I wrote a novel called Precious Little. It began as a set of short stories. I'd finish one and ask myself, where could this go next? I'd introduce characters, open up possibilities and follow them as far as it was interesting to do so. Eventually, I had a complete narrative and with a bit of tweaking here and there, I tied all the stories together and had a novel.
The aim really - I always told myself - was to get a feel for the agent/publishing game; to get an idea of how it works, how to write a letter, how to handle inevitable rejection, all the while getting on with writing my next novel. Truth be told, I felt Precious Little was very much a first novel: a bit tentative, not a little immature in both its themes and its writing. But in it were flashes of writing I was really proud of.
The first agent I sent it to was Ben Mason of Fox Mason. He represented a friend of mine, had read my story Blind Guy and liked it. We emailed back and forth and I sent him Precious Little. He didn't want it. It wasn't the standard rejection because we'd already been in touch. But he was brief while doing his best to be encouraging. I guess that must be a fine line for agents to walk. You need to reject things that aren't good enough but you need to offer encouragement, should new writers all give up and the industry die. I know that would never happen, but maybe that idea plays a part in the encouraging rejection.
After a couple more rejections, I looked at my manuscript and overhauled it. I cut swathes from it, reordered it, started it in a more interesting place, threw in some flashbacks. All in all, I was trying to make it a more entertaining read. In reality, I was trying to write in a way that would be more appealing to agents. Which is tantamount to the same thing. I had literary friends read it and cut some more.
I then did something that I thought was very bold. I got in touch with the author Julie Myerson. She had been one of the judges in the Guardian short story competition in which Blind Guy had been a runner up and in the article, had said some nice things about my writing. I wrote her a letter, just asking for advice on how a new novelist might go about getting started in the publishing world and sent it care of her agency, Rogers, Coleridge and White. A couple of days later, I received a letter back. It was strange - I had been trying to get an agent for some time but had only met with disappointment. But having reworked my story I was now starting again and this letter filled me with encouragement. It was as if the great iron doors of the literary world had opened just a crack and I could see a sliver of light inside.
Julie and I emailed back and forth a couple of times. She recommended me to an agent - Lucy Luck of Lucy Luck Associates - and I sent her my manuscript. But Lucy didn't get back to me. I began to send it out to other agents as well. I received rejections back but still nothing from Lucy. In the last email exchange I had with Julie Myerson, she said she was sorry that Lucy wasn't getting back to me and wished me well in my writing career. She said if ever I landed a publishing deal, she would gladly write a quote for the back of my novel. I'll hold her to that.
I continued to send out my manuscript to agents, all the while still working on my next novel. I switched job and moved up the country. I sent Lucy a couple of follow up emails, still hopeful there was something in my writing she liked - I hadn't been rejected yet. But about a year after my initial email, the rejection came. It was a very personal rejection (truthful or not) that said she had wrestled with whether or not she could represent Precious Little but in the end had decided not. I thanked her and asked if I might send her my second novel when it was done, should I be unable to find a home with Precious Little. She was very encouraging about that but the great iron doors had closed on me.
In my move up the country, I had begun working with the writer Stephen May - a lovely chap who was achieving deserved success with his novel Life! Death! Prizes! He helped me draft a decent letter and put me in touch with his agent David Smith at the Annette Green Agency. He never replied to me.
Again I cast a critical eye over Precious Little and added a twist at the end which gave the story - to my mind - a more human feel; something that really motivated the preceding action. And I told myself it was the final edit. Stephen suggested I get in touch with Diamond, Khan and Woods - a bright, young agency that might be looking to house bright young writers like me (Stephen's words, not mine). The way they presented themselves on their website made it seem like an agency I'd like to be part of. Indeed, an agency I could possibly be part of. But a few weeks later, the rejection came.
In among all that, I had been writing to other agents as well using the terrific list from the Writers and Artists' Yearbook. But to no avail. Standard rejections. I'm not sure how many agents I've written to. Not as many as some people perhaps. More than others. Fifteen? It doesn't seem that many when you think about it. But for every rejection, I'd look at my manuscript and ask myself what was wrong with it. The smallest detail began to appear like an enormous flaw and I'd rework something or other. It was like a live, rolling document.
I've recently read a book on writing called The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. I like to read a writing book from time to time, just to keep my head fresh. I don't always agree with everything in these books (they all have slightly different preferences) but they're a good focussing tool, especially when I get to a point with reading and writing where I can't see the wood for the trees. Noah prescribes exercises at the end of each chapter to tighten up your manuscript. For fun, I looked over Precious Little again. Even on the first page, there was so much I edited out. The second chapter disappeared completely.
The truth of it all is perhaps that Precious Little isn't any good. For all its good points, as a whole, it's not something anyone sees as a potential money maker; as something anyone would want to read. So perhaps I should stop hacking away at it. There's only so much you can change. Pretty soon, Precious Little isn't even going to be long enough to qualify as a novel.
For some reason I'm reminded of a story I heard years and years ago. A girl was in love with a hairdresser and she used to go and get her hair cut by him, just to have him run his fingers through her hair. But he never looked at her in that way. Eventually she became so addicted to getting her hair cut by him that she had none left. Maybe that's what's happening to my novel - I want so much for it to be noticed, but I'm making what was unpublishable in the first place less and less unpublishable the more I edit it.
Stephen King reportedly had four novels turned down before Carrie. Iain Banks, seven before The Wasp Factory. Perhaps this is my first novel to go down as unpublished. No, I haven't exhausted the list of agents and publishers. But the more I look at Precious Little, the less I like it; the less potential I see in it. At what point do you give up on a piece of work? I'd really like to focus my energies elsewhere - on my second novel. My original aim was to use Precious Little to get an idea of how the agent publishing world works. I've done that. So perhaps that point is now.
