Everybody knows what the dream looks like. First, you write a book. Next, you send it off to a nationally known publisher. Finally, you are rewarded with a contract for an enormous amount of money, you are interviewed on television, recognised in the street, and feted wherever you go. It's all wonderful.

Ah, but I missed a bit out. At Stage Two - sending books off to publishers - there's the small matter of waiting a few years and wasting a fortune on postage. There's a series of rejections that you have to receive before you finally, eventually, inevitably, hit that 'jackpot'. That's usual. It happened to J K Rowling, why shouldn't it happen to you too? Yes, just as Tom Cruise is the only famous actor in the world who actually passed his first audition, the rocky road to getting your book published includes the ritual humiliation of being turned down, time after time, over and over again, crushingly and repeatedly. Most of the 'names' in the world of writing have had to put up with that stuff, so why not you? In fact, most 'established' authors probably think it's good for you. Why not? Just as experienced doctors think it's Okay for Junior Doctors to work unholy hours and wear themselves out doing night shifts during their first tours of responsibility, so authors and publishers seem to agree that the hurdles that pre-publishing throws up are somehow there to stiffen the sinews and make for a better person. Yes, well, that's their excuse, trying to explain a nonsensical system that actually wastes talent and strangles initiative.

It might work too, but for one thing. Writers have feelings. Hmm, hard to believe, I know, but a necessary and powerful qualification for being able to write stuff about people is knowing something about them – and the way they tick. I think it's called 'empathy'. It means having a line into the human heart. Basically, it means authors can sometimes be downright sensitive. Good qualification for knocking out that book, but disaster for trying to get published. Now there's a dilemma. In order to concoct a story that might actually be believable, you have to be a little bit open, perhaps even fragile, your nerve endings near the surface. On the other hand, in order to get your book into print, you need the thick skin of an elephant and the blinkered vision of a hobbled horse. An interesting combination, and darn difficult to find.

Aha, you say. That's why the publishing industry invented agents. These days, The Agent is the perfect foil, the line of defence between publisher and published. It's perfect – for publishers. They don't have to talk to aspiring authors much anymore. They can rely on agents filtering out the bad stuff, (as they see it), so that they only get to open the goodies, the sure-fire winners. For the writer, however, it's no improvement at all. There's still a person they have to write a letter to; submit their proposal to; send their manuscript to; and – yes, you guessed it – a person they get all the rejection letters from. Yes, back at the writing desk, from that limited perspective, things haven't become better at all. Getting published is still a bitch. Sometimes, maybe even a lot of times, it doesn't even happen at all.

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