The Aspiring

I'm going to make myself vulnerable here and share with the group. Today I am sending a manuscript off to a literary agent, so begin a significant journey which may or may not take me where I want to go! Furthermore, I have started telling you a story before I know the ending – this is lunacy!

With the bare minimum research into the book scene, the picture that builds quickly is one of agents and publishers sitting amongst scale models of New York City which are made of unread manuscripts. Faced with the daunting task of sifting through overwhelming numbers of submissions, I wonder if the skills required to select words for publishing might be the same as looking at folio after folio of photographs, and in a glance apply an intuitive, fairly quick sense whether something has legs or not. Will a few printed words on an A4 sheet have enough draw in them to make people want to turn pages? 

All this in mind, advice for The Aspiring is wide ranging. It spans from calm encouragement that if you are any good you will get picked up within 12 query letters, through to striving madness involving a takeover of Royal Mail for the amount of post you can expect to be sending. I prefer calm encouragement to cynical panic, and am prepared to take the hint if, after a few submissions, nothing has happened. I'm interested to discover what happens when a regular person gets ideas in their head that won't leave them alone, sits on an allotment writing it all down, and then braves the scary move of putting it out there to see what happens.

Something about that seed talk yesterday. Okay then, off to the Post Office with my manilla envelope I go, to plant a little dream. 

{Today's Soundtrack: Rue Royale - Lunacy}