I do not intend to do anything else related to dragons for a jolly long time to come.
I have spent today rewriting and underwriting, and scowling, and finally investigating agents.
I have now sent my speculative story off to six agents in grand total, and that is enough. Until this six start telling me to buzz off, I will not bother again.
Actually, if they tell me to buzz off I will be encouraged. My experience of literary agents so far is that they tend to just ignore me.
One of our lecturers explained that you have got to say lots of very flattering things in your letter, because all literary agents have got massive egos. This made me laugh, because from what I have read about literary agents, this is exactly what they think about writers. In any case it seemed somewhat insincere to say flattering things about people you have never met and about whom you know nothing apart from their heavily edited Google biography. Presumably they are sufficiently worldly to be perfectly well aware that you are just being smarmy.
In any case, I didn’t. I couldn’t think of anything that might sound sincere.
Dear beautiful agent. I have heard that you are charming and very clever indeed and bursting at the seams with loveliness, please read my book.
I do not think I would need to hold my breath.
In any case as soon as I had sent the last one out I was engulfed by a gloomy conviction that the whole thing was probably the most ghastly rubbish, and I was wasting my time anyway. I wondered about doing a bit more rewriting in order to diminish the rubbishness of it, but closed the computer firmly and hobbled off to get on with the rest of my life. I still have a very fat, purple foot.
I am not going to do anything else writerly for a while, apart from things for my course. I remembered to my dismay that I have still got to prepare a piece for a Zoom thing tomorrow, and also have got to write the last assignments of the year, which have got to be handed in soon, although I have no idea when.
I have just looked. It is the fifth of June which is no time at all.
I just sighed deeply although obviously you could not hear me. I do not even know what I am going to write about. It has got to be non-fiction so I can’t even go on about dragons.
Dearie, dearie me. I can’t even go on a long walk and contemplate my creative muse, because I stumped across the road to the supermarket this afternoon, and was feeling very miserably self-pitying indeed by the time I got back.
I considered digging my paints out and starting on the Christmas Advent calendars whilst I am laid up, but I couldn’t think of anything I might like to paint except possibly a dragon dressed as Father Christmas, and then thought wearily that if nobody wants to buy this story then dragon pictures would have a very sour sort of taste by Christmas.
I need to stop thinking about dragons.
I keep remembering our tutors’ warnings that all of them have written at least six unpublished novels for every one that has been published, I do not know how they have the patience. Also I do not know where they find the time.
I am going to leave this and think about something else. I do not know what. I feel like the sort of amusing party game where somebody says: Now whatever you do, don’t think about dragons. Not at all. What is big and green with wings? and obviously you say dragon not fat parrot.
I am going to go away and think about non fiction and Christmas.
