How I Got My Agent

Or, Into the Fire Swamp

There’s a strangeness to writing this post that’s been keeping me from doing it. A sort of navel-gazing–and I’m used to that, I’m used to looking down and thinking hey, self, what does this mean? Because what is writing except thinking long, and slow, and maybe way too hard about what it all means–but this time, my view’s off-kilter. I’m not looking to find some common human experience that I can make sing. Not trying to find the narrow paths of the heart. I’m parsing an emotional rollercoaster that can be hard-wired into facts and figures, producing something that another author can click on, read, and think maybe I can do that, too.

Part of the problem is that I never read these. The first How I Got My Agent that I ever read was Paul Jeong’s (hey, Paul!), because we got agented on the same day and frankly, I was freaking curious. I like his book. I think I like Paul. (I do, I’m trying to be chill, someone warn him.) 

It was COOL. It was INSPIRING. 

This isn’t going to be cool. I’m not cool. I’m a thirty-something mom who loves shark overalls and drinks way too much coffee and likes to pick up the phone and talk to scammers but will die if she has to call the doctor’s office for an appointment for herself. 

But maybe, if I’m lucky, it’ll be inspiring. 

I started writing when I was pregnant with my fourth kid and had pregnancy-induced insomnia and anxiety and took it all out on fictional characters in fanfic at 2 AM when everyone else was sleeping. The characters got stabbed and half drowned and forced to kiss and kidnapped and burnt cooking rice but I… I fell in love with words. Especially those spicy little metaphors. I had two amazing fanfic friends who encouraged me to try writing something original. So, I went for a Little Mermaid retelling first – one step closer to original – and discovered the hard, sad fact that Ariel in any other context is loathsome. Sebastian was not kidding when he told us to pin that girl’s fins to the floor. She belongs in the ocean. I queried it anyways. To four agents. 

It did not go well.

I burnt it (burning things is fun, I highly suggest) and started the BOOK OF MY HEART. Oh, woe betide those of you writing the book of your heart. Full of sound and fury, this beastie was a vision. I wrote it, and rewrote it, and studied craft, and got pummeled by CPs, and got wrecked in the query trenches and picked myself back up and got picked up by my friends and burned everything and did it all again and again and again until all told I had sent 108 queries, wrote 11 drafts (7 full rewrites, blank page, everything toast), and got 2 full requests. One from a schmagent. The other ending two weeks later in a rejection. 

The rejections hurt on this one, because I had learned to dream.

BURN IT DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWN.

But I had learned things. Most of all, I learned that the market has no interest in a lyrical story about mafia casino heirs and their struggle to assassinate their father. Yes, this was the book of my heart. Yes, you can learn things about me from that and no, those things are not about my father. He is the most precious, intelligent, heart-warmingly wonderful man on the face of this earth. Hi dad. I love you.

ONWARDS. 2022 found me writing the most batshit book I’d ever tried, because if heart doesn’t work, go balls to the wall batshit. And someday I’m going to finish it and sell it and force you to read it. But instead, back then, I listened – this is a key truth, listen to people who’ve been there – to wise advice from a friend and mentor who’d been agented, left her agent, and mentored books for longer than some of my kids have been alive who told me, and I quoth, “Jenni, no.” 

Thus armed with rejection before I so much as graced the trenches, I endeavored to write as simple and as commercial as I could. A thriller with a single POV, a lush murder mystery, a rich, wandering, murdery voice, two sociopathic love interests and the most gorgeous philosophical obliviating where nothing is precious and everything and everyone is hell bent on self-destruction. And, first draft done, I decided to do #moodpitch and test the waters. BEAR IN MIND I had never once had agent interest in these Twitter events (and I had done every single one I qualified for since I started writing, because the only bad shot is the one you don’t take), only writer/reader interest. These are the waters I was testing. Readers. Please also BEAR IN MIND this was a terrible idea. 

You will begin to notice a theme.

I got 6 agent likes. I screamed incessantly. I finished a second draft and a full revision in two weeks. I sent them off. I began to query, and got more fulls. I was dying, shredded from the inside out with how well it was going. 

And then the rejections started to come. Because, of course, one does not simply walk into publishing. 

My first act was solid. My prose, lovely. But the second act was the fire swamp with a tiny hut in the middle for the six-fingered man, except I had promised everyone that we were going to Malibu with Rousseau so he was a real surprise and no one knew whose father he killed. I’d like to think the third act was gorgeous but the reality is none of the agents read it. 

They did, however, give amazing feedback on what I messed up in the second act (it was the six fingered man), rich in details. Thank you, agents, for that. You changed my life by taking the time to tell me why you said no, even though at the time I desperately didn’t want to hear it. I wandered in despair for a hot 24 hours after the third nearly identical rejection–then, bolstered by my writing friends, who were screaming at me that I could do this!!!--asked the agents that still had my fulls to wait for revisions. They all agreed. 

I spent the next 4 months devouring craft with MSMF, rewriting the book 3 more times, went to an in-person retreat with Maggie Stiefvater who nailed me on my prose and showed me exactly how to hammer the nail where it hurts and ONLY where it hurts, had my CPs rip the MS to shreds over and over again (second acts, y’all, they are where the hockey sticks of h.e.double originate) and finally, finally figured out how to write a book. 

The last week of January I did #kidlitpit – ONCE AGAIN BEFORE I WAS ACTUALLY DONE BUT AT LEAST TIME THIS TIME I WAS ALMOST DONE – and got three likes, one from a dream agent. I got a full request 1 hour after sending from the dream agent. I immediately queried my top list, 6 agents in total. Including an agent that I queried mostly on a whim because she was so far beyond a dream she was a wish. Please, I thought, while in reality I knew that expecting anything more than a kindly silent CNR was like trying to catch wind. 

Two days later, that agent asked for my full. I couldn’t breathe. Too much wind in my hands. I spent the weekend revising the final third of my manuscript in a fever dream. I sent it to her two days later–then queried the others on my top list, 29 agents in total.

A week after that, my wish agent offered. 

I was in the hospital with my oldest daughter who’d been having intense chest pains. Got the email at 7 AM, three hours after we’d arrived in the ER. Screamed. My daughter and I hugged and danced and talked about my book. I shook, and called my husband, and giggled with nurses and yelled at my writing friends online until my fingers went numb. My daughter and I got to go home that same day, and I talked to the agent on the phone the very next day. 

I asked for two weeks, and ended up with 16 more fulls and two more amazing offers from absolute dream agents. One specifically offered because she’d also read my earlier full, given the feedback on why it wasn’t working, and was blown away by how far I’d taken the revisions without losing the heart of the book (BURN IT DOWN, learning and pivoting and creating new life from the ashes is GOOD and agents KNOW IT). I got to talk with a film agent, and speak with authors that I’ve admired and been inspired by since I started. It was the most wild two weeks of my life, and the fact that it ended by being able to call the first offering agent back and hear HER joy over getting to work together felt like the first snow of the year falling on a school day. Magic, impossible, glorious, undeserved and yet absolutely meant to be. 

I’m an Inkwell author. 

The thought still makes me cry. I love my agent, Claire Friedman. She’s a nerd, and hilarious, and the smartest person I’ve ever met, and even faster and more intense than I am. This book is out there, and we’re already working on the next one. I couldn’t have a more perfect match– in work style, in enthusiasm, in expertise, and in love for the darkest, most esoteric, most delightfully lyrical horror I can dream up. 

Moral of the story is–in publishing, there’s always going to be fire swamps with weird six-fingered men that shouldn’t be there absolutely making themselves at home. But there’s also always going to be dreams. And they’re just as sharp as Inigo Montoya’s blade. 

And you know what? 

Embrace the fire swamp. See what it can teach you. After all, it’s freaking fun to burn stuff.