Last time I updated, I was scraping the barrel of misery in search of a writing epiphany, and I hadn’t met my deadline. The good news: I managed to finish my edits and hand in the new draft of my novel just before Christmas Eve. The bad news: silence.
My novel feels amazing. I feel like I’ve polished up a rusty sports car (no doubt I forgot to replace the bumper or something, but STILL). The villains are uncomfortable and crescendo nicely, the puzzle pieces of the plot click together, the final sentence feels right.
As soon as I sent it off, my prospective agent replied positively, saying he would probably get around to reading it in the first week of January. Whatever the case, he’d let me know when he started reading it. Finally, I could relax for a couple of weeks.
Except, the first week of January rolled around…and I heard nothing. The second week came and went. Hesitantly, I sent an email asking when he’d assigned my novel to his reading schedule. He replied saying he’d not long returned from holiday, but he’d update me within the week to let me know.
He did not.
I bumped into him briefly at my workplace, where he likes to do his own work, and again he said he’d get around to reading it soon and we could meet up in February for feedback. Silence continued. Anxiety started to eat away at me.
Now it is February, and I’ve still heard nothing. It seems strange that he invested so much time in helping me rewrite this current draft – I’m talking four months – but he is not keeping me updated with his reading schedule. If he wasn’t interested, why did he help so much? If he doesn’t like the new draft, why hasn’t he at least said “no thanks, your book is not for me”?
NEW PLAN TIME
In the face of indefinite silence, I have written a stella cover letter, a succinct synopsis and submitted the first three chapters to a new agent from Curtis Brown. To be honest, it’s been a dream of mine to get an agent from Curtis Brown, so maybe it’s a silver lining. We shall see.
Apparently it can take between ten to twelve weeks to get a reply from a Brown agent. I’ll let you know what’s up next. Probably a submissions list to more agents.
In the meantime, if you’re reading this because you’ve got publishing aspirations of your own, here are two resources I used for writing my novel’s synopsis: articles by Caro Clarke and Carly Watters.
Willow H. Wood 
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