Fanfare! Back In The Saddle Again

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Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Jun 20, 2015
Cornwall, UK
I'm not sure that this announcement is worth a fanfare - more a toot on my penny whistle perhaps, but after seven months of querying and making submissions to agents, I am returning to creative writing.

I've devoted myself to hunting literary agents and publishers with open submission windows, doing virtually nothing joyful with my imagination. It's felt a bit like clocking into a grey factory every day, to work a twelve hour shift mixing porridge. Apart from writing four poems, I haven't done anything inspiring, though I've made copious notes recording story ideas, song and poem titles and names for future characters as they came to me.

I'd intended to write a frothy sex comedy as my next novel. This would comment on relationships and internet dating in the 21st century, and be something of an antidote to the doom and gloom that came from writing about psychopaths, fantasists and depression in 'The Perfect Murderer'. As I shot myself in both feet with my first novel by making it double the length of the accepted 80,000 - 100,000 words of a debut novel, I've decided to jump through that particular hoop by writing a prequel to it.

This will become my second first novel, and as I have the sequel already written things might take off. I mentioned a title 'Who Kills A Nudist?' in another thread, which some Colonists liked, so it will be a working title at the very least.

I've begun researching murders in Cornwall for the new novel. There were two nasty, sad and lonely deaths that happened in the last couple of years. One was a premeditated murder, and has been prosecuted - the perpetrator receiving a sentence of not less than 28 years. The other man's body was found on Perranporth beach, some twelve miles from where I live. I noticed the report immediately, partly as he was found on my birthday last year, and also because he looks like an older balder me!

The investigation into his death has been wound down, but it seems unlikely to me that it was an accident. The poor fellow was found lying on the sand, naked but for one sock and shoe - the other sock was stuffed into his mouth. He had extensive injuries, which could have been caused by an attack or from damage caused by his body being dashed against rocks by the sea. No one goes swimming in the nude at night in winter!

I won't be drawing on these cases too heavily, as I have too much respect, but I also uncovered something more worrying about murders in Devon and Cornwall. I remembered an unsolved murder from 1996, which happened on the Roseland Peninsula, Cornwall. A woman out walking her dog was knifed to death. This was also the fate of a schoolgirl near Exeter a few years later - again out with her dog. An elderly woman, also a dog owner, was killed and several other dog-walking females have been attacked, escaping with their lives. This has all happened over the last twenty years, and even though it looks like the work of a well-disciplined serial killer, it's almost an invisible series of crimes. I don't think that I'm being cynical when I say that it's probably something to do with not damaging tourism - in the way that the film Jaws showed so well.

Knowing my luck, I'll draw the murderer out with my new novel - though I don't own a dog - phew!

In the meantime, I'm back in the saddle again...

broncwsrra.jpg
 
I'm not sure that this announcement is worth a fanfare - more a toot on my penny whistle perhaps, but after seven months of querying and making submissions to agents, I am returning to creative writing.

I've devoted myself to hunting literary agents and publishers with open submission windows, doing virtually nothing joyful with my imagination. It's felt a bit like clocking into a grey factory every day, to work a twelve hour shift mixing porridge. Apart from writing four poems, I haven't done anything inspiring, though I've made copious notes recording story ideas, song and poem titles and names for future characters as they came to me.

I'd intended to write a frothy sex comedy as my next novel. This would comment on relationships and internet dating in the 21st century, and be something of an antidote to the doom and gloom that came from writing about psychopaths, fantasists and depression in 'The Perfect Murderer'. As I shot myself in both feet with my first novel by making it double the length of the accepted 80,000 - 100,000 words of a debut novel, I've decided to jump through that particular hoop by writing a prequel to it.

This will become my second first novel, and as I have the sequel already written things might take off. I mentioned a title 'Who Kills A Nudist?' in another thread, which some Colonists liked, so it will be a working title at the very least.

I've begun researching murders in Cornwall for the new novel. There were two nasty, sad and lonely deaths that happened in the last couple of years. One was a premeditated murder, and has been prosecuted - the perpetrator receiving a sentence of not less than 28 years. The other man's body was found on Perranporth beach, some twelve miles from where I live. I noticed the report immediately, partly as he was found on my birthday last year, and also because he looks like an older balder me!

The investigation into his death has been wound down, but it seems unlikely to me that it was an accident. The poor fellow was found lying on the sand, naked but for one sock and shoe - the other sock was stuffed into his mouth. He had extensive injuries, which could have been caused by an attack or from damage caused by his body being dashed against rocks by the sea. No one goes swimming in the nude at night in winter!

I won't be drawing on these cases too heavily, as I have too much respect, but I also uncovered something more worrying about murders in Devon and Cornwall. I remembered an unsolved murder from 1996, which happened on the Roseland Peninsula, Cornwall. A woman out walking her dog was knifed to death. This was also the fate of a schoolgirl near Exeter a few years later - again out with her dog. An elderly woman, also a dog owner, was killed and several other dog-walking females have been attacked, escaping with their lives. This has all happened over the last twenty years, and even though it looks like the work of a well-disciplined serial killer, it's almost an invisible series of crimes. I don't think that I'm being cynical when I say that it's probably something to do with not damaging tourism - in the way that the film Jaws showed so well.

Knowing my luck, I'll draw the murderer out with my new novel - though I don't own a dog - phew!

In the meantime, I'm back in the saddle again...

broncwsrra.jpg
Definitely worth the fanfare. I've been away from writing for three months, querying and social-mediaing. I know how it feels to be brushing the creative process with your fingertips, but never drawing nearer. Good luckwith your sleuthing!
 
Toot your horn with pride, my friend. It seems a few of us have been bust elsewhere with our work, I'm also just beginning work on a new ms, after much editing and revising and re-reading of my first ms.
Onwards to creativity!
 
If any self-respecting journalist got a whiff off this, it would be all over the papers before you could say 'scoop'. Journos won't care about the tourism industry in Cornwall, or anything else. So I doubt there's a conspiracy of silence to protect tourism, I just can't see that happening.
 
Fanfare waving as we speak! I like how you set aside chunks of your time devoted entirely to writing then submitting then back to writing. It is an investment of the mind frame focusing attention on one then cyclically moving on.
 
I'm with you on this . . . I spent my first five months after quitting my office job revising old material I'd never had the chance to. But as I mentioned in another thread, I've been loath to pull the trigger and start submitting any of them.
 
I'm with you on this . . . I spent my first five months after quitting my office job revising old material I'd never had the chance to. But as I mentioned in another thread, I've been loath to pull the trigger and start submitting any of them.

Meerkat, please don't fret about submitting anything. From my experience, what will happen is effectively nothing! Submitting whole short stories or writing samples with query letters, feels a bit like throwing paper aeroplanes out of your window during a gale - you're not quite sure where they've gone, or if anyone will ever find them and read the message that you scrawled on the wings.

Form rejection letters are the normal reply, which is a good way of building up your spiritual hide until it's as thick as a rhino's. If you receive a personalised response, that's fantastically encouraging, even if they are still saying no to you. The last thing that any agent will do is offer you a helpful, let alone a spiteful critique of your writing.

You shouldn't worry about being criticised, as your efforts are more likely to be met with indifference. Being successful in making submissions has as much to do with luck and timing, as anything to do with your talent - both in creating an alluring query letter and a story that hooks the agent. You could be rejected by one agent on one particular day, but attract a favourable response from another agent at the very same agency the day afterwards. It's like trying to hit a fish in a fast-flowing river with a single chip of gravel...

This is why I threw a handful of gravel into the agency river over the last seven months. Of the 150 submissions that I've made, including some that used on-site forms, I've heard back from 43. A few replied within days, many took two months, while the most tardy took five-and-a-half months. I'm not expecting to hear back from those I queried in January and February.

These days, even established authors with a history of bestsellers behind them, are having to submit like unknowns to publishers. If you are a completely unknown writer things are that much more difficult. One way to look at things is that getting published is like entering a marathon (complete with an obstacle race) - if you don't enter it you remain a spectator, even though you've got the literary ability to become one of the runners.

So, why not join in? I can't say that it's fun, but it's bloody good exercise!
 
I just realised I've spent two months writing flash and not getting much else done. Yesterday I started on with something new about a writer who buys fans. I'm doing it for my own enjoyment, rather than a market, which means I'm just using it as an excuse to write the crap out of me before I get back to something more mainstream.

@Paul Whybrow - I did some research into a child being killed in a beach accident - you know where kids get buried in the sand and you just see their faces sticking out -I thought - imagine if it actually resulted in a fatality - An hour of internet reading later and I was in floods of tears. I don't handle real life tragedy very well! I would make a lousy true-life story writer.
 
I just realised I've spent two months writing flash and not getting much else done. Yesterday I started on with something new about a writer who buys fans. I'm doing it for my own enjoyment, rather than a market, which means I'm just using it as an excuse to write the crap out of me before I get back to something more mainstream.

@Paul Whybrow - I did some research into a child being killed in a beach accident - you know where kids get buried in the sand and you just see their faces sticking out -I thought - imagine if it actually resulted in a fatality - An hour of internet reading later and I was in floods of tears. I don't handle real life tragedy very well! I would make a lousy true-life story writer.
Wondered where you'd been David! Haven't seen much of you, recently.
 
There's food im the fridge. You just didn't think laterally enough.
Frozen peas. Always useful. As is this half - lemon.
And this jar of mayo must be good for something.
 
M. Being successful in making submissions has as much to do with luck and timing, as anything to do with your talent - both in creating an alluring query letter and a story that hooks the agent. You could be rejected by one agent on one particular day, but attract a favourable response from another agent at the very same agency the day afterwards. !
Exactly. That's why you have to look on it as a numbers game. Wherever possible, go down the simultaneous submissions route, and submit a given piece to lots of markets of an equivalent status. Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days...
 
Soggy and crumbling within thy hands. Such is life, just wring the water from within and feist ;)
 
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