How I escaped the slush pile

Before Jonny Geller picked my debut novel, Broken, off the slush-pile at Curtis Brown, the one thing I’d have loved to have got my hands on was someone else’s successful slush-pile submission. What format did they use? How did it read? And how was it different to mine?

In case you submit to slush-piles yourself and would like to see the submission that finally got me noticed, I’m attaching the covering letter and synopsis I was sending out for Broken at the foot of this post.

I admit I feel insecure about doing this because I followed an extremely dull format with my slush pile submissions, so doubt I’m giving anyone any great insights. Also, I’m not sure the fact I got an agent from this particular submission qualifies it as a success: if I’d taken a different approach, maybe one of the agents who turned it down wouldn’t have been so dismissive.

As with any format, there’s always different ideas on the best approach for slush-pile submissions. Some people like to send random chapters rather than the first three, but I’ve always believed the more coherent your submission, the more chance you have of getting an agent involved in the flow of your novel, which, for me, is the whole point of any submission.

Synopsis wise, some people like to do detailed chapter plans and others like to provide character descriptions as well. I just tried to be clear and brief — more of a blurb than a synopsis — in the hope an agent would move on to the opening pages of my novel as soon as possible.

When deciding who to submit to, I always checked in the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook or Writers’ Handbook that the agent was interested in whatever market I was aiming for. If their entries left me in any doubt, though, I submitted to them anyway — I always felt it was better to waste postage rather than the chance of getting representation.

Other than the covering letter, synopsis, and the double-spaced opening chapters of whatever novel I was trying to sell, all I ever put in with my submission was a stamped addressed envelope for its eventual return.

One area where I might have differed to other writers is that I did multiple submissions. There’s an argument that you should only ever submit to one agent or publishing house at a time, but I became frustrated with waiting up to six months for a standard rejection and eventually started to submit to three agents at once.

Whenever a rejection came back, another submission went in the post, keeping my running total at three. If anyone ever asked to see the whole novel, I stopped sending out other submissions until I’d heard back from the interested agent, then got my running total back up to three once again.

By the time I sent Broken to Jonny Geller, however, I’d completely lost patience and had about thirty submissions on the go, some for Broken, others for a novel I’d written a couple of years before. The day I got the first e-mail from Jonny saying he’d like to see the rest of Broken, I’d just returned from holiday and had something like sixteen rejections on the doormat, and I was still getting rejections for both novels weeks after Broken had sold.

Despite the fact I managed to get a publishing deal with Broken, I think it’s important not to hide from the fact it was rejected by more than thirty agents. I also think it’s important to be honest about the fact I’ve had countless other rejections for novels written before and after Broken.

Part of this is because I started submitting very young and had a lot to learn as a writer. Part of it, though, is because submitting unsolicited manuscripts to the slush-pile is like buying a ticket for a lottery that rarely pays out. Sometimes, even having the winning ticket doesn’t guarantee you a prize: Broken’s now sold in five different territories, but what if Jonny Geller had just sold a similar novel for one of his existing clients and felt he couldn’t take me on, or if he’d simply thought, well, how many clients do I need to keep myself busy? Is this completely unknown writer really worth my time? I could still be sending Broken out to other agents now, or I might have given up altogether. Better writers than me must have done this.

If you’ve been thinking of giving up yourself, try to remember it’s not just a thin line between success and failure on the slush-pile, it’s an almost non-existent one, and whether you fall the right or wrong side of that line often depends on the mood and skill of the person reading your submission as much as the quality of your submission itself.

Even more importantly, always try to remember that every now and then, despite the odds, someone does come out the other side of a slush-pile submission with a publishing contract in their hands. As long as you keep writing what you believe in and never let the rejections stop you submitting, one day it might just be you.

Here’s the one that did it for me.

BROKEN SUBMISSION LETTER

Dear Mr Geller,

Please find enclosed the first seventeen pages, plus a very brief synopsis, of Broken, a novel I have recently completed. It tells the story of an eight year old girl who is in a coma. As her family sit waiting for her to either regain consciousness or die, she debates her options and reflects upon the chain of events that have led her to death’s door.

Written in a similar style to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, I think anyone who enjoyed Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones would get a lot out of this book: although it’s an entirely different read, the mood and emotions provoked are similar.

On a personal note, I am thirty six years old and have had short stories and poetry published in various collections. Broken is my fourth novel.

If you want to see the whole novel, I’d be delighted to send it to you.

With best wishes

Daniel Clay

ACCOMPANYING SYNOPSIS

Broken tells the story of Skunk Cunningham, an eight year old girl who is in a coma, trying to make sense of it all – from the very first time she saw Bob Oswald being violent to the very moment she decides whether to live or whether to die.

In-between, she tells the story of her life; beating Jed on X-Box, trying to work out what Broken Buckley’s been doing in his box-room, and falling in love with Dillon, the orphaned gypsy boy who lives in Halford’s car-park with his Romany Aunt and Uncle.

Skunk doesn’t just tell her own story. She tells the story of Juanita, the au-pair her father loves more than his children, and Mr Jeffries, the man Juanita loves almost enough to overlook the fact he’s an impoverished school-teacher who can’t give her all the things Skunk’s father can.

She tells the story of Mr and Mrs Buckley, and their schizophrenic son, Arthur, who Skunk and Jed and Dillon soon start referring to as Broken. As Mr Buckley tends corpses in the mortuary he manages, and as Broken slips further and further into madness, can this family survive?

She tells the story of Bob Oswald and his five delinquent daughters. In their Housing Association property, without the stress of a mortgage or the day to day restrictions of social responsibility, the Oswalds’ lot is a happy one.

Until Susan, Bob’s fifteen year old nymphomaniac daughter, accuses Broken Buckley of rape.

And everything starts to go wrong.

Been enjoying Daniel’s account of his road to publication? We’ve five advance proof copies of Broken to give away to anyone who who’d like an early read of this great debut. First five e-mails to editor@fifthestate.co.uk take the spoils!