The "How I got my Agent" Post

Well, I can finally write this post. One day there will be an even bigger post, if all goes to plan, but this is a topic I’ve seen my fellow writers in the YA community write about, and I’ve always read their stories with a sense of happiness, a little bit of jealousy (c’mon, let’s be honest!) and with the belief that when they say don’t give up, to believe it.

I've always enjoyed reading these "getting an agent" posts, so maybe someone out there will stop by and enjoy mine and get a little inspiration.

(I'm afraid I don't have any funny gifs to go along with this post. (Where do these writers find them!???)

I'll just have to add this photo for visual interest. You certainly won't see one of me signing, but I like seeing other people do it.

I've always been a writer. When I was a kid I enjoyed sci-fi and fantasy, but as I got older, I drifted more towards literary fiction. My formative years were spent around a lot of writers, painters and visual artists, and this world inspired me in many ways.

I also had very many drinks.

My favorite writers were people like Martin Amis, John Irving, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin and Francine Prose. I read a lot of short stories by Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, Mary Gaitskill and others.

Yes, I was a literary snob.

I wrote a lot of short stories. I sent them to the Paris Review and other literary journals. Some even came back with hand-written notes on the rejections! This was before the interwebs, kids.

Anyway, I needed to make some money so I went to a well-known school for advertising. 
After a few years  I landed a job as a writer at a huge ad agency in Chicago. Like, real huge. I worked on all kinds of big corporate brands, wrote a bunch of TV spots, flew to LA and Europe and stayed in expensive hotels and ate at expensive restaurants and, well, pretty much became an ad guy, a term I now loathe.

So I worked on ads for years. (I still do this for a living but at a smaller firm.)

So during this time I wasn't writing fiction. 

At all. 

I just sold crap to people. But one day, a few years ago, my brother, who was working in a Barnes & Noble Bookstore at the time, turned me on to some great middle grade and YA books. One of them was Sabriel by Garth Nix. Another was the Lemony Snicket books. And another was Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials. And there were many more.  Hmm, I mused. These books are awesome. And they're not dumbed-down for kids, either.

After reading these books, I was like, Hey, I should start writing again. But I should write what I loved as a kid--you know, books of fantasy and adventure. That kind of thing.

As soon as I discovered that, and started taking pen to paper--or fingers to laptop--my voice just kind of came. I wasn't supposed to be writing for adults. I was supposed to be writing for kids and young adults, ya'll!

A year or two passed. I joined a critique group. I joined SCBWI. My writing got better. I sent out queries on my first book: a MG fantasy. Got a few requests, no offers. Hey, it was my first time out!

Wrote another book, YA this time. A lot more requests. A few close calls, but no solid offer. I still love this book and want to revise it.

Started another book, a middle grade southern gothic horror called Hoodoo. I kind of felt like I really had something with this one. The voice and setting really just rang true for me. I sent it out and got several requests. A fair amount of no-responses and rejections, too. 

Adriann Ranta of Wolf Literary was one of the agents I queried. I read her bio and found out as much as I could about her. I liked her references. She said she was looking for a good middle-grade story, so I sent her the query and 50 pages, which her bio requests. (Always follow agent preferences.) 

A few weeks later: 

She really likes it! But wait--she has a few issues with it. But she's cool enough to tell me what they are and invites me to send again if I revise.

So I spent the next few months--seven actually--revising and doing other life stuff. I also took a class by Nova Ren Suma at Media Bistro. She is an awesome teacher and fantastic writer. Read her.

So, after the big revision, I wrote back to Adriann and said, Hey, remember me? And she's like, NO. 

Just kidding. 

She says Yeah. Sure. Send it along. 

I send. 

I wait. 

A week later I get an email saying she totally loved it. And do I have time for a call!

Do I have time for a call? Nah, sorry.

!!!!!!!!

I told my crit partners.

Poured a glass of water.

Stared at my phone.

Ring...

I was nervous at first, with all my printouts about “The Call” spread out around me. But after a few minutes, I realized that what many writers have said really is true. Hey, agents are just people. Book lovers like us. And they see something in our work that they really like. Or love, as I should say. 

That word love is an interesting one. Before I took the call, I did some research on Adriann’s writers. One of them, Peter Brown Hoffmeister wrote this:

The first thing you need to do is to listen for the word “LOVE.” You need to hear that word. Not “like” or “interest,” but “love.” And if everyone’s saying the L-word, think back to high school and decide who really means it.

I know I'm over-analyzing, but when I sent Adriann the manuscript after the revision, she said she totally loved it. So I took that as a sign. Now, for all I know, maybe she didn’t even mean it in that way, and was just saying “really like,” but I obsessed over it all night, as any obsessive writer would: "Wait, she put a comma here, so that must mean that..."

Adriann reps some amazing YA and MG writers, so I feel like I'm in great company: Kendare Blake, author of the Anna Dressed in Blood books, Mindy McGinnis, author of newly released Not a Drop to Drink, Michelle Krys, whose YA novel Hexed comes out next June, Lee Kelly, author of Manhattan Savages (great title) out in 2015. Writer and Illustrator Cyndi Marko, whose Kung Pow Chicken series is for little kids.

Her adult and non-fiction titles are quirky and interesting, too.

Ok. Enough. Longest post ever. Duhhhh....

I'm doing some minor revisions and will send back to Adriann soon. She's really cool, easy to talk to and totally accessible.

One last thing: I'm not going to post how many queries I sent or how many offers I had or did not have. I think that what's important to remember is that it only takes one person to say Yes to your book. 

Because once you get that, all of those stings of no response, all of those curses for FULL manuscripts that come back with a NO without any comment, all of those times when you say, “But this is exactly what she was looking for in her bio,” they all don’t really matter anymore. It just goes away.

Because when it comes down to it, I have to say what everyone else has said and you’ve heard it a million times: It only takes one Yes.

So...yay?