Category Archives: Postcards 2023

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The daunting process of finding an agent

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This is the time of year when family used to wearily supply me with another copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, which I would then hunt through looking for likely targets. I’d read up on each agent’s specific requirements, and then measure out the ingredients to send to them. Sadly for me nothing baked into anything. So I gave up.

Then today I listened once more to writers discussing submissions, and I saw suddenly that the clue is in the word ‘submission’. That’s what it feels like after aching hours of drafting and tweaking, and rearranging according to each agent’s rules, especially if there’s not even a peep in response.

Anyway, while I sit here bleating like a sheep stuck on the wrong side of a fence, I think sometimes of J K Rowling. She created a whole world, then submitted it again and again, until finally ‘kapow‘! She succeeded because she did not give up. So, even if I can’t create a world as magnificent as hers, I can at least work on the not giving up … for now.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The pleasure of a visitors’ book

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“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory.” Dr Seuss

Visitors’ books – we love the raggedy copies we have. The smallest has travelled from home to home with us, occasionally lost for the length of a new home at the bottom of an unpacked packing box, but then found again in time for the next home. It has served us well, and now it has a new companion to take on the day to day duties.

This newcomer is filling up and growing a wisdom of its own, but it knows, and we know, that it will never be able to replicate the knowledge sheltered by its older companion. By ‘knowledge’ I suppose I mean gossip – a listing of relationships often detailed in little more than the word count of a tweet, but written long before that little blue bird, or its black X of a successor came to be. Some pages just have names and dates, but those alone can bring back a whole shelf of memories, especially if connected to the names and dates surrounding them. It’s even better if the visitors have taken the time to write a little more than just the basics, for then their own immediate impression of their time adds even more to the knowing that they were there.

So, if you’ve never had a visitors’ book, I recommend it. It needn’t be fancy, and it soon becomes a habit and then a treasure, the kind of treasure that will link many more than you will probably ever remember, or know, back to a place and a time.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The company of a dog

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“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” Roger Caras

Today involved the company of dogs. It was sunny and they were happy, spreading the fun of the day in every direction.

That’s how it is with dogs. They do not care about the latest political disappointments, or know anything about international tensions. They have no desire to own the latest in fashion, or to visit the most exotic of destinations, and they have absolutely no interest in debating the pros and cons of artificial intelligence. All they want, or all these dogs wanted, was the company of their humans, and somewhere warm and dry to be, with the promise of food to look forward to at appointed times.

We were able to provide all these, and so they in return took us out for walks and presented us with endless balls to throw. Probably a few more balls than we actually needed to be honest, but the dogs were generous and did insist.

Now the day is ended, we are slumped exhausted in our chairs, and the dogs, at last, have a chance to play with the balls themselves.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023