let me submit anything sub-standard. Even when it becomes really sale-able I wouldn't want someone 'blowing smoke up my ass' as I think you say in America. I desperately want to find a group of people I can work with to get the best possible work published as commercially as possible. Will it happen though? Have I done enough to help it to happen?

The last few years have been intolerably hard for many reasons and it has been a real work of determination to get these books written. There have been times when we've gone without food or without warmth so that we could afford the electricity for me to get words on a screen or the ink to get words on paper. My husband has put as much into these books as I have. Maybe that's why I'm freaking out a bit at the moment. If I don't get published, I'm not the only person I am letting down.

Part of me thinks that I have done as much as I possibly can to give my work the best chance of success but another part of me wonders if that could ever be the case. Is there something I missed? What else needs to happen before Monday to help my words onto the bookshelves at Waterstones?

Only Two Days and a Few Hours!

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Happy Depression!

Technically, I'm not blogging or writing for a few days - it's supposed to be a break but it's torture. All the books say you should take a couple of weeks off after writing a novel to think different thoughts before going back and reading the thing with your critical editor's eye in focus. I'm not loving it. It occured to me that I could legitimately publish an off-topic post and that would enable me to stay within the non-writing rule a bit.

How to Enjoy the Recession/Depression
A recession is upon us. What fun. A jolly challenge presents itself and we all get the chance to perfect a bit of old fashioned stiff-upper-lipped Britishness (whether British or not.) Dust off the brown tea pot, polish up your knitting needles, get out your baking trays, it's show time! Some of the following will only apply if you're English but the general gist of it should be of assistance regardless.

• Don't be a wimp. If you need to cry about the economy taking a downturn, losing your job etc do it now and get it over with... finished? Good. Get counselling for it once the economy picks up again but for now, get over it; there's more important stuff to do. Remember something that is easy to forget in a capitalist society - you are more than the sum of your belongings - Get some lipstick and, on your bathroom mirror, write the following in 'large friendly letters': DON'T PANIC!
• Edit your friend wardrobe. If you have any friends who only judge people on the basis of what they earn or possess, they need to go. You can pick them up again when the economy picks up - if you want to - but for the time being they will make you spend too much and cause you all manner of hell once they lose their own money and realise their lives are empty. Get out while you can. Friends cost money and in a recession you can only afford the good ones. Work out their 'cost per grin' value and if it fits into your happiness budget they can stay.
• Poverty doesn't kill you. Starvation kills you. Enjoy your food. Rejig your attitude to your jiggly bits. Stop asking 'does my bum look big in this?' Start asking 'does my bum look small in this?' If it does, eat some biscuits. If this recession turns into a depression, some people will starve. Make sure you are not one of them. Carbs are your friends. Throw out the sugar substitutes. Shake that healthy butt. Camels have humps for a reason and so do you. Celebrate your body's ability to store calories for later use. Exercise them off again when the economy picks up. Until then, remember that rice and pasta keep for ages so if there is a supply problem later in the year or the price goes up due to requirements elsewhere on the planet, it won't hurt to have some in a cupboard.

If you are in financial difficulty, contact the following people:

The Council: you may be entitled to housing benefit - most people are. If you have less than £16,000 in savings you could be getting help with rent while times are hard. You've paid your taxes so the money's yours if you need it. Stop being proud and call them. They're nice people. Really. Be kind to them - they have lots of angry people going in and shouting at them. It's not nice. Smile at them and they'll help you. You may also be entitled to help with Council Tax etc. This particularly applies if you've just been made redundant.
-Citizens' Advice Bureau: They'll help you take the right steps for your particular situation, put together budgets etc.
- Payplan: These people are amazing if you have any problems with debt. They are the ones the Citizens' Advice people or National Debtline will put you in contact with if you need help sorting out your finances so go straight to them if this is your particular problem. They can put together an IVA for you or a debt management plan or advise on things like bankruptcy and relevant financial legislation and they are FREE!
- www.moneysavingexpert.com You can download forms if you've been mis-sold insurance or need to claim back bank charges etc. There's advice on what to do if you've been made redundant, been messed about by your bank etc. There's an answer for just about everything on this site.

If you're not in financial trouble, have oodles of cash and don't know what all the fuss is about take the following steps:

• Look at why this is. If you have inherited money or made a killing out of business, the ultimate source of your profits will be the difference between what you or your ancestors paid for people's time and effort and what it was actually worth. If it weren't for the work of the masses you wouldn't have the cash and if these same masses don't get back to work, you won't have anything to spend your cash on. Don't feel bad about being loaded, it doesn't make you a bad person, but don't feel too smug about it as it doesn't make you a good person either. You've been helped out along the way whether you know it or not, so now's the time to do something about it.
• Spend some of it. Look around; think which businesses will affect the local community most if they disappear and spend more cash there.
• Pay taxes. Stop it with the tax-haven malarkey. It's just wrong in the current climate. Pay some tax in your home country. Go on, you know you want to really.
• Give some away. None of this 'ooh, look at me, I'm giving away money' stuff - unless you really need the approval in which case do it. Try giving money away to people who really need it. Who in your county or country needs some money and would do something great with it? Just give it to them. Do this with at least 10% of your worth every month. Wipe out your affluenza at a stroke.
• Buy organic. Lots of people are having to adjust their organic and green principles in favour of annoying things like avoiding starvation and hypothermia. You don't have to do that so splurge on organic, environmentally and ethically sound produce and keep these people in business. Keep partying for the greater good.

Happy Depression!

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