The schools are back, the traffic’s a nightmare, yesterday I wore my first pair of ‘proper’ shoes since May, and it’s pouring outside as I write this.

Yes, it’s Fall! And yet my head is still partly in Normandy – northern France – where I spent time this summer. It’s an area I love and which really inspires me as I think of all the excitements and challenges ahead in the run-up to the end of the year. Maybe it could inspire you too!

What do I love about Normandy? It’s very pretty, parts are very quaint and picturesque, but it is so much more than that – because history has steeped the fields, the beaches, the villages and the cities with huge significance.

William the Conqueror set off from Barfleur to seize the throne of England - which he believed he’d been promised – and ending up reshaping the Middle Ages. The pic at the top shows where he left from!

Hundreds of years later, in June 1944, the Normandy coastline was the surprise (to the enemy, at least) venue for the beginning of what turned into the invasion of Europe. From Sword, June and Gold, up to Omaha and Utah beaches, thousands and thousands of Brits, Americans and Canadians (and other Allied forces) poured ashore, risking their lives in bloody battles. On Omaha Beach alone, thousands of US soldiers died, cut down by the guns ravaging them from the cliffs. You saw a fair approximation of the carnage in those opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan.

St-Mere-Eglise, the 101st Airborne, Carentan, Caen . . . the names are iconic. How can all these incredible events have taken place in such a demure and charming area?

I love Normandy because it reminds me of what is possible. What you can achieve with courage, determination, flexibility – and a large amount of grit. I try to start work every day in that spirit, focusing on the positive that lies ahead and prepared to bounce back from the knocks.

If you are a writer, you can easily be thrown off course by the turbulent seas, the huge guns, that seem at times to be arrayed against you. Who are YOU to try to find your niche in this industry; what can make YOU stand out and achieve your dreams?

Here are some of the discoveries I make in the quiet lanes of Normandy.

The importance of preparation

We see tons of submissions from folks who think writing is easy – something that can be knocked out at high speed. If you are reading this blog, you are not one of those people! But remind yourself again – writing is tough, it’s a skill to be learned, a craft to be mastered. We love those writers who inch ever closer, who make it their business to find out where they went wrong before – who treat it like a serious profession in which they are apprentices.

Did the invasion of Europe happen without preparation? Need I even answer that question?! It was costly, it was scary, and it was complicated.

The importance of courage

You get knocked down – then climb back up. Stagger to your feet, look around you, assess the damage, plug the holes in the boat and fix your guns that don’t fire any more. Fortunately, as a writer you should still be alive at this point, and where there’s life there’s hope and another day.

Maybe your masterplan needs some rethinking. Maybe you won’t get that book deal this year – but it might be next, once you’ve found yourself that solid critique group, that mentoring; taken on board those nuggets of wisdom an editor gave you in passing or the lines of unexpected advice an agent proffered. If you are too defensive you may never let yourself hear the words you really need to heed – but heeding them can require a lot of nerve. 

As in everything, writing success is partly about inspiration and partly about perspiration. Actually, a LOT of perspiration, most likely.

Don’t be put off. Do you have cajones? Yes you do!

Did William the Conq say, ‘I don’t think I can do this – those English lords might get a little grumpy?’ As if!

The importance of flexibility

I’m a great believer in bending with the wind. If one plan doesn’t work, rethink and try another. If your manuscript isn’t working out in one shape, consider unpicking it and starting again from a different perspective, in a different tense etc. With a clean sheet before you, you might suddenly have a lightbulb moment.

Tired of bombarding agents with submissions that don’t go anywhere? How about signing up for a writing course that will stretch you, a conference you’ve never dared to try before, experimenting with voice . . . .

Might you approach the problem from a different angle? You’ve tried Plans A and B – so how about C? And that could apply to everything from querying to working out plot structure or character.

Was there only one way to take back France? Sure, there was one big goal, but an infinite number of ways of achieving that goal.

The importance of determination

It is very often true that if you want something enough, and you’re prepared to work for it, then you will get there in the end. Of course there are exceptions, but it’s a good philosophy to bear in mind.

Determination encompasses everything else – preparation, courage and flexibility. With a large dollop of hard work on top.  Also, quite simply, it’s an act of the will not to be defeated.

For a writer that doesn’t necessarily mean blindly firing stuff out there, refusing to take No for an answer. That can get kind of sterile.  Rather, I believe it’s an acknowledgement of the learning process – a determination to improve, to be good, to be better than last time, even while understanding that the goalposts become higher the better we get.

Did William, Duke of Normandy, face the ocean and say, ‘I think I’ll go home now for a cup of tea, those waters look a little choppy?’ If he had done, he’d never have earned the name Conqueror.

And much more seriously, was the invasion of Europe called off because of its terrible price?

Please don’t think me facetious – we aren’t talking about issues of the same scale. Obviously.  I’m just saying if something is really important to you, you’ve got to fight for it.

There’s one more thing to understand about Normandy. You can eat the most fantastic fish and seafood. Barfleur, which once hosted William the Conqueror (before he WAS a conqueror) is a fishing village. And fishing is something we agents – and you authors – can relate to.

Keep going this Fall. Do the work, keep learning, stay focused and brave. Speak determined and inspiring words to yourself.

And then let’s go fishing – with the spirit of Normandy in mind.

Bonne chance!

***

Pix: 1) Barfleur: where William set off to become a Conqueror; 2) Omaha Beach - may the thousands rest in peace; 3) Crab fishing - Barfleur again.

If, as T.S. Eliot says, ‘April is the cruelest month’, what does that make August? The month when you’re incredibly busy but think you shouldn’t be because it’s supposed to be vacation time? (In fact, as I write, Julia is away in a Nordic country doing something unusual involving fish – all in the name of relaxation.)

Some agencies seem to wind down a notch this time of year – closing to submissions, waiting to submit mauscripts to editors till after Labor Day. We don’t really do either. We can’t bear miss a great submission, and editors get so inundated in September. Presuming the crucial people are around, I prefer to get on with stuff NOW!

So August has been hectic – and I want to tell you some of the month’s highlights. All things that will tell you something useful about the Greenhouse.

1 We get out and about (a lot) – and we really enjoy meeting writers and industry people.

I was in LA during the SCBWI National Conference. Not on Faculty this year, but with 1300 writers in town, it’s a great time to see West Coast clients, our co-agents for film/TV (particularly Jerry Kalajian of IPG, Jon Cassir of CAA, Jason Dravis of Monteiro Rose Dravis) , and editors. Oh, and scouts like Riley Ellis who is always on the lookout for potential film properties for Disney. Great networking gets done on that sunny patio!

We do try to foster an atmosphere of friendliness and mutual support among our authors, so it was wonderful to have a Greenhouse dinner for our US clients in town that week. Such a great evening, and the pic at the top of this post gives an idea of the fun we had.
From left to right:  Elle Cosimano, me, Annemarie O’Brien, Lindsey Leavitt, Amanda Conran, Sue Cowing, Erica Scheidt, Talia Vance, Donna Cooner, Catherine Linka.

I also want to highlight those delightful people the YA Muses, with whom I chilled in LA. Greenhouse reps two Muses, but they’re all great people. Between them, they’ve sold a total of eleven, yes ELEVEN books in the last year - incredible for a group of debut authors! How did they do it? What have they learned along the way? What a mine of information!  If you haven’t already, check out their blog http://yamuses.blogspot.com/

The Muses are:  Donna Cooner (GHL client/Scholastic), Talia Vance (GHL client/Egmont & Flux), Bret Ballou (webmaster/ new writer), Katy Longshore (Viking) and Veronica Rossi (HarperCollins).

And Julia? Her August trip was to the Arvon Centre in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire (an awful lot more bracing, and probably damp, than LA), the former home of poet Ted Hughes, where she spent a weekend sharing agently wisdom with new writers. http://www.arvonfoundation.org/p93.html

2 We did our first TV rights deal

It’s not easy – especially now – doing deals for film or TV. It’s not even easy bagging an LA-based co-agent who loves your story enough to jump in and present your work to the studios. It has to pop, it has to have visual potential, it has to be unique, and even then . . . So while we are constantly approached by production companies wanting to read newly sold manuscripts, turning that into an option deal means a LOT of hoops must be jumped through by a lot of people, often over a longish period of time.

So we’re really excited to have reached signed contract with Gaumont International for Sarwat Chadda’s DEVIL’S KISS and DARK GODDESS novels (with Gale Anne Hurd of WALKING DEAD/TERMINATOR attached as producer). Fingers crossed for where this goes next!

3 We love representing and selling unique work, whether by already published authors or debuts

We’ve done two deals this month which show that!

I’d had my eye on Blythe Woolston ever since I heard her read a few pages from her new manuscript –BLACK HELICOPTERS - at SCBWI Montana last September.  Which shows the value of conferences! She joined Greenhouse in July, and within a couple of weeks she had a six-figure, two-book preemptive offer from Candlewick.

Blythe won the prestigious William C Morris Award at ALA Mid-Winter for her debut novel THE FREAK OBSERVER (Carolrhoda LAB), so why so much excitement about this new deal?

We all know publishers can jump for big, dark novels – paranormal, thrillers, dystopia, but BLACK HELICOPTERS is a bit different. Yes, it’s a psychological thriller, about a girl raised from birth to be a conscienceless killer, who sets off in a bomb belt to kill and be killed – until her plan goes explosively wrong. But the story is told with sophistication, non-sequentially, so the reader must piece together the timeline of events. Also, it’s less than 35,000 words in length. In other words, there are several elements that don’t sound obviously ‘commercial’ - yet the story has intense impact. It’s caused a stir because it is surprising, different, very clever, and every word counts.

Julia also made a great sale in August. EDEN, by Helen Douglas, is a YA novel that brings together a love triangle, time travel, and space. The clever aspect here is how time is used in the story. We’re used to plots set in the future, but EDEN brings a boy from the future back to the present day in order to stop a planet being discovered – in the future – that will spell the end of Earth and humanity. Very clever! Again, a publisher leapt for it and Julia sold World English rights to Bloomsbury US and UK in a simultaneous preempt.

So, if you’re tempted to write something you think ‘everyone is buying’, just remember – we are looking for work that is surprising, original, and ambitious. In fact, something that no one else at all is writing!

4 We love doing deals both sides of the Atlantic

Yes, we love our international roots and working our special transatlantic identity - and we’ve had a lot of success at it. Exploiting rights in our authors’ work to the max, is something that gives us so much satisfaction. Latest example? In August I tied up a second UK/Commonwealth deal with Simon & Schuster for Brenna Yovanoff’s PAPER VALENTINE, which I sold first in a 2-book deal to Razorbill in the USA a few weeks ago. Great to keep developing Brenna’s publishing relationships throughout the English-speaking world (and of course beyond, in translation).

5 It’s very exciting to land a new client!

Hurrah (rubs hands in glee), I have just taken on a new author who appeared in our submissions inbox a few weeks ago. I never like to say too much about that till we’re further down the tracks, but I can tell you that she’s very talented and has a very exciting story to tell – I guess you could call it a romantic thriller, featuring a girl with way too many secrets and in way too much danger . . . And after that very vague statement, my mouth is zipped.

6 We work nearly all the time, but not quite

We’re only human. We love the summer. We love to be outside - walking, swimming, boating, and doing things with dogs. Here, to finish, is a summer picture – Dachsund bath time!

So that was just a small part of our August. How about yours?

I toyed with much fancier titles for this post, but then decided to say it straight. What you want to know is how to write a great query and the whole process worries you sick, right?

Everyone else in the industry has blogged on this topic, so there’s no shortage of great advice around, but having just faced around 350 queries on my return from vacation, I’m weighing in with a few simple pointers.

I should also say that all the photos on the post are relevant to ‘getting it right’ in different ways, and they all fill me with delight in the same way a perfectly turned query email does.

Let’s start with the perfect (French) cup of coffee. Short, strong, elegant. Served in cup and saucer, and usually with tiny square of chocolate balanced alongside. (S*bucks, with your buckets of hot milk, please note.)

The first thing to know about queries is that they’re not nearly as hard as you think, so lower your shoulders, breathe deeply and say, “I can do this!” As soon as we demystify the process, the stress and anxiety fall away and you are in the best mental place to write a simple but strong account of yourself and your work. And that’s what we’re after. This isn’t voodoo. It isn’t brain surgery. It’s a few straightforward paragraphs.

A good query will consist of a beginning (introducing your work/yourself), a middle (your pitch), and an end (your bio and sign-off). But first – before you write a word – there is work to be done!

RESEARCH:

How will you set about querying? If your instincts are to spread yourself around like confetti at a wedding, please curb them. Contrary to what some ‘experts’ say, there is no merit whatsoever in flinging your query indiscriminately at the entire industry. If you do, you will annoy a lot of people (who don’t represent what you’re sending them), lower your own sense of value, get yourself into a right old muddle, and also waste a lot of your time – and everybody else’s.

So, think carefully what agents you want to target, and why. Read their interviews, see who they represent, check out what deals they’re doing, and study their submission guidelines. Always research via the agency’s own website, not via hard-copy guides or online databases. You want the most up to date info, and the agent’s website is the only place you can trust for that.

You could also read my blog post ‘A peach of an agent’ (find it in the website blog archives in July 2010) which gives some tips.

Get a sense of an agent’s taste, but don’t presume they will (or won’t) want to rep you entirely based on what they’ve already sold – unless they say they’re only interested in one kind of book. Greenhouse is looking for outstandingly original work across all genres, not clones of our existing authors, and we’re always looking for something unique that we’ve never seen before. Surprise us!

So, do a reasonable amount of research, make a sensibly-sized list of people to target. But don’t obsess.  If you’re a Type A personality, you can get really wound up about this kind of decision-making. It’s not a scientific process. Do the work, but then leap in with ‘joie de vivre’!

Read the agency’s submission guidelines with care and follow them.  We are all inundated and hate wasting time, so make it easy for us to fall in love with you and your work. That includes addressing your email to the correct person, spelling our names right (my favourite was the submitter who addressed her submission to ‘Julia Childs’ instead of ‘Julia Churchill’ . . . .).

NOW TO THE QUERY WRITING (but first a perfect example of a bonsai tree):

Your opening:

I am scanning your email at speed and I want all the pertinent info ASAP, up front. Tell me the name of the work, what age group and gender it’s primarily aimed at, what genre (paranormal romance? Speculative fiction? Classic-toned middle grade? Etc), and how many words it has. The latter point is surprisingly important, because it tells me immediately if we’re in a saleable ballpark, if your word count matches your audience. For example, a 20,000-word novel aimed at YA is likely to be unsatisfyingly short. A 200,000-word novel for the same market is going to unwieldy and massive.

Do tell me in your first/second paragraph if the query is exclusive and if we’ve met – eg, at a conference. You could also tell me why you’ve decided to query me; is there a particular connection? Also useful to know where you see the potential audience for your book – can you think of any similarly pitched titles already in the marketplace?

The middle:

Here I want two paragraphs (no more) of really enticing story pitch. This should give me the bones of the plot (though not the detail), while also intriguing me and making me want to read more. I know your stress levels rise here, so I’m going to give you a perfect example - the pitch that Lindsey Leavitt sent me in Feb 2008 for her contemporary YA debut SEAN GRISWOLD’S HEAD (published 2011 by Bloomsbury):

After discovering her father’s big MS secret, Payton Gritas’s structured life crumbles. So begin her excruciating ‘chats’ with Ms Callahan, a school counselor aiming to save Payton from drowning in denial by encouraging her to write Focus Exercises on any random subject. Payton chooses Sean Griswold, her alphabetical connection since kindergarten. More specifically, she chooses his somewhat large head.

Payton’s head-centric research spawns more and more questions about Sean and his dome. Like, what’s with the scar? Why does Mr Prep hang out in the Goth hallway? And why is a 15 year old in training to be the next Lance Armstrong? She finds answers to these questions by getting inside Sean’s head, while Sean somehow finds a way into her guarded heart. But when Payton realizes her Sean obsession won’t ultimately mend her battered father/daughter relationship, Payton must shift her focus to the one person who can get her through the drama –herself.

Why did I like this? Because the romantic premise is arresting, cute and original – there’s humour, but also indications of a significantly deeper thread. We get the gist of the ‘macro’ of plot, but also the ‘micro’ of the emotional arc and where/how the tension will rise. In short, I could already see what this book could be, and how we might market it.

Does this help?

The ending:

This should be one short paragraph telling me a little about you. Any writing ‘credentials’ – published work, courses taken, etc etc. And anything else you think relevant and which might help to pick you out. Also useful to know if if this is a multiple submission and/or whether you already have interest.

And there you have it – a simple but beautifully turned query.

But wait – there are a few pitfalls for the unwary!

QUERY HORRORS TO AVOID (but first, a picture of a perfect Normandy crepe au citron):

It can be tempting to try ‘too hard’ to embellish your query.

Don’t use fancy fonts or coloured backgrounds. Annoying to read and distracting. Keep it simple and use a professional-looking typeface.

Don’t include a pitch within your query and then ANOTHER synopsis later on. We don’t have time to wade through pages of outline.

Don’t fret and re-send if the formatting of your pasted pages goes wonky. We can see beyond formatting.

Don’t brag hugely about yourself (ie, saying how wonderful you are). Does anyone warm to a bragger?

Don’t liken yourself to JK Rowling, CS Lewis, Stephenie Meyer or Philip Pullman etc. It’s fine to point out your potential audience (titles with similarities), but if you compare yourself to the truly greats - in sales or content - we are almost certainly going to be disappointed. The best writers tend to be very modest because they’re always aware of not being as good as they long to be.

Don’t address your query to ‘Dear Sir/Madam’. Find out who we are (and our gender).

Don’t send attachments, when we are very clear we don’t open or read them.

Don’t think/expect we will make an exception for you. We get tons of submitters every day who require us to make them exceptions to our guidelines. It wastes a huge amount of time.

Don’t fling your work at us without a proper query, thinking, ‘What the heck, they don’t read it anyway.’ We do.

So - keep it simple, professional, honest, and realistic. And always remember that your query only points the way to your writing, which is the key to everything.

Happy query writing!

+++

Pix: Coffee at Cafe Versailles, Isigny sur Mer, Normandy; very old bonsai tree at National Arboretum, Washington DC; perfect crepe at Bayeux, France.

It’s taken me more than two and half years to return to this theme – first visited in My Life in the Spotlight: Part 1, posted on October 11, 2008. Sadly, because of the way this blog is set up, I can’t directly link to the earlier post, but you can find it easily via the Archives in the left margin. Perhaps you’d like to read it first, so you can see my context here.

Every now and then, usually at a conference, someone will ask me a question – one so terrible, so provocative, so heartfelt that it can barely be articulated. I can tell it’s coming because of the emotion and anxiety in the individual’s face as they approach me. Gently, I will guide them to a quiet spot behind the coffee urn or to a remote seat in the lobby, because this is not a discussion to be had amid crowds of laughing, chatting attendees.

The devastating question is this:  HOW DO I KNOW IF IT IS TIME TO GIVE UP?

That’s right – give up. And I don’t mean, ‘When is it time to abandon one manuscript and move on to another?’ I mean GIVE UP WRITING FICTION, GIVE UP TRYING TO GET PUBLISHED, GO AND DO SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY WITH MY LIFE.

I know, it’s huge, isn’t it. And such a travesty of all we believe (we write because we must, we keep trying because determination is key, didn’t J.K.Rowling get rejected innumerable times?) that any answer is like rushing in where angels fear to tread.

But I don’t believe in taboo subjects, so I am going to offer you a story, which is my way of answering the unanswerable.

*******

It’s the 1990s, my kids are young, but I’ve been pursuing the dream for a while now – song-writing and singing, both alone and with my band. It’s a struggle doing this with a family, but I knew I had to try – to see how far I could get, because performing is what I DO, because it’s the ultimate self-expression, the ultimate adrenaline rush. Because it’s who I AM.

The wives of the band guys are getting antsy. Their husbands have got day jobs and kids too, and they don’t have as much at stake as me – or as much patience with ferrying equipment around London at midnight on a Wednesday, only to perform to a bunch of inebriated people propping up a seedy bar.

My standards and goals have risen too. We’re getting gigs, but I yearn to be better, to find a whole new level. It’s the dissatisfaction with oneself that is so hard to take.

One night, down at the Mean Fiddler Acoustic Room (where so many bands and singers have debuted), I get talking to a guy who’s got the set after me. He’s there alone with his guitar and he’s got no audience. I’m really happy all my people (lots of them) will be hanging around to hear him because it’s a bleak place alone.

I come off stage and wind down, listening to him. His voice is strange and memorable, his songs are plaintive – getting drunk on a Saturday night, losing your girl – and he’s just a guy in a scruffy grey jacket and jeans, alone with his guitar. Afterwards everyone agrees, I was better than him, and I smile bashfully because it’s probably true.

Back home, getting children ready for school, doing freelance editorial work, my dissatisfaction with my music grows. I’ve got other things on my mind – I need to make some money, I need to get serious, I need to invest my limited time wisely. And most crucially, I’m just not as good musically as I want to be.

Gradually, I drop back. I don’t even return the call when The Borderline leaves a message offering me a gig, though I’ve wanted that invitation for ages.

It hurts like hell, but it’s over. Who am I now?

Maybe a year later, I’m in the kitchen doing the dishes, radio playing in the background. Suddenly, I am transfixed. It’s a voice I know – a strange, wailing, painful voice that I’ve heard before but can’t place. My heart is racing because this MEANS something important – but what?

And then I realize. It’s the voice of David Gray, the guy I shared an evening, a venue, with. The guy who had no audience so ‘borrowed’ mine. The guy I was widely thought to be better than.  He’s sounding amazing and he’s singing a song called ‘Babylon’. You can catch a few bars of it here: http://www.davidgray.com/music/discography/DG_AlbumDetails.aspx?albumid=14760f81-ede0-461c-910a-e9f95edaee36&Cat=Albums

I’m not jealous - I’m amazed, dumbfounded.  I laugh out loud. I’m lost in wonder that this can happen. A guy I knew in a beer-stained bar is hitting the big time.

And now David Gray becomes ‘my guy’ – whose progress I will follow obsessively over the months, as his iconic album WHITE LADDER becomes one of the biggest global sellers of the decade; as ‘Babylon’, ‘My oh my’ and ‘Sail Away’ become soundtracks of their generation, piped into every supermarket and airport in the UK and US.

The ironies and the truths are not lost on me and I quietly thought them through that day in my kitchen.

I turned away from music and back to publishing, rapidly ascending through the years and ranks to Publishing Director, and then of course over to the US to create the Greenhouse, which is the crowning achievement of my literary life. I truly found my vocation, doing what I do best. I am a far better editor and literary agent than I was musician, and I derive great satisfaction from working with writers and helping them to achieve their dreams.

David Gray continued with music, after I stopped. He went on to become an international superstar, from the grassroots up – the old-fashioned way. Managing on little money for years, he fought through huge obstacles to find his sound, his audience. I have the utmost respect for him, and will always feel a connection.

*********
And so, I return to that troubled questioner at the conference, who’s laboured for years without reaching their goal. HOW DO I KNOW IF IT IS TIME TO GIVE UP?

This is all I can tell you, but it comes from the heart . . .

Sarah Davies gave up trying to make it as a singer-songwriter and found reinvention, success and fulfillment - in her true vocation.

David Gray stuck with music through the lean times and setbacks, eventually bursting through to unimagined international success – in his true vocation.

Vocation is an old-time word, but one I love. I commend it to you now - because it is the only answer I can give to the answerable question.

Wishing you all a very, very happy 4th of July.

So it seems that the moral of the week (in the US, at least) is this: if you are going to send pictures of your undergarments around the internet, make sure they aren’t grey and distinctly unstylish.

I’ve found myself transfixed by this very contemporary, cautionary tale of personal and professional disaster. When we pass a highway pile-up, we have to fight that strange urge to slow down and look. Why? Perhaps because we need to reassert that we’re gloriously, mysteriously alive – and that today was not OUR day to die. And when I saw that a guy who appears to be smart, intelligent, destined for success, could be brought down by clicking on the wrong little box on Twitter – Reply rather than Direct Message – it made me exhale with relief. It wasn’t me. But it could have been – and it could have been you.

Doh, I don’t mean we’re all tempted to send knicker-pictures to virtual strangers. I’m not talking about morality or indecency or misuse of government equipment. I’m just saying, we are all only a click away from making idiots of ourselves online.

I’ve not yet made a huge, walloping, catastrophic online blunder, but I’ve been very close to those who have. Like a colleague some years ago, whose pod was just across the aisle from mine. When a pompous, bossy senior manager sent out one of her famous ‘all user’ emails – telling everyone off for some misdemeanor – he wrote a stunningly rude response, intended for close friends. Only problem was – he clicked Reply instead of Forward. Ever seen the Ride of the Valkyrie approaching you?

Or what about the publisher of great repute who forwarded an email to colleagues telling them what she REALLY thought about this particular author and his manuscript. Only she didn’t – Forward, I mean. One mouse click in the wrong spot and her diatribe went straight back to the (very sensitive) author.

But it gets worse, doesn’t it. Because now we can shoot off 140-character streams of consciousness any place and any time, thanks to Blackberry and iPhone apps, or Twittelator for iPad. Buttering a bagel? Refilling your wine glass? Taking a break from washing the car? Bam, we’ve clicked and it’s gone. But how much were we concentrating and which box did we click?

Some time ago, Greenhouse turned down a potential client because of their online profile. [Now you’re all thinking IT WAS ME! Because I understand writerly paranoia, I’ll just say it was some time in the last 3 years, and the writer came from either North America or UK/Commonwealth. So no point trying to guess!] The individual in question wrote well, but what they were saying online was scary – angry, bitter, neurotic, and needy. If you’re going public about how much you hate your life and most people in it, how might you treat your agent if we don’t delight you every minute of every day?

Then there’s the writer who announced online that they’d already got EIGHT full manuscripts out with agents (so why should I bother to ask for it? The others got there before me), and the one who documented every one of her multitudinous rejections (and then sent me a query). Folks, you’ve got to be careful.

If you blog, you aren’t dropping a line to your best friend or confiding in a private journal. You are putting yourself permanently into the ether for agents and editors to find you. The internet octopus has long tentacles, very few degrees of separation lie between us, and even if someone doesn’t Follow you, they may Follow me, and so on.

I’m ambivalent about social networking. I love it for its fun, its companionship, and the easy-reach information it provides. I’ve signed at least one client because of Facebook, and I owe it for the return of my beautiful coat, lost at Bologna airport and returned thanks to a friendship sustained by FB.

I enjoy seeing what’s happening on Twitter. Standing at a Departures board in a deserted airport late at night, thousands of miles from family and home, a Tweet from an acquaintance can feel like a hand reaching out from some great existential loneliness.

But it makes me nervous too. I get antsy when scores of people I’ve never seen or heard of want to Friend me on Facebook. How should I feel about strangers scrolling through my family photos? Am I right to be wary or am I just being overly precious?

I want to be fascinating and meaningful on Twitter – but what to say and how much? I’d love to supply you hourly with fabulous links to important industry articles that will enhance your knowledge and writing journey. But the truth is, I just don’t have time – in fact, I barely have time to cook the dinner. And do you really want to know that there’s a new family of fledglings cheeping in our birdhouse?

I’m sure you have similar feelings to me. How much is enough, how much is too much, and what counts as a mistake? I can help you a little.

Generally, avoid documenting anything about your querying or subsequent submission processes. Play your cards close to your chest and cultivate your poker face. Your agent, if you have one, will love you for that, because it leaves she/he able to do their job – selling your book - with maximum freedom. It will also lower your stress levels because thousands of people won’t be watching as you ride a potential rollercoaster to deal or no deal.

An elderly member of my family really hated to hear gossip. Very solemnly he would intone, ‘Is it true, is it necessary, is it helpful? Of course, I would roll my eyes. But nowadays those words are often in my mind as I consider whether to say something – or not. Of course, if we all stuck rigidly to all three criteria there would BE no social networking because the whole fun of it is that it’s as fast moving as a babbling brook, whirling us ever onwards.

And yet maybe there’s something in that old saying. The Times of London today exposed the risks of jury trials collapsing due to jurors increasingly tweeting/status-updating verdicts or canvassing support from other jurors. And it’s definitely true that in the books business there are times when the best thing to say (online) is nothing at all.

I suspect a certain congressman, and his Underpants of Doom, would concur.

Pix:

1) An old-fashioned means of communication - Cornwall, England 2) Cannonballs, Fredericksburg - enough said. 

Firstly - this post is illustrated with book jackets from three just published - or about to be published - Greenhouse authors. Relevant to my topic? Not really, except that all three authors (Amanda Cockrell, Sarah Aronson, Harriet Goodwin) have, at different times, been both critiquer and critiqued, so it’s a neat segue to what I really want to write about. Which is . . . .

CRITIQUES!

Critiques – you know, those short one-on-ones agents/editors/published authors do with new writers, usually at conferences. Love them or loathe them?

I’ve done (ie, given) lots of critiques this year, at a variety of conferences, and some of you will already be bracing yourselves for maybe your first-ever critique at the SCBWI summer conference in LA this August.

How scary is it to present your precious baby (aka manuscript) to the hawk eyes of an industry insider for 15/20 excruciating minutes? I bet it’s awful. You’ve tended and nurtured this frail little shoot for months, maybe years, and suddenly someone you don’t know, whose very name engenders acute anxiety (you’ve read about them in PW! They do deals on Publishers Marketplace!), comes along pawing and picking at every treasured word. Don’t they realize your self-confidence is even more fragile than your plotting?

You have my sympathy – and, dare I say, empathy. I also have surprising news for you. Critiques aren’t easy for the critiquer either.

WHAAAAAAAT!? you say. How can it be hard for YOU? All you have to do is sit there passing judgement and then walk away without a care in the world. YOU don’t have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and unpick/reknit some or all of those mangled pages (best-case scenario). Or (worse-case) deal with the possibility that the whole premise was wrong from the start.

Firstly, let’s get something straight. Most of us know what it feels like to be rejected, passed over, mocked, dismissed, criticized or otherwise told we’re not good enough – in ways far worse than in generally gentle critiques. Let me throw my humiliation hat into the ring:

Back in the early ‘90s, my band/singer-songwriter days, when a drunken man standing somewhere in the darkness beyond the spotlights completely ruined my rather beautiful accappella song about genocide in Bosnia (yes, we’re looking at you, Ratko Mladic…..) by yelling, ‘Open a vein, Luv!’

Or how about much earlier, maybe my 21st birthday, when a certain ex-boyfriend (He Who Shall Not Be Named) patiently explained to me why we would not be getting back together – ‘I’m really sorry, Sarah, but you see, I just couldn’t feel proud of you in public.’

Hah yes, I thought you couldn’t match THAT one! Ladies, there’s a reason why we all throw ourselves on to the dancefloor when Gloria Gaynor sings ‘I will survive’. Right?

So, it doesn’t take a big leap for me to put myself in your head when it comes to critiques. When I sit down opposite you at one of those little tables, I am fully aware of your nerves – and my power. I can hurt you, perhaps irreparably in terms of your writing, with one phrase. And that’s why I find these sessions so hard. I want to speak the truth, I want to be honest, I want to give you a golden nugget of advice, and I want to send you on your way feeling good about yourself. Or at least, encouraged, enabled, and enthusiastic about the future.

Is it easy? Often – either because a writer is so nearly publishable or because they are so open and keen to learn that they just can’t get enough advice and guidance. Plus they are incredibly gracious. Frequently all the above.

Other times it can be tough – maybe because the writer is absolutely new and their work is very raw. Sometimes because they just don’t want to hear anything that isn’t 100% praise and they’re actually only there because they want an agent to take them on (and will tell you so very clearly). Occasionally because they have so much invested in this story, this dream, that the emotion is just too much and the tears come at any indication that their pages may not be destined for a 6-figure deal at a major publishing house. (Please note, if you ask a direct question it is very hard for the critiquer not to answer it.)

When I enter a critique I am hyper-aware of every word I say. Critiquing is very tiring because I roll every phrase around my mind before I speak, trying it on for size and possible effect, striving to find ways to maximize these few minutes for you while also leaving you with a positive experience. It can sometimes feel like walking over a minefield. The critiquers will probably forget and move on; for the writer, those phrases may live again, on an endless repeat, for months to come. It’s a big responsibility!

For all the many of you whose openness and courage make critiquing so rewarding – thank you. In those few minutes we can bond as human beings with a love of writing and books, and a shared understanding of how we can use language to encourage and inspire each other. It can be a really stimulating and enjoyable experience.

As you head off to whatever conference awaits you in the coming months, I believe there is a critiquer/critiqued pact we can make.

For the critiquer: To be very familiar with the pages before the meeting (and to have written some notes on a handover sheet); to be honest, with only the goal of helping to make these pages even better - and always speaking with great care and kindness. Above all, to leave that writer encouraged and positive for the journey ahead, perhaps with one big point that will stick in their mind.

For the critiqued: To approach the meeting with openness and a real desire to learn. A critique is not a fast-track to getting an agent (if that does happen, a wonderful surprise). It should not be a forum for a writer to argue with their critiquer and tell them that they are wrong and the manuscript is perfect. It probably IS a good idea to slip a fresh Kleenex into your pocket – just in case!

Always remember - you are paying for this time. It is YOUR critique, so use it to the max.

Going to LA? If so, I’ll be in town seeing film people, but staying at the conference hotel during the event. Look out for me in the lobby, around the pool, and we’ll have a drink. I’m not attending the conference, so won’t be doing critiques – this time - but I’ll be in action again at the Tri-State conference (WV, PA, DE) in Gettysburg in November!

The critique pact. Critiquer and critiqued – neither side is a walk in the park. Shall we pinkie promise to make it easier for each other?