HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Writing a novel is the easy bit. No. That’s a lie. It’s hard (unless you just dash something off and hand it over to a vanity publisher--sorry. I promised to stop ranting.) But it’s a darn sight easier than getting it published which requires the patience of a saint, the ego of a dictator and the persistence of a blunt drill boring through granite. But it can be done.

Because I did it.

This is the point at which people who’ve never tried either to write a novel or to get it published will tell you all sorts of rubbish. It’s exactly the same scenario as when you announce you’re pregnant for the first time. You’ll get conflicting advice ranging from those who tell you it was a doddle from start to finish (they’re either liars, or incredibly lucky) or those who tell you the story of their gruesome experience and won’t be happy until you turn green.

So this is my birth story from conception to labour and the birth—shortly, I hope—of a bouncing baby novel. Not a doddle. Not gruesome, I hope. Some of it happened a long time ago so I may be hazy on the timing although I know it all started almost ten years ago. I haven’t mentioned the names of agents or publishers —except that of the man from Myrmidon who said yes (Ed Handyside)—not because anyone did anything wrong or bad—they didn’t; everyone I contacted was and is a legitimate operator and were doing their job efficiently and successfully, but just because it’s not relevant to anyone else.

I can’t know remember where the idea first came from except that I knew for a very long time that I wanted to write a historical novel set in Harrogate where I was then living. I knew it was going to be about two sisters, about cooking (although that became less important later) and also about railways. I did a lot of research. And I mean a lot. Originally it was to be a tribute to those great big Victorian triple-deckers—the Dickensian novel if you like. Many characters, convoluted narratives, every sub-story and every character linked in very many ways and stuffed full of coincidences. I never intended it to be a saga or a romantic novel but it ended up that way because of the journey it took. I did, however, try to keep it humorous because I hate any novel without a few laughs in it. If I ever take a similar journey again I will still listen and consider carefully what people suggest but I won’t be quite so meek.

As I was writing the first few drafts I’d read a lot of those ‘how I got published’ books and listened to author talks. I was told I had to get an agent first. So, once I felt the manuscript was ready to go (ha!), I got organised with chart and pen and the Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook to hand, the latest edition, of course. My plan was to send query letters to ten agents at a time and then wait to see the replies before querying ten more. From of the first ten I had eight standard rejections and two who didn’t reply despite my care in including an SAE. I noted down the responses on the chart. I then did the same again. This time I got seven straight rejections, one never replied and two agents asked to see a partial—that is, a synopsis and first three chapters. One said no and the other asked me to send them the full manuscript and told me not to contact any other agent while they were considering it. You can imagine how thrilled I was. It was one of the biggest, most well-regarded agencies and the lady who signed the letter was in charge of women’s fiction.

Funnily enough, promising as it was, this was my first mistake. I didn’t realise that what most agencies mean by women’s fiction is sagas or romance. If I’d researched more fully I would have seen that the agency didn’t at the time (they may now) represent more literary or serious fiction. Another mistake was that the manuscript was 250,000 words long and with a poetic title. Remember, I was just a tad naïve.

Anyway, I did as she asked and waited for her response. Again I’m hazy about the time-scale but I think she’d had it for about six weeks before she phoned me and said, ‘I love it!’ I had to sit down.

We then had a long chat in which she told me that my writing was good and that she agreed with me that I wasn’t a saga writer or someone who cared to write about the miseries of the downtrodden poor. She did say she saw me as a solid bread-and-butter type mid-list writer who was never going to be a bestseller, which was honest, but fair. So far so good. She then spent a long time discussing the fact that I’d need a suitable pen- name, probably something with a surname beginning with C so it would be displayed at eye level on bookshops shelves. I was surprised on how much time this discussion took although no conclusion was drawn. She then asked me to cut the 250,000 to 100,000 words and change the title. She also wanted me to remove most of the stuff about railways. Not what women like to read about, she said. She also told me to take my time.

So, several months later I sent the manuscript back to her. She was very enthusiastic although in a subsequent telephone call she told me that her boss, the agency’s owner, didn’t feel this novel was the right one with which to launch my career. How about writing another, set in the twentieth century, say the 1920s? That’s a very popular period for sagas right now. I protested (a little). I was after all talking to a leading literary agent. I told her I knew nothing about the nineteen twenties and hadn’t we agreed I wasn’t a saga writer? No, of course you aren’t, dear. Huh?

Now, had I known then what I know now, I would have said thank you for your time and walked away and go back to querying the agents I hadn’t got round to. But remember, I had gained the interest of a leading agent who seemed prepared to nurture me. What did I do? Of course. I researched and wrote the second novel. It took me a year. I called it April Fields and it was about the aftermath of the First World War and touched on conscientious objectors, shell-shock, women’s suffrage and then the General Strike.

Finally I sent her the manuscript of April Fields. Contrary to my expectations I had enjoyed writing it hugely. Within six weeks she phoned me to tell me she ‘loved’ it (this was getting to be a pattern), but my dear, your heroine marries the wrong man!! And cut out the political stuff. Your readers won’t like it. Back to the drawing board and a rewrite. This time she loved it again (although she wasn’t sure that I hadn’t been right the first time about the prospective husband. Still, never mind!) She said she would send it out to all the main saga editors. Wow! But hang on a minute…I thought we’d decided I wasn’t a saga writer. No dear, of course you’re not, she replied. You’re much better. She sent the manuscript out to all the women’s editors at the big publishers. She didn’t tell me which ones, though.

Every so often she’d phone me to say that these editors loved it! But not enough, it would seem, to buy it. The problem was that they were all waiting for—you’re not going to believe this—the heroine to be raped—it should happen on about page forty, apparently—and when she wasn’t, they lost interest.

The phone calls dwindled to a trickle. Until the day came when she told me she’d given up. No more requests to write another novel (which I don’t think I would have done anyway). That, I thought was that. And it was.

(A strange epilogue to this was that about a year or so later the agent sent me a letter of the blue to say that she had retired and she was very sorry for not having passed on the letters she’d had from all the editors saying what a super writer I was. Huh again. Then she said that should I choose to write something else her successor would certainly consider it.)

So there I was. I now had two unpublished novels and a bout of what I supposed could be called ‘writer’s block’, although I hate that expression. I think it was more a feeling I was wasting my time and I wasn’t getting any younger. Looking back now, I can see that this was a mistake. I should have kept on and saved myself a few years of falling behind.

Anyway, it happened and I wrote nothing but short fiction for the next five years. I did other things writerly related. By that time I was now pretty busy as a submissions editor for QWF magazine and very much involved with the Historical Novel Society, editing The Historical Novels Review. But I found myself wondering whether my first novel—you remember, the one about sisters, hotels and railways— was a load of tosh or not.

At that time several new types of agencies were opening up. They were called literary consultants and they had several functions. They acted as a (paid) critiquing service but also, if they thought a manuscript was publishable, they would pass it on to an agent for his or her consideration and take a cut, obviously. Agency scout is the term. I still think such agencies (if reputable and tried and tested) do have value—at a cost—but that they’re really no more than a way of shunting the slush pile further back down the line.

But I still needed to know whether this novel was anywhere near good enough to even try and send out. Remember, the agent never got as far as submitting this one to publishers and several years had passed.

After the literary consultancy had seen a sample chapter (presumably to weed out the insane), I then sent them the whole manuscript for a full appraisal—I was in gainful employment at the time and could afford it. In return, I was to get a lengthy reader’s report with constructive advice on how to fix any problems.

The report came back to the agency. They were gobsmacked. We’ve never had a report back like it, they said. The reader thought it was publishable. But more than that, she just so happened to be a senior editor for one of the very biggest publishing houses in the UK. AND she said that if I were to rewrite it in accordance with her suggestions, she would take another look with a view to publishing it. Wow Big Time! Funnily enough she wanted me to make it longer than the 100,000 words I’d cut my original 250,000 words down to. She said readers of this kind of fiction like big books and could I increase it to about 200,000 words? A bit more about railway-building would be good!

Of course I set to; but I probably took longer than I should have done although I was told to take my time and get it right. It took me nearly a year. (Why for Pete’s sake. I can’t remember. Fear, I think.) Anyway, it was a Big Mistake. Another thing I’ve learned the hard way is that things change so quickly in publishing and what’s said today might not be said tomorrow.

Eventually I got the revision done and sent it directly to the editor. After a few weeks she phoned me and spoke to me for at least half an hour which was wonderful. She said she still liked it but couldn’t accept it because she’d already taken on several new writers that financial year and that her company wouldn’t be prepared to finance another writer with no guarantees of being a major bestseller. (And this was when the country's economy was booming!) The other reason was that she’d just accepted a novel in the same historical genre set in Leeds. She said mine was better-written but there was nothing she could do about it as she’d already committed. (See what I mean about timing?) She did say that she would look at anything else I wished to send her. I mentioned the second novel. She wasn’t interested. Which seemed contradictory but I guess it was a polite brush-off.

Disappointed—and yes, I cried—as you do, but I was beginning to get the hang of this. Not long after I met another commissioning editor of another major publishing house. She’d judged a short story competition and I met her at the prize-giving ceremony. Strictly speaking, only those who’d been short-listed had won the opportunity to send a novel manuscript to her. However, I’d been long-listed and I thought why not? She could only say no. I went up to her and asked if I could send my manuscript. Please do, she said.

So she read it and said she liked it. Only there were too many characters and sub-plots, so could I cut those out and she’d take another look? Perhaps cut the length down a bit, too and expand others? Now removing characters and sub-plots is harder than it sounds and far more tricky than adding bits, especially when, in my novel, they’re all connected. This was a real unstitch and re-stick job and it took forever. I kept finding places where past things were referred to—past events that had either been cut or altered radically. It was a complete nightmare. But I did it—and guess what? She liked it but not enough to want to publish it. (Although she said she’d be happy to read anything else I might write.)

My novel was now nothing like I’d first planned it. I had kept all the previous versions but quite honestly, I couldn’t face another major rewrite.

So it went in the metaphorical bottom drawer and I was back to the drawing-board. In the meantime, I’d bought a new PC and novel two (April Fields) had vanished off the floppy disc I’d saved it on (no CDs then) and all I had was a hard copy.

So what to do? Another novel, obviously. It soon ground to a halt partly because my heart wasn’t in it and partly because I sent the opening to a well-known novelist who trashed it. (She was running an online writing course at the time.) Before that, I had entered a short story competition and won first prize—£1,000 and a chance to have a 40,000 word novella or a volume of short stories published by the lovely Biscuit Publishing . I chose to write a novella because it was a new venture for me. It took me almost a year and Chasing Angels was published in December 2006.

Life moved on, as it does. My sons grew up and left home. I and my husband were in decided to refurbish an old property in a village in the middle of nowhere and left from the house we’d owned for the past twenty-six years. I was no longer working for QWF but I was still a reviews editor for the Historical Novels Review, although no longer in charge. I still wasn’t writing much and was beginning to wonder whether I ever would again…

…Until, through the Historical Novel Society, I heard about a new and highly acclaimed small publisher, Myrmidon. I checked their website and found that they accepted submissions by email and didn’t want a synopsis. Hurrah! The submission criteria have changed since because they became swamped and now only accept manuscripts in hard copy—but still don’t require synopses. For once, I was in the right place at the right time. I send the first three chapters of the Victorian novel, now called Hope against Hope. After a couple of months I got the most amazing email. Ed Handyside wrote and I quote: Your genre is not typically my reading of choice. In fact, if someone suggested that I might like to read an early Victorian romance set in a Leeds pub I would probably express a preference to have egg-laying spiders put in my ears. But I enjoyed what I read.” And he asked me to email the rest.

This I did and when I heard nothing for six months, I assumed he hated it and decided that was it. I would never publish a novel. I tried to write short stories again and found I couldn’t. I was truly at rock-bottom.

Then early in 2008, I got an email from Ed ...


For anyone interested in What Happened Next, you’ll have to wait until I start (yet) another blog, one dedicated to HOPE AGAINST HOPE coming soon to a PC near you.