Editor at Bloomsbury, please, please love my book - Alice Jolly
Recently I spent a couple of days teaching. This wasn't my usual Oxford teaching job. But it involved the same kind of approach - reading students work in advance and then meeting with them to talk it through. As I reached the end of the second day, I was tired and hot, looking forward to heading home. But I was also interested to meet my last student because her work very much impressed me. It was odd, interesting, challenging - and very well written. Our conversation turned out to be as interesting as the work had suggested. This young woman was clever, quirky with an independent mind. I liked her. But then, as our conversation came to an end, she asked that inevitable question. 'Will I get this work published?' Usually when I am asked this question, I say something vaguely encouraging but imprecise. Partly I do that because I'm not teaching publishing, I'm teaching writing. I also do it because I now genuinely can't answer that question. I ...