TLC Industry Day

Finally, today, after much anticipation was The Literary Consultancy’s Industry Day. This was part of the ‘Chapter and Verse’ programme I enrolled in over a year ago and it took place at the new Free Word centre in Farringdon. I completed the six sessions of mentoring (conducted via email) with Matron in June and submitted my full manuscript for reading in August. It was assigned to a reader in mid-September and takes four to eight weeks to be returned so should be expected back in the next month or so.

The day was attended by around ten would be novelists, many of which had received partial or full grants for the programme from various Arts Councils. This created an interesting debate over lunch as to who had more right to be there – those who had been aided (but therefore already had a recognised talent) versus those who had bought their way in (with no requirement to prove capability). The answer’s neither and both, of course.

We started with a typical round the group introductions session where we each described our experiences on the programme so far. The group was divided on who had received their full read back and who hadn’t. Those who had received their full read back had very interesting experiences to share. It seems that the receipt of the full read is a very stressful moment. The hope or expectation of the writer is that this is the point where TLC says “Well done, this is fantastic, and we’re going to help you take this to market” which they do with some, but more of that in a moment.

One writer felt that the results of the read directly contradicted advice she had received from the mentor during the programme. There are two parts to the response to this. One is that ultimately it’s the writer who has to rely on their own integrity and creative ambition to make choices about their work. I think that there should be clear limits set as to the extent of this as a collaborative process. The writer has to take full responsibility for the choices they make with their work and mentors are there merely to explore ideas or make suggestions to help the writer’s thinking. Secondly, reader preferences are subjective. Obvious I know. But as I’ve said before, we can’t please everybody all of the time and this comes back again to the writer’s consciousness of their work and their creative integrity. Blame can only be left at the creator’s door.

So what if no blame needs to be laid and all fantasies are fulfilled and the TLC offer to use their contacts to help the writer take the work to market? Well, Bingo! Although, this seemed a little fuzzy to me. The TLC positioned themselves as ‘Literary Scouts’ at one point, confusing for me who thought this role was primarily to sell international/overseas rights to homegrown writers, rather than the more logical definition of ‘talent spotter’. And there seemed to be some fluidity on the commercial implications of this. I.e the TLC have commission share arrangements with some agents and will approach some publishers directly. I think, were I lucky/good enough to find myself in this position I would have to spend some time fully understanding how these relationships fit together as it doesn’t seem as straightforward as the writer/agent/publisher channel generally recommended.

The initial introductory session was followed by a talk from Macmillan New Writing. Very informative it was too and the highlight for me was the examples of the successful submission cover letters that were circulated around the group. Message summarised: break the rules if you are good enough to do so. And Timeslip novels need a longer synopsis. And reference the writers you think your readers would like but find a line between confident and presumptuous.

Then lunch – fending for ourselves. Always an interesting affair with a bunch of strangers in an unfamiliar location. We survived and made it back to the session in a timely manner.

Then a session with TLC, Macmillan New Writing and an agent and an ex-editor/representative of Granta. Again, a fun and informative debate but I think I must have been thinking about and researching doing this for too long as I didn’t pick up anything new. I just need to get my manuscript out there now, following the reads, and hope for a break.

It was a well put together and very professional and enjoyable event though. And as I think I’ve said before, I highly recommend this programme for someone who needs a little extra support and help putting their first manuscript together.