I am delighted to announce that I have signed a book deal with Swiss publisher Bergli Books for a non-fiction book about Switzerland. I believe this country is hopelessly misunderstood and a little unloved. Armed only with a cheap laptop, I intend to stress-test the stereotypes, and change the narrative about Switzerland.
People always say you should write the book only you could write. That’s what I’m doing now. I came to Switzerland in 2003 on the love train (actually an Aer Lingus flight to Geneva). Since then I have experienced the country on many levels – as an immigrant, a journalist, a foreign spouse, and mother of three Swiss children.
Churchill famously said that Russia was a riddle, inside a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. At times Switzerland has felt like that to me too. But over the past decade of covering Swiss news for swissinfo.ch, and navigating everyday life, I feel I have stripped away the layers and got closer to understanding the Swiss soul. I’m ready to share the good and the bad about the Swiss.
This book will introduce readers to the real face of Switzerland, from presidents to poets, from bankers to street sweepers. At the same time it will paint a faithful picture of the political, cultural, economic and historic landscape.
Recently I wrote about rejection on this blog because it was becoming my specialized subject. I was getting used to it. In fact I was even getting good at it. After all that I can’t tell you how good it feels to take this long-awaited step towards being an author.
The title of the book has yet to be confirmed. The release date is also still being worked out by teams of experts (well maybe one small team), but I’m expecting it to be sooner rather than later. In the meantime I have a lot of work to do and will keep you posted on progress.
I’ll leave you with one small interesting fact. Bergli Books is an imprint of the Swiss publisher Schwabe, which was established in Basel in 1488, making it the oldest publishing house in the world.
Hi, my name is Clare and I’m a submitting writer. It’s been one day since my last rejection. This post goes out to all those who are submitting their work to agents, competitions, journals or the man in the moon. Big hugs everyone.
Rejection ALWAYS comes when I least expect it. Thanks smartphone. The latest polite message came when I was walking aimlessly around a forest. Tip: rope parks are more fun for kids than for the accompanying adult on the ground.
Every rejection is a test of your BELIEF in yourself and your work.
Accept the CHALLENGE! One particular person at one particular point in time cannot or does not wish to take this specific piece of work. Change the person, the time and the piece and anything is possible.
DESPAIR will make an appearance with each rejection. Keep it brief. Just let the big D come and go again and you’ll be fine. Treat the two imposters just the same and all that.
In the old days writers waited for the postman. Now the poison dart is sent by EMAIL and you will hear a ding before you are struck. Assume the crash position and click!
You come to treasure the personalized rejections because they contain precious FEEDBACK. We will take these crumbs from the publishing table because, you know, starvation. Hearing that my story was “strongly crafted” gives me wings.
Submission GUIDELINES. They are serious about this S**T. Ignore at your peril.
HOWEVER. This word comes after something half positive like “I genuinely liked the work” or “I enjoyed reading your chapters”. It means no.
INSIDE job. Don’t get all bitter about other people getting published because of some perceived unfair advantage. Authors get dropped by publishing houses all the time. You still have your chance.
JUST be yourself. Authentic work is what counts. There is no point trying to mould your writing to fit a particular fashion. Anything that is popular now is likely to be old hat by the time you are submitting and your version won’t ring true.
KNOWLEDGE The publishing industry is just that, an industry. Don’t be a total ingénue. Do your homework and be preprared for a long apprenticeship.
You’ve got to LAUGH a little, cry a little, until the clouds roll by a little.
“Could you send me the full MS?” These words herald a good day. The great big hot air balloon of hope rises but you need to pull it back down quickly. At the very least it will lead to precious feedback.
NETWORK. I’m not talking about stalking agents, although twitter is good for building up a picture of someone. The best networking you can do is among peers who support each other and pass on valuable information.
ORGANISATION is a key part of perseverance. Do the research and keep a record of every submission and whatever progress it makes. Keep a note of what agents / journals are looking for. Could save you legwork the next time.
Nobody likes to be ignored but that doesn’t mean we can break the golden rule of submitting. Be POLITE. You don’t want to end up the star of the ‘crazy author’ anecdote at the annual agents’ bash.
QUITTING. Don’t even think about it. If Donal Ryan sent his second book out to 45 agents, I’m not giving up after 16 and neither are you. But don’t forget to write the next book or story. Helps take the sting out of things.
Be prepared for RADIO silence from time to time. It happens. Even after a request for a full manuscript. Some agents simply cannot keep up with their correspondence. Not to be taken personally.
STANDARD rejection. ‘Not right for my list.’ ‘Unable to offer representation at this time’. ‘He’s just not that into you,’ as Miranda would say. If you are getting annoyed by standard rejections, try drafting your own to see if you can do any better.
Submitting is a quest and should retain at least a modicum of enjoyment and optimisim. If it’s becoming a grim obsession give yourself some TIME OUT.
Don’t UNDERESTIMATE how long the process of submission is. Putting together a good submission takes time and effort. Multiply that by a large number and then add the waiting game. We are in this for the long haul or we might as well forget it.
VANITY. Actually this should be PRIDE but I’ve already used up my P. We all want recognition but don’t let pride become too central in this quest. Modesty is the best policy.
WORD count. The devil is in the detail. 10,000 words, the first three chapters, one-page synopsis, under 500 words, less than 3,000 words. Read the fine print.
The eXCEL sheet is where you keep track of all the rejections. Date sent, name, email, submissions policy, response. Mine is colour coded (I know). After each rejection I upate the file and I feel back in control. An important little ritual.
YES! One day you too will be asked to the ball and you will be able to smile and say YES!
ZEN is the only way. The writing is one thing and the business is the other. The hard truth is that not everyone can get picked for the team so let’s keep this in perspective. Life outside writing has to be more important.
When you say you’ve written a novel, it’s common enough to be asked whether you’ve considered self-publishing. I usually mumble something non-committal about it being too much to take on, not the direction I want to take. But what is really holding me back?
Think of the pre-published author as a wannabe sailor. Actually want-to-be doesn’t cover it. This is someone who has dedicated years to developing their knowledge of sailing, they’ve bought all the gear, read all the books and bored everybody around them with their endless nautical talk. The only problem is they’ve never actually been out on the water.
Down at the harbour is the old respected yacht club. This is the gateway to sailing, the place where real sailors congregate. There are experts on hand, hot showers, a state-of-the art marina and opportunities to crew on fantastic yachts every day.
The sailing enthusiast grew up hearing about this yacht club and their only wish is to join the yacht club and become a real sailor. But the yacht club is exclusive. There is a long waiting list and the club selects only a handful of new members every year.
Why not just buy a little sailing dingy and launch it from the public slipway at the other end of the harbour? They’ll have to get the boat there themselves, carry it down to the water and drag it back up again. There may not be any wind the day they manage to get all this together but they will be sailing. They will have their place on the ocean. Why sit on the shore and wait when they might never get a chance to sail at all?
Here are five reasons why the single-handed option doesn’t appeal to me.
1. Drop in the ocean. Self-publishing has become hugely popular with close to 450,000 titles published per year! This massive democratisation of the sector has created legions of new readers and new writers and that’s a great thing. But it also means an incredibly crowded space for authors to be trying to catch a wind. Most of those little dinghies are still stuck inside the harbour and this is a frustrating place to be. Only a tiny minority make it out into the bay where they can pick up speed.
2. All hands on deck. Self-publishing requires strong project management and entrepreneurial skills and there is no avoiding the out-of-pocket costs, knowledgeably listed by Jann Alexander in this recent post:
Publishing is a teamwork-based business best navigated with the help of an agent. Do you really want to have to sort out the cover design, proofreading, printing and distribution on top of writing your next book? And I haven’t even mentioned marketing.
3. Pieces of eight. This is the part that gives me the shivers. The people I see who appear to be making a success of the self-publishing route have a big author platform and often a big personality to go with it. All their social media is strategic. They are manically engaging with people not based on any organic process of interaction but because they are pumping energy into an online presence that has to work for them – ALL THE TIME. Sometimes intelligent and interesting, sometimes inspiring but also a little bit scary.
4. Ship shape. No matter how much has changed in the publishing game in the past decade, having one’s work chosen by the industry as worthy of publication is still the most important measure of quality. It’s not that established publishing houses aren’t guilty of publishing poorly written books or that masterpieces can’t be found among the half a million. It’s just that self-publishing is an open door and that unavoidably lowers the value of the group.
5. Deep water. From what I’ve seen, self-published authors fall into two categories. There are the crusaders for whom self-publishing is a quasi-political movement and there are the pragmatists who have opted for self-publishing as the only viable way to get their book read, usually after trying and failing to go the traditional publishing route. The pragmatists are making the best of things and may even turn into crusaders in time but underneath it all you can sense the strain.
Obviously I’ve stretched the nautical analogy to the absolute limit at this point and probably managed to reveal how little I know about both sailing and publishing in one fell swoop. I’m aware that publishing your own work takes a lot of courage and dedication and that this discussion can be quite divisive. What are your thoughts? Is it possible to like one option without loathing the other?
(Please check out Marc Kuhn’s response to this post on his blog. A former radio journalist, Marc lives in Florida and is the author of two children’s novels and two adult novels.)
Writing is a very private and personal affair; publishing is anything but. I seem to be hearing a lot lately about published writers living not so happily-ever-after once their first book is out there. They have to deal with changes they were pressured into making, a title or cover they don’t like, poor sales or reviews, stressful book promotion and the pressure to get the next book written or accepted.
On some level I must be taking this in and yet it has about the same effect as hearing about someone else’s unhappy marriage, when you and your chosen one are still love-struck and kissing on a park bench.
So just to celebrate the journey, here are ten great things about writing while it’s all about passion:
1. Just the Two of Us: You spend a lot of time together and you’ve been through a lot. The characters have become real people whose unfolding stories keep you from ever feeling bored. After that long process of building a relationship sentence by sentence, you are protective of your manuscript. Nobody who isn’t hand-picked by you will get to comment on your work. You’re slightly unhinged about the book but who cares, it’s mine, all mine!
2. Dream a Little Dream: If you haven’t tried to get published yet, you haven’t tasted failure and this is the time when you can still dream big. On your first query letter, the agent will instantly get back to you asking for more and it will be love at first sight for him or her. This will be followed by a bidding war, a fabulous launch party, the big reaction, the prizes, translations, interviews. Who will play your lead character in the hit movie?
3. Sitting on the Dock of the Bay: There has to be a certain self-imposed pressure or you would never have got as far as finishing the book, but it is self-imposed and therefore adapted to your reality and routine, and, well, if you keep extending your deadline, no one minds but you.
4. Wild World: This may not apply if you have started submitting your novel but before that phase, you are delightfully naïve about the whole publishing business. That innocence is something you’ll probably miss someday.
5. All By Myself: You know the argument, partly because successful self-published authors are very vocal about it. Agents are the gatekeepers to a moribund publishing industry that excludes good books from reaching the audience they deserve. You can spend your life crying over your forty rejection slips or take matters into your own hands and bring out your own book. Better still, don’t even bother submitting to agents and publishers, put your energy into self-publishing and reap the rewards.
When you are still writing you can ignore this whole debate, as it’s only academic – for now.
6. It Had to Be You: Somewhere out there is someone who will like your work, believe in what you do and put their heart and soul into getting your book off the ground. You haven’t met them yet, but when you do find the one, it will all have been worthwhile. In the meantime, you can dream about getting the call.
7. You’re So Vain: If you haven’t had the good fortune of having your book chosen by an agent or a publisher then you won’t have experienced the begrudgery backlash that inevitably comes with success. Even writing buddies you laboured uphill with may not be immune from thinking sour thoughts about you.
8. Learning to Fly: Writing your first novel is special because it’s an intense learning process, and that makes it very interesting. You can do the learning in advance or learn as you go about point-of-view, antagonists, show-don’t-tell, foreshadowing, revising. Either way it’s a pleasure.
9. With a Little Help from My Friends: Since I started writing two years ago I have met many wonderful people – some in person and some through social media – who have been bitten by the same bug. Some I now count as friends, whose support and understanding light the way on this sometimes lonely journey.
10. When I Wish Upon a Star: Before you write a book, there has usually been a long period of carrying around that wish and doubting your ability ever to achieve it. That fantastic feeling of satisfaction when you get to the last page is for keeps, and it is independent of the publishing outcome.
