A new chapter has begun - agent submissions (aggghhhhh!!)
- Karina
- May 7
- 3 min read
75. Thursday 7 May 2026
I know I wrote yesterday about nearing the time for sending out my manuscript for Crime Writing for Beginners, but it has somehow caught me by surprise that I found no good reason not to press "send" on the first submission. Now I feel sick. I have submitted to my top three (if not number one) agent, with whom I had a few email exchanges with between July 2024 and February 2025 about my previous novel, Infinite Possibilities. She read two versions of that book and was very encouraging, welcoming the submission of anything else I wrote in the future. This feels like a very. Big. Step. The main reason I almost didn’t send it (I’d have dithered for at least a few days) is that I will be more disappointed if she doesn’t at the very least want to read all of it than any other agent I send it to. I know I am a step further up to the closed door of the agent and publishing world with her, so it will be a bigger disappointment if she doesn't want to read more - she feels like my best hope as she said so many positive things about my writing after reading my last novel.
This morning, I worked on my template-of-sorts as part of my agent submission “pack”. It’s hard when you are trying to improve on something if you have it in front of you. I got up shortly before 7am this morning, made a flask of coffee and fed the birds. It was cool and still outside and the birds were comfortingly noisy. I came indoors and handwrote the “best” version of previous attempts to write it. I find it a lot easier to identify words and sections that don’t sit right on the page if I handwrite. I then underlined all the bits that felt wrong. That ended up being almost the entirety of the last half.
I walked up the garden to sit on a bench higher up the valley, way above the house. Unfortunately, my hands got too cold to write much more, but I did identify the points I wanted to make and I felt content and ready to crack on with it.
I came indoors, opened a new Word file, copied the upper section that I was pleased with and, crucially, didn’t copy the rest of it over. I then opened a blank document and wrote "who, when where, catalyst and resolution" as questions, which I then answered. I also asked: Whose story is it? Why would a reader want to follow the story? How does their story end? I answered those questions.
I then wrote a short paragraph answering my own question of “what’s it about?”, followed by a paragraph about me and why only I could’ve written this story. And hey presto, with a few tweaks, I actually felt pleased with what I’d written. I feel a need to reiterate that it is just a template and a starting point for covering emails, not to be cut and paste into every agent I submit to.
Now that I find myself having started the demoralising and slog-like process of submitting to agents – I know, I know, I should manifest and be more optimistic, I just can’t – I probably won’t write here so often. Submitting to agents is not part of writing a book and I don’t want to keep writing about how dejected I feel for not having heard from any agents, or how miserable I feel for having received a generic rejection email. Maybe in a month or so, I will update. But for now, subject to corrections or tweaks to my manuscript from feedback from the four friends currently reading it and any changes I make when I print it out in the next few days, I’ve kind of finished Crime Writing for Beginners!
I know I’ve been a bit negative about the agent submissions, but it does feel good to be getting it out there. The seeds of an idea for what became Crime Writing for Beginners were sown in early June 2025. I think this novel has taken longer than my previous ones (except the first one, which took quite a bit longer because, in large part, I had no idea what I was doing). Both it and me are ready to see what happens next. Fingers crossed.
