As a personal struggle I have been trying to publish various pieces for the past four-ish years. Now, even though this process is new to me I didn't set about it like some new kid with his first typewriter and a fresh English degree in hand. I took over a year to write, used the time to bounce ideas off friends, and do my own research about what makes a story good. When finished I took my manuscript to friends and had them hand it out to their friends, people I didn't know, to get what I hoped would be more honest opinions. Then I spent another six months revising. After this I took it to a professional editor and had it fixed up. Then I took it through another few months of polishing, tweaking the language and style to be the best it could be. Then finally on to the agents.
For those of you who are not writers, let me dissuade you from the pain. Trying to publish is like playing a game of chicken with the actual act of committing suicide. After you put years of your life and time into something you have studied to produce, you will get this message.
"Thank you for your submission, we are very busy, but will get back to you within two to six weeks."
And that sounds great... Until 4 months pass without word one back.
"This must be a mistake" you will tell yourself, "did they loose my submission?"
But the sad truth is that they don't seem to care all that much. Eventually (over a year in some cases for me) they will respond with something like, "We apologize but our company does not feel like going in this direction at this time, but others may so don't stop applying to agents." That's it, a generic canned response that could be sent to any writer about any book ever written. And that is what you will receive. Tens or even hundreds of these responses.
In the end I believe that I sent out something along the line of nearly 100 quarry letters. Which are also great as there are standard quarry formats, but every agent wants something different, so each submission must be hand catered to fit the requirements of the agency, taking even more time and effort for the same level of response.
All in all I am convinced that only around 5 people actually read the sample pages that I was sometimes graciously allowed to send with the quarry. And those were generally the responses that came back on time or early.
I'm not blaming the agents themselves, I'm sure they are busy people, I'm blaming the people, the "writers." Somehow somewhere along the line we as people decided that if we can speak the language, than we can write the language. And as much as this may be true for things like texts, and casual or simple work emails, it is not true for the masterpieces of writing.
Great writers are often born with a gift, and then take that natural talent and hone it with lots and lots of work. In some cases an entire lifetime of writing, only to be recognized for one or two pieces. It takes time to develop voice, tone, mood, vivid word choice, natural rhythm, and those are just some of the simpler parts of good writing. Then there are the more complex things like pacing, character interactions, themes, imagery, emotional tone, and atmosphere which are even harder to convey on the page.
After teaching English for a few years I have part of the reason we think this way, which is related to a mistake that we made a long time ago. We teach English like it is a science or history, we hand out the pieces, study them, and make students write a paragraph about how "tone is a thing which writers use to convey emotion," but what we miss as teachers and students is that writing is an art. Some people are naturally artistic, some people can learn to be artistic, but most of us simply are not ever going to compete with the greats. Unless that is we resolve ourselves to become the next greats. That is the key, to write with great purpose, not just to write because we can. We writers are the guardians of the language, it is in our hands, let us do great things with it.
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