Burnt fingers and jubilation

I’ll be the first to admit if I’m wrong, and I guess you can’t judge all agents from the mistakes made by a few, so I’m opening this up to debate because a few people have suggested I get an agent.

The reason I have not done so already is due to earlier experiences. Even 12 years ago I was almost shafted by an agency listed in the Writers Handbook who requested being paid around £100 to read my manuscript even though there was no detail of this in the handbook. I almost did so too (and would have learnt the hard-way) if it wasn’t for some timely intervention by a writer who said this sounded a little dodgy.
I’ve also found that some agents seem to miss completely what you are attempting to write. The Secret War is a case in point – agents out there didn’t want a historical fantasy-horror novel. It either had to be history or horror-fantasy. No compromises (not exactly original, is it?).
And when The Secret War did find an agent… £50 later for administration, and the agent disappeared off the planet with my cash and did nothing with my book (again, she was listed in the Writers and Artists Handbook). So I parted company, and thought why am I wasting my time sending four submissions a year to bloody agents who either don’t respond back or take several months to do so, charge stupid fees or don’t even get what I’m writing and would rather have formulaic stuff land on their desk? (Yeah, four submissions a year – another crazy rule imposed by agents who don’t like you to send your mss to more than one at a time!!!! I thought competition was a healthy thing.)
I felt vindicated when The Secret War was accepted by Macmillan, that perhaps I did have a decent book afterall, and historical, fantasy-horror was something that could find a home in a publishing group (indeed I flicked through all the rejection letters with a sense of jubilation!). Even better, I was getting published without the help of any agents, who to me, seemed out of touch.

But things change, and so do my writing needs. The Burning Sands of Time will be completed some time early next year, but I am entertaining having it “looked at” before I send it to Macmillan. Of all the books I’ve written, this is perhaps the most fragmented in that I‘m writing with many more distractions and it isn’t as easy to get the flow going (hence another reason for this blog entry - I’m going to cool it with the blog entries until I get some big news on The Secret War front as I seem to spend more time discussing writing than actually writing. I promised myself that once that happened I needed to put the brakes on this blog).

So as a parting request for the time being, fuelled partly by the last blog entry and comments on editing and agents, what are other writers’ experiences of agents and literary consultants? Are there any you can recommend, and is it something you consider necessary for all writers?

x