sarah eve kelly

I’m not a literary agent. You know why? Because I wouldn’t know where to begin; because I stand in ceaseless awe of what they accomplish and what they endure; because in any number of situations, I wouldn’t know what an agent should do. Nevertheless, I’m posting today not as a writer, but as a fairly decent human being, about what agents should not do.

Two days ago an agent received a bad query. A bad, arrogant, douchey query. You know how I know? Because this agent broadcasted it all over the web - not just the content of the query, but the bad, arrogant, douchey, unprofessional response said agent received when the author was confronted with her form rejection. And not only that, but the author’s name.

It is an occupational hazard of following agents on Twitter to see a lot of bad query snippets posted as object lessons in what not to do when you’re querying. And I have a lot of respect for setting strict submission guidelines and refusing to consider queries that don’t abide by them. I appreciate that agents try to teach writers lessons by telling them what not to do - and, more importantly, what to do to query well. But this particular case was not a lesson: it taught nothing. It was bullying and schoolyard antics at their viral worst.

Lashon hara is the Jewish prohibition against ‘talebearing’ or gossip. It is specifically targeted against the use of ‘true speech for wrongful purpose’. It’s right up there with murder and incest as an unforgivable sin against another human being. Lashon hara is aptly demonstrated by a 19th-century homily which gained worldwide fame in the 2008 film Doubt. The story goes like this: a man feels badly for having spread gossip, and consults his rabbi regarding how to make amends. The rabbi says, ‘Go to the roof of that building with a pillow and tear it apart, and let the feathers fly away.’ The man does this, and returns to the rabbi: ‘What do I do now?’ The rabbi says, ‘Now, go gather up all those feathers.’ It is as possible to rein back malicious gossip as it is to find every feather that was once in that pillow. It is, in a word, irreversible.

There is a specific exemption to the prohibition against lashon hara: the promulgation of true speech for a necessary purpose. As a warning, as a lesson. Airing out this query may have come within the outer boundaries of this exemption if it hadn’t devolved into a poetry contest mocking the author’s website, writing, and putative choice of underpants. People who query arrogantly are not, as a rule, arrogant people: they are usually desperately insecure people who shouldn’t be put in the stocks and subjected to public ridicule for an arrogant query. It is not only mean and bullying to no purpose whatsoever: it is dangerous. And at the very least, it is colossally unprofessional.

Who has gained from this? No one. To what purpose was it put? Yes, the query was bad, but what followed was like going after a squirrel with an AK-47. No one has gained, and this author has irretrievably lost, and for what? For one unsound move. You might say he was asking for it. The worst he was asking for was a sobering smackdown over email if the agent felt so strongly about his rudeness, not a kangaroo court.

Form rejections have one purpose: to save the agent’s very valuable time. When you get a form rejection, that’s it: no further correspondence required. This author thought he knew better, and responded. Bad move. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from my own dealings with agents - and with human beings, for that matter - it’s that usually, the best way to make a bad thing go away is to ignore it. This agent didn’t do that; this agent started a public circus. She certainly didn’t save herself any time.

Writers are constantly opining about that one writer who gives all writers a bad name. I saw a lot of that yesterday on Twitter and in the comments on the agent’s website: ‘Don’t judge all writers by that guy!’ ‘Don’t judge all Canadians by that guy!’ What about agents who give agents a bad name? To what standard are they meant to be held? How can an agent justify spending an entire business day hosting a poetry contest about this guy’s skivvies?

Readers, there are people who have resorted to self-harm and suicide because of a lot less than this guy’s been put through. Stable people; balanced people. And are writers, as a population, stable and balanced? Well, I’ll let you answer that.

That’s it for today. Back to high good humour soon.

Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c.

The ever-wonderful Editorial Anonymous posted this week about the fact that editors and agents shouldn’t be able to dash writers’ dreams by rejecting their manuscripts, the argument being two-fold: first, that it’s your manuscript, not all your dreams, that they’re rejecting; and second, that you have to come into this business armed with a better-than-average dose of confidence and thick skin if you expect to get anywhere. The premise is true, and the arguments are dead-on. Someone in the comment thread even likened the entire effort towards publication to auditioning for American Idol: you might feel a little sad for the brutal critiques these contestants are sometimes subjected to, but you must recall that they entered the arena with their eyes open - or, at the very least, should have done.

The only problem I have with this post is that it preaches to the choir. The people who agree are going to agree, and vociferously; and the people who don’t - the people who give all aspiring writers a bad name - are going to fight back with unintelligibly angry rants and manifestos about Talent and Callings and Publishing’s Missed Opportunities.

I was alerted to this post, as to so many things, by Twitter. The tweet called attention not so much to the post itself, but to the ‘defensive, whiny’ nature of the comments. I clicked on the link bracing myself for the kind of mountain of offal that makes all writers look bad, but what I found was this: agreement. From writers. Respect; professionalism. And down at the bottom of the thread, some disgruntled bint opining on how publishing’s got it all wrong, how the wrong people are rejected, and how the industry doesn’t entreat the people who write celebrity memoirs to work hard and play by the rules. There were about forty comments at this stage, and exactly two of them could be classified as ‘whiny’ or ‘defensive’. I pointed this out on Twitter - and after a little back-and-forth that did not raise my heart rate by a single beat - was summarily told to ‘chill the eff out’.

I believe in the rules. Agents and editors, hear me: I’m one of the good guys. I worked hard to get an agent, I take rejection well, and I’m learning to work harder and to work better. My only point was that I’m not the only one. The web has largely succeeded in pulling writers into line, and - for the good guys, anyway - has perhaps even gone too far: most of the writers I know live in terror of offending their agents, and think the most arbitrary and tiny acts could reduce their fitness for publication. These are people who queried properly and respectfully, who followed guidelines, who are stoic, hard workers - and (she says in a tiny voice) are enormously talented. Can we all be published if we do everything right? Of course not; nothing works that way. It’s a painful lesson, but it’s one we know. And we’re perfectly aware too that agents and editors are professionals like anyone else - there are good ones and bad ones - and only the bad ones are asking for unquestioning worship and deference. We know all that.

So I can only imagine that professionals in publishing are perpetually moved to write opuses convincing writers to behave because they see things in their inboxes that we don’t see. There are a lot of idiots out there, and guess what: none of them is going to read an agent’s or editor’s reasoned argument that things are the way they are for a reason. And if they do read, it’ll only be to spit venom in the comment threads and (I say it again) make the rest of us look bad. These are people who are beyond argument, and it’s not worth any professional’s time to attempt to engage them.

Over the past couple of years I’ve started to exist in a world (an online one, anyway) that understands how publishing works: that there are ‘good’ passes and ‘bad’ passes - that being good enough doesn’t mean you get a million-dollar advance, but that you’ll get a certain kind of rejection: the kind that invites further work, the kind that takes a moment to tell you what doesn’t work about your novel. You know who doesn’t know that? Our families. Try saying ‘I got a good pass’ to your mother or your best friend. All they hear is a door slamming; a rejection means that you’re not good enough, full stop. It means ‘She says she’s a writer but she’s just titting around.’ Anyone who’s serious about writing has to contend with this level of completely understandable ignorance in their personal lives all the time, unless he or she makes a resolution (as so many do) not to talk about writing at all. The ridicule to which you open yourself up when you decide to pursue writing professionally - not from agents, not from editors, but from your family and friends - is such that you’d have to be totally crazy to do it, or very serious, very committed, and ready for anything.

(NB: I’ve been ridiculously lucky with my family and friends, who are willing to listen and to understand how this works. But anyone who’s not family, or not a close friend, thinks (at best) that I’m giving myself airs or (at worst) that I’m a criminal idiot.)

The best part of Editorial Anonymous’s post was at the end: ‘We are not your fairy godmothers; we are your colleagues.’ Once again, the stoic, hard-working, talented writers understand this and don’t need to be told. The dissidents will dissent: it’s what they do. And so: if we’re colleagues, we’re colleagues, right? Everyone in publishing deals with rejection, not just writers. Agents pitch and get rejected. Editors take a beloved manuscript to acquisitions and get rejected. Hell, a book gets sold and printed and gets rejected by the public. This happens all the time. Most of the time the rejection is the right decision; sometimes it’s the wrong decision. It’s never not heartbreaking. But we are, as the post says, colleagues. This doesn’t just mean that writers have to take criticism and rejection with grace. It means that well-intentioned writers who play the game and follow the rules have to be treated with respect, whether or not they’re being rejected.

Speaking for myself, I’ve always been respectfully dealt with in a rejection situation - agents and editors have been kind and encouraging, some of them well beyond their remit. I don’t think it’s that system - speaking from my own experience - that’s problematic. What’s problematic is all these ‘colleagues’ mouthing off at the slightest provocation about how unprofessional other people in the industry are: editors about agents; agents about writers; writers about everyone. It gets up my nose to open Twitter and find another lambast against my lack of professionalism, and that of my writer-colleagues. It’s true that one manuscript isn’t the sum total of our dreams, and that no one can crush our dreams but us. But we work so hard - we open ourselves up to so much ridicule - and although we must take rejection and criticism in the spirit in which it was intended, there are few other professions which force its aspirants to eat so much shit when they haven’t done anything wrong. When, in fact, the only reason that they’re bothering to read these abuses is because they’re doing everything right.

No writer is asking for a parade. I’m certainly not. I just want the flow of vitriol to slow a little bit. You don’t spank every bloody kid on the block because one snuck into the cookie jar or broke the hi-fi. Go after the idiots all you want, but cut the rest of us a little fucking slack, all right? With all sincere respect.

Till next time, &c &c.

Ask anyone resident in Oxbridge about something called the X5 and you’ll get two things in rapid succession: a shudder and an anecdote. The X5 is a bus service, the only direct means of conveyance (failing a car or a coach and pair) between Oxford and Cambridge, and follows what’s known as the Misery Route, running through countless roundabouts and stopping in such cities as Bedford and Milton Keynes where, at 6:00pm, if you ask where you can buy a sandwich, the response you’ll get is, ‘What, at this time of night?’

The train is more comfortable, but requires the following (if you’re going from Cambridge to Oxford): a train from Cambridge to London King’s Cross, a tube ride to Liverpool Street station, and another hour’s train to Oxford. A return trip on the X5 is £15; the train will run you closer to £60.

All of this is in aid of saying this: I was in Oxford a month ago for a doctoral workshop. I had gotten there on the X5.

There is a Borders not far from the coach station, and I thought I’d indulge myself with a book for the perilous return journey, so in I went. Sometimes I buy a book, sometimes an audiobook; sometimes I just go into bookshops to survey the landscape. I usually traverse the entire shop some three or four times before I’ve taken everything in and can make a decision, if I make a decision at all.

One reason I take so bloody long in bookshops is my shallow attention span, coupled with the general character flaw of paralytic indecision. The other reason is that about half the time, I’m looking for good historical fiction, and it’s fucking impossible to find in any shop bigger than the palm of my hand.

A friend who used to work at Chapters-Indigo, a major bookshop chain in Canada, told me that historical fiction doesn’t have its own section in bookshops because there is no real consensus on what constitutes ‘historical’ fiction - how far back can you go? Should a novel, written now and set during the Vietnam War, be considered ‘historical’?

(Yes, if.)

Now, I’ve had to have a crash education in publishing, and I confess I know very little of what there is to know. But I’ve gotten this far in life without putting the palm of my hand on a hot element or trying to lick a flagpole in subzero weather, so I credit myself with some minimal measure of common sense, and it strikes me that it would behoove authors, the consuming public, publishing houses and major bookshop chains for said presses and chains to agree on a few simple definitions.

Historical fiction is, very simply, this: a story set before the author’s lifetime. Novels don’t become ‘historical’ novels just because they get old - Jane Eyre is not historical. The Picture of Dorian Gray is not historical. Nevertheless, A Tale of Two Cities is historical, as is Barnaby Rudge - both were set (during the French Revolution and the Gordon Riots, respectively) before Charles Dickens’s lifetime. A simple rule, yes? So a novel set during the Vietnam War could legitimately be called ‘historical’. If.

See, this is what bothers me. Agents invite queries from authors of historical fiction, a solid category of fiction. Agents then pitch to editors who invite pitches for historical fiction, still a solid category. A historical novel is sold because it meets a given standard and sparks interest or pleasure in an editor at a press and his or her superiors. Throughout this entire process - writing the novel, the query process, the pitching process, and the acquisitions process - the work itself remains a work of historical fiction.

The happy ending for this novel is that it goes into bookshops and gets lost.

Philippa Gregory has done historical fiction an enormous service by sparking renewed interest in the genre with her novels. Sarah Waters and Hilary Mantel, both nominees (and Mantel the winner) on the Booker shortlist this year, have performed similar feats. Historical fiction is a big genre right now. But what if the reader’s interest is sparked and he or she wants to read something else? Where to turn? People who like historical fiction are no different from people who like crime fiction or science fiction or fantasy fiction (all understood categories in bookshops), and yet they have to sift through massive FICTION sections in bookshops to find something that might maintain this interest. The end result is that it’s very difficult to break out in historical fiction, because people know to look for Gregory under G, but can’t browse for anyone else without getting lost.

The reason I started this post with a pointless anecdote about Oxford is that in the Borders I browsed through (ultimately buying nothing), there was a section taking up half of one wall called TEEN VAMPIRE NOVELS. I can tell you I just about lost my shit. I am friends with people who write books which will end up on that shelf; I respect them and like their writing. I also understand that ‘teen vampire novel’ is a category not requiring a lot of deduction or ingenuity to define. But seriously: historical fiction doesn’t require that much more ingenuity. If an author and a press together decide to market a book as historical fiction, doesn’t it just pants everyone involved if the book can’t easily be found by its target audience once it’s on sale?

The best readers of historical fiction can do at the moment is share their finds: my favourites, for the record, include Suzannah Dunn, Hilary Mantel, and Patricia Finney. Historical fiction isn’t by any stretch all I read, but when I want to read it, I’d like to know where I can find it.

And so ends my shabbos rant. Till next time, &c &c.