I’ve finished my two weeks of work sorting The Catchpole Agency’s submission inbox and I actually can’t believe how much I enjoyed it! Basically he gets hundreds of email submissions of people sending in stories they’ve written and I was filtering them for him into folders of NO, MAYBE? or HAVE A PROPER LOOK. The submissions inbox is open in the summer, but there was a backlog of emails from the last few years to sort. The Agency are not actively looking for new clients because they have enough, but they keep tabs on submissions just incase a story is too good to pass up. This does mean 99.9% of the hundreds of emails I looked through will not be getting reply, which is written very clearly on the submissions page of their website. I was fully aware of this and so did not spend too long on each email. It may sound harsh, but there is a difference between personal correspondence and professional correspondance. James Catchpole told me he was looking for voice and so he reads the story writing first, before he read anything else written in the email. I found this was the best course because then you don’t get sucked into the person’s life before you see the quality of the writing. I could see from talking to him and from observing myself just how hard it is to get noticed in publishing, which is why there are hundreds of agents out there, all with different things that will speak to them, and writers shouldn’t be discouraged if they get no reply from one agency query. Most writers send out scores of submissions before they find their agent. It’s what makes everyone nervous about traditional publishing, but it’s a hurdle every published author has faced.

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Which is why I am so amazed James Catchpole took the time to read my work. From talking to him, I know he prefers picture books because they are so much quicker to read. Initially when I met him and he offered to read my work, he got back to me after several months to say he hasn’t read it yet, but hadn’t forgotten about it. I kind of made it more pressing when I told him I was having to move out of student accommodation, didn’t have anywhere accessible to live, didn’t have a career and didn’t know if my writing was worth pursuing. He then read it and told me it was a story worth pursuing. That knowledge gave me hope through my surreal housing search experience. He recently read a second draft and we called to talk about it, which is when he offered me some work.

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I’ve said it before: Becoming Sweetwood will take time. It has lots of potential, and I want to honour that by doing as best I can on it. And now I have my flat for working in. I didn’t expect my job as a Reader for The Catchpole Agency to come so naturally to me; I guess a youth of looking at illustration and lyric-writing paid off, as did those Literature degrees, and I know what is good when I see it. Of course I am very aware of how fragile people’s hopes and dreams are, but after all publishing is a business. There is a difference between writing for your soul and joy, and writing for companies to invest in. If writing gives you joy, do it, but also be self-aware as to why you’re doing it. When I called James today, I showed him the story I liked the most out of the hundreds I had looked through. It was from a few years ago, and he checked and the writer already had an agent. If I can see the writing was good, so could someone else.

James will contact me again about another round of me reading the submissions in the autumn. Until then, I really need to decide what I want to pursue. I could look for more work as a Reader, but will make sure I finish my next draft of Becoming Sweetwood as well…

(Featured Image is ‘Forest Games’ by Jeske Balmakers)