I started this blog as a platform for all my writing updates, envisaging monthly posts about fanart and book signings and international releases. Huh. The reason I’ve been quiet on that front and have taken blogging detours to topics like ethical food and alarm clocks is because there’s not much storytelling value in “oh yeah I still don’t have an agent”. Those elusive, frightening, literary Gandalfs guarding the publishing world in full YOU SHALL NOT PASS mode.
Well, not really, in reality they’re book-loving people with the probably-often-disheartening job of sending lots of polite rejections to hopeful writers. But even with so many options for your baby, your freshly-written manuscript - the up-and-coming self-publishing world, audio books, even text stories published weekly on Facebook - it’s still a truth that if you want to traditionally publish your book, you need an agent who likes it as much as you do. I’ve had a few emails with that unpromising two-line preview of “thank you for your submission, which we read with interest, but” - yes, as everyone points out, twelve publishers turned J.K. Rowling down but frankly, nowadays you could never hope to submit to a publisher and only twelve rejections is honestly an accolade. So my current writing situation is redrafting, writing cover letters, designing my dream cover art (possible preview coming soon, I haven’t made up my mind!) and checking my emails A LOT. Now, I think Etiquette is good and - dare I? - I think other people might like it too. There, I said it! It’s a cross between Malory Towers and My Fair Lady and Made in Chelsea with a sparky main character and, should you wish to read it in such a way, lots to be made of themes of privilege, class, and feminism. I’ll never stop writing even if every agent in the world blocks my email address, but - not to get too doom and gloom about it all - when is the right time to give up? Would an agent ever say to someone, for example, “sorry but this niche eight-hundred-page post-modern experiment full of symbolism where time runs backwards and halfway through you realise the main character doesn’t even exist is never EVER getting published by ANYONE” or will they always offer a kind “another agency may well feel differently”? When does “quiet confidence in your book” become “foolish optimism”? Once you’ve submitted to every agent in the UK? Should you then go down the self-publishing route, or take the agent’s advice and think “yeah, true, nobody will ever read this”? Does FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS have the little small-print caveat “unless they’re really stupid”? Ho hum. Anyway. Next week heralds my return to Oxford after a year, variously, in Germany and at home in Yorkshire - so expect updates along the lines of OH MY LORD HOW DO I WRITE ESSAYS and THIS IS NOT A DRILL I HAVE FORGOTTEN ALL MY GERMAN and lots of food- and drink-based procrastination on my Instagram. Oh, and any agents reading this who are in the market for an eight hundred page post-modern experiment full of symbolism where time runs backwards and halfway through you realise the main character doesn’t even exist - hit me up and I’ll write you one ;)
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The official website of Yorkshire-made, Oxford-based writer Isabel Parkinson. Want fewer words and more pics? Follow me on Instagram!
(Header Photo: Radcliffe Camera, Oxford - Isabel Parkinson 2016)
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