METHADONE TREATMENT

So.....
H (agent) has:

• MS (all 614 pages/189,000 words of it)
• Rights page (easily the most annoying thing, after the synopsis, that I have ever had to write)
• Cast-list of characters
• and one precious page condensing the Thirty Years War - three decades of the most violent, fascinating, jaw-droppingly bloodthirsty years of European history - into a perfect little appetiser for all those international publishers even now booking their tickets for the London Book Fair in the hopes of coming away from it with contract for next international best-seller, 'The Fires of Grace', warm in their hands.

Little do they know it yet.

So, I wrote this book. Amazingly enough, first time out the traps, it found an agent. A really good, proper agent too, one who is as passionate about it as its author and in her firm but elegant way, has also pulled from author synopsis, rights page, cast-list and Everyman's Guide to the Thirty Years War. Ye gods, writing the book was the easy bit. If you're a writer who is a step, or a couple of steps, away from this, be warned - the minute it finds a home with anyone else, your book ceases to be yours altogether. You are now merely servicing and supporting it.

Your other immediate problem is what the devil do you do with yourself without a book to write? Without the constant pull back to the pc? You can start another (I have), but now you've learned a bit about what you're actually doing, or trying to do, in writing a book, you gotta admit, new book will be a lot more research than it will be any proper writing for many weeks to come. You can tidy flat. You can attend to sadly-lapsed exercise routine (5k along the River Thames this morning - what is it about running beside this river that still feels like such a privilege?). You can address vexed question of buying somewhere new to live, which is even now snoring quietly to itself in some cowebby corner of back-brain. You can water plants, file nails, make list of all the books you can now return to the wonderful and endlessly long-suffering London Library. You can listen to Man U (hiss hiss boo!) v. Arsenal (hiss!). You can review ridiculous complications of real life, beyond the world you have created where You Are God.

You can start a blog. You can start a blog sharing journey from wannabe author to (hopefully) published author, or not, with all those other wannabe authors out there at different stages on their own journey.

Hallo to you all, how are you?