Claire Watts: July 2022

Sunday 31 July 2022

Writing Diary: July

This month I left my agent. We’ve done some good work together but the relationship didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere, so it’s time to find a new champion.

Submitting to agents is one of the less fun parts of being a writer but I think I’m better at it than I was. For one thing, I have more knowledge about what an agent is looking for, which helps me to shape my approach letter. Secondly, I feel more in charge than I used to. True, an agent is one of those ‘gatekeepers’ that the industry talks about all the time. You (mostly) need one to get your book on the road to being published. But agents need authors. They need books, they need ideas, they need talent. A great agent may be looking for specific books that they know they can sell, but they’re also going to be keeping an eye out for an idea that comes at them from out of the blue. Some agent out there is looking for me.

So I write my letters. I read up on various agents to find ones who seem to be interested in books like mine, who have profiles that appeal to me, whose Twitter feed I enjoy, who I’ve come across personally or know of through friends. I tailor my submissions to whatever their particular format is (they’re all different: 3 chapters/5,000 words/10 pages; attachment/body of email; synopsis of 1 page/500 words/300 words; blurb; list of published works). I think carefully about why I’ve picked this particular agent and craft a charming sentence at the end to make it personal.

It's kind of like internet dating…

So now I’m thinking, if it’s like dating, I ought to be compiling my own list of what I’m looking for in an agent. So here it is:

1. Someone who is a champion of my work, who loves what I’ve written and is certain that publishers and readers will love it too.

2. Someone who is interested in my whole career, not just this one book:

• who will consider all the manuscripts I have written and discuss with me whether they’re worth spending more time on.
• who will guide me when I start out on a new project.
• who will bring me ideas that they think would be sellable.

3. Someone who will take on both my fiction and my nonfiction.

4. Someone who will give me brilliant editorial feedback that will help me improve my work.

5. Someone who will reply to messages from me promptly and check in on me regularly.

6. Someone who knows how to read what’s going on in the industry and how to get the best deal for me (and themselves).

7. Someone who is professional and but also feels like a supportive friend.

So now I wait. Between 4 and 16 weeks, so the submissions pages on their websites say. I could do more submissions but I think I’ll wait and see what comes of this batch of five. Maybe I’ll decide my letters need tweaking. Or my synopsis. Maybe all five will want to see my book. That would be interesting. Maybe I’ll have a meeting with more than one agent and I can use my list to interview them for the job of Best Possible Agent for Me.

Watch this space.

My new book, Snippets, is available now.

For a taster tale, you can read a Snippets story that's not in the book here.

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You can also find me on my website clairejwatts.com

Tuesday 12 July 2022

I dream of ... a library

I was recently doing a writing exercise about things I hoped and dreamed about when I was a child and how I felt about those hopes and dreams now. One dream was that I wanted to be a writer. Tick, done that. I dreamed of having a dog. Yup, done that, and I was right – it’s the best. I dreamed of owning a huge gothic house with a morning room and a drawing room and secret passages and servants’ quarters and many bedrooms called things like ‘the rose room’ and ‘the lilac room’. I don’t think that would suit me particularly now – too much cleaning, too many decisions about decorating and I bet the plumbing would be no good. Oh how the practicality of middle age stomps upon the fantasies of childhood!

One dream I held onto longer than most was the dream of having a library. You know, one of those that you see in movies, with books around every wall and a library ladder (I adored the scene in Bednobs and Broomsticks when Miss Price is up the library ladder looking for a particular magic book and the guy – forget his name – is pushing her around and singing). I was entranced by the idea of floor to ceiling bookshelves packed with books, ideally all hardback because if you could, why wouldn’t you? There’d be big comfortable chairs everywhere, the kind you can curl up in, one by a wide light window at one end and another by a grand fireplace. A sofa too, long enough to lie down on, not too firm. There’d be a table or a desk. Nowadays, I’d have to add in good reading lights all over the place, of course. I loved it when I visited grand houses open to the public and went into a library where books with leather covers and gold writing were housed behind glass doors. Yes, I thought. That’s the dream.

And now? I have a lot of books in my house. Being surrounded by books makes me comfortable. When we first moved here, for years some of my books were in boxes and I can honestly say that I never felt more at home than when at last we had enough bookshelves for all my books. There are bookshelves in every room here apart from the bathrooms. Some of the books I have had for a long time. Some are just passing through. When I finish reading a book, sometimes I find a place for it on the shelf, sometimes I put it straight in a bag for charity. It’s not necessarily about whether I’m going to read it again or whether I’m going to lend it to anyone. I keep books because they’re beautiful, because they were given to me by particular people, because I think they have some kind of importance, because they’re part of a set. If the decision’s not clearcut, I keep them. They may go in a cull later on.

A cull? Yes. In an ideal world, my bookshelves would not be packed floor to ceiling. There’d be a little room here and there, a space to welcome more. And to achieve that, not only do I give away the books I’m not going to read again, but I also have to be ruthless about weeding. It’s those ones I wasn’t sure about in the first place that go first, along with the ones my husband hasn’t actually thought about (he wants to keep everything, as though our bookshelves were infinitely expanding). Then I have to think about the rest. Sometimes something I’ve kept for years suddenly becomes dispensable. Occasionally I discover a space where I can fit new bookshelves and then, for a while, all the books can breathe and settle because there’ll be no need to cull for a while.

So would I like to have a library? Yes. I love the idea of a big room – both light and cosy – where I would be surrounded by books. It would be full of books I value for one reason or another and I would know just where to lay my hands on any particular book. But they wouldn’t be packed tight; there would always be space for more. The more I think about it, the more I think that it wouldn’t just be a library, this room. It would have to be my living room because why would you want to go anywhere else? (Do I put a TV in this fantasy library? Depends on how many other rooms I’ve got in the fantasy house.)