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Nov. 27, 2006 Early in 1998, when I was still in China, anticipating that I would return to the US by the end of the year with little money in my pocket, I conceived the idea of writing a novel for submission to publishers. That’s what I did do too. By the time I arrived in Phoenix, I had a complete manuscript in hand, which I typed forthwith. Then consulting a directory of literary agents, I started mailing query letters to agents specializing in the kind of novel I had written, which might have been called science fiction or fantasy. Some of the agents invite you to send chapters of your book. First of all, there were far fewer agents than I supposed, and I ended up with a list of only 50. Obviously, you can’t mail a science fiction novel to just anyone, for instance a publisher of law books, textbooks, or encyclopedias. Secondly, getting copies of chapters and query letters, buying mailers and stamps, and mailing the letters and packages gets to be time-consuming and expensive. Some aspiring writers tell the story about how Vladimir Nabokov received over 700 rejection slips before he finally connected. The moral seems to be that, if you hang in there, eventually you’ll succeed. I didn’t fall for that moral. For every Nabokov, I reasoned, there are 1000 anti-Nabokovs that sent out 1000 query letters and still got nowhere. It took me fewer than 50 submissions before I got the message. It’s not that I’m not vain and would not revel in the glory of seeing my name on the spine of a handsome volume, but, in reality, such a distinction proves nothing. Some of the most worthless books imaginable, at least in my opinion, have been best sellers. I still have my own conviction that my book is a great book, and that is and will probably have to be enough. I realized, looking at the responses that I did get, that it was not because my work lacked merit that it was not accepted for publication. It’s simply a fact of life that there’s a glut of written matter on the market. The average agent or publisher does not even look at your manuscript, as far as I can discern. Not a single letter that I received, even among those that asked for more material, contained any evidence that anyone had read the book. Even a few laudatory remarks that I received made no specific mention of anything that I had described in the novel. Phrases like “This seems like a spellbinding tale,” or, “Highly intriguing!” don’t mean much to me unless they’re accompanied by some discussion of the plot that reveals that parts of the book were read. I got two or three responses each asking me to submit copies of the whole 335-page manuscript, along with an SASE. Apparently, this was a come-on. According to literary agents’ ethics, agents are not supposed to charge fees or make offers to edit. They earn their money by selling your book on your behalf, not by charging you a lot of fees that don’t offer any promise whatsoever. But they can avoid violating rules of ethics by telling you that your spellbinding novel needs editing. They don’t themselves edit, but they know someone who does, and they give you the address. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I know my diction well enough to understand that my novel did not need any editing at all. The grammar, spelling, style and plot were all letter-perfect. I must have gone over it 20 times. Of course, that doesn’t mean that anyone had to like it and it doesn’t mean that it would have sold. I can’t judge on these matters, but one thing I know for a certainty is that the novel did not need any proofreading or editing. So the letters constituted an insult more than anything else, and I realized what kind of game I was getting into. Anyway, in writing the novel, I had contemplated in my mind’s eye what the average reader might want to read, and often I had changed what I really wanted to write accordingly. Unfortunately, eventually I lost the manuscript and had to rewrite it, but I stopped worrying about what the average reader might want, writing precisely what I personally wanted. I haven’t made any active effort to get it published. I simply don’t feel that getting on some merry-go-round of mailing queries and awaiting replies, anxiously, endlessly, is a worthwhile activity. Better to write some more, even if just for your own amusement. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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