The writing show getting published with Jean Tennant

The Writing Show continued with a long forgotten rubric 'getting published with ...' The so-called reality show in which aspiring writers are interviewed following up on their progress writing and getting published. One the two writers currently in the spotlight (though issues of the rubric have been scarce of late) is Jean Tennant. Jean has published a series of novels under the name Jean Simon in the late eighties, early nineties, but after a long period of no fictional writing activity she is trying to return with a newly finished novel: Karaoke Nights at the Twilight Lounge. Getting published with this novel, in spite of her experience in the past, proves so difficult, Jean has taken up new projects on the side.

As to the publishing the novel, she still hasn't managed to find an agent, let alone get a publisher interested. In the early reality shows she explained why she felt she needed an agent: publishers tend to ignore unsolicited work and will mostly attend to the material brought to them via agents. Hence, she chose to look for an agent in stead. Now, after a year, no agent has accepted representing her work. Few of them even did not take the time to make a clear rejection.

In the mean time Jean has rewritten the beginning of the book. Writing show listeners who can read the first chapters on the writing show pages, were a bit taken aback, in the previous shows, but in the latest show, the new version wins acclaim. There is still one agent who has not yet rejected the material. The agent's office has requested to see the full novel and has let Tennant know, she must be ready to wait up to a year before receiving an answer. Tennant by then fears, to want to completely rewrite the work. You know, after having not looked at it for such a long time and gained new perspectives.

The Prelude - In Our Time

The poet William Wordsworth is one of the most influential of English poets in the romantic age, mostly mentioned together with Coleridge. BBC's In Our Time discusses Wordsworth, developing the dialog to what is considered the poet's masterpiece: the poem The Prelude. A work the poet continued to revise throughout his life and which was only published afterwards.

By then Romanticism had developed such, the poem was less influential than it could have been. Or such is claimed by Bragg's guests and I wonder why it is still considered Wordsworth's greatest work. From the guests in the studio nothing but acclaim - also from host Melvyn Bragg, who is, after all a writer and shows a certain level of identification with the subject of the show, he doesn't have normally.

Fortunately there is enough recitation to let Wordsworth speak for himself a bit. It is also analyzed what it was in his work that made him so influential. In the end, it is argued he was the better poet between him and Coleridge and Coleridge is claimed to have known it. But Wordsworth adored Coleridge and The Prelude, was known also, even before publication it was known somewhat, as the poem 'to Coleridge'.