As I leapfrog onto and over the myriad of author and agent websites and blogs I find that I rarely land on one that I don’t pick up a tidbit of info that helps me advance my campaign to gain representation for my work. At the risk of making profound the obvious, an agent I was researching over the weekend said that the prize belongs to those who can go the distance.
What exactly does go the distance mean, and what are the land mines along the way that work against getting there? To me, going the distance means maintaining a relentless effort over an extended period of time, while battling tenaciously against any notion of quitting. I’ll admit the process is much more demanding than I envisioned.
So, let’s look at my vision of the process. I thought it would take weeks maybe a month to land an agent. Why did I think that instead of many, many months? I got a little mixed up. I thought that once I was finished with the writing process, the world would be completely ready to embrace my new book. After a year and a half of writing, then six edits, and three complete revisions were done, I felt I’d hit the ball out of the park. On that happy day I was able to type THE END at the bottom of page 425 and take a bow while my family and friends stood there clapping. I convinced myself that the quid pro quo for all of that unflagging effort was getting the book represented and published right away, because those agents have been waiting in the wings, ready to pounce on my hot new book. I blame that land mine on my imagination. I know better!
When I was the publisher of a major trade association magazine we’d be tearing our hair out in March if we didn’t have the entire December issue in the bag. Our marketing and sales guys weren’t going to buy a simple write-up of what we thought was going into the issue, they wanted to see drafts of the actual articles, so they could sell ad space around them. Hell, they wanted pictures of the authors and demanded to know their shoe size in addition to their academic credits. Their agenda today has to do with what’s being published nine months later. So the fact that I’m done today has nothing to do with a prospective agent’s readiness. I have no idea what he or she is working on the moment a gentle voice from his or her laptop says, “You’ve got mail.” As that sappy voice announces my incoming query, synopsis and sample chapters, my prospective agents could be embroiled in a contract dispute, or refereeing an auction for a client’s new book. The one thing they aren’t doing is hanging around awaiting my query!
Not only does the computer’s You’ve got mail spiel draw attention to the arrival of my pitch, but it says the same thing, in the same nonjudgmental, plane-Jane monotone for your pitch, and the pitch of the king and queen of the most revered MFA programs in the country, as well as the pitch of some guy who just finished a ten-year stretch on death row and came out very much alive and wrote a book about it, and the pitch of astronauts…I guess the point is made. There’s no shortage of great writers telling great stories. My target agents are working hard for their current clients. If my pitch gets any attention at all, I’m lucky. Part of going the distance means accepting that.
So our first land mine is frustration or anger over the slowness of the process. You think Why isn’t this moron even emailing a freaking rejection to me? Is a mouse click going to kill him? No, it won’t. First of all, you aren’t querying morons. You are simply trying to attract the attention of one of the publishing industry’s gatekeepers. Researching Ethan Ellenberg as a possible agent provided me with some terrific insights about agents, royalties, and seeing ourselves as authors or entertainers. He makes the point in his submission guidelines that the incoming load of queries far surpasses his, or his staff’s ability to make those few mouse clicks for the hundreds that come in each week. See http://ethanellenberg.com/submission-guidelines/ I suppose if I took time to write a “thanks but no-thanks” note to Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or LL Bean every time they promoted a product to me, I wouldn’t have time in the day to write this post, or worse, to promote my book or write the next one.
The other land mines are those things we choose to do other than write and promote. Taking a day off now and then is okay. I can still pick up my work and be in the mindset I was in when I put it down. If I go a week or two, which does happen when I travel or get involved with other work, it’s tough to get back into the zone where my mind as a writer lives and flourishes. Get out of those doldrums by re-reading the last twenty-five or so pages you wrote, look at your notes or outline, and get back to getting it on paper.
If you’ve been derailed from your promotion campaign, resume researching target agents this very minute. Find one that causes you to say “Aha! I know how to reach this guy.” Read everything you can about him or her, the interviews, blog posts, conference schedules. Get to know the agent so well that if he or she came over for dinner tonight you’d know exactly what to talk about. Then, rewrite your query letter. Print out one from your files that comes close, but don’t be satisfied by simply opening the file and refreshing it. Rewrite the letter from scratch, addressing key info you gleaned from your research. Presto – you’re back on the road.
A lot of excellent fishermen with great boats and the best rods and reels to be found, still go home without a single fish, sometimes without a bite. They got skunked because they were either fishing in the wrong spot, or there were more fishermen in the area than fish to be caught. (Well, my goodness, a downright folksy look at supply and demand!) If you can bear with this metaphor for a wee bit more, remember the only way a fisherman can guarantee he or she will not catch a single fish is to not have a line in the water. The more lines he has in the water, and the more kinds of bait or lures, the better his chances to land something good. You and I are fishing for agents.
So, for me, going the distance means staying focused on my writing and promoting. It also means not listening to negative voices in my head about agents who don’t read or respond. Finally, never become jealous over someone’s first novel going NYT Best-Seller and movie deal in its first six months. Just be glad that such things are still happening because tomorrow may well be your turn, or mine. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?
Till later,
Ken