Looking for an Agent

         Literary agents are the essential prerequisites for getting published. Don’t have one? Then you can’t get published. They are the cup of gold at the end of the rainbow – the shiny, imaginary light that all amateur writers aspire too. But for most writers winning the lottery would be easier, and that’s without even buying a ticket. That’s because securing the services of an agent is hard – nigh on impossible. I’ve been working at this for approximately twelve years now – writing e mails, typing up synopses, listing influences, and selecting extracts from my books. All to no avail. At the moment, it seems like there’s more chance of King Arthur rising from his tomb than there is of me being accepted by an agent. Other than a brief dabble in the Fortean world of Amazon I remain completely unpublished. For unpublished read unknown and unloved. Same difference really. There are vampires that have seen more light of day than my novels.

        Now I know what you are thinking – because to tell you the truth I have been thinking it too lately – what if I’m no good? What if all this is just delusion, a mid-life crisis-turned-book-writing-fantasy? Because it’s possible, isn’t it? There are bad writers everywhere, even those in print. What if I’m one of those? What if my books are what the readers scoff at in the Agent’s mailroom? I can imagine the discussion now

        “It’s one of Wolfenden’s again!” 

        “Any good?” 

        “Same old dross.”

        “Figures. When will he give up?” 

        The young woman shrugs. “Send the e-mail. Maybe this will be his last one.”

        “Hope so; this is getting tedious.”

        The e-mail I’m referring to is the Agents’ dreaded rejection slip. It is short and horribly concise – calculated so that whoever sends it spends the least amount of time on it before saying adios and heading to other more important tasks, such as hobnobbing with actual published writers and not deadbeat losers like me.

        Over the course of my writing career, I have received hundreds of these e-mails. It’s a wonder that I haven’t given up.

        Why haven’t I then?

        Other writers do. Most writers struggle to complete their first novel, never mind write a dozen in the face of overwhelming rejection and failure. So why don’t I quit? Surely, there must be other things that I can be getting on with?

        Such as?

        Such as playing with my phone on my daily to commute to school, or else watching tv. Unproductive things like that. The problem is that aside from not giving up on my publishing dream, I find that writing helps my mood and gives me something to aim for outside the daily grind. It’s a part of who I am. Without it I’d be a more stressed, more depressed version of myself. One with no goals, no ambitions. So, I can’t stop writing. Not now. Not ever. I will keep writing until the end, which I hope is a long way off. As distant as Pluto or one of the blurry moons of Alpha Centauri.

        So how to get an agent then?

        I thought that by now the various U.K. agents would have viewed my persistence as a good thing, and that all I needed to do was send off one more novel and I’d be gobbled up like a mouse in a den of snakes. But it hasn’t happened. Indeed, I’ve come to the realization that it won’t happen. I could be sending off my novels for the next hundred years and it won’t make a blind bit of difference. As I’m an anonymous writer living in China, there’s no way an agent will take a chance on me. Not when their lists are almost full, and they have hundreds of U.K.-based writers pecking away at them on a daily basis. Something has to change. I have to do something different. What then?

        This blog for a start. I am going to start marketing myself – writing blogs, making videos and recording podcasts etc. I will change the way I approach the literary business not because I want to, but because I have to. To survive and to be read, I must get published. And that means stepping out of my comfort zone and taking more risks. If for no other reason than to draw more attention to myself and my work.

        All life is struggle. The world of literature is no different. I must move with the times and change. But above all I must not give up. The stories and characters that I‘ve created depend upon it.

        Wish me luck.