It's Life Jim, But Not As We Know It

I read this brilliant post by Kylie Griffin about 'World Building' in writing. It mentions how important the setting of a novel is & got me pondering. Actually pretty much anything gets me pondering. It doesn't take very much at all for me to drift off. I'm convinced I live in my own head. But the post made me think about the settings/worlds that inspire me.

Everyone, but everyone should know Terry Prachett. And everyone including the long dead Ancient Egyptians should read the Discworld series. This setting is so intricate I'd like to jump ship and live in Ankh Morpork, reside at the Unseen University (how I wish mine was unseen, particularly by me)and hang out with Death. Pratchett manages to create a setting thats the most intricately designed yet easy to understand one I've ever seen. The Discworld is logically flawed, impossible but undeniable. I'm convinced somewhere out there it exists. Its fantasy written by a master & I'd read him all day if I didnt have to do things occasionally, like breathe.

I fell hard and fast for Margaret Atwood when I was in Year 12. We were given 'The Handmaids Tale' for our text and told to read a chapter a night. I read the whole thing in a day. Gilead was frighteningly real and still is. The setting was as shocking as OfFred's tale. A future we could potentially inhabit. One of her newest - 'Oryx and Crake' scared the living daylights out of me with its setting. A new race of genetically created humans peacefully exist while the remaining humans advance themselves out of existence. Archaeology turns to rubble and one man is left watching all the pieces of brilliance shatter. The setting is terrifying and it shadows through all of Jimmy's thoughts.



Anne Rice and I met some long years back with Interview with the Vampire. The Godmother of Vampires (no, not Meyer. Go sit down. Blasphemer)takes our world, right now, the heartbeat of every city and succinctly opens up the supernatural the same way we open up a tin. Unless you're me, in which case you do it with plenty of swearing, elbow grease and finally hand it over to someone else. Vampires slip into our world and the setting becomes somehow sharper, somehow prettier when its viewed through immortal eyes. I love her settings as much as I love her Facebook updates.

Reading through the link, it shows just how important the settings are. Like a separate voice for someone who never shows their face.

Why Finding Mr Right Is Easier Than Finding An Agent

Or – give me JDM & a pen:

It’s true; finding Mr Right is much easier than finding an Agent. Especially for me as I was sadly born without a heart. It doesn’t bother me but it does make ECG’s hard work.

Finding Mr Right can be done by going to your local pub/club/watering hole/Church (not that Church should be in the same sentence as pub)cinema/shopping centre/anywhere you have people of the opposite species.

Finding an agent however is only done through long trawls through Google, especially if you, like me, have an addictive Facebook habit & a fantastical need to see if Wikipedia has anything on the latest Dr. Who. You come away with a list of agents finally & the realisation you just saved 30+ pictures of Matt Smith to your laptop yet they all look the same.

Once you’ve spent forever working on your baby (5 months in my case), pulling late nights, talking about your characters like they’re real, wondering if taking on their personalities – which considering mine are an Ice Queen and a sociopath is not a good thing – will help you pass uni this semester, you enter the world of the agent. Finding Mr (Or Mrs, lets not be sexist here) Agent is hard. The literary agency websites are designed to make you give up right there and then. Your manuscript must be double spaced, single line spaced, all spaces between words removed, no paragraphs, we want paragraphs every which way. Don’t tell us how many words is in it, we want to know how many words, commas and full stops you put in it. We want a synopsis, we want a query letter, we want your 195,000 baby in 20 words or less. We want your life story, we want your target audience, we want your comparable titles. Writing the application is longer than writing the manuscript.

At first I felt like crying when I saw the first rejection letter. Bear in mind none of these (3 so far) have said “Your work is God awful. Kindly stop breathing”. It’s been the wrong genre, not the type the agent specialises in or in the case of one very special agent I was not enough of an internet “celebrity” (his word) to have a book published. Because clearly my internet credibility, clearly an oxymoron to begin with, is more important than whether I can string words together in a sentence or whether I simply copied The Bible and changed Jesus to Edward. I’ve looked at other writers in my position and unfortunately they suffer the same kind of letters. One book on writing included the authors’ quote that she’d been “rejected by everyone in the known universe”. One had their work rejected because there were no vampires. Another, too many vampires. One particular bloke because the work was so well written the agent didn’t they could market it. Yes, I’m still puzzling that one out myself.

Then I got one particular rejection letter where the agent praised my writing. I read a beautiful passage by an amazingly talented woman I’ve only just met – Denise Parton Plunk – who, between her and Isaiah 55-63- taught me to let God be in control. I read Isaiah 60 and Isaiah 61 and felt full of faith. I took my dog for a walk in the dark and felt God wipe away the doubts. This is who I am. This is what I do.

Finding an agent is hard but without it I’d never have learnt the lessons I’ve learnt in the past few weeks. That God is in control & my part is to meet Him. It’s our book. That I can fight and scream all I want but if the agent is wrong, the way the whole deal goes down will be wrong. That you don’t get knocked down because someone doesn’t like what you do. Case in point Stephanie Meyer got 9 rejections. 5 never replied. Alexandra Adornetto got 23 rejections. JK Rowling was rejected by more than that. You trust. You believe. We’ll make it.

Finding Mr Right is much easier.