First Cut Is The Deepest ...

12 November

I’ve decided to post a little earlier than usual this week on account of a reaction I’ve received from an agent regarding MÄLAREN. Last week I was keen to tell you how I’d gone off my own work and how I’d become contemptuous of it. Well, this week it seems my writing is back in favour – but still no cigar.
I hadn’t expected such a swift response. My experience with agents leads me to believe it will be weeks (if not months) before I get any form of meaningful reply – which is why I’m sending off now in advance of my trip to Chicago. So you can imagine my surprise when I got an email on Saturday night(!) saying that X had read my submission and was giving me some feedback. She says I write quite well (bless her) but doesn’t think the idea behind the book is strong enough to convince a publisher. In other words, a rejection – and my first cut.
My reaction was twofold. Firstly, I was naturally delighted regarding the comment about the writing – although in some ways I wish she hadn’t responded so quickly. X is an agent I would really like to work with, having met her at a recent Festival of Writing. Had she not come back to me so soon I would have been able to cling to the idea that her response was still to come when all else had failed. Ah, well ...
But secondly, her comment about the need for a stronger ‘conceit’ intrigued me. This is something I have only recently come across. It appears that these days we not only need to write well, to plot well and to have structure to our work but we also have to have a clever and/or original idea. The implication is that in order to succeed we must somehow shock, surprise or amaze our audience (the audience being the agents, editors and other gatekeepers to the publishing world). I’m not sure I like this any more than I like being obliged to write a sensationalist first sentence/paragraph/page etc. to attract the reader.
We’ve talked about this in our writing group and we’ve come to the conclusion that some of what we would now accept as ‘classics’ in the world of literature would simply not be published these days for this very reason. They are well (and in some cases, brilliantly) written, have great plots and great structure – but they don’t say anything new. I have recently read ‘Stoner’ by John Williams, a book much lauded by the media and others (eg. Ian McEwan) for its lucid prose. But although it ticks all the conventional boxes, it tells us nothing we didn’t already know. Would a publisher want it today?
This brings me to an important point. As those who’ve read my blogs about art will know, I am scathing about conceptual art and the idea that the skill behind the painting/sculpture doesn’t matter any more and it’s ‘the concept’ that counts. Are we headed the same way in literature, I ask myself? Are we going to see the well-written book side-lined simply because it doesn’t say something new and/or shocking? If so, I begin to see how artists have been forced into producing ‘conceptual art’ in order to survive and I find myself having some sympathy for them.
The solution, for the time being at least, seems to be for me to tart up the pitch for the book rather than the book itself. I’ve spent seven months writing it and ‘it is what it is’ as they say. Has anyone got any thoughts as to how I could dress it up a bit? How about some monkeys and a typewriter? Answers on a postcard ...