and so the search begins…

So anyway, I’ve been spending my time writing – trying to get the first novel of my saga ready for sending off to agents.
It hasn’t been easy, but with help from my girl, and a little from my older sister’s mother-in-law-to-be, I think it’s there. The earliest document pertaining to it that I can find on my computer is dated March 2010. So it’s taken well over two years to get it done. The saga story as a whole, much longer. I got the first plot points of the first story (fifth book) written when I was still in high school, which was over a decade ago. Ten years of knowing the characters, the places, the story, and finally I’m getting somewhere.

I spent a day and a bit working on the synopsis–nightmare, getting that to fit on one page–and much of yesterday went on picking out which agencies I should send to. Then I spent a few hours this morning knocking my covering letter together.

I thought I was ready to send it all off, when I realised that I didn’t have the header on any of the documents. That took a while to fix, because adding the header to the synopsis meant that the main body of text went over onto a second page, which isn’t allowed. Had to do even more chopping to get that right, but I’m confident it’s still of good quality. Hopefully good enough quality that the agents who read it will be intrigued enough to read the first three chapters and–you never know–request the rest of the manuscript.

Anyway, once again I thought I was ready to send it all off, but I thought I’d have one more check to see it was right – paranoid as I am. And good thing, too – when I’d cut the first three pages from the full manuscript and pasted them into a new document, I’d forgotten to add the page numbers.
Usually that’s an easy fix, but for some reason when I tried to add them to the three chapters, they only appeared on selected pages. I think the text was split into different styles (despite it all being the same style), so it only picked up on a few of the styles and wouldn’t show on others. I had to go through and add the numbers on each page individually. I definitely got them all – I double checked. Then I got it all together again, and I sat here for a while contemplating my first rejection. Which might not come for three months, yet. And I sent it off.

I think I’ll send some more (or at least one more) this evening. I’m trying not to rush anything, though, because–as you can see from the above–mistakes will sneak in, and literary agents aren’t looking for reasons to accept manuscripts, they’re looking for excuses to reject them. Each agency can get around three thousand manuscripts every year, and they usually only take on one or two new clients.

Do I think I’m good enough to be one of those two, for one of the agencies out there? Honestly? I don’t know. I do know that I’m good, and that if I work at it all my life, I will get there at some point. But if that point will be any time soon, I really can’t say. I’m confident that the story I’ve written is good, but I’m not confident about an agent will think they can sell it. They’re probably much more likely to pick up something that’s going to attract attention, rather than something that needs to be carted around, and while I’m confident that people would like the story if they read it, I don’t think agencies or publishers will share that opinion; I don’t think they’ll take the risk.

Happy to be proved wrong, of course, and fingers crossed I will be. If I’m not, I’ll have to go back to the manuscript and see if there’s a way I can change it to make it more marketable. The alternative is to go with self-publishing, which in some ways would be better, because I can sell direct to the reader, who I’m confident will like it. But it would require me to trawl through forums and the like marketing it, and trying to get interest up. Then, again in theory, word of mouth would pick up, more people would read, and I’d see the sales figures going up to reflect that.

I’d much rather go through an agent, though, if I can. Cross your fingers an agent or two ask to read the full thing. That’ll be a nice first step.