Part 1 of 3 - How I Found My Literary Agent
I said “No” to many things and kept writing.
There are plenty of how-to articles and classes out there to guide writers on preparing a query package or navigating the query process; this isn’t one of those. Instead, in this blog series, I’ll examine the big-picture strategies that have—wonderfully—resulted in my getting two offers of literary agent representation in the past month. In part three, I’ll reveal the agent I’ve selected.
It’s been just over two years since I made a blog post. After finishing my manuscript forThe Butcher’s Apprentice in late 2022, I intentionally set the story aside and evaluated whether or not it—and I—were ready for querying. The process of querying literary agents can take up a lot of time; each query should be customized to individual agents, and submission guidelines vary between agencies. It takes sustained focus to research the best potential author-agent fit, so it was important for me to guard my personal time to devote the necessary energy to the task. One of the most powerful actions I took in the past two years as I prepared myself and my manuscript to query literary agents, was to say “NO” to a lot of things. I said no to:
-watching (most) TV and movies
-taking more writing classes and workshops (by late 2022 I had already taken over 100)
-reading books I didn’t love (I read a lot, but allowed myself to not finish books that didn’t feel worth my time)
-blogging
-interacting on social media in ways that could rob me of my peace of mind and sleep
At the end of 2022, I knew the word count of my manuscript was above the genre standard, and that could mean an automatic pass for many agents. So, I took a deep breath, and instead of forging ahead with queries as I initially wanted to, I took a year (late 2022-late 2023) and revised the manuscript, removing over 20K words from the story. It was a deep and painful cut! In doing so, I eliminated several characters and plot lines that simply wouldn’t fit.
Here’s what I did with the extra time that saying “No” gave to me:
-revised my story, wrote new material and researched potential agents 2-8 hours a day, 5 days a week; I treated it like a job
-read a minimum of two hours, daily
-submitted the manuscript for unpublished writing awards
-exercised my neck, shoulders and back 2-3 days a week, because sitting for long periods of time requires extra strength and muscle in these areas
-honored my need for sleep to sustain creativity
The result of saying “No” to many things, while continuing to write, was a greatly improved manuscript that I began querying in late 2023. I immediately received requests from agents for the full- and partial-manuscript, which buoyed me through the loooong query-and-wait, query-and-wait process that was 2024.
Stay tuned for my next blog post in this series where you’ll learn about my query stats (# submitted, rejected, etc.), and—in addition to saying “no” and continuing to write—the other major contributing factors in my landing a literary agent. Look for that sometime next week. Sign up for my occasional author newsletter to receive updates on my latest writing news. Thanks for reading!
