Jim Mitchell
Mitchell Le Guin Pullman Associates
100 Century Gardens
London
E1 1SN
27th of March, 2022
Dear James,
Thank you for your various enquiries over the past years. How to put this formally? I love what I’m seeing of this novel of yours. I know you sent it to me almost as an apology. Don’t be so modest. The work isn’t done – of course it’s not done, there’s no shame or fear in saying that – but surely you can see, when you’re already feeling good and the world looks alright, surely you can see how bright and hot the core of it is. Even when you don’t feel so good about it, you don’t delete it, you don’t throw it in the sea. Even at those times, a part of you knows it’s good. Perhaps that part is afraid of what it could become, and what you could become in the making of it.
Your whole streak of work is moving towards the same cluster of questions, and I like it all and I want it all. But most of all, I want this novel, in whatever final form it takes. Will it be as you imagined? No! Where’s the surprise in that? You really think you can predict the workings of your own mind? I don’t, and I don’t want to. I want the mess you have to make.
I hear the quailing and wailing inside you — it’s a risk! You already know this, but sometimes it helps to name it: the rich life is a risk, James, you are the die, the flipped coin. Whether it’s writing 180,000 words of novel out of an idea which is too weird to let go of, or inventing a fictional literary agency named after your heroes and hoping they/their estates don’t litigate, we are all just spilling paint and hoping the stains look good. The secret is, this is a no-loss game: the practiced eye can see the beauty in any spillage.
You are also afraid that it can’t be done. Can’t be done by you, you mean; let us be specific. I’m afraid I have to deploy the logic bombs (there’s an idea) on you: if you sit down and do the things people do to get this done, it can’t not be done. You are water running through the rocks, wind on the dunes. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it’ll happen, nothing personal.
And so we come to the contract. I am surprisingly well-connected. I will represent your book in reaching out to various agents, I will keep submitting, I will not give up, I will stand up for you. You in turn will furnish me with a book to send. And because people want to see it, though they don’t know it yet, you won’t take too long. It’s the 27th of March; not long until your 36th birthday. You raced to get a thready first draft done by your 35th, and you managed it. So, I’m giving you six months from today. I want an agent-ready manuscript by the 1st of October - see how far away that already sounds? Let’s put it another way: on the 1st of October, I will send whatever I do have to first readers. It’s been too long.
You owe me a book, because you owe you a book. I don’t offer representation to just anyone, you know. So let’s honour the agreement we’ve made with each other.
I’ll see you in October, James. I’m so excited to be taking this journey with you.
Sincerely,
Jim Mitchell
MLGP Associates