What Does It Take?

Should my lips grow dry, would you wet them, dear?
Would you go away to another land, walk one thousand miles through the burning sand?
Wipe the blood away from my dying hand?
Will you love (the manuscript) when I'm down and out?
In my time of trial, will you stand by me?

Would you go to the wall for me? Take a bullet for me?

All that and more must be required for literary agents these days. Eve Bridburg declines the manuscript because she only takes on novels for which she would face down a Mack truck. Nearly every standard rejection I have seen for partials and fulls carries the same theme. The agent does not feel that they could sell the manuscript.

On the shelves of my local independent bookseller and the free (after you've paid your property tax which covers the cost) library, I have encountered one novel after another that really does not have anything to say. Where are the Trollopes and Dickenses of our era? Not marketable is where, sitting in the pile of manuscripts to be rejected. Don't be controversial, don't skewer the high and mighty, because an agent would not risk their life for such subjects.

What does it take to get published? Well,if you write women's fiction, let the Lifetime channel be your guide. Don't forget your checklist of diseases of the week, so that you can include a few characters with bulimia/anorexia/self-mutilation/ shopaholism et al. Add in a hefty dose of some saccharine sentiment - I feel your pain - and you're off to the races.

The manuscript I've been submitting is not marketable. The plot pokes a stick in the eye of those on high. It is topical, it is timeless, but no one would take a bullet for it. Back to the current WIP. Agents have told me I have writing talent. I'll have to use it to bland purposes to get one of them to say yes.

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