Paranoia & the Writer

What Literary Agents Should Tell You....

34 Calls for Submissions in August 2017 - Paying markets

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Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Jun 20, 2015
Cornwall, UK
It's easy to become paranoid as a writer. After all, we work alone, hidden away from the world creating stories that we hope will be loved by the very people we're shunning. But to do this, we need to make entreaties to mysterious wraiths—literary agents—whose websites appear to show them as civilised arbiters of taste, yet they're also strangely silent when approached.

Querying takes on the feeling of throwing a message in a bottle into a tempestuous ocean: has anyone even read your submission, and if they have done did they immediately dismiss it or laugh their heads off at your ineptitude?

The old saying 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean to say they aren't out to get to you' takes on a frustrating twist for writers: 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean to say they even know you exist.'

This state of disconnectedness and paranoia are well summed-up in a poem by Phillip Lopate, called We Who Are Your Closest Friends. An excerpt appears in Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird which is one of the best books about writing I've read.

We Who Are Your Closest Friends
Phillip Lopate
we who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting
as a group
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift

your analyst is
in on it
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us

in announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves
but since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make
unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your
disastrous personality

then for the good of the collective

Do any of you feel like you don't exist, that what you're doing is just a figment of your own imagination?
How is it that mediocre authors get published when your immaculate manuscript can't get a look in?
Do you ever feel like there are more people who hate you and your writing than love it?

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I'm not querying at present, will start again soon, but I doubt my manuscript will ever be immaculate. My intention is to make it memorable.The world is indifferent to me, neither hostile nor friendly, apart from those who love me, who love me because I love them. It is also true though that, smile at someone and - usually - they smile back. I don't take it personally. I think it's just because they don't quite see how....when or where to turn this one into pennies.
 
Should your paranoia follow you to bed and cuddle up with regret, then remember Fleur Adcock's poem Things:

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.
 
Very true. We need in this life to learn to be our own best friends...and that also makes us trustworthy to others.
 
Ultimately, yes, though it's necessary for happiness to have someone alongside, even just part way as they're going their own path. Nearby lights of signalling ships.
 
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Do any of you feel like you don't exist, that what you're doing is just a figment of your own imagination?
How is it that mediocre authors get published when your immaculate manuscript can't get a look in?

Get. Out. Of. My. Head.

And screw mediocre writers, there are so many people out there with book deals that would clearly fail a grammar test for 10 years olds! <I'm not shouting YOU are shouting!>
 
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What Literary Agents Should Tell You....

34 Calls for Submissions in August 2017 - Paying markets

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