A Running Metaphor

I read a beautifully written guest post recently on Isabel Costello’s blog The Literary SofaIt was by Antonia Honeywell whose novel The Ship was published earlier this year and was one of Isabel’s picks for 2015.

The post describes her perseverance in continuing to write novels when they failed to find a publisher, even though the second book was picked up by an agent, who also represented the third. She makes the analogy between writing the novels and children’s sandcastles on a beach — impermanent structures that will inevitably be washed away by the tide but we are still somehow compelled to construct them. She makes the point that the enjoyment of the act of creation itself is fulfilling — the results aren’t expected to endure.

One reader commented that after reading the post he was glad he’d stuck to writing short stories and not novels! And the post has been written from a point in time where Antonia has been able to celebrate the publication of her debut novel, although it appears to be the fourth she’s actually completed.

But the post resonated with many others who commented and makes the point that such is the effort and discipline required to achieve publication (with Antonia’s fourth time success being more typical than the  lucky first-time novelist) that it’s essential that anyone who sets out on a major writing project enjoys the  process of writing itself because that might have to sustain you for a long time. (I’m sure this is a factor behind writers seeking out courses, writing groups and the likes — because these can give affirmation about your writing from a reader’s perspective, albeit a very different one to that of either the book-buying reader or an agent or author.)

My Race Number and Timing Slip for the Thame 10K on 28th June
My Race Number and Timing Slip for the Thame 10K on 28th June

As the photograph above suggests, I often apply a more conventional metaphor to the writing process than washed-away sandcastles — long-distance running.

At the weekend I ran the Thame 10k race. It might just be possible to see my not very impressive time of 58 minutes 47 seconds on the timing slip on the photo — but I completed it in under an hour, which was my modest objective. I’m hoping for a similar pace at slightly more than double the distance in ten days time when I enter the Wycombe Half Marathon for about the fifth or six year running (if you excuse the pun).

Panoramic View from the Top of Coombe Hill
Panoramic View from the Top of Coombe Hill

Earlier in June I competed in the most lunatic and masochistic race — the 6k Coombe Hill run — which is apparently the only fell race in the south of England. Like the Thame and Wycombe races, this isn’t a fun run, it’s officially licenced by UK Athletics and organised by Aylesbury Vale Athletics Club.

The race starts with a solid mile of running up the Ridgeway on a gradient of about one in ten, although it’s steeper in places. Then after a steep descent the runners have to scramble up a 190m near-vertical climb (some people use their hands as well as feet) to the top of the Chiltern Hills highest viewpoint — the war memorial on the top of Coombe Hill. It’s as far removed from a running track as is imaginable and overlooks Chequers.

David Cameron After His Sport Relief Mile
David Cameron After His Sport Relief Mile

I once bumped into David Cameron doing the Sport Relief Mile at a local sports club. I’d rather enjoy seeing him huffing and scrambling along if he decided to enter the race held closest to his weekend country pile.

I managed to drag myself around that course, having been persuaded to do it by the postman, who’s involved in the club that organises it! Like a Home Counties Everest, I did it because it was there. It wasn’t quite as gruelling as I expected. Not knowing the course and fearing the worst, I paced myself on the long uphill too cautiously, trying to leave something in reserve. I didn’t need to call on it in the end — but it was still bloody tough. (Is there a writing metaphor in there somewhere?)

View of  Coombe Hill in Autumn with Chequers in the Foreground -- The Highest Point of the 6k Race
View of  Coombe Hill in Autumn with Chequers in the Foreground — The Highest Point of the 6k Race

I tend to amble along towards the end of the field in these races. I must be reasonably fit to complete the distances but I ‘m not a natural distance runner. Like James in my novel, I’m physically built more like a rugby player (though more of a back than a forward!) than a rival to Mo Farah — and that’s without the evidence of enjoying too much good food and drink that I carry around my waist to a greater or lesser extent depending on how virtuous I’ve been recently. But there’s something about running that seems to resonate with writers.

I’ve read many articles, interviews and blogs where writers reveal that they’re keen runners (Claire King’s blog entry has particularly stuck in my mind).

One thing writers appreciate is the solitude of running (except if, like me, you occasionally scramble up a hill where you almost need to use handholds with a couple of hundred others).

It’s a different solitude to sitting in front of a computer typing away. It engages you with the outside world but in a slightly removed, distant manner that appeals to writers: you’re passing through, observing, watching, experiencing the sounds and smells and, if you’re running at any sort of pace at all, physically connecting with the environment in an intense way.

You’re breathing in huge lungfuls of air, so being at one with the weather (warm, freezing, humid, wet) and acutely aware of the ground under your feet — the sapping hard stone on the Victoria Embankment or the wonderful bounce from the soil on a Chilterns footpath that’s been drying in late Spring.

Pyramid Orchid in a Chilterns Meadow on One of My Running Routes
Pyramidal Orchid in a Chilterns Meadow on One of My Running Routes

As I’ve said, I’m almost embarrassingly poor as a competitive runner,  but I drag myself out in my trainers because some runs can be so pleasurable they verge on transcendent experiences. I remind myself how lucky I am to be able to run through fields full of wildflowers  and butterflies, a slog up a steep hill being rewarded with amazing views as far as the Cotswolds.

I try to fix these moment in my memory as a moment to remember, a reminder of how precious it is to be alive in that second and be grateful that I’m fit enough to experience it.

And its not just running through countryside that can be exhilarating.  I’ve been fortunate enough to use a gym in the bowels of a prominent building in Westminster. I’ve often emerged from there in my running gear to do circuits of the Royal Parks (from St. James’s via Green to a loop around the Serpentine in Hyde Park and back) and to run along the river from Westminster Bridge up to the Millennium Bridge (or Tower Bridge if I’m really energetic) back along the South Bank. That’s an incredible way to get different, slightly detached perspective on London and an amazingly concentrated piece of sightseeing.

For a writer, running gets you away from the desk and out into a different environment with new stimuli and the thinking time it imposes can be invaluable. Characters, plot ideas, ways of resolving problems can all be reflected on without any feeling of compulsion to get something down on the page.

Sometimes this freedom becomes a bit worrying — when I’ve come up with some idea I like about 3km into a 10km run I become paranoid that by the time I’m out of the shower it’ll have disappeared from my mind.

And sometimes I’ll use the undisturbed time on my own to indulge in something that demands my mental concentration but not any physical presence — listening to The Archers’ omnibus and Desert Island Discs on a Sunday morning run is a particular pleasure.

But above its practical benefits, I’m sure writers appreciate running as a metaphor for the process of creating their work.  The analogy works at several levels. Both are usually solitary activities and they need self-discipline and determination to be applied to reach a goal — finishing the section, chapter or book and completing whatever distance you choose to run.

In training you’re usually running against self-imposed targets: try to run under a 10 minute mile or complete a 10k in under an hour is like achieving a target word count (although with writing there’s little danger of being stranded miles from home if you don’t make it). Even in a race, you tend to compete against personal targets (your personal best — PB) rather than try to outrun everyone ahead.

It’s difficult to motivate myself to get going with either writing or running (the infamous displacement activities, like filling the dishwasher, often suddenly demanding priority) but, once started, I realise how much I enjoy both. Writing has the edge here as it’s not quite so physically demanding. (Unlike running, energy can be restored with a cup of strong coffee — as happened last week when I was working to a deadline so intensively that I stayed writing until 4.15am — when I got up from my computer the sky was becoming light.)

Running has its downsides as exercise. While it has cardiovascular benefits (my resting heartbeat is reassuringly low), it hammers other parts of your body. I’ve had tendonitis, an MRI scan on a knee (fortunately revealing nothing worse than normal wear and tear) and a number of accidents. Last autumn I tripped while running the Ridgeway near the Whiteleaf Cross and hurtled into a bed of exposed flint. Fortunately I was able to run home, albeit covered in blood and dirt and nursing a broken thumb, which was in a splint for the next six weeks.

Luckily, writing isn’t so physically dangerous but it can be just as brutal in terms of its demands on free time and the sacrifices required to embark on the huge task of writing a novel — the Coombe Hill race with its ‘climb the biggest hill the hardest way possible’ ethos is an apt comparison.

The different distances in running offer up parallels. Maybe a short poem or a piece of flash fiction is like running the 100m? The short, intense product of a lot of training. A short story might be more middle distance — 800m perhaps — with elements of the long haul but still speedy.

A novel is pure marathon. Metaphors abound. Consider the gruelling preparation, the need to hang in there for long haul when every sensible muscle in your body wants to stop, the inevitability of hitting ‘the wall’ — yet all these masochistic hardships are forgotten in the glow of satisfaction of  achieving the goal. (I have to imagine this as, despite entering the ballot for London several times, I’ve never run a marathon but I’ve done several half-marathons, which are pretty tough.)

And the process of getting your writing published stands comparison with running a long, tough race. Some people don’t enter, despite having the ability to complete. Some shoot off ahead: maybe they succeed quickly; maybe they burn out with exhaustion. Others, having started, calculate the effort isn’t worth the reward and withdraw.

Sometimes the course is uneven — a steep downhill slop where you pick up speed and think you’re rushing ahead is followed by a lung-busting, leg-trembling climb that leaves you wondering why on earth you chose to put yourself through this ordeal in the first place. But with friends and bystanders cheering you on, offering moral support, you pace yourself — discover the limits of what you’re able to put into the race, dig deep and realise you’re still enjoying it.

As happens in the Wycombe Half Marathon, you might pass very close to the finishing line but then be directed away for a further agonising stretch before you turn into the last straight but with the finishing line appearing to be way in the distance. But if you keep on moving, you’ll keep on closing in. If you stop you’ll never make it.

My Wycombe Half Marathon Finishers' Running Shirt 2015
My Wycombe Half Marathon Finishers’ Running Shirt 2015

Update: 12th July 2015 

As mentioned above, I entered the Wycombe Half Marathon this year, as I have for the last five years or so. It’s a course for masochists as it has a huge hill right at the start (up through Wycombe Abbey).

Running the race today, I had plenty of chance to put my ruminations on perseverance into practice. I’d run a relatively comfortable race at a slow(ish) but achievable pace (on course for a finish between 2hrs 10 and 2hrs 15) when at the 8 mile stage I felt a sharp pain on my forehead. I’d been stung by some sort of insect. I tend to react badly and unpredictably to insect stings and bites and I was worried enough about an adverse reaction to run back to the water station and ask a marshal if I could be checked by the first aiders.

At one point they wanted to take me to the minor injuries unit at Wycombe hospital but I managed to get seen by the St. John Ambulance people instead. I didn’t seem to have any bad reaction apart from the sting itself so they gave me an antihistamine tablet. This all took so long (I had to fill in forms and so on) that the last runners were just passing as I finished. I was given the option of a lift back to the finish but I decided I’d carry on running and try to complete the remaining five miles — as the last runner in the race. I managed to catch a few of the other runners so didn’t have the ignominy of finishing last and I even managed a little surge at the finish to beat the 2hr 40 mark by a few seconds. Then it was into the St. John Ambulance medical tent to be checked over by the nurse.

‘Are you feeling short of breath?’

‘Well, no more than usual after running 13 miles!’

The Cake

Following various tweets and retweets I came across a great blog posting from the US by writer J.M. Tohline about approaching agents via query letters and submitting manuscripts.

There was a response from an agent called Amy Boggs that not only identified what should go in an agent query letter but neatly summed up the dynamics of virtually any novel (if you substitute ‘novel’ for ‘query’).

The bulk of a query should consist of 1) the main character, 2) what happens to complicate their life, 3) what goals they now have in response to that complication, and 4) the main obstacle between them and their goal. That is the cake of the query; everything else is just frosting and sprinkles.

Of course there’s an awful lot that needs to go into the writing of a novel that is just frosting and sprinkles but the cake is what most readers really want.

Click here to read the full, comprehensive posting.

Visit from Judith Murray

One of London’s leading literary agents, Judith Murray from Greene and Heaton paid our group a visit on Wednesday night. She has a number notable authors on her list, perhaps the best known being Sarah Waters.

Judith mentioned at one point that the part of the role of an agent was to be an author’s advisor and advocate — and she spoke with such enthusiasm and showed such huge knowledge of the publishing business that it wasn’t hard to imagine the excellent job she would perform looking after her clients. I’d be tempted to say the authors on her list are a lucky bunch but that would belie the huge amount of effort that we learned is involved from both writer and agent before Judith represents a writer.

That said, sometimes there has been an element of serendipity in the way that Judith has come across authors — Sarah Waters had been sending off her manuscripts to publishers’ slush piles without success until she mentioned in passing to her neighbour that she was looking for a publisher — the neighbour happened to be a colleague of Judith’s at the time who suggested that Sarah sent the book to Judith — and it all went from there. Apparently the first few chapters of ‘Tipping the Velvet’ were published virtually unchanged from how they’d appeared in the first manuscript — requiring next to no editing. That the novel went on to great success makes a couple of related points: firstly, the opening pages of ‘Tipping the Velvet’  must have languished unnoticed on various publishers’ slush piles; secondly, the later success of both novel and author show the value of an agent who is passionate about the work.

This need for the professionals in publishing to be passionate about a novel was also emphasised by our visitor last week, Francesca Main. Judith receives about  20-25 unsolicited submissions a day — and she reads them all — but is likely take on a smaller number of authors than that in a whole year — less than half a percent.

Clearly, to have a chance of making it into that small number of acceptances, the novel will need to immediately engage her interest. Moreover, she reads the submissions from a necessarily commercial angle — if she can’t immediately think of three or four editors (out of the large number she knows) who would also be interested in that type of novel then it would be uneconomic to progress any further. The book might be a great piece of work but if there’s no market for it then it’s a tough fact of life.

Judith was candid enough to admit that she has passes over books that have later gone on to be published with success — she turned down at least one novel that went on to win a literary prize. However, that book that wasn’t to her personal taste and an agent really has to love a writer’s work for the relationship to be a success.

As we find with our own readings in the class, everyone has different literary preferences, and being rejected by an agent is not necessarily a reflection on the quality of the work. Writers need to develop a thick skin to cope with rejection — a quality that might count as much as many facets of literary ability but, given how novel writing is often so bound up with one’s own personality, then such persistence and self-belief are probably some of the most difficult personal qualities that writers need to develop.

Judith’s tastes, incidentally, tend towards good literary writing — but of the sort that has a strong narrative and engaging characters. She’s not a fan of intentionally self-conscious, experimental writing, which she enjoys intellectually but she says there are other agents who specialise in such genres.

As Francesca mentioned the previous weeks, Judith also re-inforced the tough conditions in the publishing market at the moment — since September 2008 publishers have become much more risk adverse and have erred on the side of safe bets — principally established authors with a good sales track record or the amazingly talented and disciplined celebrity novelists who somehow manage to dash off a novel while appearing in their soap operas or reality TV series. That said, Greene and Heaton had a particularly good year in 2009.

Nevertheless, the market is very tough and publishers won’t invest in a new author unless they’re confident that booksellers will promote it — the 3 for 2 table at Waterstone’s or its equivalent in Amazon. And the publishers are expected to contribute to those promotion so there goes any hope of an advertising budget.

The need to drum up interest in a new author in these straitened times also explains the long lead time often experienced by a novel from a new writer. Any promising work that lands on Judith’s desk now might not be published until early 2012. This is because the publishers will try to create a ‘buzz’ about the author — try to get good word of mouth recommendation, or endorsement by influential bloggers, solicit favourable reviews and so on. There’s a lot of work goes on to attract interest and raise the novel’s profile — and often the author’s personality can make a big contribution to this effort (again, it’s becoming less of a world for shrinking violets).  Literary prizes are particularly important in boosting reputations.

Bearing in mind the long lead time, I asked a question about whether contemporaneously-set novels might be seen to date very quickly. Mine is set around now, or maybe in the last year, but would an agent think that in 2012 or 2013 that readers would think ‘Oh that’s so 2009’? On the other hand historical novels wouldn’t have that issue. The answer was not to worry — the main criterion is the quality of the writing by far.

All the work an agent does for an author was comprehensively outlined — including many aspects that most of us have hardly given a thought to, such as foreign rights. Essentially the agent is the author’s first professional reader and, as such, a good agent can use experience and contacts to guide an author right the way through the publishing process. An agent will offer sound advice throughout a writer’s career – and, given the investment in development of a new author, agents are interested in writers who offer the prospect of a long career (I hope that doesn’t mean that if you’re over 30 you’ve got no chance — let alone over 40).

One thing that authors in our position can’t expect, though, is a large amount of editorial intervention. While Judith really enjoys the process of working with an author to identify what might need to be improved in a novel, time-management pressures mean that she can’t help to substantially rewrite a novel. The writing has to be good in the first place. If it’s not then an agent won’t have the resources to turn prose that’s just OK into something better.

One piece of very useful advice, therefore, is don’t send work out to agents before it’s ready. The novel should be ‘good to go’ before it goes before an agent’s eyes. An agent generally won’t be able to give detailed feedback on novels that are rejected so it would be futile to send a first draft out and expect it to be returned with lots of detailed annotations on how it might be made better. Instead you’ll get a rejection but you’re not likely to know whether it was because the book as a concept was not commercial or because it was just sloppily written. At least if an author sends the best, most complete version of a novel then the chances of it being rejected on pure quality grounds are much reduced.

Similarly, there’s not much point sending in the first three chapters and a synopsis if the novel’s not complete. The agent might love it but won’t sign you up until he or she has read the whole novel — an agent needs to know if the writing can be sustained and developed over the course of a longer work.  We might get some useful encouragement but no deal until the book’s completed. That said, Judith is very enthusiastic about spotting new talent and supports events such as our course reading evening and she encouraged us all to contact her with our work.

So how to contact an agent? The covering letter is important and is the first thing that is read. The quality of the letter will say a lot about the quality of the submitted novel. It should be concise — but should give an idea of what the novel is — just something like ‘thriller’ will often be sufficient. Information about the author is important — and we shouldn’t underestimate the value of writing courses such as ours — saying you’ve written the novel during the City University Novel Writing Certificate course will definitely make an agent take the submission a lot more seriously. Judith will then read the first part of the novel and only if she’s interested will she then read the synopsis — any decision will be made primarily on the writing itself.

So many writers don’t do research on which agents to contact — and the result is that much effort is wasted when agents receive work in unsuitable genres and the like. So how do you find an agent who will love your work? Apart from the Writers and Artists Yearbook, one clever trick is to find a book by an author whose work is similar to your own and then look in the acknowledgement pages — so long as the relationship hasn’t exploded there should be some thanks given by the author to an agent.

Or you could sign up to the City University course and have a few of them come along to listen to you giving a personal reading of your work — more scary than putting an envelope in the post but, fingers crossed, more effective: Judith represents Kirstan Hawkins, a course alumnus, who spoke to us last term after the reading event a couple of years ago.