Hey all, I'm Paul Knight and this is my introduction to my blog…it's not going to make any Top Ten Poll list but I am hoping it will encourage other writers and alike to stick with their chosen forte and take a few risks with it…what's the worst that could happen, right?
For all those that have read my profile, as much as writing about my darker days may hold a lot more interest I really do not think owning up to some of the naughtiness I got up to in my younger years on the Internet is going to do my freedom any good. However, who knows, along the way I may just let a few things slip when trying to make a point.
This is the part, that if this were a tacky, low budget TV show, the screen would go all wavy and it could make the fact that a flashback was about to take place. I have a few skeletons in my closet, I think to those reading about me would have already gathered, and 4 years ago, I thought I would exercise a few demons and write down a few things that still haunted my dreams…
I sat down in front of my PC at work (I was just starting a complete career change from the industry I was in for many, many years) and started to make use of my very limited IT skills. Tallying up all the hours I spent writing, it equated to 72, I had produced a 70,000-word manuscript without even realising it. When I first started, it was to tell a few stories, but as the words kept coming I set my target to 100 pages, but then I went past that mark and could just not believe where I ended up.
To the handful of people that read it, the feedback was "That ain't too bad", a compliment in my circles…so I got crazy ideas of having it published and investigated further on how to go about it.
They say that everyone has at least one novel in them, which is all fine and dandy but when the total of said people actually sit down to write it, the publishing world becomes a very unfriendly place. Each publishing house receives on average 100 sample manuscripts per day…granted that most of these manuscripts that each individual publishing house receives are duplicates…it still highlights that there is 700 new authors trying to get noticed every week x 52 weeks per year. You work it out, that is a lot of competition…it makes X-Factor look like a school playground, five-a-side kick about. Moreover, to accompany that much competition, comes rejection after rejection after rejection…if you have tried it, then you will understand where I am coming from.
Now this is not a slur or reflection on those who work at publishing houses, looking back on it all, I get that they can become overwhelmed with the submissions, I get that to actually read each and every manuscript would take an army of readers and I also understand the default rejection letter they all send out is not a true reflection of your work. But I tell ya, when you are sending out sample after sample and only getting rejected…you do start to question yourself and ask "Just how sh*t is my work?" and wonder why they just can't take a few extra minutes and jot down what was wrong with it…just a couple of hints to make it better…just a little help to change the work from ugly duckling into beautiful swan. But they don't and all your nearest and dearest do with their biased opinions is try and make you feel better but not given any constructive criticism on what needs to change, be taken out or added. So where does that leave you…?
Two publishing houses I owe for actually proving that last point wrong was Blake publishing (John Blake), who offered me the chance to get it published on condition…I used the real names and places of the characters involved (I changed the names and distorted a few timelines to protect the guilty). This was something I just could not do…I would be dropping far too many people in to sh*t creek for things they were never convicted for…it was unfair to them and I would not be upholding my East End upbringing. So that was out of the question but still, it was very encouraging and a much needed boost to stay on course and to keep sending the manuscript out.
The other publishing house that made a difference was Piatkus books (Piatkus Books), in their rejection they did point out three things to me:
The book was too short, it needed at least another 50,000-words.
The way I wrote it as a first person perspective did not work for the book.
It was too centralised on only the main character.
At last, actual constructive feedback that I could expand on …albeit that it arrived just as my motivation was sucked dry by numerous, sterile default rejection letters…plus, as I said, I was embarking on a career change, so for the next 2 years I turned myself to moving on up the food chain of my new profession.
This finally brought me to February 2006, when I got the urge to revisit my original manuscript and expand on it. I kept the letter I had from Piatkus books and used their feedback to restructure my book, changing the perspective of the way the story was being told, threw in some story arc's and puffed out a lot of the sub stories and characters. It took me 4 months to rewrite it (a huge increase in time than the 72 hours the first draft took) and I got it to the point where I felt comfortable for anyone to read and judge it.
It was time to restart the publishing section again…I was older, a little wiser to what to expect and I knew the book was now more fitting to it's genre and word count. The first publishing house I sent the new and improved manuscript to was Piatkus, I included in my covering letter about all their help first time round, thanking them for their input blah, blah, blah, threw in my sample chapters and S.A.E. It took just 6 days from the point of sending it to getting it back to find the same sterile, default rejection letter I was getting the first time round…If you ever needed a mental equivalent of getting kicked in the nuts…reading that first rejection letter would be it.
It was the first of many but they did not faze me like the first one did…I knew I had something better than before but I was well aware that I was no J. K. Rowling, I was not destined to be a No.1 bestseller or win the Turner prize. I was a writer who had stories to tell…I was a storyteller who just wanted to be heard (or read, depending on how pedantic you want to be about it). And it was with this determination that I took my destiny in my own hands and eventually teamed up with Troubador to produce 'Coding of a concrete animal'.
For all those that have read my profile, as much as writing about my darker days may hold a lot more interest I really do not think owning up to some of the naughtiness I got up to in my younger years on the Internet is going to do my freedom any good. However, who knows, along the way I may just let a few things slip when trying to make a point.
This is the part, that if this were a tacky, low budget TV show, the screen would go all wavy and it could make the fact that a flashback was about to take place. I have a few skeletons in my closet, I think to those reading about me would have already gathered, and 4 years ago, I thought I would exercise a few demons and write down a few things that still haunted my dreams…
I sat down in front of my PC at work (I was just starting a complete career change from the industry I was in for many, many years) and started to make use of my very limited IT skills. Tallying up all the hours I spent writing, it equated to 72, I had produced a 70,000-word manuscript without even realising it. When I first started, it was to tell a few stories, but as the words kept coming I set my target to 100 pages, but then I went past that mark and could just not believe where I ended up.
To the handful of people that read it, the feedback was "That ain't too bad", a compliment in my circles…so I got crazy ideas of having it published and investigated further on how to go about it.
They say that everyone has at least one novel in them, which is all fine and dandy but when the total of said people actually sit down to write it, the publishing world becomes a very unfriendly place. Each publishing house receives on average 100 sample manuscripts per day…granted that most of these manuscripts that each individual publishing house receives are duplicates…it still highlights that there is 700 new authors trying to get noticed every week x 52 weeks per year. You work it out, that is a lot of competition…it makes X-Factor look like a school playground, five-a-side kick about. Moreover, to accompany that much competition, comes rejection after rejection after rejection…if you have tried it, then you will understand where I am coming from.
Now this is not a slur or reflection on those who work at publishing houses, looking back on it all, I get that they can become overwhelmed with the submissions, I get that to actually read each and every manuscript would take an army of readers and I also understand the default rejection letter they all send out is not a true reflection of your work. But I tell ya, when you are sending out sample after sample and only getting rejected…you do start to question yourself and ask "Just how sh*t is my work?" and wonder why they just can't take a few extra minutes and jot down what was wrong with it…just a couple of hints to make it better…just a little help to change the work from ugly duckling into beautiful swan. But they don't and all your nearest and dearest do with their biased opinions is try and make you feel better but not given any constructive criticism on what needs to change, be taken out or added. So where does that leave you…?
Two publishing houses I owe for actually proving that last point wrong was Blake publishing (John Blake), who offered me the chance to get it published on condition…I used the real names and places of the characters involved (I changed the names and distorted a few timelines to protect the guilty). This was something I just could not do…I would be dropping far too many people in to sh*t creek for things they were never convicted for…it was unfair to them and I would not be upholding my East End upbringing. So that was out of the question but still, it was very encouraging and a much needed boost to stay on course and to keep sending the manuscript out.
The other publishing house that made a difference was Piatkus books (Piatkus Books), in their rejection they did point out three things to me:
The book was too short, it needed at least another 50,000-words.
The way I wrote it as a first person perspective did not work for the book.
It was too centralised on only the main character.
At last, actual constructive feedback that I could expand on …albeit that it arrived just as my motivation was sucked dry by numerous, sterile default rejection letters…plus, as I said, I was embarking on a career change, so for the next 2 years I turned myself to moving on up the food chain of my new profession.
This finally brought me to February 2006, when I got the urge to revisit my original manuscript and expand on it. I kept the letter I had from Piatkus books and used their feedback to restructure my book, changing the perspective of the way the story was being told, threw in some story arc's and puffed out a lot of the sub stories and characters. It took me 4 months to rewrite it (a huge increase in time than the 72 hours the first draft took) and I got it to the point where I felt comfortable for anyone to read and judge it.
It was time to restart the publishing section again…I was older, a little wiser to what to expect and I knew the book was now more fitting to it's genre and word count. The first publishing house I sent the new and improved manuscript to was Piatkus, I included in my covering letter about all their help first time round, thanking them for their input blah, blah, blah, threw in my sample chapters and S.A.E. It took just 6 days from the point of sending it to getting it back to find the same sterile, default rejection letter I was getting the first time round…If you ever needed a mental equivalent of getting kicked in the nuts…reading that first rejection letter would be it.
It was the first of many but they did not faze me like the first one did…I knew I had something better than before but I was well aware that I was no J. K. Rowling, I was not destined to be a No.1 bestseller or win the Turner prize. I was a writer who had stories to tell…I was a storyteller who just wanted to be heard (or read, depending on how pedantic you want to be about it). And it was with this determination that I took my destiny in my own hands and eventually teamed up with Troubador to produce 'Coding of a concrete animal'.
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