March 8th 1999 was the day I BECAME an author.
I’d been writing a long time before that, but that was the defining moment in my head and where I received the most horrendous review on my precious novel. I’d sent it for analyst to a well-known (shall remain nameless because I’m still scared of them) book advisory service.
I paid my money (over £400) and waited for them to fall over themselves in recommending me to agents and publishers (we’re dreamers, us authors).
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Four months later, I received my ms back (in those days it was all done via the old fashion postal service) and I opened the brown package with eager fingers. The smell hit me first: cigarettes. But I wasn’t deterred. I sat down with my smelly ms to read the advisory’s review, digest their suggestions and to feel warmed by their encouragement.
What I got was wriggly red lines underlining sentences, red circles around paragraphs and lots of exclamations or question marks in the margin. There was no explanation to these marks, but there was a one-paged mockery analyst of my work. It was handwritten with very bad handwriting at that.
Of course, I was devastated, and my husband suggested I not contact the advisory until I calmed down. But name me a woman who listens to her husband! Oi, put your hand down, you.
The advisory was blunt, unapologetic: “Welcome to the writing world, dahling, this is what it’s like, get used to it.” They blamed the smell of the ms on the ‘cheap’ (their words) ink I’d used, and said the wriggly lines and circles should be self-explanatory.
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They offered to take the ms back and re examine it ‘providing I pay the postage costs’. But I was so shocked and demoralized by their attitude I declined.
The report could have broken me. It was more than harsh, it was nasty. In hindsight, I think I was sent the note version of the analyst although this was never admitted. But you know what, that day something clicked in my head and my backbone strengthened.
I put the ms aside and began another book. This time though, I used another advisory service: Cornerstones Literary Consultancy. This book wasn’t ready either, but the service was encouraging, patient and most of all, a learning experience.
The moral?
There are some nasty people out there. Be strong.
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| craziness assured |
She’s losing her boyfriend.
She can only afford to eat spaghetti hoops on toast.
She’s called Charlie… or Charlotte, or ginger, ginge, Duracell,
carrot.
Yet with all these odds against her, she pushes forward to
take the lead story on her paper at London Core.
Shame no one knows. Shame she’s the office general assistant and not a real journalist.
Shame it’s on missing prostitutes and Charlie thinks pretending to be a ‘tart
with a heart’ will get her that story.
She doesn’t just get a story.
She becomes the starring role.
‘A place where we could walk along the Thames just by ourselves; it’d be beautiful watching the silver moon dance on the surface. I’d have taken your hand…’
She began to stand, but dizziness swamped her. Trying to ignore the sensation, she staggered away from the spacecraft, but the ground shifted under her feet. Time was measured for Jenny, yet around her things were moving fast.
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