Budding authors would do well to check out <a href="http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/a-good-author-is-hard-to-find/Content?oid=2820559" target="_blank">the very interesting piece from an anonymous agent</a> below. It tells you the truth that agents normally only speak about among themselves, in quiet rooms, with friends, and with authors they know very well too. Agents everywhere are drowning in unsolicited manuscripts from hopeful writers that are so bad they make you want to cry.

Not bad in the sense that they're poor. Bad in the sense that they are utter dross, efforts that can only have come from the minds of people who have never read a book properly themselves.

Huh? Yes, honest. Here's a somewhat disguised conversation that took place recently, one in which I took part in a way.

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<blockquote>Agent to budding writer pushing an idea: So who do you read?

Budding writer: Read?

Agent: What others authors? Who do you think you might be compared to?

(Pinter pause)

Budding writer: I read a Stephen King book a while back.

Agent: Which one?

Budding writer: The movie one with Jack Nicklaus.

Agent (sighing): I think you mean Jack Nicholson. <em>The Shining</em>.

Budding writer: Yeah. <em>The Shining</em>.

Agent: Book or movie?

Budding writer (hesitantly): Both I think.

Agent: So that was, what, thirty years ago? Anything since?

Budding writer: To be honest I don't read fiction a lot.

(Long Pinter pause)

Agent: Don't you think that would be a good idea? I mean if you want to write fiction...

Budding writer: They're all the same really, aren't they? So to get back to my story. There's this secret research facility, see. And some aliens. And a vampire. A really <em>hot</em> vampire...</blockquote>
OK. I exaggerate. But only a little. Honest. If you're about to submit a manuscript yourself do bear in mind an agent will want to know what you read, why, and what you think of it. If the answer's nothing you deserve to be where you'll stay. At the bottom of the slushpile.
<blockquote cite="http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/a-good-author-is-hard-to-find/Content?oid=2820559">[See <a href="http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/a-good-author-is-hard-to-find/Content?oid=2820559"><cite>A Good Author Is Hard to Find - Books - The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper</cite></a>]</blockquote>
PS. Before you ask. I am currently reading <em>Ruskin's Venice, The Stones Revisited</em> by Sarah Quill.