Emma Walsh: 'Sometimes I get novels with strange scenes that are personal sex fantasies, and they're really weird and that kind of makes me a little nervous'

Pity the poor literary agents and publishers. There they sit in their offices, hoping that the next Roddy Doyle or Cecelia Ahern pops out of the already groaning slush pile. The reality is that Roddys and Cecelias are very few and far between.


The vast majority of first-time book submissions are usually competent, well-presented affairs, while a smaller percentage show enough promise to be published.


Then there's another percentage, smaller still, but sometimes more memorable, and usually for all the wrong reasons. These are the manuscripts that arrive in 10 battered shoe boxes tied with string. The ones that look like they were written longhand in red biro. (At least, the editor hopes it's biro.) The volumes that arrive proclaiming the writer's genius in capital letters on the acknowledgements page. The acknowledgements page that concludes with: "I'd like to thank the voices in my head for always being there for me, and asking me to write this book in the first place." These are the odd submissions, the eccentric, the weird and wonderful, and sometimes they're just plain misguided and confused.


Emma Walsh is head of Walsh Communications, a publishing consultancy and literary agency. She's had her share of experiences with odd submissions, and she remembers one in particular from her days with Poolbeg: "There was an American writer who sent this absolute tome. It was called something like The Great King Rat of Ireland, and it really was pretty bad. The writer was so confident that she was writing things like, 'When Disney decide to make a three-movie series out of this, I'll let you be involved in it and be part of its amazing success.'"


It's hard not to picture some of the more deluded X-Factor contestants when you hear about some of these people. Walsh reckons there are two categories of writers. "You do get a lot of 'Would you like to be the agent responsible for the next big thing?' The general rule of thumb I use is that the more humble writers are the more fantastic writers. The deluded writers' work never tends to live up to what they pitch it as."


Ciara Considine, senior editor with Hachette Books Ireland, has had similar experiences. "I recall receiving a fiction submission accompanied by a very long letter describing the unparalleled brilliance of the novel, how it mixed the genius of James Joyce with the pace and plot of John Grisham, and using many more superlatives in high self-praise."


There seems to be a strange psychology at work when it comes to these first-time writers, and Considine makes a potentially inflammatory, but valid point: "I don't want to appear sexist, but it could only have come from a man – in my experience, men are quicker to tell you how good their submission is, women are more inclined to let the publisher make the judgement call. In reality, the James-Joyce-meets-John-Grisham held true on neither promise."


Ita O'Driscoll of Font Literary Agency has noted the driving impulse behind this authorial egotism: "I've come across some writers who think who they are is more important than what they write and feel that a media profile is all that is needed to get a book published. Getting published should be first and foremost about the writing."


Then there are those who make the decision to be deliberately quirky, in the belief that grabbing the editor/agent's attention with some kind of gimmick will allow them to push themselves to the top of the queue. Patricia Deevy is senior editor with Penguin Ireland, and she remembers a recent incident: "Someone had printed out an ode on very decorative paper and framed it, and included it with their material. A stranger writing a poem to me is a bit strange. Let's put it this way, it doesn't really help their submission."


Deevy maintains that sending in a submission to a publisher should be approached in the same way one applies for a job. "And when you're sending in a job application you don't do anything that would make your potential employer think that you're strange," she says, laughing.


There are those though, some who might take the job-application approach too literally, as Walsh points out: "I remember getting a book, which was interesting enough, but they sent in their CV as well. The CV was bizarre. One of their jobs was an artificial inseminator for cows, and I just thought, 'What am I supposed to think about this?' It had absolutely no relation to the book whatsoever."


Deevy has come across another example of a certain type of writer who believes they are destined for greatness. "There is a thing you very occasionally get. It's usually men with material that's a little bit on the raunchy side, and they think they're the very first people who've been daring enough to write like this. And they're more or less saying, 'Will you be the one who's brave enough to publish this?' And that really doesn't work either."


And while it's very easy to laugh at people, she does point out that as an editor you have to be objective, fair, and respectful, regardless of how strange you think the material, or indeed the author, might be. "There is the thing of people who have experienced difficulties in life, or emotional trauma, and they come to a point where they have some kind of epiphany about their backgrounds and they turn that into something, and it's not the case necessarily when that's written up that it's going to be of interest to other people. It might be very important to them, and it's good that they do it, but occasionally people have a desire to see that published, and you have to handle that sensitively because you want to say to people this is very valuable to you, but it's not really suitable for publication. Very often it's appallingly written and all of that because it's solipsistic."


There can also be another worryingly personal angle to some of the material editors receive, as Walsh reveals: "Sometimes I get novels with strange scenes that are personal sex fantasies, and they're really weird and that kind of makes me a little nervous. Normal sex scenes are grand, but when you get really bizarre stuff in that kind of oedipal style, that can be a bit worrying."


Despite this, Walsh maintains that the seemingly odd can sometimes turn into something pleasantly surprising. "I got a book recently, a really small cute book about a vagina with a personality, but it actually turned out to be completely utterly charming and lovely. Now, I haven't found anyone to publish it yet, because it's obviously such an unusual subject, but it's worth giving everything a chance."


For all the peculiarity that can be encountered in her job, Walsh is aware how big a step it is for people to submit something.


While it's easy to scoff, one thing holds true for all wannabe writers, and it's this: "It takes a lot of courage to send your work off to be read and judged by someone."


'It's about unicorns. They're the protagonists' The open and shut cases


Queryfail is a Twitter feed set up by two literary agents in the US to share examples of the worst opening lines they'd received from author submissions. The feed has grown into a treasure trove of dodgy book pitches, and has caused controversy among agents and writers. Here are some choice samples:


? "The manuscript is complete. It is 320 pages in Font 10 with 178,313 words. It has 36 chapters. "


? "My book is about a friendship based upon mutual vomiting practices in high school."


? "My book is differentiated from Twilight because the vampires have wings, and are half-breed angels."


? "Forty-three years of toiling within my own mind have come to an end with this manuscript!"


? "My inner voices told me to send this to you. I channelled the whole thing from an angel named Thomas."


? "I witnessed a lot of things that happened before I was born. How? Alien abduction."


? "Tragically initiated into a secret panther-worshipping society…"


? "This is my first attempt at writing a fictional novel."


?"It's about unicorns. They're the protagonists."


? "Have you ever wondered what it's like to be pulled up a waterfall or to be flushed down a toilet?"