Tag: agents

  • Q&A: how is your writing routine different now that you have an agent?

    how is your writing routine different now that you have an agent?

    Considering I’ve been agented all of 20 days, 17 of which were spent either bogged down in edits, recovering from edits, or barfing my guts out, my writing routine hasn’t changed all that much. 

    But based on the three days I’ve actually spent writing, I find I simultaneously have more time and less time than I did before. 

    I never realized how much time I spent querying, whether actively (sending things out) or passively (reading agent interviews, pitch tips, etc). So much of it had become habitual that I often find myself checking for emails that have already come, etc. I’m still in the process of reclaiming that time and allotting it elsewhere. 

    There’s also seems to be less time, because for now, at least, I’m hyper-focused on one particular flavor of book, whereas before I was more or less doing whatever I felt like doing whenever I felt like doing it. 

    There’s also that whole afraid-I’m-going-to-disappoint-everyone-slash-be-outted-as-a-writing-fraud thing, too. But I like to ignore that whenever possible.

  • Q&A: Congratulations on signing with your agent! 🙂 It must be so nice to have all of your hard work validated!

    Congratulations on signing with your agent! 🙂 It must be so nice to have all of your hard work validated!

    Thank you. 🙂

    Though if I’m completely honest, I still don’t really feel validated by it. I mean, it’s great, and I’m over the moon happy, and everything. 

    But I don’t feel any more valid than I did before. I still don’t really have a clue what I’m doing. And I still have days where I’m terrified someone will find out I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and call me out for being a fraud. 

    I got the agent call while I was in the middle of revisions. Revisions that shouldn’t have been so hard, but for some reason were. And there times I really did not know if I could do them or not. I felt like my book was broken and I did not know how to fix it. If it could be fixed. If it should be fixed.

    And in those times, I really wanted to be rejected. By everyone. I wanted them to tell me it wasn’t working and I should move on to something else. Because moving on to something else seemed so much easier than fixing what was broken. 

    So much easier than admitting something was broken, and I did not know how to fix it. 

    Then Jessica called, and she loved the story, even though it wasn’t perfect, even though it needed a lot of work. Loved it enough to want to represent it. And I as thrilled. 

    And then I was terrified. Because if I couldn’t figure it out, if I failed this book, I wouldn’t just be disappointing myself. I would be disappointing the editor who requested it. The agent who believed in it enough to represent it. 

    I really do not like letting other people down. 

    It took a lot of self ass-kicking to get over that. Probably it will take even more next time.

    So yes, it is a great thing, and I am very excited. 

    But no, I don’t feel validated, really, like my hard work finally paid off. If anything, I feel like the hard work has just begun. 

  • Q&A: do you/did you ever have a dream agent or editor you wanted to work with?

    do you/did you ever have a dream agent or editor you wanted to work with?

    Not an actual person, as in, “I want John Smith and only John Smith”, no. But I do get along better with some personality types than others, so that’s definitely always been a consideration.