Salutations, Writers! Sensible Shoes demanded that I explain how I of all people got an agent. It's definitely an astonishing event.
Big deal; you can fly. Do you have an agent?
So here's what happened: Several years ago I took a writing class at Vroman's, Pasadena's outstanding independent bookstore. The teacher wrote the most depressing literary fiction ever printed -- judging by the bookjackets, anyway. But she didn't care what kind of fiction her students wanted to write, so long as it was good.
Anyway, she taught me a lot about writing, and when the class was over, some of us formed a writers' group, which we kept up for a couple of years. I learned a lot more about writing by doing it, and finished my first novel, which my mother assured me was second only to Jane Austen's, though in a different genre.
Then I started looking for an agent.
The first thing I did was go to writers' conferences: Southern California Writers Association, Sisters in Crime, and best of all, Killer Nashville. These have sessions on how to attract an agent through seductive query letters, how not to repulse an agent by being annoying, how not to bore an agent by using the wrong words. They also have actual agents and writers who, for an extra not-usually-exorbitant fee, will read 20 pages or so of your novel and critique it. And how-to-write sessions.
I learned a lot at these. Especially that my novel was not a murder mystery as I had naively believed, but something called a legal thriller. And three things that really annoy me: that all genre novels must a) feature a threat to all life on earth or at the very least the Academy Awards (a/k/a "have high stakes"); (b) be chock full of character arcs; and (c) have protagonists who suffer incessant slings and arrows leading to heart-damaging suspense that throbs on every page. And a lot more.
I took some of this to heart and made more changes. Then I started sending out query letters to every agent I could find who might represent legal thriller writers, thriller writers, Pacific Northwest writers, fiction writers, whatever. I studied their websites. I read interviews they'd given. I followed their arbitrary and capricious submission guidelines ("Include the first five pages in the body of your query."). And they didn't respond at all. So I kept tweaking the query letter, and now I knew more people who could help me tweak it. And I'd made some friends who could read the novel with a more critical eye than had my mother, and I tweaked the novel some more. I entered novel writing contests: St. Martin's Minotaur contest, Killer Nashville's Claymore Award contest, some English one I can't remember, and Amazon's Breakthrough Novel one, sadly now defunct. The novel was a finalist in the Claymore one and semifinalist in the Amazon one, but these failed to lead to glory, publication, or even an agent.
Now I was at least getting rejections instead of stony silence from the agents. One sentence form rejections, but still.
At this point, as a result of hanging around writing venues, I had met other writers, some of them published. And one of them suggested to an agent they knew that the agent read my novel. The agent read it and liked it and actually talked to me! And said she couldn't sell it because (a) legal thrillers aren't selling that well; and (b) the stakes, a first degree murder charge, weren't high enough (see above); and (c) there were insufficient slings and arrows and suspense (see above again). Was I writing anything else, she asked.
Well, I was. In fact I was well into a second legal thriller with the same protagonists. And luckily, from hanging around all those conferences and writers and all, I had learned about the existential threat thing and the slings and arrows and suspense and had put them in the book. Even though it was a legal thriller and therefore had a strike against it, she said she'd read it. So I worked like mad and finished it and sent it off. And she liked it and said she thought she could sell it and voila, I had a contract! And two pages of suggestions to make it better. See (a), (b), and (c), above.
So I don't know how much, if any, of this can be boiled down to actual advice. Except that persistence is good. And contact with other writers. Oh, and being willing to listen to advice even if your work is second only to Jane Austen. Those are probably the takeaways.
Tonight's Challenge:
The Callow Youth, the Stout Companion, or another participant has written a fictionalized account of the Quest for the Jewel of Togwogmagog. Write the first 100 words or so of his/her query letter to Eminent Agent.
The Write On! timeslot has returned to Thursdays at 8 pm ET (5 pm Pacific).
Before signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write and/or Writer Beware.