One-to-ones, I’ve had a few, but then again… who can resist the chances to “pitch your work to industry gate keepers!” in a writing festival package? Although you might wish you had resisted, after a weekend of looking at your watch through interesting talks so that you leave them in time (factoring in a nervous pee) for your appointments, and letting other potentially instructive sessions flow past you while you sit there in post-one-to-one bewilderment.

Perhaps I just made bad choices, but I never got much out of literary speed-dating. I have no issue with agents that just didn’t like what I was doing – even the one whose way of imparting this was to spend 10 minutes arguing that a principal ballet dancer wouldn’t travel standard class in a train. I also forgive the two agents (in the same afternoon) that used half of my allocated time to go for a pee. But the one that was so full of praise and excitement that I looked over my shoulder to see if they were speaking to someone else, asked for the full manuscript, and then never replied to any emails…

It’s a tricky pairing: the agent is keen for good festival feedback, doesn’t want any awkwardness, and would like to give constructive feedback – if she can remember enough about your sub (and control her bladder). But the author with a finished novel may not be too receptive to drastic suggestions made after a possibly cursory look at a small sample, and, let’s face it, really just wants to be asked for a full MS.

It’s probably better to have these meetings at an early, more pliable stage of your novel. Or hone your manuscript with a writing group and a good literary consultancy, then do carefully crafted online subs to the RIGHT agents and publishers.

Exactly two years on (and still not having heard from the ecstatic agent), I’m pinch-myself happy to be a signed author with the wonderful Urbane Publications. I can now be one of those smug so-and-so’s who can go to a writing festival without any need to miss anything – my eight years of running the one-to-one gauntlet are over!