Do you write fiction like an angel, only to have your work ignored by agents? Does it drive you up a wall?
It did me. I actually blush remembering some of the attitudes I assumed 25 years ago when my my struggles to break in didn’t lead directly to publication.
Here’s my view now: I might have been a published novelist sooner had I taken some time to familiarize myself with the acquisition end of the book business. Instead, like so many of us, I bought into the adversarial model:
Agents are unreachable, frosty, superior, exclusive, discriminatory, etc. They are pseudo-literary snobs, unwilling to give the time of day to fiction that’s unusual. They pamper their big money authors and look for more of the same.
With thoughts like that, I existed in a kind of purgatory. Doors wouldn’t budge because agents were on the other side, pushing back. I just couldn’t break in, and it made me crazy.
I now know this: if for one whole business day I could have sat next to a good agent and watched her work, I might have come away seeing things in a wholly different way. I might have grasped what I didn’t at the time: that when my work was rejected, it was for good reason, and above all, it was not personal.
Writing is the only trade where you can wake up one morning and, with zero experience, decide you are going to publish a novel. Agents and editors know and dread this syndrome because it’s largely responsible for the daily cascade of submissions into their office–most of which can’t begin to fill their needs. Writing coaches see it too, when we have to advise a new student or client that they may not be as ready for publication as they think they are.
The fact is, you will catapult yourself far down the career path if learn to think like an agent.
From the standpoint of that revelation, take another look at your submission – with enough of the agent’s perspective to understand why and how it may not yet qualify for prime time. And in Part 2, I’ll suggest a few ways to go about this re-examination effectively.
Here’s Part 2
Those Darned Agents – Why So Snarky? Part 2
Also: a 2-part interview with New York agent Miriam Altshuler
Those Darned Agents – Miriam Altshuler, Part 1
Those Darned Agents – Miriam Altshuler, Part 2
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