IS IT WASTED TIME?

An amusing thought for the writer tearing out the remainder of his or her hair: once you've completed your work you will not be able to contact a publisher except through an agent. An agent capable of gaining you a deal will receive between 3 and 500 submissions a week, most of them utter rubbish. That agent will rarely see each submission. You may hate that but you might hate it even more if you became a client and your agent had no time to sell your work because they were too busy reading submissions. So, who will see your work? Well, your guess is as good as mine. I might not like to think this but you might like to consider it -- that person may also be the one making the teas. Try sending stuff off under different names and addresses. Each rejection will be standard. Better still, if you're really pissed off with them, send them a bit of Dickens, Greene, Rowling. Try not to make it too easy for them to spot. These writers will also be rejected. So, the point of this entry is: are we wasting our time trying to sell when we ought to be writing new material? Oddly enough, I don't believe we're totally wasting our precious moments on earth. I've found some of my best ideas have come when I've been most under pressure. It's worth remembering that if an agent could make themselves as much money as JK Rowling by writing they would be doing so - not dealing with our humble stuff on a daily basis.

Where Did I Go Last Night?

WHERE DID I GO LAST NIGHT? is a recurring thought during the day. I refer to the characters and the places appearing during the night hours. Many of these have found their way into my work. Some have been the start of complete stories. Others have happened in that time between wakefulness and sleep when the subconscious mind comes out to play. This is where life sometimes becomes a bit weird. Once, in that state, I dreamt about something that happened within the next twenty four hours. The most dramatic dream came a while ago and was immediately converted into ten thousand words of my most ambitious novel so far. The strangest and the most moving was connected with the death of my mother. So, you can see that while I am taking a light-hearted look at what happens to people when they are dreaming there is some serious stuff going on when we're lying crumpled and defenceless.