Writing Desk #3 | On submission: exposure, choice, growth

Notes on a book proposal, and the turning of the year

Evening Blue (Firmament), by Arthur Garfield Dove, 1941

My book proposal is about to go out on submission to publishers in the UK and abroad. It is the process during which my agent will pitch my book to acquiring editors at publishing houses, starting with those at the London Book Fair.

But she is also pitching me: who am I, and why am I the one to write this particular book, now? And, in receiving her feedback on the proposal, it has felt at times like I am receiving feedback on myself. Which bits are beautiful, which bits confused, which bits need addressing? What am I even trying to say, is it honest, is it really me? All this to say, it is an exposing process.

And writing here, about this process of submission, is surely just adding to the exposure because there is no guarantee of success. I’m trying to track it though, track my growth through it, just as I’m daily tracking the emergence of spring outside in the hedgerows and garden and fields. There are shoots and buds that are opening to the world because it is the only way they can be fully themselves, fully alive. I think of something Anais Nin wrote:

“the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

The word ‘submission’ comes from the Latin submittere "to yield, lower, let down, put under, reduce," from sub "under" and mittere "let go, send". The word submit, then, speaks of letting down, letting go. And it is what I feel; that I will have to let go — of expectations, of a desire to explain and add disclaimers, of my voice in the process. I must trust my agent to sell me and sell my book. And it feels excruciating to have to let go, to not be in the room when these conversations — about something so personal to me — happen.

Submission conjures ideas of powerlessness too, or at least power imbalance. I think back to being a councillor, and members of the public trying to input to and influence decisions, only to be asked to submit to the outdated procedures and processes of government even when those procedures do not serve us. These procedures we are asked to submit to often seemed to be thinly veiled tools of exclusion. If there is no choice, then perhaps submission is passive, more a kind of surrender to a process we have no control over. (But we do have control: we created the infrastructure of democracy, we can re-shape it again. That is the subject of another letter though).

The idea of surrender is similar to that of submission, but submission suggests to me a degree of choice where surrender suggests reluctance. The roots of the words are almost opposites: submission contains sub "under" and mittere "let go, send"; surrender contains sur- "over" and rendre "give back". I submit is to let go/put down. I surrender is to give up/give over. Perhaps I am reading too much into these words, bending their meaning. I think I am trying to work out something about the strange compulsion to want to show my work, yet being mortified about the idea of anyone reading it. It is a choice, even when it is painful or exposing. It is a process I invite though I have little control and find it difficult. Is this submission?

When it comes to books, publishers hold the power. Though perhaps I am being too quick to conflate their function with authority or wisdom. Perhaps there is the possibility of alliance instead: if they are interested in my book, it will turn out well only through active partnership.

Medieval mystic Julian of Norwich said "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”. This I think was not resignation, not passive, but rather a recognition that she had chosen to relinquish control, and to be open to mystery and transformation. Perhaps sending my book out is an act of release into that mystery too.

I am trying to relinquish control, and to trust in a future I cannot see. That’s what faith is: trusting in things hoped for but not seen. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo must submit to the journey itself, knowing he cannot shape the path ahead. Transformation becomes possible only after he submits to an uncertain journey.

I will submit my book to people beyond me because I choose to even though that choice makes me uncomfortable. Growth is often uncomfortable, I think.

I am writing these final lines on March 1st. The sun is blazing over the fields and calling life out of dormant things. Creating and revising and understanding and releasing my proposal — what it is, and needs to be — is a little like feeling the season turn. Life has been dormant, but it now submits to the soil and the sun. The dandelions and oaks and apples have let go of their seeds, not knowing where they would land and take root, but doing so anyway because it is in their nature. It is what their shape was called to do. My proposal has been quiet, unseen work. But the season turns and asks me to trust it, to face the blazing light and let it call me forth.

In March, I’ll post a bit more about the nuts and bolts of the book journey so far as I’ve had a few questions about it.

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What is the turning season calling you to? What are you creating? I’d love to know how you balance the draw to create (anything! food, words, pictures, a life) with the uncertainty that comes with that.

Also, where are you finding hope at the moment? Do you find it easier to do so when the spring comes? What even is hope to you — expectancy, persistence, positivity, a fine thread that is hard to grasp, impossible, something else?

A few things I’ve been enjoying:

📚 Raising Hare, by Chloe Dalton — the author, a political adviser and speechwriter, learns about herself and the world through an unlikely relationship with a wild hare.

🎵 Dolly Parton’s bluegrass collection — such feeling and story.

🌱 Digging and smelling the earth at our (scruffy) allotment:

Thank you for being here,

Elizabeth x

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In case you missed my last post: