Guest: Joanna Swainson Slush Reader for a literary agency

Please welcome Joanna Swainson, reader with a literary agency, who has agreed to answer a few questions on this blog.

Please could you tell us a little about your job?

I read a lot! We get hundreds of manuscripts every week across the different genres. I read the women's and general fiction that comes in - so anything that isn't non-fiction, crime/thriller or childrens/YA comes to me. If there is something I think the boss will like, I pull it out of the pile and leave it for him to look at with a brief summary of why I think it's good. If he likes it we will request the full. If he really likes it, we will ring the author straight away.

Are you given a specific steer by the Agent of what he is looking for?
The agent is very, very clear about what he is looking for. He told me in no uncertain terms when I joined the agency and he repeats his mantra on a regular basis. For him, a great character(s) is the single most important thing. Next it's story and plot. The writing comes third because he's prepared to work with an author to fix that.
It's quite strange really - I am not reading for myself, so have had to reject things that I liked, knowing they weren't going to be suitable for the agency. These tended to be things that were more in the way of literary fiction which is not what the agency covers - we are out and out commercial. Luckily I love commercial fiction too!

We hear stories of how bad the quality of the slushpile is. In your experience is this true?

I heard those stories, too, so was surprised by how competent the slushpile is. It's not dire, no. That said, in order to get picked out a manuscript has to have something pretty sparkly about it and I'm afraid that's pretty rare. I can understand why the slushpile gets such a bad press - agents have so much to do - but since my job is to read and only to read I can look on it quite kindly. If it wasn't for the slushpile I wouldn't have such a great job!

What depresses you?
Manuscripts imbued with cynicism, arrogant characters that have no wit or verve or anything else going for them, and authors who for some reason don't like the characters they have created.
Sometimes the ideas can get a bit repetitive. The number of manuscripts I've read about internet dating, for example, which are the thinly disguised experiences of the author - but that's not so much depressing as... here we go again!

What gets you really excited?

When you 'hear' that elusive voice and you just know you've got something special. Then when others in the agency read it and we all love it. I've had really buzzy days in the office like that.

Have you made any ‘discoveries’?

Two of my 'finds' have been signed so far. That's two out of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts I've read, so it just goes to show. That said, sometimes I pick things out where the agent has thought it's not quite right for us, but we encourage the author to send us their next thing.
In the time that I've worked there, other authors have been signed, but they haven't come via the slushpile. They come through recommendations from existing authors or writers' conferences and such like. One recent author handed one of our staff a manuscript at a party. It turned out to be absolutely brilliant. So there are other ways.

Apart from reading the slush, what else do you do with the agency?

Sometimes an agent will ask me for a second opinion on something so I'll have a read of their manuscripts. I do readers reports and give editorial notes. I had some web designing skills from previous work I'd done, so I redid our whole website and I help keep it up to date.

Do you get to meet any celebrities or go to any fancy parties?

From what I can gather, big parties are a thing of the past but they do happen every so often. I did go to a glamorous book launch the other night where there were lots of recognisable faces. Our writers are writers proper, though, and we don't have 'celebs' on our books so it's perhaps not so relevant to our agency.

What advice would you give to the aspiring writer?

My advice would be pretty mundane: write and write and write, read authors who you want to write like and really study them. Above all be rigorous and ruthless with yourself.
If you can delight in the process of writing that's a bonus because I think that always comes across in the good manuscripts that I read.

Thank you Joanna.

Stormy Seas

Yesterday was a day of wild westerlies. We took the coast path round Portland Bill and watched the swell roll in and crash onto the rocks. Salt spray was in my hair and on my lips. I love it when it’s wild and windy like this.

Today the copies of our Writers Group anthology – The Hangman Inn arrived. This was a lot quicker than I expected and I think the group are going to be pleased. I took the proof along to show them on Thursday. Quite few people are going to be giving them as Christmas presents.

I’m not sure I’m going to take on editing something like this again in a hurry though. It was hard work – especially when people sent me files in weird formats or didn’t wrap their text!! I’ve got an awful lot more respect for the editors of all those short story anthologies and magazines out there as a result of this little exercise.

And as for the rewrite? It’s chugging along. Life seems to be getting in the way a bit though – what with Halloween just gone and Guy Fawkes night to come – not to mention Christmas looming on the horizon!

I must keep on reminding myself – make time to write!

Relics of a Darker Age

A fine Sunday afternoon and everyone is out enjoying the sunshine. A hanglider hugs the cliffs whilst dog walkers throw sticks into the surf on the beach below. Jetskis and windsurfers skim the waves and down at the Smugglers Inn people soak up the sunshine and sip their beer.

Today the bay is a wide playground, but here and there we come across reminders of a darker time – a time when the threat of invasion was very real, and the coastline was fortified. A time of war.
As you walk along the coastpath, you could easily pass these by. The brickwork still stands, overgrown with brambles and nettles; machine gun emplacements looking out across the bay, reminding us that things here were once very different.

But even today not everything is as it seems, for there a four large ships tied up in the shelter of the bay. There’s a storm out there somewhere. But me? I’m eating ice-cream and playing with my children in the sand.

The Hangman Inn

The Hangman Inn is an anthology of poetry and prose produced by the Yeovil Cre8tive Writers with yours truly here has been busy editing. It’s been hard work but I have to admit I’m very pleased with the result. We have such a diverse and talented group and it showcases the broad spectrum of writing styles and genres that we cover. The cover art was kindly produced for us by the very talented Wayne Chisnell.

The theme of the anthology is the Pub, The Hangman Inn, which is situated on a lonely country road to the south of Yeovil and the stories had to feature the pub in some way, and any point during its history. I even produced a photograph of said pub for inspiration.

Of course, this isn’t the Hangman Inn at all – the Hangman Inn is purely fictional!

What made me laugh though was when several members of the group suggested that maybe we could have our Christmas do there. Another suggested that the landlord might like a copy, and another spent ages searching for it on a map. They all looked so disappointed when I broke it to them that The Hangman Inn doesn’t really exist. (well I’m sure there’s a Hangman Inn somewhere – there’s bound to be!). But I guess it had become real for us.

The proof copy has finally arrived and it’s looking good. I’ll be ordering up the rest of them so that we can give it a launch in November at the next Prose Café, and we can all get copies for Christmas!

Anyway, I’m afraid you won’t be able to buy a copy unless you come along to one of our Prose Café’s at the Octagon Theatre in Yeovil. Sorry.

Why We Should Plot

Plotting isn’t for everyone. I know some writers who like to sit down with no idea where a story is going and see what evolves as they write. When I first started I did this. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I really need to plot.

When I write a short story I need to know, in my head, exactly what is going to happen – and, with the short form in particular, how it is going to end, since a short story always needs a powerful ending.

But the same applies to novels. At the very least I need to know how it is going to end, but with a much bigger canvas to work with, I’m finding it more important to know what the twists and turns along the way are going to be. I guess plotting has never been my strongest point. But this is something I really need to crack.

For, even though I thought I’d done enough plotting for the WIP before I started, I seem to have come unstuck. One of my characters, who I’d clearly not thought carefully enough about, managed to involve herself in the story for far longer than she was needed, and now I’ve had to go back and write her out of the last five chapters!!

I think I need to do a bit more work on the plot for this one before I go any further!!

But for now it can sit and gestate at the back of my mind – I’m up to my eyeballs in the ‘novel-formerly-known-as-Myth-Making’ rewrite – and I need to make sure the plot is solid in this one too!

One Step Forwards

And two steps back. At least, that’s what it feels like. Although in reality it’s actually all forwards.

What am I talking about you ask? The answer is that elusive gold-dust of Agent feedback.

I’ve posted about my Agent hunt before, and I know I’ve been quiet on the subject – well that was because I was busy rewriting, and then resubmitting, and now…. More Agent feedback, and it’s back to the drawing board.

I was just about to crack on with the WIP, but that will have to wait. There’s another rewrite to be done for this one, and some major changes to be made.

The Journey to Publication

The wonderful How Publishing Really Works blog has just announced a new series of articles coming our way – stories of people’s routes to publication. This is going to be really interesting, I can tell.

As an aspiring author, published in short fiction but as yet unagented and without a book deal for any of my novels, I find these sorts of stories of hard work and determination wholly inspiring. It makes me feel if they can do it then so can I, if I just stick with it, work hard, improve my writing and come up with that killer idea!

So pop over there and take a look. The first will be posted tomorrow.