Clapham, in the rain

Who would we find there, in 1968?

I’ve been accused of digression.

Not just by my family over the dinner table, but by the great and the good. I managed to get some feedback from a well-respected literary scout recently and although he had some nice things to say, he was, if not scathing, then hair-tearing frustrated by the sheer amount of stuff packed into my opening chapter.

But, before I go sailing off in that direction, let me be uncharacteristically, chase-cuttingly focussed. I’ve realized something: literary agents are only interested in work they can ‘place’ genre-wise.

Hello Captain Obvious? Well, there’s a bit more to it. I’ve been working on Valentine Klimt and the Revolution of Love for over two years now. The pitch is simple:

“The sixties are in full swing, but Valentine Klimt, granddaughter of the famous artist, can’t enjoy the party. Someone’s defacing Granddad’s paintings — and only she can stop them.”

Ferociously confident at a time when equality is more slogan than reality, Valentine isn’t going to hang around for half-arsed reality to catch up. While the hippy revolution unfolds in swinging London, she’s plotting a rebellion of her own, doing something nobody in her bohemian family has ever attempted: holding down a proper job. But when a series of Gustav Klimt’s paintings are defaced with whitewash — cryptic messages only she can decipher — Valentine must choose: continue her office battle against grey-haired gropers or travel the tumultuous Europe of 1968, braving protest, revolution and horses, to save her Granddad’s legacy.

Not a total non-starter, right? Parody-thriller. Light-hearted mystery. A bit cerebral, perhaps, but something you’d read not a million miles away from the beach.

That’s also what readers seem to think. The feedback has been spectacular and I’ve been blown away by the positivity, not just from one or two people, but relentlessly, in tens and dozens. Valentine — forthright, opinionated and brimming with chutzpah — seems to strike a chord with readers. Like a greased piglet that wriggles out of your grasp and runs behind the barn, it was obvious she had a life of her own, right from the get go. Within a few chapters, the feedback was “don’t let that comb-over win!” — he didn’t —, “I was right there with her!” when the aforementioned creep got his comeuppance, and best of all: “Valentine wouldn’t say that.”

Aha. When the reader is that protective of the character, you know you’re on to something.

The plot unfolded. Readers laughed. Readers cried. Glowing with life-affirming feedback, I worked into the night to finish the manuscript, following Valentine on a paper-trail of vandalized paintings from sooty, snooty Clapham to protest-filled Paris, chasing art thieves through the streets of Vienna on a Lipizzaner stallion, before plunging into the melee of riotous Prague and rescuing Klimt’s meisterwerk, the infamous Rite of Spring, from the jaws of an industrial paper-shredder. All we had to do was escape the invading Russians. Piece of cake.

Exhausted and breathless, we arrived on page 283. The End, with a tiny hint of unfinished business that might just kick off a sequel. Elated.

And, you’re thinking, he submitted it to a couple of literary agents, and the rest was history…? Well, not quite.

“Your writing is incredibly charming, and I was impressed by the originality of your take on universal themes of intergenerational conflict and parent-child relationships. However unfortunately I don’t feel that I connected enough with your writing to offer you representation for this project.”

Oh. Still, it could be worse. Next one?

“While it’s well written and enjoyable, it’s sadly not for me. That said, I’m sure another agent would go for it.”

Alright. Better find that other agent, then.

“I'm sorry to say I don't feel confident I can sell this for you, but hope you find someone who'll do you a gratifying deal for it.”

I like the sound of gratifying. But unfortunately, that’s as far as it’s gone until now. I’m rejected, while I crave acceptance. Am I a million miles away or the thickness of a sheet of paper?

And it’s the world of literary agents, isn’t it? Working out what’s missing is a game of tea-leaves and chicken entrails. They’re not going to tell you how to fix it. But having sifted through the feedback, and a million blogs (I can recommend Emma Darwin), and worked my way though the grief/denial/alcohol phases, I had a small epiphany: it’s all about the abstract visualization thing.

The what thing? Another of those digression moments, I’m afraid.

Clapham, in the rain.

When we enjoy good writing we become lost in it, don’t we? We’re not seeing the inky words on a scratchy page, we’re there, inside the work, visualizing the scene. In the character’s shoes. (We could have a longer digression about what it means to replace oneself as a writer in the work … but that’s for another time.)

As writers, we naturally assume our goal vis a vis agents is to get them to experience the writing in this way. But maybe for agents it’s a bit of a different calculation. Can you see the book in the bookshop? Or the smile on the face of the editor you’re thinking of? Or… and this is finally the actual thing — thanks for sticking with it: does the agent need to visualize the reader?

A work colleague of mine is fond of the word ‘empictured’. Perhaps a little too fond considering it doesn’t appear in any dictionary I’m aware of, but it sounds good. The agent needs to empicture or — alright then, envision — a whole bunch of things: the settings, the times, the places. The sounds and smells of 1960s London. The whine and roar of the buses on Vauxhall Road. BBC voices on the radio, and proper tea with milk. A heady concoction of cigarettes and Babycham, laced with that most potent of drugs: nostalgia. A shorthand evocation of Clapham in the rain.

But more than that, the agent needs to see the reader, I realize. Who are they? And, more importantly, what do they enjoy reading? Perhaps this is what I’ve been missing all along.

Who this hypothetical reader might be, I can’t say. Original flower-child looking back from a long perspective, enjoying various cosy mysteries and not otherwise seeking a nostalgic thrill-back? Teenage retro-freak, decked out via Vinted, for whom this is truly historical fiction? Or any of us in between – looking for mystery, or romance, or a bit of a laugh, who weren’t quite there for the golden age but still hark back to an imagined Shangri-la where the Beatles ruled the waves and the sun hadn’t quite set?

It remains uncertain. But imagine: an actual, modern day reader picking up the book — in the context of all the other genre-themed offerings in the bookshop — smiling at the ironic price-flash on the cover — “only 2/6!” — and thinking, “yes. I didn’t set out to read a faux-1960s thriller where the protagonist is decades ahead of her time, but it’s an interesting area and… wow. I’ve got to see what happens on page two…” The reader is transported to 1968. The agent is transported to the bookshop where the reader reads, engrossed…

So where does this leave me? Thinking about a new pitch, and wondering about genre descriptions for sure. Avoiding digression, possibly, but also standing next to that reader, looking over their shoulder and enjoying the smile on their face.

Honestly, that’s the acceptance I want more than anything.

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