How I Got My Agent

People in the writing community know what a big moment it is to write the “How I Got My Agent” post, but a lot of the people in my life aren’t a part of that community. They’ve been happy for me as I’ve shared this great news, but I’m not sure they’re able to fully appreciate what a big step it is and how long I’ve been working and hoping to reach this point. So today I’ll try to explain that. It’s kind of a long story, but I only get to tell it once. And I’ve been waiting a long time to tell it.

It began on some quiet afternoon when I was about eight years old, digging out my parents’ rarely-used typewriter and writing a story because it seemed it would be fun…. then reading my way through so many summer library programs…. trying to check out seven books on my first visit to the school library in junior high and surprised to discover I was only allowed three at a time…. my interest in reading having all but died off by ninth grade, to where I couldn’t be bothered to do the reading for my required book reports, and instead completing the assignments by inventing book titles, authors, plots, themes, main and supporting characters, motivations, and morals, figuring there had to be so many books in the world there was no way my English teacher could possibly know them all…. Having that same teacher assigning an essay describing a day in the life of someone’s job; I wrote a first person account of school bus driver and made him an ornery old crank, with enough characterization for the teacher to give me the first A+ of his career.

Stephen King fandom brought me back to reading in high school and bled into my mystery fiction class, where I was assigned to devise a perfect murder; I had the victim stabbed with a giant candy cane that had been licked down to a sharp point, then had the killer destroy the evidence by eating the rest of the murder weapon, residual blood and all (I know that’s awful, but it was really cool at seventeen and I was reading a lot of Stephen King)…. Writing a short story on my own after that, just for fun again, and sharing it with a trusted teacher who was honest about it but not as critical as she rightfully could have been…. Trying a second story and having it work well enough for the same teacher to read it -- without my knowledge -- to some of her other classes, keeping me anonymous and building a tiny buzz around the school as people wondered where it had come from.

My mother borrowed a worn hardcover edition of a Writer’s Market from a friend, which was meant to encourage me but gave me my first look at how big and overwhelming the publishing industry was…. Going to college with a newfound interest in short stories, one of which won me a free sweatshirt from my dorm…. Proudly taking a B on a paper instead of an A in a freshman writing class when I refused to change a word at the professor’s insistence; she didn’t think the analogy of describing a pizza place as being “infested” with junior high kids was appropriate (although everyone else in the class was on my side, and even argued my point for me)…. Finishing enough short stories to “self-publish” a collection by printing six copies of it at the Kinko’s seven blocks from campus, then passing them around between my family and friends…. Being in the creative writing minor program long enough for my fiction professor to give me an A and tell me I should keep writing…. Talking with my father about my future education career and how I planned to make ends meet once I entered the underpaid lifestyle of a teacher; my flippant answer? “I’ll teach during the school year and write books in the summer.” I was mostly deflecting the question, but it was certainly a someday kind of hope.

Graduating, still writing short stories as I sought and found a teaching job, at the same school where I continue to work two decades later…. Entering a community theater playwriting contest on a whim, and winding up with my play backing its way into being produced…. Finding the courage to try a novel, then staying up to write until 3:00 A.M. for most nights of a summer, eventually producing a flawed manuscript for which I still have great affection.

My tenure was reached, my master’s degree was earned, I was established in a career I deeply loved and felt was the most important thing I could do with my life. But there was always the dream. I kept writing because it was never a choice to stop, and as the years passed by the possibility of seeing my work published someday seemed to gradually lessen. I worked mostly in solitude, sharing my more personal writing with the people I trusted most, and starting up this very blog to give my writing brain some extra practice and working out. I finished another novel, better than the first. I looked for an agent with only a token effort, and soon shelved it as doors closed and the demands of life intruded. Then a friend wanted to try NaNoWriMo but didn’t want to do it alone, so she convinced me to sign up with her. I won in that first year with a messy but complete draft of a new novel. The following year I signed up again, with a project that flowed out of me like nothing I’d tried before – a manuscript I eventually titled FOLLOWING INFINITY.

After a lazy, overconfident job of polishing it into what I thought was a good enough final draft, I began to query. The letter worked – most of the rejections I collected were at least personalized, and late one Saturday night a full request came in, to my thrill and astonishment. However that agent soon passed, not impolitely but directly telling me how the manuscript wasn’t ready and what I still needed to do to get it there. By then I was working on a new project and couldn’t bring myself to sink back into an extensive rewrite. I put it on the shelf and the dust began collecting.

Fast forward three years. My colleagues and I were searching for a read-aloud for Character Education lessons, but the titles we considered wouldn’t fit the available time window. I thought back to FOLLOWING INFINITY and suggested it when we started getting desperate, thinking it might be interesting for the students to discover their math teacher thought about something other than equivalent fractions and multiplication properties. The rest of the team previewed it and gave their blessings. Witnessing the manuscript find some new life inspired me to spend that summer finally giving it the rewrite it deserved.

I had a tighter version done by the time school began and decided to give querying another shot. Within a month I had a full request, and three weeks later a partial. The partial closed quickly but the full hung on. Around this time I got an e-mail from my cousin, a published writer himself, telling me about a contest he was entering that he thought I should check out. With nothing to lose I sent in an entry sample, and soon he and I were both first alternates in Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars. A month later with my pitch ready and the revisions suggested by my contest mentor completed, my entry went live and collected another partial request, which upgraded into a full three weeks later. The full from months before had closed, and Brenda’s next contest, Pitch Madness, was just around the corner. I didn’t see how I’d be lucky enough to make the agent round a second time, but again, with nothing to lose except a potential opportunity, I entered anyway.

And what do you know – my little book made the cut. There was my name and my title and my pitch bouncing around Twitter, and my excerpt posted on one of the host blogs. I had to lock my phone in my classroom closet when the agent round began so I wouldn’t stalk the Twitter feed during the school day. Another full request from querying turned up in my mail the same afternoon as when the agent picks were revealed, which I figured would at least lessen the sting if I didn’t have any contest requests come in. But I did have one, from Carrie Howland of Donadio & Olson, Inc. I sent out the materials and dove into my research, learning as much as I could about these new potential agents, just in case. The more I learned about Carrie the more impressed I was, and the more curious I became, and the harder I had to work to keep my hopes tempered.

I didn’t have to wait long for any news. Carrie replied only two weeks after I’d sent the full. She didn’t write to pass on the manuscript or to set up The Call, but just to let me know how much she was enjoying the reading. A tiny bit of my brain melted off when I read that, because I knew from my years of reading agent stories that such a thing wasn’t typical. I figured this had to be a good sign (even if the message arrived on April Fool’s Day).

A week later she wrote again, hoping to set up a call to discuss revision ideas. We compared schedules and arranged a time right after my school day ended. It was a long day to get through, and it only got longer the closer I got to the bell. There was a feeling of mental whiplash going from reminding my students to stack their chairs and check their mailboxes one minute and then talking to an agent about my manuscript the next. I felt some of the pressure was off from our earlier e-mail exchanges since I’d already tipped my hand a little: I’d asked which number on her signature would be the better one to call and she pointed out one was for the fax machine. Yeah, somehow that got past me. “Okay then,” I told myself, “so she knows at least two things about you already: One, you’re the kind of nimrod that can’t recognize when a fax number is labeled as such, and two, at least you aren’t afraid to ask questions.”

The conversation went well, and I didn’t feel any of the nervousness I’d always figured I would. She told me what she loved about the manuscript, even highlighting a few things that were some of my favorite parts, and explained what changes she thought could make it even better. When I knew for certain she was making an offer, I contained the excitement and forced myself to zero on what she was saying, knowing there would be time to celebrate later. She told me to think about her revision notes and we agreed to talk later, but we had been on the same page in so many ways I already felt my decision was pretty much a lock.

I still had to contact the other two agents with the full, and in a matter of days both congratulated me and stepped aside. I was on a short vacation then so my time was open, and Carrie and I were back in touch only minutes after I knew the path was cleared. We talked for another hour and ended the call with a handshake reaching across three time zones. It was incredible serendipity for all of this to come together when it did: I was visiting one of my best friends and his wife over a long weekend. He knew as well as anyone else how much of my life I’d sunk into writing, and he got to see me pace around the living room during that second call and was the first person to know it had happened. That we took the ferry into downtown Seattle later that evening to see our favorite band perform really solidified the day as one of the best I’ve had in a long, long time.

It’s nearly a week later as I write this, and now the thrill is becoming less about a dream achieved and more about an opportunity. I’ve had the chance to read through my agent’s revision notes, and I already have ideas percolating about what to do with them. That’s my newest level of excitement now – having someone who not only gets the manuscript and sees it as something special, but also wants me fully realize its potential. It’s been some time since anyone has set a writing challenge like that in front of me, and I have to say it feels really, really good.

So to circle back to the blog, I think I can now give the implied question of the title a legitimate answer: What did I do, or what will I do on my summer vacation? Moving forward from here, the plan is to fall back on that half-joke of an idea – teach during the school year and write books in the summer (although there’s going to be quite a bit of overlap into the school year when it comes to the writing). Because now I get to step over the self-imposed line of demarcation I hadn’t allowed myself to cross before. I don’t have to qualify my work as an obsessive hobby or conditionally call myself a writer.

Now I get to be an author. And I’m so very happy about that.