The general consensus amongst local writers, however, seems to be that it is better to query agents in the US and UK markets. This is simply because the local market isn’t quite mature enough for anything but politically inspired fiction and memoirs – unless you have already made a name for yourself via journalism or similar. Are there any South Africans out there that would like to prove me wrong?
The new story has been swirling around in my head all day. I think my brain needs a break from The Novel, and this is a welcome diversion.
I deleted about half of what I wrote yesterday, and then wrote a whole bunch more. I am not sure if it makes any sense to anyone but me at this point in time, but I have brought the word count up to just over 1100. Why, oh why, are short stories so damn stubborn. I used to write them all the time, but never had to take note of the word count. Just looking at some old stories I have written, none of them fall in the accepted word count range, it would seem – either I write too much (like the one story is just over 10,000 words) or way too little (under 1000).
It is a strange concept this, writing towards a word count. I guess it helps to place the story from a publisher’s perspective, but I wonder if it also doesn’t force people to sometimes add into the story stuff that just shouldn’t be there, or remove things that should.
But yes, the short story is neatly formed and almost fleshed out. I am sure that, by tomorrow, it will have morphed again, but, for now, I am fairly happy with the track it is on.
I decided that I will not work on The Novel this entire week *gasp* and give it some time to breathe, and then focus on it again from this coming week-end. And then, for days on end, all I will do is eat, breathe and sleep the Novel, until I convince myself it is ready for agent submissions.
I did do a quick browse through Agent Query today, and have started making a list of the agents I would like to query, again. The mere thought of it makes me cringe, but I realise that this is a very important part of the entire process, so I will battle through it :)
The funny part of this is that I made a list a couple of months ago of those dream agents to query, and many of them are still on my list. I did discover a couple of new ones (with blogs to boot), so now I need to do some more research. I am just glad that the agents do have blogs, because it makes it so much easier to query someone you have some kind of a relationship with – even if it is mostly one-sided (because I am simply too shy to comment on the blog entries most of the time, or, by the time I read it, I will be comment number 364 in the list, which seems kinda like a ‘me too’ comment)
And this reminds me. I see I have 31 subscribers via Feedburner (today, at least), so there is at least one other person reading this blog. So, this is for you, my reader *grin*, tell me, why do you write? Do you write for the fame and fortune, or for a different reason?
Laura Boone recently started a literary agency in Johannesburg, and is accepting submissions, provided you follow the submission guidelines.
The agency was founded at the beginning of 2007 as a special interest division within the Laura Boon Communications Group to address a need in the market place for a South African-based literary agent to represent SA authors both locally and internationally.
Laura has more than 10 years experience in the book trade. She worked for Exclusive Books, at both the Sandton City and Hyde Park branches. She also worked in the marketing department of publisher Random House and has worked as a book publicist for the last six years.
More here: laura boon communications
I found this link via the Write Co blog, that is also well worth checking out.
