Ah, so a note has just appeared in the mail saying it’s that time again. Time to make an appointment with the eye doctor. Perfect – I’ve been having some problems with my baby-blues for a while now, so not a bad idea to get them checked out.

You see, I have a bit of a problem with eye-rolling. Always have, and it’s got quite bad recently. The problem began at school.  Lacking the nerve to be honestly and openly BAD, I simply became an eye-roller – master of the swift, fleeting head swivel, the sardonic lip curl, the rebellious flaring of the nostril. And yes, that eye-roll, just out of sight of the teacher.

I blame others for my descent into eye-rolling virtuosity.  People like Miss Eyre, leader of the woodwind ensemble during my teenage years.  A lady of stout ankles and formidable shoes who would peer through her spectacles as a waggle of her flute led us into a honking decimation of Mozart.

‘No, girls, we DON’T tap our whole foot in time to the beat. We only tap our TOES inside our SHOES.’

Eyes start to swivel.

‘Modern music? No, girls, at St Helen’s School we are not interested in music composed after 1850.’

Eyes rolling so fast I can practically see my brain.

And really, eye-rolling has stood me in good stead ever since – during dreary speeches, endless meetings (at which publishers excel), pomposity and frustration of every kind. Try it and see.  If you can get really skilled, no one will even spot it!

Agenting has introduced me to a new kind of eye-roll. The submission-related kind that makes my eyeballs spin – not in response to the writing (on which you will hopefully find me quite kind), but to various other triggers.

Here is a handy guide to Sarah’s Eye-Rolling Hall of Fame, courtesy of her inbox – and with only a modicum of poetic licence in order to protect identities:

Roll 1:
‘Dear Ms Davies, I am an extraordinary and potentially very famous person. My writing is a cross between that of Charles Dickens, Philip Pullman and Tolkien. You’d better sign me up FAST while you still can.’

Roll 2:
‘Dear Ms Davies, You don’t want to represent me? Your loss.’

Roll 3:
‘Dear Ms Davies, I have written a series of 46 books and I’m sending you now 5 pages from the middle of Book 7.’

Roll 4:
‘Dear Ms Davies, My daughter is a star of stage and screen, and has her own show on MTV, though she is only 4 years old. She has written a fictional story book with a heroine looking remarkably like herself. It will change the world. I advise you to take up this opportunity soonest.’

Roll 5:
‘Dear Ms Davies, My book is an urban paranormal romance, which comes in at 365,000 words and 623 pages, single spaced. I am happy to send it over in a Humvee.’

Roll 6:
‘Dear Dan Lazar of Writers House . . . . .’

Roll 7:
‘Dear Ms Davies, I am resending my query because I sent it to you originally on Christmas Day, the day before yesterday, and you still have not got back to me.’

Roll 8:
‘Dear Ms Davies, This is the third query I have sent you today, in separate emails . . . ‘

Roll 9:
‘Dear Ms Davies, sorry I can’t be bothered to send you an actual query, but here are the pages anyway.’

Roll 10:
‘Dear Ms Davies, Can you please publish my book in your publishing house?’

Roll 11:
‘Dear Ms Sara Davis . . .’

Roll 12:
‘Dear Ms Davies, I am delighted to send you some pages of my novel, complete with endorsement from bestselling author Fred Snooks, whose book CHAINSAWS OF THE WESTERN WORLD has made him a sensation in Pig Hollow, South Dakota.’

Roll 13:
‘Dear Ms Davies, If you can help to get my book published, my cousin says he will promote it in his grocery store.’

Roll 14:
‘Dear Ms Davies, I have studied your website and acquainted myself with your tastes. I am therefore delighted to send you my novel, which is a thriller about rape and incest in Soviet Russia, aimed at readers of John Grisham.

Roll 15:
[Scroll down immense list of agent addressees. I don’t get as far as Ms Davies.]

Roll 16:
‘Dear Ms Davies, my story about a race of little people called Weeeeneez would make an excellent movie (probably by Disney) and I have already designed a range of merchandise. Please click through the 7 links below to read a sample of my screenplay. Then call me to set up a phone call on Thursday.’

Roll 17:
‘Dear Ms Davies, I think we are a match made in heaven; shall we make sweet music together?’

I could continue but my eyeballs seem to have pivoted so far they’ve got stuck, so I’m off to that nice eye doctor for a little R&R;.  Oh, and some drops.

See you soon (I hope!). 

So, it was wonderful. It was better than wonderful – it was full-on, fabulous, up-to-the-brim great, from day one of the Bologna Book Fair through to the final moment of my subsequent Tuscan mini-vacation.  In fact, you can see just how great it all was from this photo of me at the fair . . . .

Oh no! Seems that the wrong picture has somehow been inserted here.  This isn’t a shot of me at the fair – it’s the Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna from Florence’s Loggia de Lanzi. Ooops, sorry about that terrible slip of the mouse!

I’m clearly all awry. Because Italy has made me think, as it always does.

I am a lover of small things.  The exact word (where no other will do), the correctly placed comma, the minutely timed glance. The perfection of precision underpins any great work of art, and the best writers know it.

But I also love the immense.  The stupendous idea, the theme that stretches to infinity, the question to which there are a million answers; the vastness of time and history.  And I love stories that carry a whisper of that.

For me, Italy is about both the great and the small. The endless, and yet the angel dancing on the pinhead.

When you stand in the tiny church where Dante first saw his Beatrice, or in the chapel where Boccaccio set part of the Decameron, his masterwork, your feet are set on the dawn of western literature. When your face is two feet away from the still-vibrant colours of a fresco painted on stone in the first half of the fourteenth century, or when you look up at the graceful poise of Donatello’s statue of David, you find yourself breathless before such ancient beauty.

In our time we think we know everything, but the truth is we are in danger of forgetting so much.  Italy pulls me back to the heart of things.

The Bologna Book Fair nudges me to remember that behind the daily tasks there lies a huge and international industry. The wonderful friends I meet again in the halls, and the new ones I make at the fair, bring home to me that personal relationships underpin so much of what goes on between agents and editors, between publishers from very different cultures; that the sharing of ideas, the passing of information, the word on the street is as real and dynamic as it has always been.  Bologna is so much more than just ‘a bit of jolly’; it’s one of the engine rooms of business, and a microcosm of how trade has always been done, right back to those medieval merchants scurrying down cobbled streets, their dark cloaks swishing behind them. 

Art and money; the heavenly and the mercantile; the grand vision and the detail necessary to carry it off.  The polarities always exist together, and no place makes me more aware of that than Italy. I see it in the extraordinary engineering of Brunelleschi’s massive dome, constructed more than 600 years ago (http://www.brunelleschisdome.com). I see it in the brush strokes of Botticelli’s gorgeous ‘Primavera’ (http://www.mystudios.com/treasure/1/primavera-review.html). And I see it in the magnificence of Florence’s San Lorenzo Church, where the bones of Cosimo de Medici, the founder of one of history’s greatest and wealthiest dynasties, lie crumbled beneath inlaid marble. 

If we want to make and love art we move between times – the past, present and future.  The continuous line is awe-inspiring and humbling, but we all share this sense of beauty and value. And we walk in the footsteps of so many who knew what it means to strive to be great at their craft.

As the great Renaissance painters and architects understood, every detail is crucial in supporting great structures - every plank of wood, every touch of the brush; and every detail of a story. And the greatest art is generally underpinned by the necessity of business.

We may never end up painting the Sistine Chapel or chiselling a flawless Pieta, and we may never be remembered for writing the Divine Comedy. But we can still aspire to greatness in whatever we do. And that goes for agents as well as writers. 

I love Italy. It sets me straight.

It’s gradually coming back.  I can feel it approaching.

My mojo is just around the corner!

Mojo – aka zest, energy, life force etc etc – and I parted company about a week ago in a storm of sneezing, tissues, DayQuil and thumping headache, mixed with all the dreariness of jetlag after my London visit. Here I sat this week, squinting at my monitor through red, running eyes, trying to deal with all the volumes of stuff needing urgent attention at this extremely busy time of the year.

Why so busy?  Because there’s something else that’s just around the corner, over the horizon, and that is . . . . .

BOLOGNA!

If you’re an old salt in this children’s books world you’ll know that the Bologna Book Fair is the annual trade event/selling opportunity/networking convocation/bonding extravaganza/gossip-fest/eating marathon/sleep-deprivation test/jamboree of the international children’s books industry. Held every year in the ancient and beautiful university city of Bologna in northern Italy, it is always an exciting few days – presenting and pitching your wares (if you’re a seller rather than buyer), reuniting with old friends and making new ones, spotting emerging trends, catching up with who’s arrived and who’s gone, who’s doing something new . . . . and generally reaping all the benefits of almost every publishing enterprise in the world being represented in one place at one time. Top international editors, audio publishers, movie scouts, artists, bestselling writers, apps experts, agents . . . they’re all at the fair, sipping tiny cups of espresso in the halls or laughing around enormous dining tables in the city’s fabulous restaurants and bars. You never know who you might bump into when you visit the restroom!

Best of all this year?  Both the Americans and the Brits seem to be back in strength, after a bleak fair last year when so many companies didn’t send people.  Why is this good? It means there’s a sense of buoyancy and optimism in the business. And that has to be positive news for us all. 

But before I touch down at the actual fair, I’ll be in Bologna a little early for the annual SCBWI Bologna symposium, along with other agents such as Rosemary Stimola, Kristin Nelson and Marcia Wernick.  Take a look at this link and you can see more about it – and also interviews with all of us: http://www.scbwibologna.org/presenters/agents.php. My contribution is simply a first-pages panel on Monday morning, but I’ll also be dining with the faculty on Sunday and the delegates on Monday night.

So it’s all go here. Our author/books list for the fair (ie, the rights we have on offer) is all prepared and printed out, and includes a number of new authors and titles, which is really exciting! We only talk about manuscripts which we’ll be able to send out within a couple of months of the fair, but we have some great new work to present, as well as rights to sell in different territories on our more backlist books. You learn a lot about how to pitch a work (and if it really has a hook) when you sit across the table from a different publisher every half-hour for two days without a break.  What catches their attention and what doesn’t? Does this story have legs – or not?  It’s all in their eyes as they listen to you, and you’d best beware because some publishers will make it abundantly clear if they’ve switched off!

Now it’s a countdown till I leave Saturday evening, flying all night via Paris. Now we’re on to the really vital things. The ritual pre-Bologna haircut tomorrow. Pulling copious garments out of the closet, trying them on (why the heck don’t these trousers fit like last year???), throwing them in a pile, searching for tangled leads to all manner of gadgets and adaptors, muttering as I realize I’ll NEVER get all this in that suitcase if I add all the ARCs I’ve promised Rights People I’d take . . . .  AND WHAT ABOUT EUROS???

Did I mention that I loathe packing? Way too much stuff or way too little – will I ever get it right?

Power-load the Sudafed.  Pack the Kleenex. Stuff the Kindle in the carry-on. We’re off to the fair. And Spring is here – the bulbs are sprouting, the temperature outside is gorgeous, and everything is bursting into life.

Of course, Spring is Bologna time! And after the fair I’m excited to say I’m taking few days’ vacation in gorgeous Italy. Bye-bye Blackberry.  So if you have a submission up your sleeve, either prepare for a bit of a wait to hear from me, or perhaps delay sending it until the very end of March. 

Oh, and by the way – the photo is of our stand at Bologna last year.  Alex Webb and Caroline Hill-Trevor of Rights People. And, of course, big signs saying GREENHOUSE!

Wish Julia and I luck! Go Greenhouse!

Hi everyone!

Julia blogging from London today. And sitting opposite me right now is Sarah, who’s spending a few days here catching up with all things UK. This is the view from my desk. I like it!

Sunday was the best kind of winter’s day: cold, dry and blue.  And I spent much of it sitting outside a café in South London with a cold nose, a big cup of tea and my good friend, Leah Thaxton.

Leah is Publisher at Egmont Books in the UK. She’s got great taste, having acquired Andy Stanton (MR GUM), Julia Golding (THE DIAMOND OF DRURY LANE), Michael Grant (GONE) and Emily Bearn (TUMTUM AND NUTMEG): all among my favourite new children’s book writers.

In Summer ’09 Leah and I spoke together at the Bournemouth Literary Festival. And on the train home, making our way through National Rail shortbread and yet more tea, we came up with the idea of a joint enterprise: BookCamp.

We wanted to create a masterclass on writing for children and the children’s book business, with a 360 degree perspective. At Bournemouth we’d realized there’s such a hunger for advice and information about the art of writing and the business of books. So toasting each other with a plastic cup, and looking out over the Dorset coastline, we decided that we would be the people to deliver it.

BookCamp has got two main aims: to help new authors grow in their craft, and to provide a behind-the-scenes insight into the children’s book industry. 

At BookCamp events I’ll be sharing my twenty top tips on writing for children, and asking attendees a few of the questions that I ask myself when reading a manuscript. Does your main character have an emotional arc as well as an outer journey? Does your story have a focus and are the stakes being raised chapter on chapter? Is there enough conflict in your story? Does your story start in-scene with dynamism and originality? What is ‘show, don’t tell’ and why does it matter? Who is your reader and what feeling will the book leave them with? And is there a secret to writing that submission letter? Maybe – almost every author I’ve taken on had an initial approach that made me sit up and press ‘print’. We’re looking for focus, clarity and intent – and I’ll be talking through exactly what that means.

At the Greenhouse we know that getting published is the dream – the first book on the shelf of your local bookshop, the first Amazon review, the first batch of fan mail. But what actually takes place once a book has been sold? Leah’s going to answer that question. She’s going to talk about how the publishing process works from acquisition through to publication, what drives her buying decisions and how she goes about building classics of the future.

And just in case we don’t cover all bases, we’ll be taking questions from the floor about everything you’ve ever wanted to ask an agent or publisher.

To all our US readers, I regret to say that BookCamp is UK based. Our first deployment will take place at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 27th. I think we’re almost sold out but more dates in the UK will follow so keep checking the website if you fancy coming along.

And from one exciting Greenhouse development to another. This week we started our Facebook fan site! So if you’re on Facebook, click here to become a fan. We’ve got a competition to win a US proof of THE REPLACEMENT by Greenhouse author, Brenna Yovanoff (published by Razorbill in the US this Fall and Simon and Schuster in the UK in early 2011).  To enter, click on the discussion tab and tell us what you think we should speak about at upcoming conferences and writer’s events. We’re also asking writers to share their top writing tips – be it on overcoming a block, self-editing or maybe just a quote or thought that inspires you. It would be great to hear your advice.

Delighted to be guest posting on Sarah’s blog this week. Thanks Sarah! And hope to see some of our UK blog readers at a BookCamp event soon!

Agenting has a lot in common with the Olympics.  A sometimes cold and hostile environment, other times boiling heat; a lot of standing around, then you’re off – slaloming your way around poles in the fog or belting round the short track on one skate.  There’s the leaping around with shining delight at the foot of the piste – and sometimes the slow, quiet trudge back to the dressing room to take a break, nurse a wound, and have a lie down in private. But most of all there’s the constant effort and application, keeping the focus, waiting to perform the triple-toe loop at just the right moment.

Things have always moved fast in the agenting world, but after just two years in this business (as opposed to more than 25 years on the other side of the desk) I would say it’s speeded up even more in the past few months. It’s common now to receive a submission on a Friday, read it by the Monday – and hear that the writer has already received an offer of representation. There’s a lot of us out there looking for you, and of course you don’t necessarily submit to all your chosen agents at the same time.  So I’m getting down on bended knee here and asking – can you please send out all your submissions on one day? OR BETTER STILL, JUST SUBMIT EVERYTHING TO ME AND ONLY ME?

Doh, I didn’t think you’d go for that one, but worth a shot, eh? Oh yes, we love exclusives and referrals, and when we get either we move like Apolo Ohno!

At Greenhouse we generally respond quite quickly to all queries, but if we get as far as reading your full manuscript we do like to have a good think (and ideally read a manuscript more than once) before making the big commitment of representation.  And for me that means that reading once on Kindle and then printing the manuscript out, putting my feet up on the desk, grabbing my Post-It notes and pencil, and studying the work in the old-fashioned way. How would we work on this? How would I pitch it? Which editors would like it? I don’t always have this kind of leisure - if there are other agents in the picture – so I’m welded to Blackberry and Kindle at all times. Best example of this was a few weeks ago, coming home to DC from New York on the Acela train. The BB flashed to say I had a new message. I read it instantly and found it was from a writer I’d been in touch with nearly a year ago – she’d done a revision and it was attached.  Whoopee! I instantly sent it to my Kindle and had read most of the manuscript by the time I arrived at Union Station.

Several new clients have joined us recently, which is exciting – all very different, and a wide spectrum of writing, from the young and delightfully funny, to bleak and edgy young adult.  At this point I won’t mention any names because all are in different stages of revision, and I think it’s less pressured for new writers to work in peace without their name being ‘out there’ as they labour with edits. But it’s really exciting to see these debut authors coming on, enjoying their writing, and challenging themselves to develop their stories in bold new ways. They’re on their way to their first Olympics, they are medal contenders against a tough field, and it’s the work done day by day over the next weeks and months that’s going to count. Work those muscles, stretch and bend, push yourself to the limit!
The pace is hotting up in other ways too.  Just back from a great conference at lovely Asilomar, Monterey, where I made lots of new friends among both writers and faculty (see photo; I’m in yellow, pontificating as usual). Ari Lewin of Hyperion, Tracy Gates of Viking, AnneMarie Anderson of Scholastic among the publishers, and fellow agent Ken Wright of Writers House (not a bad double act!). Writers Gary Schmidt (who gave a fabulous talk), Liza Ketchum (www.lizaketchum.com) and Ellen Klages (www.ellenklages.com) added all kinds of great insights. And then, of course, there was funny Greg Pincus, social-networking expert. Oh, and lots more great people. If you were at Asilomar and are dropping into my blog, a big hello and thanks from me; do leave me a comment!

Sometimes there are big upsets at the Olympics, and the little guy can triumph unexpectedly.  Greenhouse came up from nowhere and has muscled its way into the running, so we believe in start-ups and small beginnings. In which spirit, do take a look at brand-new British indie children’s publisher Nosy Crow.  www.nosycrow.com.  Made up of four of my former London colleagues/friends, Nosy Crow has just opened its doors for business over in the UK and I wish them all the very best under their powerhouse leader, Kate Wilson.  I’m willing to bet we’ll be seeing a lot of their titles on sale in the US in the coming years, and it’s great to have a bold new independent player on the scene. Do drop in on their site; you can say I sent you!  I know they’d really appreciate your encouragement as they enter what is only their second week in business.

So now it’s full steam ahead through the spring.  Bologna is looming – both SCBWI conference and trade fair – and I’ve got a full conference schedule coming up after that: New England in May, Montana in September, then Miami, Atlanta and Seattle in the first quarter of 2011.  Do you live in any of those areas? If so, I hope to meet you.

The Olympics are tough stuff. If you want to be a medal-winning agent you need to work harder, respond faster and care one hundred per cent.  You know why? 

Because in the agenting Olympics, if you snooze, you luge*.

(*Which is, I know, exceedingly lame.)

Snow! Ice! Madness and mayhem! 

A-P-O-C-A-L-Y-P-S-E!

Welcome to the past 10 days in Washington DC/Northern Virginia. A land of snowbanks four feet high, whipping whiteout winds, strange gnarly icicles hanging like sharpened troll’s teeth. And the slow sliding trudge back and forth down skating-rink streets where only the sound of snowblowers breaks the silence.

It’s been a strange old time, I can tell you.  And even stranger if you’re a British émigré, used to cries of ARMAGEDDON over nothing more than one inch of the white stuff. Face pressed against the glass I watched as inexorably it rose – 12 inches, 20 inches, 26 inches, 32 inches; a brief respite then 11 inches more. . . .  Like a white invader – snapping the pole of our housemartin residence, trickling into the walls with ominous sibilance, sliced like a two-foot shining wedding cake along the driveway. Outside, the modest crossroads have become the mountains of the moon – our very own Alaska. And somewhere in the whiteness you’ll find Wee Man [see earlier posts], hurling his curly ice-balled self into snowdrifts, as plucky and up-for-it as a deranged (and miniature) husky.

So a lot of work has been done in the past 10 days – the rush from desk to window, Kindle to shovel, camera to pencil – as I’ve snowplowed my way through manuscript critiques for Asilomar, against-the-clock edits on several manuscripts (I never like to keep expectant authors waiting long), speech preparation, submissions, reading, finance bits and bobs, another about-to-be-confirmed German deal - and much more.  Do you want to know how hard agents work? Well, I’d better not mention the hours that are standard for me, but you can probably take a guess. Nothing comes from nothing in this business and if you want to make a mark, you can expect to work like a dog (no offence to the Wee Man).

I’ve also been thinking about communication during this period. I’m terrible at being shut in; I’m a chatty/mingling/convivial kind of person, and having my way barred by roads my Mini can’t traverse is profoundly frustrating. I get cross, I get antsy, I want to bust out.  So I’ve been profoundly grateful for the companionship of the internet and all its sociable delights and distractions.

One of the questions people always ask at conferences and in interviews is: how important is social networking, blogging, tweeting etc?  Is it vital to a new writer? Should I have a web presence? WHAT SHOULD I BE DOING AND AM I NOT DOING SOMETHING I SHOULD BE DOING AND AM I THEREFORE DOOOOOMED???

What I want to say is . . . . calm down. As Dame Julian of Norwich (an English medieval mystic lady) said, ‘All things will be well.’ And it’s true.  If you have a great concept, if you write strongly and with passion, if you have a grasp of structure, character and pace . . . . then an agent on red alert will find you, whether or not your name has ever appeared in cyberspace. It’s true that not every agent will feel a conviction about your work (unless you’re one of the few), it’s true that some will miss you because they couldn’t get there in time, but if you approach submission with thoughtful diligence you will make it, tweet or no tweet.

My personal view is that until you have a deal it doesn’t matter too much whether you have a website or not, though I know some may disagree with that and it does depend on a) how great the site is b) how gifted a self-promoter you are and c) whether you’re prepared to invest time, care and money before you have any guarantee of an actual audience. There are some benefits to NOT having an online presence before you have the deal - because post deal you can exactly target your site to the correct audience, rather than doing a tricky about shift from addressing your peer-group writers to addressing an actual readership of kids. And that’s something important to bear in mind – your readers/visitors are going to be completely different after the deal than before.  After the deal you want a colourful, fun, informative, possibly interactive site that will lure young people who’ve enjoyed your book – plus you can use it to post school visits, new books, interviews/reviews, etc etc.

I think the online mantra should always be: Who is my audience? Am I catering to that audience as well as I possibly can?

I guess I’m ambivalent about social networking.  Basically, if you’re a published author (or soon to be published), anything that builds your fanbase is a good idea and strongly recommended. And, of course, it’s good to be savvy and informed about the industry you aspire to join. However, I’m not sure there is necessarily huge pre-deal promotional worth in Facebooking, tweeting, blogging et al – it’s fun, it’s useful if you get widely picked up/followed/read, but reading posts by an aspiring author has never changed my decision about taking someone on as a client. 

For me, it all comes down to the writing because that’s where the rubber hits the road.  I want authors who first and foremost work energetically on their craft, glory in language, take joy in a fabulous story well told.  The rest – the promotional stuff – can be put in place after we get you a deal.

I always look at links that writers include in queries – they can be very interesting and revealing. In a blog-filled world I love to see writing that is fresh, funny, moving or just plain interesting; writing that complements your fiction skills and underscores just how standout you really are. Again, it wouldn’t change my decision about you, but be wary of enumerating your rejections, documenting the endless struggle – you are out there in cyberspace for posterity, and any agent or editor you query is almost certainly going to drop in if you include a link. Is this the face you most want to present?

You know what? I don’t tweet. I blog because I love to write, and because I want to tell you a bit about what lies behind Greenhouse. But everything I really want to say requires a lot more words than the hiccup of a tweet. Julia tweets useful tips and quotes from this site (look left!), but she and I have always been very clear that Greenhouse tweeting should give you inspirational good value – a word of wisdom; a writerly ‘thought for the day’.  Do you want banality from us? I think not.

This may be an unexpected thing to say in 2010, but I shall say it anyway.  Are you ready for my heresy? OK, here it is:

There are so many random words flying around cyberspace. We are in an eternal babble so loud we can hardly hear ourselves think.  There is a frenzy of chatter assaulting our inner ears. Where is the still, small voice?  Because just possibly the essence of creativity lies in that small pure sound if we can only hear it.

There are icicles outside my window. Strong, strange and mesmerizing. Drip by drip, night by frozen night, they have grown – crystalline, sharp and beautiful as a razor. It took time, it was hard to see it happen, but when I looked today they were bigger still.
How do we grow as writers? How do we become all we long to be? How do we take ourselves and our words into the world?

Could there be more in a drip than a tweet?