I finally signed with a literary agent, namely Dawn Frederick of Red Sofa. In fact, I just sent off the contract to the last person who needs to John Hancock it up.
It's for my humor writing, and it's with my writing partner Mike MacDonald (who founded The Smew, the satire news site I wrote for and eventually helped edit a few years back). In a total bonus move, though, Dawn also represents Young Adult, at least if you're already her client (and may eventually regret telling me that).
You see a lot of these blog posts--the "it's finally my agent soul mate, and in the end, it happened so fast!" posts--but that's kind of how it was. I sent in a query on a Tuesday morning, Dawn got back to me within the hour requesting materials, and by the end of the work day, we were setting up a Skype chat for Thursday night. We chatted about all kinds of book-related things, and life-related things, and while I am 100% sold on Dawn's expertise and her track record, the thing that made it feel so right was her personality (cynical and mordant, practically a pre-requisite for getting along with me) and her enthusiasm. She GOT this book. She loves it. What more could you ask for?
So enough gloating. I'm feeling super-effing-lucky, and it was a fairytale in the end, and dreams come true, sometimes even before you turn 30 (just barely), blah-blah-blah.
But I want to put something out there that I think people don't say enough, and that, as a writer who's still in the middle of the endless-rejections-from-agents phase of your career, you need to hear:
It only happens "overnight" after a LONG slog of nothing happening.
I have been hunting for an agent, off and on, for about eight years now.
Eight fucking YEARS.
This is the fifth book I've tried shopping. The first was terrible semi-autobiography and is now dead. The second was better, and I still think I could fix it someday, but only be redoing the whole damn thing. The third was written on spec for an agent I briefly had (was he a dream? WAS IT ALL A DREAM?), who only informed me that he'd dropped most of his client list after I sent him the requested book, and so I only ever queried half-heartedly for it. The fourth is a young adult contemporary novel that I know still needs help, but which I want to find an agent-life-partner for before I change it all AGAIN.
The fifth is this humor book.
The thing is, it only ever looks inevitable from the other side. Every single one of those earlier projects got some interest--full MS requests, encouraging emails from a couple agents, etc. etc.
And all but the last two--the YA novel and the one that just landed me Dawn--are now living in a digital drawer indefinitely.
Some people are just awesome and have a perfect book ready for every-single-agent right out of the gate. Good for them. I kinda hate them.
But most of us only ever get to the "breakthrough" moment by being utterly relentless. Trying 1000 different projects that fail in 1000 different ways; publishing at dozens of sites that no one goes to just to get clippings (and more importantly, experience); occasionally doubting ourselves so deeply that we wonder if we were deluded the entire time, if maybe we should just accept that we're never going to be good ENOUGH at this, and should just turn our career ambitions towards full-time drinking, instead.
Getting from point A--I have a great idea and some serious talent--even to just point B--I now have an agent who agrees, at least somewhat--is so. Effing. Hard.
And I know that the next steps will be just as hard. Maybe harder. It never STOPS being hard. In fact, at my writing group this week, we all collectively sighed over a story of a multi-book author with multiple awards who still turns drafts in to her critique group that get torn APART.
Pretty sure this is 98% of the process forever.
It's a winnowing process, and in the end, I think the most important trait of someone who's going to succeed at this is simply being too stubborn to admit that you might be the chaff.
So yay, I found an agent.
But it took me FOREVER to get here.
In a semi-twisted, masochistic way, I think that's the part that's actually inspiring?
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