“She began her career as the assistant to the agent who represented Stephen King…”
That was in an agent bio I read yesterday. Now, she certainly has the credentials to justify name dropping, but it made me laugh nonetheless. Because it made me think of The Office: “I’m Dwight Schrute, Assistant Regional Manager” and Michael cutting in, “Assistant to the Regional Manager.” Finding things to laugh about is how I cope with the stress of the agent hunt. (Actually, it’s how I cope with most stressful things, but this post is not about other stressful things.)
A few of my readers might be writers, and so you’ll know well the process I’m about to describe — and may not have any interest in reliving it! But for those of you who have ever wondered what happens after a writer has finished a novel and before it’s published, this is what we go through.
After months, or even years (I started my first draft in April, 2008, and finished it in August, 2009), writing, editing and polishing your novel, making it the best it can possibly be, you’ve then got to summarize the entire scope of this 100 thousand word manuscript into a measly 100 words. That’s right: all you have to sell your novel to an agent, who then must try to sell your novel to a publisher, is 100 words. And it’s not just your novel you’ve got to sell. In much fewer than 100 words, you’ve also got to sell yourself as a marketable commodity even if you have zero publications to your name and little writing experience apart from a few short stories in college. Nothing makes you feel more vulnerable than sending that off to agents whose clients include bestsellers and award winners. You hit “send” and then are left to wonder whether your novel will sound like the stupidest, most trite bit of writing ever to appear in their inbox. It’s enough to make you lose sleep, throw up everything you eat (if you can eat at all), chew your nails down to the quicks,or get really drunk. Certainly you will check your email compulsively every five minutes.
Fellow writers, this need not be! I have developed the perfect no-stress method for querying agents:
Wait until the last 2-4 weeks of your pregnancy. Querying agents is a great distraction from waiting for your water to break, and nesting the excitement of the impending birth of your child is a great distraction from awaiting replies. And then, when you do receive three rejection letters out of your first four queries, you can’t even really feel that disappointed, because you’ve got a little bundle of joy and unconditional love and acceptance on the way. It’s an absolutely foolproof strategy, I tell you!
Okay, so it’s really only foolproof if you happen to be pregnant. What if you don’t have the distraction of a coming baby while you’re in the querying process? How do you cope with the inevitable rejection? Because you will be rejected. Maybe once. Maybe twice. Maybe three times. (I was, three times, in the space of 12 hours.) Maybe more. Almost certainly more, the more queries you send out. (And the more agents you query, the more likely you are to find one who wants to represent you.) How do you deal with the negative responses?
