S. K. Dunstall

Overheard at a literary function, one writer talking to another.

And now that I’ve sold it and the book’s doing well, you know what, I’m going to go back to that agent who passed and I’m going to say to them, “This is the book you passed on. Look how it’s doing now.”

The writer who was speaking took years to sell her book, but the published book was very successful, especially for a first novel. She and another writer were discussing a literary agent who’d passed on the book, saying something along the lines of, “I enjoyed this story, but I don’t think it will sell.”

So what’s wrong with the comment above? Other than that it’s bad form on the writer’s behalf.

Answer.  The book that is doing well is most likely not the book the original agent passed on.

Let’s talk about our own experience. The LINESMAN that was doing the rounds trying to get us an agent was a vastly different book to the one that finally got published.

The agent who took us on, gave us feedback. Great feedback. Based on her feedback we re-wrote parts of the book. I can’t remember how many times it went back and forth before she was finally happy with it.

Then she started sending it out to editors. We saw some of the feedback.

“Ean is a fantastic character, but the second half of the book needs rework. I don’t think I’d have the time to work with the authors to fix it.”

It went around for twelve months like that. Our editor, Anne, who finally took it on, initially passed on it. She liked the story, but the second half didn’t work for her. But, she said, if we wanted to rework the second half, she’d take another look.

We rewrote the second half. It was a massive rewrite. Sent it back to our agent, who sent it to Anne, who finally accepted.

But the story changes didn’t stop there. We went through at least two more big rewrites with Anne.

By the time the story was ready for publication it was majorly different to the one that got us our agent. Sure, the basic story was the same—Ean was a linesman, the other linesmen thought he was crazy because he sang to the lines—but the rest of it was dramatically different.

It was also a much better book.

So in our experience, that agent the writer at the function was talking about was probably right to pass on the original book. It wasn’t right for her, and she didn’t love the book enough to help turn it into something she could sell.

Judging a work of fiction

There’s a book, I can’t recall which one at present, but it won a major award for fiction.  The Miles Franklin or the Man Booker, or something like that.  It was a memoir.  After it had won the prize, the memoir was exposed as a fake.

My memory is hazy.  I thought the whole kerfuffle happened last year.  (I also thought it was Norma Khouri but her book was written back in 2004 and she didn’t win any major awards that I can see.)  Google, normally reliable, couldn’t help me.

I still can’t find anything about it, so maybe I imagined the whole thing.

What I remember was the fuss that surrounded the outing of the memoir as a fake, and the calls for her (I think it was a her) prize be taken away.

At the time I remember thinking, hold on, this is a prize for fiction. Why should exposing the story as a piece of fiction make a difference to whether she won the prize or not?

It would be different if the prize had been awarded for a memoir rather than fiction.

Surely a work of fiction should be judged on its literary merit.  Shouldn’t it?

And yet, as readers, we can’t help judging the author

There are layers of—let’s call it understanding—between the author and the reader of his/her book.

There’s the reader.  There’s the story they read and interpret.  There’s the story the author thinks they wrote—which can be very different to the story the reader takes away.  There’s the reader’s opinion of that author, based on what they read in that story. And there’s the author him/herself.

As a reader, you start off with little to no idea who or what the author is, except by their writing.

If you like them enough, maybe you go onto the internet and do some research. Read their blog, follow them on social media sites, even interact with them. If you follow them long enough, eventually you get an idea of who you think they are.

If you’re not honest, expect an impact on your readers when they find out

A well-known m/m author who writes under a male pseudonym recently admitted that ‘he’ was a ‘she’.

When I heard, I shrugged, and said to myself, “So what.”  It wasn’t even unexpected. Most m/m writers are female, and a goodly proportion of them write under a male pseudonym or use their initials.

Yet when this writer’s latest book became available I realised I was reading it more critically than usual. Further, the reason I was reading it so critically was that this person who I had thought such a role model for young gay men, wasn’t.

Note that it wasn’t the author who had let me down so much as my perception of that author. I had an idealised image in my mind of who that author was and what they did.

Reader expectations—be honest about the big things

As in the case of the fake memoir I mentioned at the start of this post, the readers who called for the prize to be withdrawn had their own idealised version of who that author was, too.

I understand better now why they were so upset.

Of course, the writer is not responsible for what the reader thinks of them. They can’t be. Every reader has different thoughts, anyway.

But it made me think about the type of things an author should be honest about.

If I had to give advice to a writer about honesty

In these days of internet, especially when authors are encouraged to do some of their own marketing, it’s a rare author whose readers cannot find out something about them.

If I had to give one piece of advice to a writer about honesty, I’d probably say, “Be honest about the important things.”  Don’t pretend to be what you’re not. One of the reasons fake memoirs cause so much angst is because the reader has more invested in the author than they do normally, because this is the author’s supposed story.  And when that turns out to be lies …

You can’t control what a reader believes about you, but as a general rule, if the reader goes to meet you in a public author-reader space—such as a convention or a book-signing—it shouldn’t be a shock.*

*One piece of advice often given to authors is that your author photo should be close to your real age.  Sure, have a good photo if you can, but if you’re a portly 65 year-old, don’t make your author photo a picture of you back when you were eighteen, and skinny as a rake.

Ideas come from everywhere.

On Twitter at the moment there’s a tweet going around about Pet, the sheep, who was brought up with family dogs.

According to her owner, ‘Pet’ was an orphaned lamb who was brought up with the family’s four collies. She thinks the oldest dog is her mother, sleeps in the same basket and followed her everywhere from a very young age.

Watch the video. Watch this one too.

This one’s from a site called Tastefully offensive.

Look at the way she jumps, at the way she wags her tail, at the way she pricks her ears up. This sheep considers herself a dog. I don’t know if she’s ever met another sheep? How would she fare if she did?

How does she get on with strange dogs?

There is so much to Pet’s story. All you need is a little imagination.