On her blog this week is a guest post from Billy Coffey, one of the authors she represents, discussing what happens after an author finds the right agent.

Having an agent has become so important in recent times that one might consider it to be the summit of all the effort after completing one’s novel. But as Coffey rightly describes, that is when the work really starts.

A different focus

Coffey describes landing an agent as a mid point in getting published. You have come a long way already, but there’s still a mighty climb ahead.

I have never been one of those wannabe writers who falls into the trap of thinking one can simply hand over a novel for an agent to sell to a publisher. There seems no question, to me, that much more work must be done after that time. But I am sure it will be a very different time.

Right now, in the latter stages of my first novel, I am piecing together information and scattered guidance from wherever I can. It’s not tough to find and I am glad to say rarely conflicting from different sources. But it feels as though I am working in the dark, feeling my way around, making mistakes, learning, trying again, hoping I get it right and do not waste an opportunity through inexperience.

Agents know how to navigate the choppy waters of publishing and though I doubt they never get it wrong, are certainly aware of how an author can give their work the best chance of being published. Often that chance is at the price of more work, more editing, rewriting, polishing and buffing the writing.

Having someone to light the way ahead, even the next handful of steps, with solid experience and knowledge would transform the drudge of honing a novel and give it a more defined purpose.

If you are a writer in search of an agent, follow Rachelle’s twitter and blog, I am sure they will help you on your journey.

For the first few years as an aspiring stand-up comic, one must tread the rocky paths of the open spots. These are the 5 minute – or if you are lucky 10 – slots that most smaller comedy clubs make available to new comics honing their techniques.

The open spot routine goes as follows:

• Travel for 2-3 hours to the venue
• Hang around for 1-2 hours waiting for your spot
• Spend 5 minutes in front of a disinterested audience who paid to see ‘real’ comics
• Hope the club promoter saw enough promise in you to give you another spot in a few months
• Go home and re-consider any gags that did not generate a laugh

That may seem rather cynical view, but that is the process when reduced down to its core. It is genuinely much more fun that it sounds, however. These open spots are best handled by packing them with quick-fire gags and quips; fire stuff into the mic, then get the heck off. I found the minimal audience interaction very uninspiring.

So I moved into running a couple of (very) small clubs and acting as compere. The compere spends several time slots working with that night’s audience, warming them up, cooling them down, and generally creating each appropriate segue from the previous to the next act. Most importantly, there is an evolving relationship over the period of the show.

I’m getting to the point, thank you for hanging in there…

I experience a similar problem in the difference between writing a short story compared to writing a novel. But this is not centred around the act of concise writing.

I want to get to know them

Stories are about people – at least I believe mine are, regardless of their respective settings. There’s little more satisfying than learning about the characters one places into a story, understanding their nuances, discovering their quirks, ’seeing’ them play out their lives.

The short story simply does not have the space or the time for such luxuries and that is where my challenge lies. These are interesting, nay fascinating people (they must be as I am including them in my story!).

The dead end of death

This problem is particularly acute in a series of short stories I am writing and planning which will form a collection entitled “Six Deaths” – the title is something of a giveaway – and as you might guess, each character has but a brief sojourn within the pages. And there lies my personal challenge when writing shorts: I want to know these individuals, get under their skins, understand who they really are before… well, let’s just say before they up and leave.

I find writing short stories about the characters that inhabit Edwardian London in the TableRappers book(s), so very much easier and satisfying because I know them such that I do not feel I am missing out on learning about them as individuals.

It feels so utterly disrespectful to create a character for the sake of merely a few thousand words. Perhaps I just need to grow some thicker skin and be a little more ruthless with my characters. Hmm… Six Deaths, how more ruthless can one be..?

Dame Jaqueline Wilson’s My Sister Jodie, a book aimed at the 9 to 11 age group, has sold around 28,000 copies since its release in March this year. After a single complaint about the use of the “twat” in two instances, retailer Adsa pulled the book from its shelves and as a result, publisher Random House has decided to edit the word to “twit” in reprinted versions.

Anne Dixon (no relation) discovered the word when she purchased the book from her local Asda as a gift for her niece. She emailed the author and when she did not get a response (there is no information about how long she waited for a response from one of the top children’s authors around), she complained to Asda who immediately removed all copies from their shelves.

This is not about censorship, it’s about retail muscle

Asda – part of Walmart – have achieved around 23,000 of the total sales of this book. That is a lot of lost sales and so Random House buckled under that potential income drop. From a business viewpoint, I can almost empathise, but as an author it would horrify me.

However, this does not detract from the most important factor: all it took was a single person making a complaint. That is a very slippery path to hyper-sensitive, minority-influenced censorship. But there’s a twist…

Is this just a publicity stunt?

My natural, British cynicism surfaces with any story like this. What goes unmentioned in most accounts appears at the end of this Daily Mail version of the story:

However, the [Asda] spokesman said that Asda had since reviewed the matter and would continue stocking My Sister Jodie in all its UK outlets.

A severe knee-jerk reaction followed by a u-turn. I will leave you to make up your own mind on that call.