The Word Cloud

My Dear Sir,

If this is not a popular choice for a competition I do have other ideas. I tried to think of something often mentioned by 'word Clouders and rejection slips' came to my mind.

People are just having a bit of a think maybe....

I will leave the first choice. However, once upon a time, I wrote a play about how people betray themselves by the books they read, so the shopping list idea is not so daft. Off to work now.

mmm...

Dear Sir/Madam

We have engaged with your writing style and find your prose easy to read. However the plot seems rather implausible and the story quite weak. Less is not necessarily more. Two lines are not enough!

Ooops!

Ooops!

Please disregard both of my above posts-sent in error! :-(

Not 100% sure I know what this competition is all about, but then again I'm never 100% sure about anything!! And as i've never sent anything away I've never recieved a rejection letter!!

Dearest Ma'am, Thank you for sending us your sweet little tale from the south. We were amused by the antics of your heroine, but don't think our readers will believe that she fought so bravely to keep the family farm. During wars women swoon, not make dresses from the curtains, so we don't feel your story is very believable. As for the rouge, he wouldn't have married her no matter how attractive she might have been. A woman is not her waist measurement! We also think his easy manner with the slaves and hired help is unlikely. We wish you well with your book, but we are looking for writing that makes a statement about our country and our culture.

Dear Sirs

We thank you for the recent submission of your collaborative project, which we read with interest; however, we regretfully feel that this is not a work that would fit within our list.

There are several reasons that have led to our decision. The collaboration itself is ambitious but ultimately we felt that it produced several inconsistencies in both plot and tone that would perhaps have benefited from a single lead voice; several aspects are repeated in different sections of the novel and whilst some offer different viewpoints on the same event, others resort to repetition, giving the overall impression that the book is overwritten.

We assume, given the various powers of your main protagonist, that this work is intended for a Young Adult readership. Unfortunately we feel that the Superhero genre is oversubscribed at present and that the notion of the hero being presented as a son of a god is now a little passé. For example, Odin’s son Thor and Jupiter’s progeny Apollo have both become definitive examples of the genre. Moreover, whilst Apollo’s talents were musical and Thor’s abilities were to conjure thunder and rain, we are of the opinion that your central character’s multi-talented powers – healing the sick, converting water to wine, feeding thousands from a few pieces of fish and a few slices of bread, walking on water and, as the book reaches its climax, rising from the dead – create the potential for disbelief. Perhaps you might like to consider a revision, whereby a singular power is granted to your character in order that your readership might more easily identify with him?

As a final point, we also felt that your protagonist’s nemesis, Satan, is an underdeveloped character who would benefit from a greater back story. Satan is presented as ‘evil’, and yet we learn little about what has made him so. In many ways his story may be more interesting than that of Chris. Again, you may wish to consider a revised version, whereby Satan becomes the central focus. If so, we recommend that Luke’s talents are utilised as the chief storyteller.

We wish you luck with your work and please feel free to contact us again in the future should you decide to redraft your material.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately I don’t feel that I can find a publisher for this kind of fantasy, and trilogies written by unknown authors are especially hard to place. I didn’t find the mythical species you named Hobbits to be believable, elves are frankly passé, and I wasn’t sure where in the United Kingdom is Middle Earth. Maybe you meant Middlesex? Also allegorical tales about the imminent rise of Nazi oppression could cause offence.

Sincerely yours

Adolph.

SS publishing.

1945

Sir,

Your manuscript is enclosed. While there was a certain element of fun in the anthropomorphic nature of the story, it was hard to identify your target readership. Talking animals suggests a children’s story, yet some of the violence rendered by vicious hounds and the banishing of some quite likable characters to the knacker’s yard renders it quite unsuitable for those of a tender age.

So I must assume it is intended for an adult audience, though its disparaging portrayal of the main human character is hardly likely to endear it to any but the most ardent misanthropist. Your choice of names, too, for certain of the less agreeable animals is perhaps unfortunate and would certainly rule out the possibility of selling translation rights to any of the soviet bloc countries.

I fear I must turn down the opportunity to represent you on this occasion, but I wish you well if you decide to try elsewhere. If you do so, I should point out one particular point that you will need to re-think. The adjective ‘equal’ is absolute and cannot be governed by an adverb. Someone cannot be ‘more equal’.

Sincerely,

A Nagent

Dear Sir.

The chocolate coated scorpions were melted between the pages. I realise you had good intentions by sending the package by courier from Thailand, but we have had unseasonable weather these last two years.

Nevertheless, our latest technical improvement, Rover, licked off the worst of it and left it legible to the trained eye. We have a system here: we put all manuscripts into the slush pile and then we let Rover dig one out, after our Earl Grey break.

You will be delighted to hear that your story, A Dog’s Dinner, was selected. Such a catchy title – loved it to bits.

So did Rover.

It would have helped if you had numbered the pages, but I’m a jigsaw fanatic during working hours, and reconstructing the first three hundred and twenty four chapters was a “piece of cake”. Excuse me for the literary exploitation of this idiom – which reminds me so much of your style of writing.

Simple.

That brings me back to your story. I thought it would be good practice to let Marjorie, our resident psycho, take a first peek. I’m not quite sure which branch of the profession, but she has a black sense of humour and a cast iron stomach.

Just as well.

Her feedback was - amazing. A Dog’s Dinner is different; our editorial team is agreed on that. Your writing is unconventional literary fiction suitable for the marble-topped coffee tables of the impoverished upper classes; the chopping scenes - all ninety-seven - were well thought out, even if a little repetitive.

I felt that Edgar Allan - your main character - even if he suffers from asthma and a dyslexic god complex, should own a dog to bring credibility into the story. Although a god would spread hairs everywhere, and I quite understand your VOP. Your minor characters played bit parts and I’m not so sure this worked as well as it could; we hardly got to know them.

Our main concern was the setting. Dungeons: iron chains attached to walls dripping with condensation, stone floors with scurrying rats, a mad professor, and a table full of carving knives. It had atmosphere, granted, but it was definitely TTO.

Subtleness is our new mantra.

“A Dog’s Dinner” is crap.

Kind regards

Felicity Fotheringale-Smythe. Crufts winner, 1960.

PS I found the cheque folded between the handwritten pages of the last chapter. Clever, that.

Dear Sir,

Regretfully we are returning your manuscript. It has some good qualities and shows a certain potential. Overall we thought it was well structured, but somewhat overwritten. We feel that it isn’t really suited to our list.

In fact to go further we doubt there is a space for it at all in the current marketplace. These days it isn’t really possible to sell a war story that doesn’t involve any war. We note that the only fighting you feature was between armies that were essentially on the same side and that there was no fighting as such. Merely a rather wimpish surrender and a bit of firing squad action. The main war action appears to take place elsewhere with a big battle between the Allies and the Germans. This is the sort of thing that readers would want to see in a war story. Not some surrendering "prefer to go out decently" wimpish side changing what nots.

In addition, these days gay characters really need to be out of the closet and take a greater lead to address that part of the readership. The thought of a hulking gay soldier hiding his unrequited love for the captain for years and being OK with his courting a local girl isn't at all plausible. Not in such an all male environment. And frankly, as a serving officer in an occupying army it seems so unlikely that he doesn’t manage congress with the girl, even with a serious father on the patch. And not for another fifty years? We mean, really!

We can’t recommend anyone else that might want to take it on, unfortunately. Perhaps if you made some changes and the submitted it elsewhere it may have possibilities for a small run. You could try to get it on the reading group circuit, for example. If we may offer one final word of firm advice as we always like to close our letters constructively. Make it a guitar. How many modern readers even know what a mandolin is?

Yours

Blah, Blah, Waffle and Blah.

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Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to review your synopsis and the first three chapters of your book; however, regretfully we have decided not to take up your kind invitation to publish at this juncture. You are clearly as gifted author, but our main issue is with the sale-ability of the work.

In today’s competitive and cut throat market, length is a key issue when it comes to commissioning new work, and as your synopsis ran to twenty five pages, and the novel itself was is in excess of 120,000 words, we feel that some serious editing is needed to make it saleable.

Also, though we enjoyed the central premise, for clarities sake might we suggest the action is relocated to a more Anglo centric location, as Russian names have a limited appeal, and perhaps a more domestic setting would bring it more easily within the grasp of the average reader? Update it to contemporary Slough and set it in a busy hair dressers run by a divorcing couple and a tug-of-love story round a little dog, and you might have a more viable product, especially with a few to the potential for a TV adaptation.

As for the title, well, we feel it’s a little vague in it’s focus, War and Peace, which is it? If you can take on board out suggestions, how about ‘Hair Peace,’ nothing like a pun to jump off the shelves. Throw in a few football references and some descriptions of shoes and wedding dresses, and we might be talking.

Yours truly,

Girlie and pink publishing ltd.

My dear young lady,

Thank you so much for entrusting this publishing house with what I feel to be – nay, what I know to be - a delightfully fluent and captivating narrative, crafted in the very best traditions of liberal, egalitarian American literary fiction.

My colleagues on the commissioning bored all agree that, had any of them read your submission, they should very likely feel as enthused by it as indeed I do.

However.

We felt – or, rather, I felt (and the rest of the board would very likely have felt had they…etc, etc…) - that your manuscript - like, indeed, Icarus – flew too close to the wind. This in terms of its imbued propensity for unsettling liberal democratic sensibilities. That, I regret to inform you, is the nigger in the woodpile, so to speak. Well, several niggers, actually – at least three:

We felt (or, rather, I felt…etc, etc…) that issues relating to racial prejducialism in small southern towns, though laudably addressed from within the egocentric vernacular of your nine year old protagonist, would be rendered more properly and effectively by an adult voice steeped in gravitas. Her father, the lawyer, perhaps?

Children hounding a shy, reclusive middle-aged man – who very likely suffers from litigiously-proximate mental health challenges (we, you will note, prefer the enabling term ‘challenges’ to the more disabling ‘problems’) – is not a plot direction that this publishing house is willing to take in the current socio-literary climate.

Following on from the above: a shy, reclusive middle-aged man leaving sweeties, shiny coins and other grooming inducements in a place where young children are quite clearly meant to find them – this is not a plot deviation we can countenance under any circumstances.

In view of the above albatrosses around your novel’s neck, we must respectfully decline your submission on this occasion. We do, of course, sincerely wish you every success with your future literary endeavours.

Oh, yes, your novel’s epigram -

‘Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.’

Lose it: In our experience they never were. And they always like to sue.


Yours etc, etc…

Bodgitt, Wing and Aprare.

'Barb' won May's competition. I am sorry about the delay but I have been unable to access the site.

Thank you Mike for going to the trouble of giving such an excellent critique of the entries, and congratulations to Barb in absentia. It will be something nice for her to come back to.

Mike. Thanks for the honourable mention. I'll win one of these one day. Clearly not this day. Ah well.

Perhaps as Barb isn't going to be setting the next month's comp you might like to nominate someone else to pick up the baton?

I could suggest a comp about 'shopping lists' but otherwise I could nominate Noel as he came second? It was a close run thing!

I think it's a great idea to let Noel set the competition - his entry was really super.

I'd 'third' the idea. Go Noel!

stop faffing about and get Noel on board