Greetings from a total newbie (to Litopia, and writing)

[Andrew Okey]

My dear fellow Litopians,

I'm one of those standard-issue middle-aged English literature graduates, who always thought I should write something and had lots of ideas and never did anything about them. But then...one of the ideas stuck in my head, and my wife heard it and said "you have to write this" and I had a go at writing creatively (my first attempt since some truly awful teenage poetry) and I realised that maybe I'd been waiting these last 30 years to have lived enough life to finally have something worth writing about. So now I have a (fairly literary) novel written and am looking for an agent (so far I've had three near misses, including a full MS request, from 13 queries) and meanwhile, I keep on having exciting ideas for new work, enough to keep me busy for the next decade at least.

But getting published? It's like Omaha beach out there. You can train for years, hone yourself to maximum fitness, but in a hail of bullets you're still most likely to be a casualty. So any and all advice would be really welcome...

Andrew.

 

[Marc Joan]

Welcome! Advice? Wait for the cavalry...

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Welcome!

 

[Carol Rose]

Welcome!

 

[David Newrick]

The battlefield analogy is very good one for summing up a career in writing. Oh wait! you thought finding an agent, publisher etc. was the battlefield part! lol

I write crime fiction, social realism and soon to be announced literary fiction from a small bunker created from mashed up rejection slips. I will win the final battle with irony!

Welcome and see you around the colony Andrew.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Welcome to the Colony, Andrew. Getting rejected is part and parcel of a writer's life. Receiving another 'no thanks, it's not right for us' email, makes me think of how my mother used to get me to collect horse manure deposited on the road by passing riders, scooping it up with a shovel into a bucket to put around her roses to make them flourish!

You'll find some useful thoughts on rejection in this old thread.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Hello The best cheese needs time to mature, dunnit. That degree of response from so few submissions is a sure fire sign you're getting something right.

What's the novel about?

 

[James Marinero]

Welcome Andrew. You seem to be firmly on the runway and moving - a great start!

 

[Andrew Okey]

Thanks Katie-Ellen,

Thematically, my book's about the dangers of total honesty in human relationships. Plotwise: a former East German dissident, in his twilight years has invented a fairy tale to entertain his grandson. This appears to be a (subconscious) political parable [the Stasi as an all-seeing dragon, the State as a crumbling cottage in the woods etc etc] but, in the developing relationship between the dissident and his translator, it becomes apparent that it is actually an (even more subconscious) confession of personal failings and betrayals. Weirdly, writing a full fairy tale (about 5,000 words) where everything and everybody means two completely different things was the most straightforward part of the process, so maybe I should shift from lit.fiction to fantasy?! A.

 

[Lex Black]

Welcome to the Colony!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Weirdly, writing a full fairy tale (about 5,000 words) where everything and everybody means two completely different things was the most straightforward part of the process, so maybe I should shift from lit.fiction to fantasy?! A.

I don't see why, necessarily

Masai Dreaming, Justin Cartwright.
A View of Pale Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel.

 

[Geoff]

Alan, hello and welcome.

 

[Andrew Okey]

Weirdly, writing a full fairy tale (about 5,000 words) where everything and everybody means two completely different things was the most straightforward part of the process, so maybe I should shift from lit.fiction to fantasy?! A.

I don't see why, necessarily

Masai Dreaming, Justin Cartwright.
A View of Pale Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel.

Katie -Ellen,

Yes, the Life of Pi analogy is especially apt (in my defence, I only read the book after I was three drafts into my own). Some friends have pointed out very mild similarities with 'The shadow of the wind' (again, a book I only read after I was well under way) though Zafon is careful not of quote much of his book within a book, so I figure that's not quite right. I haven't (yet) had the courage in my agent query letter to say "this will appeal to those who liked Life of Pi" (as if!). Instead I tend to refer to Fallada's Alone in Berlin and, if I'm feeling especially brave, Helen Dunmore's (totally brilliant) The Seige.

A.

 

[Andrew Okey]

Alan, hello and welcome.

Cheers Geoff - that's oddly refreshing; usually people get my surname addled! ;-) Andrew.

 

[MaryA]

Welcome, Andrew!

 

[Andrew Okey]

Welcome to the Colony, Andrew. Getting rejected is part and parcel of a writer's life. Receiving another 'no thanks, it's not right for us' email, makes me think of how my mother used to get me to collect horse manure deposited on the road by passing riders, scooping it up with a shovel into a bucket to put around her roses to make them flourish!

You'll find some useful thoughts on rejection in this old thread.

Great, thanks for the thread, Paul.

 

[Kitty]

Hello and welcome @Andrew Okey

Three near misses from 13 submissions is a pretty good hit rate. Keep sending it out. Sooner or later you're going to get a bite.

 

[AgentPete]

Hi Andrew, pleased you're here!

 

[Patricia D]

Hello Andrew. Welcome and good luck with that book.