Good News! Unknowns DO get picked from the slushpile

I'm sure that you, like me, hear a lot of the following whenever writers get together, either in cyberspace or face to face. Agents, particularly the big boys and girls, are not interested in writers who are just writers. It's a closed shop. They don't read submissions. They only pay attention to you if you're: famous (or rather infamous) already whether you can write or not; young, good-looking (which for females means blonde and busty) or have lead a fascinated life ie you've climbed Everest blindfold and with your hands tied behind your back or you used to fight sharks, or failing that you had a miserable childhood. If you're an ordinary person whose only talent is writing, forget it...

It's not true.

Whilst it's true that agents are looking for manuscripts that will become books that sell, they care more about the writing than anything else (unless you're Katie Price but, as we know, she and writing are mutually incompatible and beyond irony.)

To prove my theory, I would like to introduce you to Geoffrey Guiver who has just got himself a contract with an agent. And not just any agent but Ian Drury of Sheil Land Associates, no less. So how did he do it? Well, not by diving naked into a tank of piranha fish but by...but let him tell his own story. Geoffrey has been kind enough to visit my blog and subject himself to an interrogation.

But first a little about his manuscript. Initially entitled Saxon it is now SWANMAIDEN. And here is a brief description to whet your appetite.

Geoffrey's novel SWANMAIDEN is a supernatural mystery in a similar vein to Kate Mosse’s Sepulchre or Peter Ackroyd’s First Light.  The action is set in the present day, in an ancient landscape, and leads the reader to believe that there are more factors in play than could be explained by science.  The novel weaves Saxon legend and animalistic imagery into the story of a young archaeologist who becomes obsessed with the excavation of a peat-preserved, Saxon warrior.  Her preternatural understanding of the Saxon and his wife is dismissed as romantic imagination until present-day events around her start to echo the ancient, bloody past. 

I’m hooked and I hope you are, too. I've tied Geoffrey to a chair and am shining a bright light on him. Let the interrogation begin...

S   Roughly how long did it take to write the manuscript? 

G   Two years, including rewrites. There were lots of those.

S    Did you show it to any readers or any professional critiquing service along the way? What are your views on this? Did it make a difference or was it merely a confidence booster? (I'm playing devil's advocate here.)

G    I had a lot of support.  In addition to friends and family, the Litopia online forum really helped me pull it into shape.  I had plenty of constructive feedback on the excerpts that I posted, and four online friends offered to read the whole book.  That was a massive help.

I also bought one professional critique, after a rejection this March that really hurt.  I'd been introduced to an agent by a published author at a conference, where the agent also saw me win the conference prize for a short story.  He asked for the ms but still turned me down.  That stung, so I paid for a critique by TheWriters' Workshop.  It was expensive, but well worth the money.  Their editor, Debi Alper, gave me some excellent advice as well as encouragement, which triggered another rewrite.  With her permission I quoted her report in the final, successful submission round; comments such as '[a chapter] ranks among some of the best writing that I've seen and literally took my breath away’ must have helped me climb the slush pile.  I think Debi's critique was fundamental in guiding me towards a book of publishable quality.

S    Did it end up totally different from the way you first envisaged it?

G    It was a richer, more complex book, but the concept did not change significantly.  The beginning and end were pretty much as originally plotted, but the body diverged from the plan as I discovered nuances and wove in twists.  The characters became more three dimensional as they became real in my own mind, but that's what writing's all about, isn't it?

S    What did the process of writing and editing teach you?

G    How much there is to learn, and how much I still have to learn.

S    How about your moods as you wrote. Highs? Lows? Did you juts treat it as a job to be done? Did it ever become a slog?

G    The hardest part was the first 30,000 words of the first draft, when it felt like brushing water uphill.  After that, it acquired a life of its own.  Even the knock-backs and criticism were easy in comparison because each time, once I'd licked my wounds, I saw how to make the book better.

S    Do you have a writing regime?

G    I’m very undisciplined.  I try to put a solid 2-3 hours in the morning, when I'm fresh and productive.  After that it can either flow, when I'm on a roll, or grind to a halt.  When I'm stuck I spend a lot of time dreaming, inhabiting the world I'm trying to create.  I have some great thinking places, particularly an arbour in the garden when it's not too cold.  There's no internet access out there, so fewer distractions.   The need to earn a living can intrude, so the writing regime goes out of the window when fee-earning work comes along. 

S    How many agents did you submit to before you got the thumbs up?  

G    With hindsight, I started submitting SWANMAIDEN before it was ready.  I submitted earlier drafts to 10 agents.  In late September, after the last rewrite, I submitted to 5 more.  Ian Drury of Sheil Land requested the full manuscript 12 days later, and offered representation 6 days after that.

S    How many other manuscripts have you completed languishing at the back of the wardrobe or in the depths of your hard drive?

G    One full novel.  That was burdened with autobiographical baggage and had more points of view than the House of Commons, so I can now see why it wasn't accepted.  It was a good learning exercise and I'll probably re-use bits in future books, so it won't be wasted effort.

S    Thank you, Geoffrey, for agreeing to be grilled.

G    It's a great pleasure to be part of your blog.  Many thanks for inviting me!

Finally, here is an extract from SWANMAIDEN. You can find it on Geoffrey’s blog or, if you don’t want to leave my blog right this minute, I've pasted it here with Geoffrey’s permission. I hope you’ll agree that what attracts agents above everything else is the quality of the writing. I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to read the published book. Watch this space. I will follow its progress to publication and keep you posted.

The mind can do a lot of thinking in its final moments.  Some strange corner of Fergus’s brain had time to know that the stag in the middle of the road was magnificent.  Shaggy-maned and bearing its antlers with all the poise of a medieval jousting helm, the beast had been staring downhill with its nose into the wind as if the last gust had carried the sound of a distant call.  At the first thump and shudder of the brakes it turned its head towards them, and did not move.  It merely glared at them over its shoulder so that the grizzled, moisture-matted pelt folded into its neck like the stole of an ancient king.

That same part of Fergus’s mind, the bit that wasn’t panicking and bracing his body for impact, wondered at the infinitesimal detail of the scene.  A light fog snorting from a greying muzzle.  Foliage, crystal sharp in the autumn patchwork of yellow-and-black, leaf-and-bark.  The vibrations in a raindrop on the windscreen as the ABS shuddered beneath them and they side-slipped over wet leaves with almost no check to their speed. On the edge of his vision the antlers turned to watch them glide past, but Fergus’s focus had switched from the stag to the edge of the road and the drop beyond. 

His first reaction was panic.  The second was rejection.  This isn’t happening, this isn’t real.  But the verge still flicked them nose-up into the air in a detonation of wheels and suspension, making the CD skip as they launched.  Reality was a momentary hiccup in a digital scream.  Weightless behind a whining engine, he stared horrified at the canopy of an oak tree that loomed in front of them as the nose of the car started to drop.  He sensed Kate’s arms pushing away from the wheel as if to force herself backwards through her seat, but he didn’t see her face.  His eyes were locked on the trunk of the oak, a massive pillar of the woods that rushed at the centre of the bonnet.  It filled the windscreen beyond wipers that counted them down to oblivion with their metronome beat.  Three, two, one…

His final reaction was acceptance.  Just before they hit, Fergus knew that the moment was real, that this was the instant of his extinction.  And with that knowledge came two heartbeats of calm in which a great sadness pulled him to the ground, a sadness so profound it was beyond weeping.