My Agent Romance
By Guest | August 30, 2011 |
Therese here. Today’s guest is debut novelist Jennifer Miller, who’s here to talk with us today about agents–particularly why it’s important to have not only any agent, but the right agent. Jennifer’s book, The Year of the Gadfly, will be published by Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt in May 2012. And even though the book isn’t available to pre-order yet, you can whet your appetite for this spring book by reading the early reviews here.
Jennifer is also the author of a nonfiction book, Inheriting the Holy Land, and has a long line of journalism credits including The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Marie Claire, Men’s Health, Smithsonian.com, Salon.com, Guernica.com, the Columbia Journalism Review, and The Millions. She has an MFA and has taught about the craft of writing to students at Columbia, WritopiaLab, and the Free Bird Writer’s Workshop.
Welcome, Jennifer.
My Agent Romance
Break-ups suck and this one was no exception. It was a rainy afternoon, and I stood gripping the phone, feeling a chasm open in my stomach. My four-year relationship was over, and I was convinced I’d be alone forever.
If I tell you I’d just broken up with my literary agent, you might accuse me of hyperbole. Sure, we’d never kanoodled on the couch, or gone for Saturday night dinner dates, or batted around baby names. Our relationship was built on mid-week power-lunches and intense rounds of book proposal edits. But even though ours wasn’t an actual marriage, it kind of felt like one. My agent and I had signed a contract that (I naively thought) signaled our intent to stick together through thick and thin—good book deals, mediocre deals, or in the case of the immediate situation, no book deal. And we had produced a child together—the amazing book she’d been so instrumental in helping me produce. When my agent and I linked up four years prior, I never anticipated divorce. Does any newlywed?
Early in our relationship, my agent and I wooed each other in a way that felt a little bit like dating. I’d get dressed up and put on makeup to go to her office (but I could never compete with her style—it appears to be a requirement of NYC agents that they always look amazing). She’d offer me a drink, and then we’d chat, trying to impress each other while pretending that we weren’t doing just that. It turned out we were a great match. She was Jewish (my grandparents were thrilled!), I responded really well to her editing style, and she was patient with my neuroticism.
So then what went wrong? When my second book proposal was rejected by the imprint that had published my first, we came to an impasse. She didn’t think the proposal or any of my other ideas were marketable. I wanted to write a novel, but she didn’t think that a wise career move. After our rainy day phone farewell, I reluctantly deleted her number from my contacts list.
Like so many of us do after tough breakups, we cry for a while and then have a rebound. I signed on with the very next agent who came my way. She was totally wrong for me, of course, but I was afraid to leave—afraid of being alone again. Wasn’t it better to have any agent, I wondered, even one who doesn’t get my work, than no agent at all?
“Break up with her,” my friends told me. “She doesn’t treat you right. You deserve better!”
Only after we split—and I was truly alone and agentless—did I learn to trust myself. I started working on my novel in earnest. Of course I worried about the future. Would I ever publish another book? Was my fiction total crap? But I couldn’t move on with another project until I’d finished my novel.
They say you always find love when you least expect it. A few years had passed and I wasn’t so concerned about finding an agent anymore. I believed in my novel and I knew that when I’d finished a draft, I’d find an agent who believed in it too. And that’s when I met Mollie. We’d been in a creative writing workshop together but lost touch after the class. Months passed and then one day, I ran into her at a reading. I spotted her across the crowded bar—and made my move.
“Hey,” she said. She was wearing large dangling earrings and an amazing dress.
“Hey,” I said, hoping my hair looked okay.
She asked about my novel. “I’d love to see it,” she said.
I swooned. Then we made a date.
Living in New York, running into your ex is inevitable. Earlier this summer, when I spotted my first agent at a reading, I had to fight the urge to duck behind a bookshelf or crawl under a table. She looked amazing, better than ever. And even though I’d sold the novel she’d advised me against writing earlier in my career, I didn’t feel triumphant so much as nostalgic. You never forget your first love, but you can find the resilience to move on.
Thanks for a great post, Jennifer, and congrats on finding The One.
Readers, do you have an agent story you’d like to share?
You can learn more about Jennifer and the book she had to write on her website and by following her on Twitter. Write on!
Photo courtesy Flickr’s Neal.
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
Aw, what a tragic romance with a blissful turn of fate!
Thanks for sharing with us. Lately WU has been featuring authors right up my alley. Inheriting the Holy Land might have been a useful read for my MA thesis. It looks wonderful and I’ll be anticipating the novel release!
Hey Sara!
What was your MA thesis on? If you’re still interested, you can get the book on Amazon for a cent. (I’m not even kidding.) Hopefully, The Year of the Gadfly will have higher market value!
All best,
Jen
You know I love this story, Jennifer!
Yes, our gal is the absolute BEST ever!
When I met my agent for lunch at Nationals, I made a sarcastic joke about “my brilliant career” (I am as yet unpublished). She looked across the table at me and said, “I DO think you’ll have a brilliant career; it may just take us a little while to get you there.”
I was very touched by her faith in me!
Thank you for sharing this. I think a lot of us unpublished authors who are waiting to finish books, and get an agent, sometimes forget that it’s not the end of journey but rather a beginning of one.
Rosemary – that’s fantastic. Your agent’s definitely a keeper :-)
. . . i don’t care if your first agent was binky urban, you traded up with mollie (my fourth and final agent)!
I had no idea you’d gone through these breakups. Good for you for realizing you deserved better. Sometimes that’s the hardest part (in all sorts of relationships).
That’s hilarious — and wonderful! Good advice and great story.
This is lovely! I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from friends who have dealt with agents-from-hell, and a lot of times the fear is palpable: the agents are with big agencies, the authors are afraid for their careers. But by the time they hit bottom and “dump” the agent, their confidence is usually thrashed and it takes a long time to recover. I’ve been fortunate with my agent, too. Thanks for this.
Great observations on client/agent relationships. I think you make a very important point about writers’ insecurities and the impulse to grab the first agent that shows an interest… Writers must remember that this is a two-way relationship, and the attraction must be mutual ;)
Great post, and fun to read. Most of us have more than one marriage, I think.
Before I met my now-agent of thirteen years, I had two others. One left me and left the business, leaving me with her partner, and we didn’t synch as well. Then I had a fierce, combative relationship with my second agent, and broke up with her via email before a conference where yes, I ducked her constantly.
Third time was the charm. As in any long term relationship, sometimes we fight, but it’s about the right things.
You’re not the first to compare agent/client relationships to marriage. It seems they have a lot in common! I’m glad you found a new agent, and hope that this one is The One. Thanks for giving all us aspiring writers something to consider as we embark on our careers.
Thanks for the story. Glad you found the right one for you. I look forward to the release of your book. I, too, have found The One, and I plan on keeping her ’til the end of time.
Love this story. I completely relate. My story is almost exactly the same only substitute that I published a novel first. I got two book deals both cancelled because the editor moved twice, neither book published. And then my agent didn’t seem to like anything I submitted to her after that, including the memoir I am now working on. I decided to break up with her this summer. A friendly break up. Friends quickly tried to set me up with their agents, and while I appreciated the matchmaking, I wanted to be alone for awhile. My writing is flowing better than ever now. I just hope I have the happy ending with a new agent and another book published as Jennifer. I worry about all the same things. This post gives me great hope. Thank you.
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