Who are you?

Han Solo:          ”Who are you?”
Princess Leia: “Someone who loves you.”
Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi

Finding an Agent

This is first of an infinite number of “most agonizing” parts of the writing process for a new writer and a new writer’s friend. Sending out a query letter and the first three chapters of her baby to a literary agent is somewhat analogous to sending a note up the middle aisle in math class to the most popular boy in school with the words,

Will you go out with me? YES NO

scrawled across the back of a homework assignment in dark blue ink. While your writer knows, intellectually, that rejection of her query letter is probable, it is never really expected (she’s envisioned their witty and mutually effusing telephone conversation in her head the minute the letter slid into the mailbox or her finger hit the Send button) and it is never, ever painless.

Yet, rejection is most likely what she’s going to get for a while. Days and weeks will go by only to receive a form letter stating, “No, thank you.” And still, like a Dachshund digging away at a badger, she is going to read up on agents to find the types of books they represent, their preferred methods for queries and submissions, their current authors and, most importantly, as much as she can about their personalities to determine if she and the agent would be a good fit. Letter after letter, she will ply her talent and her pages from the agent of her wildest dreams on down, until she decides to either: a) pack it in and concentrate on her day job; b) rework her query letter and/or book for a while; c) start over from scratch or; d) she gets picked by an agent. You get to play the essential role of cheerleader and sanity saver, dangling reason in front of your writer like a rainbow from heaven. “What does she know?” “Boy, are they going to regret passing you by while you’re on the New York Times bestseller list for the 35^th consecutive week!” “Let’s start a ‘No’ folder and burn it when you get your big break.”

The acceptance, likewise, while always secretly expected, will hit her like a cold shower and a welcome relief. Now she can get down to the business of selling her book, making a quick six figures between the advance, royalties and movie rights, and figuring out what to wear on Good Morning America. But most importantly, your job is to encourage her to walk away from any agent that doesn’t love her writing style or her work. She’s going to need someone who really loves her work to get it into, possibly even push it into, the right publisher’s hands.

Your friend is likely going to worship her agent and will want to appear cool, professional and “pulled together” when talking to her agent. She will, therefore, store up all her freaky, writer ticks for when the two of you are together. You already know that she’s a basketcase about her writing three days out of four. You actually read the first, painful draft of the book and know about her tendency to change the color of the heroine’s eyes, the model of the car across the street and the type of fruit spilled across the floor from one line to the next. Granted, her agent knows that she’s a nutcase too. She deals with writers all her waking hours, but it’s easier to let the writers think she is blissfully unaware of their neuroses. Even is she’s a founding member of American Atheists, she probably still says a prayer of thanks every night before going to bed for all friends of writers.

Now, your writer is not going to be able to keep this “pulled together” game with her agent going for much more a couple of weeks, two months tops. Right around the time that her book has sat on a publisher’s To Read pile for longer than a fortnight, your writer is likely going to snap. Snap. This is when you, too, will begin to worship her agent. Think of her as your assistant in talking her down. She’s going to earn her 15% commission. This is going to be a big plus, especially initially, but you have to remember that she will never be able to focus solely your writer and her emotional needs. She has dozens of crazy writers who all have her number on speed dial and she’s going to have to deal with them in their turn. This means that most of the talking her off the ledge stuff is going to fall to you.

May the Force be with us all, Share!

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