This week, my daughter will be thirteen. Thirteen years ago, my first child was born. I could tell you that the years have sped past me like lightning. I can see me, in a chair, by a window, thirteen years ago, holding her tiny jerky body after feeding her and it could be yesterday. It…
Anyone can be an agent. You can be an agent today. All you have to do is to write 'literary agent' after your name and go get yourself some clients. There is no professional body to which you must belong, there are no qualifications which will put letters after your name; there is no limit…
One of the little jokes that the publishing industry likes to tell about itself is that we all love to lunch - that we spend most of every day at lunch. "I really feel we should have a lunch, don't you?" and "Surely it's time for lunch!" we proclaim to one another on the phone,…
I worked from home this past week and made a desk of the kitchen table. I have worked from home at least once a week every week for thirteen years, since my first maternity leave, and I have learned the benefit of reserving particular tasks for those days: long unhurried editorial phonecalls, creative thinking of…
I've written before about the importance of kindness, in my work as a literary agent, and generally in our world of publishing. I don't propose kindness as a replacement for business-like behaviour or for sound commercial decisions. It is disrespectful for publishers and agents to treat authors as anything other than business partners. But kindness has a place…
An author came to see me recently. She was between contracts, temporarily without a publisher, suffering a slump in confidence. She knew she would probably be under contract again soon, but living in uncertainty was making her anxious. "You know what you should write?" she said flatly, unquestioningly. "You should write a blog called 'In…
I once made the mistake of thinking that the middle aged mum standing next to me was ordinary. We first met as we cheered madly for our sons to win a race, one school Sports Day. I lumped all of us together, women whooping in unison, all living in the same few streets. Ordinary mums.…
We readers live extravagant lives in our heads but we're not just huge brains in unfeeling blobs, we're bodies too and we read with our bodies as well as our minds. Yes, I think it makes a difference to the experience of reading a novel, whether you read it whilst holding a heavy hardcover in…
One of the most common reasons given by editors for turning a prospective book down is that they find the main protagonist unsympathetic or the characters in general not 'likeable' enough. Writers find this reasoning absolutely maddening of course (all rejections are maddening, but this one especially so), because firstly they rather liked their characters; and secondly…
I have always been a runner, but I haven't always run. When I was a child, I had the freedom to run around fields and streets all day every day without worrying about where I was going or when I'd be back. When I was a young person, I ran for my school and I…