It’s been a while since I’ve posted, ya know, anything. Life. Work. More life. The regular bloggy excuses. But I’m thinking it’s maybe time to break my blog silence because I have a bit of news. A bit of really freakin awesome news actually.
If you’ve read my ABOUT ME section, you know that I started this site as a way to eventually (hopefully) push my eventual (and hopeful) kids book, tentatively titled Sneaky Little Outlaws. Well I’m proud and pleased as all freakin get out to announce that the first step in making that dream a reality (well, the first step after actually writing the stinkin thing) has finally happened.
I HAVE AN AGENT!
It’s all official with signed paperwork and everything. As of this week, I am now a client of Amy Tipton at Signature Literary Agency. You have no idea how utterly surreal it was walking to the mailbox to send out my contract with my son asking me, “Who are you mailing a letter to?” and me being able to respond, “To my agent.” My agent. I have an agent. Like that’s so… so… Hollywood.
The road to representation was a long, soul-sucking process. For those of you who have not gone through the process, let me paint a little picture for you. You have just spent months, possibly years, pouring your blood, sweat, tears, emotions and whatever free time you can eek out of the reality that is your “regular life” into a story that you sometimes love and just as often hate, until the night you finally type the words THE END. After that you let trusted friends and family read it, hoping they’re just going to fall all over themselves telling you what an absolutely perfect story with perfect plot and perfect characters you’ve written and how they wouldn’t change a thing. In reality, the reason you gave it to these people is for their honesty, which they give to you uncensored. So after spending a good month being depressed and pissed off at said friends, you eventually come out of the fetal position and realize that their criticisms were probably right and get to work chopping up your masterpiece to make it better. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat. However many times it takes to get it as near-perfect as you (and your very patient readers) can possibly stomach.
After that, it’s time to begin the submission process whereby you have to whittle down a (in my case) 256-page novel into a single page query letter which you will then send out to every literary agent who seems like they might represent the type of drivel you’ve just spent the last four years channelling into Microsoft Word. Then you wait. Then you wait some more. Most agents never respond. Most of the ones who do offer little more than a copy-and-pasted “thanks but no thanks” rejection letter. Here and there one will respond with interest and ask you to send them some sample pages, mayhap even the entire manuscript. Holy crap! Your heart leaps. Your nerves are on fire. You’re practically THERE, you just know it! Then the real rejection starts rolling in. The form rejections to your one-page query letter, while sucky, never really stung all that bad. But when somebody reads your entire book and THEN says no thank you… Oh my. Oh dear. Oh crap. That means it wasn’t just because their client load was full, or they weren’t looking for the type of book you wrote. They actually liked your idea, but then rejected your book based on its actual merits… or lack thereof. After five or so months of this, you start to doubt whether your book was really as great as you’d always imagined it… or if it’s even any good at all. It doesn’t help when you pick up a book at the library that absolutely sucks and go, “Well geez, my book was better than THIS.” By now, whenever an email shows up in your inbox with the RE: QUERY subject line, you’ve pretty much just resigned yourself to the idea that it’s going to be another rejection. Which it usually is.
Until the day it isn’t.
I’ll be honest, when I sent Amy a follow-up e-mail about 4 months after she requested my full manuscript, it was really with the intention of tying up my loose ends and finally putting this book to rest so I could move on with my aforementioned “regular life.” So when her response came back three days later with an offer of representation I just… I just… well shit, I effing FLIPPED OUT. I had an agent! I mean, I had an agent! Now lest you get the impression that Amy was my consolation prize after getting rejected out of hand by every other agent in town, let me assure you that even though she was the last agent to respond, she was actually one of the agents at the top of my “I’d really like to sign with them” list. She’s an editorial agent which means she actually works with her writers to make their books as good as possible before submitting to publishers. She’s young and full of energy but with solid credentials, a good track record of sales and a team of other experienced and well-respected agents backing her up. And to top it all off, this is her agent photo.
Bitchin. How could an aspiring author NOT want to sign with this chick? In talking with her other clients I know I’m in good hands and I’m seriously stoked to see where this partnership takes us.
There’s still plenty of work to be done. Amy has already put me to work revising a major section of the book before she sends it out. As it turns out, it’s the part of the book that has always been my favorite part. Those of you who are also writers know that dreaded mantra, “Kill your babies” or “Kill your darlings.” The notion that the thing you love most about whatever you’ve created is going to be the one thing you’ve most likely lost all perspective on and the one thing somebody who knows better is going to tell you to nix. You fight it. You try and make them see it your way. But in the end, you know that they’re probably right. Fortunately for me and Amy and our brandy spanking new writer/agent relationship, it only took a week or so of me going, “but but but” before I realized that yes, she’s right. She has said from the beginning that she loves my book. Loves my story. And only wants to make it as good as it can possibly be. I believe her. I trust her. Time to put those babies on the chopping block.
And so now the work begins anew, after which the road to publication is still fraught with more, oh so many more, opportunities for soul-sucking rejection before (hopefully) eventually ending with a publisher who says, “We love this, let’s do it.”
Thus begins a new category in my life as a writer, and a new category in this very blog. By clicking on the “being a writer” label, you can follow the progress of my book (and me I suppose) as it goes through the long and arduous process of turning from a double-spaced word processing document on my laptop, to an actual physical book that you can actually buy at bookstores nationwide. Wish me luck. I have an agent!