Two years ago this month, I shopped my manuscript to a handful of agents. By handful, I mean six. Two of them I had been in touch with via the Boston Writing Workshop. They both had the same response to my manuscript: “Loved the premise, but the writing isn’t what I’m looking for.”
I spent all of about fifteen minutes pondering what that meant and poring over my manuscript. Very quickly, it became apparent that I depending on some words more than others, that I wasn’t letting the reader immerse in the scenes, and that my turns of phrase were at times awkward.
It would have been easy to give up. I read Twitter often enough to know that others have felt the same way, and for lesser hurdles. But what drives me is the story, so I took steps to fix the issue.
First, I took a break from the book to study my writing more, and to study the writing of others. I used LeGuin’s Steering the Craft to work through my way with words. I’ll probably do it again this winter.
Second, I read—voraciously. For the first time in a while. I read all of the EarthSea Cycle. Radio Silence. The Temperature of Me and You. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Running with Scissors. The Stationery Shop. The entire 12 graphic novel set of Sandman. Parts of Lives of Girls and Women. Possessing the Secret of Joy. The Things They Carried. The stack of books by the bed is no smaller than it was before. I read like I was a thirsty man in the desert, desperately searching not just for story, but for words. Rebecca Wells’ reliance on scent. LeGuin’s exercise in warm colors. Munro’s description of a country road. I don’t know that we remember every word in a story. We remember the feelings words evoke, and that’s part of the challenge of writing: Did you get the precise words to capture the exact feeling?
The third thing I did was hire a former colleague as my editor. She did a no-holds-barred analysis of my manuscript, questioning anything that she either could not follow that did not ring true. She held up the mirror … no. She held up the magnifying glass, and made me look closely. In the process, she made me a better writer.
So why am I saying all this? No, I did not find an agent. Not yet. But I did begin shopping my manuscript again this weekend. I will shop it to more than a half dozen this time. There is no guarantee I will succeed, but there are always other options for sharing a story. And that’s where my allegiance lies: to telling a good story that people will want to read. In the meantime, I’m on to the next project, because … well, there’s always more to write, isn’t there?
Nicanor Abbott 