Day 13 – the ‘danger of magical thinking during a run’ day Stats at the bottom, such as they are. Magical thinking – many of us are guilty of it. In one of those serendipities that can seem miraculous, I was writing about the process of magical thinking in alcoholics for a client today and […]

Life does not get much better than … Today the sun shone. I had coffee with an agent (not my agent, not even remotely ever going to become my agent, because she deals with different territory, but a clever, witty woman who makes me laugh and makes me think), and picked up a little bit […]

Posted by on Apr 9, 2008 in agents, novel edits, writing residencies | 4 Comments

I’m on the Rosneath Peninsula, enjoying a wonderful week’s residency at Cove Park. The preeminent idea of the week is to work on editing the novel in line with the excellent suggestions I received from an agent a couple of weeks ago, and I am indeed getting that done. But I’m also spending a lot […]

Posted by on Sep 12, 2007 in agents, novel writing | 6 Comments

Requested Material There can’t actually be many happier words that a writer can write. The End is good, but Requested Material is better. It’s what you put on the outside of your parcel when you send your manuscript off to an agent who has asked to read it. Yes.Again. No. I’m not saying which agent. […]

Posted by on Feb 27, 2007 in agents, novels, waiting. | 8 Comments

What it’s like when your manuscript is ‘with’ an agent … It won’t get there. It will arrive all torn up with pages missing. I left a line out of the address. I addressed it to the wrong person. The counter person got the postage wrong and it will take three months to arrive. I […]

Posted by on Feb 20, 2007 in agents, indian sweets, novel research | 4 Comments

A potentially frabjous day First, because I posted my novel mss to an agent yesterday. Now the trick is to forget all about it and get on with the new novel … Second, because a very special set of research materials arrived this morning. Five 1920s ‘dirty postcards’ from a dealer in Paris. There is […]

Posted by on Dec 8, 2006 in agents, novel writing, submissions | No Comments

What am I doing again? One of the biggest problems for any fiction writer is getting their head above the daily issues of making a living to fix on their long term ambitions. Most of us want to get a novel published. That desire has three concrete steps. Write novel Edit novel Send novel to […]