Category: Tutor News

A Word On Agents
Marti Leimbach

A writer may think of agents in London, New York and elsewhere as gateways to publication in a major house, or she may consider them as fortresses that barricade her from the world of publishing and all her hopes in that direction.

They are both, of course.  At times, they may seem elusive, discouraging, and wholly disinterested in anyone who isn’t already in the media with a grand following. They attend parties and launches and awards dinners for already-established authors, and appear to have no interest whatsoever in bringing aspiring authors into the fold.

By contrast, agents can dazzle you with attention. Sell a few stories, or appear in a newspaper article with what seems like a good non-fiction idea, or have another writer slip your manuscript into the right hands, and suddenly you are treated like a celebrity. The same agent assistants who once protected their boss from you now crowd around, telling you how much they love your manuscript. The assistants are smart and educated and often the daughters of terribly famous other authors. They present you to an agent who has a list of the best prospective editors for your work, ideas of how to sell your foreign rights, and enormous confidence in your future. You go out to lunch and your agent wants to talk about you, your book, and even your next book. Finally, you’ve entered the beguiling and heady love affair that is the author/agent relationship, with your life’s work at its centre, and it feels just great.

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On Letting go of a Novel

Wendy Brandmark

The launch of novel is an odd experience. Suddenly a book which never let go of me, no matter how exasperated I became with the puzzle of its story and bothersome group of characters, is finally making its way in the world.

My second novel, The Stray American, came out just before Christmas. I’ve been delighted to hear from readers who identify with Larry’s lonely journeys through London, who enjoy the comedy and have favourite characters and scenes. The novel is no longer mine. It’s true there were editors and writers who read the book before it was published, whose comments affected the revisions: the ending changed and most recently the title. But I miss the writing of the very first drafts when a tangle of relationships emerged from what had been just an image of expatriate Americans in London.

When asked why she wrote, poet Denise Levertov once said, ‘I like to make a thing.’ We spend much time thinking about agents and publishers. Somehow a book is not alive until it is published, and we as writers can only be validated in this way. But looking back, I think the real satisfaction was in early days when the novel began to take shape. That lone journey.

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MSt tutor Wendy Brandmark’s novel The Stray American is published by Holland Park Press.

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MSt tutor Patrick McGuinness has been awarded the Duff Cooper prize for his novel,  Other People’s Countries, a Journey into Memory (Jonathan Cape)

“A stunning piece of lyrical writing, rich in narrative and character – full of fresh ways of looking at how we grow up, how we remember, how we start to make sense of the world.”

The Duff Cooper Prize “celebrates the best in non-fiction writing”.

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