Tag: agent search

On The Hunt

Yeah, brace yourself. It’s another self-indulgent post about me. It’s all about me.

In a previous life segment, my work responsibilities included facilitating teams, team-building, and teaching others how to facilitate teams. An entertaining experience, I applied much of what I learned and observed to my personal efforts. First among these that I often apply to my efforts are the four stages of team dynamics: forming, storming, norming, and performing.

Sure, it’s about a team, and I’m just a singular individual, but I have a lot of people inside me.

I’m not kidding.

There’s the husband, son, brother, friend, the guy retired from military and business, a beer drinker, reader, writer, walker, U.S. citizen, liberal, rock fan, animal lover, cat slave, and aging white U.S. male with a crooked sense of humor. I need to shut most of them up when I sit down to write, if I want to get anything done. I also often need to silence the muses, as they’re eager to pursue other fiction projects.

Part of what team dynamics are about is getting together, surveying the situation, putting yourself into it and focusing, working out differences, assessing the others, and then, working toward a goal. Goal is a large and nebulous term in this context. It can be about working toward actual stated goals, objectives to support those goals, coming up with a plan, or creating a vision. In my case, it’s usually about sitting down and writing like crazy. Today, though, like the past several days, it’s about finding a literary agent.

Those of you who have ever searched for agent will understand.

I don’t mean to disrespect agents. I admire them and appreciate their role. They’re a lot like writers, and not just because they work with words and books. Writers are often searching for the secrets. What are the secrets to conceiving a plot and then writing a book? How do you cope with writer’s block, and how do you push through, sustaining your efforts until a novel, play, screen play, what-have-you, is completed? Are you a pantser, an outliner, or some twisted hybrid in between? Do you write everyday? Where do you write?

What fiction writing is about is finding what works for you. That’s true with just about every damn effort on Earth. Find out what works for you. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but you need to do something. If you don’t do something, nothing will get done. Your dream will remain fallow.

That’s hard for many to understand, but that’s the secret. Suck it up, start somewhere, keep trying, and keep learning and adjusting. Thinking about those lessons, and applying them to agents, I see how and why their approaches vary.

I’ve often lamented (read: whine, complained, or growled and ranted about) the lack of standardization about what agents want and how they express it. Their wants are often vague and not infrequently contradictory. Demands for outlines, summaries, synopsis, the number of sample pages widely range.

And it all makes perfect sense.

See, just like writing, they’ve honed their own approach. This is what works for them; that’s why each often makes a unique demand. It’s just like writing.

Returning to my original premise here, my daily approach is like team efforts because of my stages. First, I set out to arrive at my work location and decide what I’m going to do. That’s forming. Next, I complain and whine to myself about how difficult, frustrating, and depressing the agent search is: storming. From them comes norming as I establish objectives for myself, a daily schedule (including breaks and eating), and methodology. Finally, emerging from the rest, I at last begin performing, the final stage.

I’d not perfected my agent search methodology, but I do have something that works (so far). I use several primary tools:

  1. MS Word
  2. Manuscript Wish List (MSWL) (free)
  3. Publishers Marketplace (25 USD per month)
  4. Query tracker (free)
  5. Duotrope (5 USD per mont)
  6. Literary Agency websites (naturally) and blogs (free)
  7. Google

I begin by creating a Word document to establish a list of potential agents. At the top of that, I write a one sentence blurb that summarizes the entire novel. This helps me frame and focus my thinking as I search for an agent.

I’ve done this same thing using Excel, Access, and various tools that are out there. I use Word because I’m intimate with Word and want to keep it simple. I don’t want tracking my queries to be a larger burden than necessary.

  1. Agents name & agency
  2. Date submitted
  3. Result
  4. Remarks or comments.

Next, I start going through MWL. I can begin with anything but I like MSWL’s speed and simplicity. I don’t use its search function, though. Essentially, I prowl the database from A to Z, looking for agents interested in my type of writing (science-fiction infused speculative literary alternative history, anyone?). When I find one, I look at their specific MSWL page.

  1. I’m looking for what they say they’re looking for and gauging their interest in my novel’s genre;
  2. I’m checking what literary agency they’re with;
  3. I’m confirming that they’re open for queries and submissions.

Next, I go to their websites and read their submission guidelines, and again confirm that they’re accepting queries for my genre, that they’re open for submissions, and that they’re still with that agency.

After that, I search for them in the Publishers Marketplace, look for them in Duotrope and QueryTracker, and then do a general net search to see what I find on them. I check out their Twitter account and Facebook page. Gathering all of this information helps me weigh them.

When I find a potential agent, I add them to my Submission Wish List. I rank them, too. I establish a Hot List (that’s the header in the doc) of twenty agents whose information sparks the greatest optimism. In keeping with their guidance, only one agent from each agency should be on that list. I also only include agents based in the U.S., as a personal choice.

Besides the Hot List, I have the Short List and the Long List. Yes, it’s a lot of lists, isn’t it? It’s stems from my natural reluctance to do this sort of thing, my innate habit of over-analyzing information, an urge to be systematic, and my need to organize things to help me think.

I only begin with MSWL, though. I do the same thing, searching for agents, in the Publishers Marketplace, Duotrope, and general net searches. I’m casting a wide net.

Yes, it’s a load of effort, hence, my need to go through the stages. (By the way, regressing to a previous stage isn’t unusual and shouldn’t be taken as anything except a change in the moment.)

Yesterday, I finished all of that. My Hot List has twenty names on it. My Short List has another thirty-nine names.

I then began the next stage: I’ve written a query, summary, ten page synopsis, bio, and elevator pitch, and then established a sample doc of the first fifty pages. I’ve used advice, suggestions, and insights that Jane Friedman has on her blog for query basics and synopsis writing. Included in bio is my social media presence so they can look me up just as I looked them up. I’ll use, cull, and modify these basic documents to meet each agent’s requirements. Then I’ll begin submitting.

And that’s where I’m at today. Today’s goal: submit to ten agents on the Hot List.

Got my coffee. Here we go. Time to perform.

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Syn-Syn-Synopsis

I brushed off writing my synopsis like I was signing a birthday card with élan when I wrote about it in a post earlier this month. Writing a synopsis wasn’t that easy for me.

It’d been yonks since I’d written one. I wanted to do the best that I could. I knew the idea was that it’s a brief summary. How long should a synopsis be? How much detail should be given? Should I describe the character and setting?

Searching for answers, I pulled out books on writing and publishing that I have on hand. I read magazine articles, newspaper articles, and blog posts about how long a synopsis should be, what it does, and what it shouldn’t be. I panicked. I read agents and publishers’ opinions about what’s at stake in the synopsis in their opinion for accepting or rejected a novel. I read what authors shared about their rejections and their initial efforts writing synopsis, and I grew disheartened. Then I brushed that off and got busy.

After creating a synopsis file, I opened the latest version of Four on Kyrios and began reading it. After refreshing myself with the chapter, I wrote one or two sentences about what it was about. I did so chapter after chapter. One paragraph typically captured a flow of events about what the characters were doing, where they were doing it, and results. I resisted doubts and over-thinking it while I was doing it.

I won’t lie, working intensely, it took me most of a week to write. Did I do it right? I don’t know. As with everything, I learned what I could and applied the knowledge and tried to do the best that I could. As with everything else in life, that’s all that I can ever do.

Got my coffee in hand. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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April Showers 1921

I wrote about a new novel that came to me in a dream the other night (“Spinning Up”). One unmentioned aspect was the newly conceived novel’s cover. I saw it in the dream. The cover felt and looked so real and substantial to me that I was nonplussed. The title, April Showers 1921, was embossed gold letters on a silver cover. It seemed so real that I looked up the title to determine if that book already existed. Without surprise, I found songs, books, and short stories called April Showers, but none had the 1921 addition, and none featured silver and gold covers. I seem safe with it.

I’ve worked on April Showers 1921 some since dreaming about it, fleshing out characters, setting, and writing some scenes, but I didn’t throw myself into it. After two days of that, I wondered, why not? I realized that indecision caused by my greatest weakness, over-analysis, was paralyzing me once again.

It’s a familiar scenario. I overthink something. That drains my resources, and I stop making progress until I resolve what I’m overthinking.

Naturally, this paralysis is all founded on a writing issue, specifically — this time — finding an agent for the Incomplete States series. I think I’ve identified several potential agents. I narrowed my search to one lucky agent. I’ve written a synopsis and query letter. That’s where I stopped.

The Incomplete States series employs several styles. In terms of recent books, it reminds me of Cloud Atlas. My series science-fiction infused, but its mostly literary, except the first novel has a science-fiction military noir feel to it. Fantasy flares strong in another book, while yet another has the sensibility of historic fiction.

Yes, I enjoy genre B&B – bending and blending – whether I’m reading or writing it.

On a side note, the great and all-knowing Internet says, don’t mention any of the rest of the series when seeking representation and publication of the first book.

For grins, I hunted down the rejection records for successful writers. I’ve followed this path before, so it’s very familiar to me.

J.K. Rowling. Her Harry Potter series was rejected twelve times, you know. Dr. Suess was rejected twenty-seven times before he found a publisher willing to take a chance on his Cat in the Hat book. The author of  The Martian, Andy Weir, had given up on being published, but kept writing and self-published. When The Martian found success, publishers came running. Kathryn Stockett, The Help, was rejected over sixty times. Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, had twenty-six rejections. Catch-22, Joseph Heller, twenty-two rejections. Twenty for William Goldberg, The Lord of the Flies. Carrie, by Stephen King, was rejected thirty times. Pretty amazing was that Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, experienced over one hundred rejections. After she self-published and had success, publishers came calling, and her novel was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore, who won an Oscar for her performance.

There was also Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, over five times, and Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, rejected one hundred twenty-one times.

Reading about these rejections is invigorating and inspiring. You gotta have hope, optimism, belief, and determination. You gotta keep writing for the love of writing.

Writing about my paralysis cleared matters up and broke the log jam. (I now have a featured image of logs floating through my mind.) I’m ready to submit. (Ha, ha, I love how that can have multiple meanings.) All they can do is say no, right?

The day is full of promise. I got my coffee. Time to submit, and then write and edit like crazy, at least one more time.

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