MCWC  The Mendocino Quill
  • The Quill
  • ABOUT
  • CONTACT | SUBMISSIONS
  • GET LINKED

Finding an agent . . .

9/21/2014

 

Guest Post by Norma Watkins
MCWC Board Member and 2011 Presenter

Picture
Norma Watkins is the author of the award-winning memoir The Last Resort. She has a Ph.D. in English and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, which she teaches at Mendocino College’s Coast Campus.
The first time I tried to find an agent, I had turned my Ph.D. dissertation into a novel. I asked a friend in Miami to give me the name of his agent and sent off my manuscript. One day at the office, the phone call you dream about—the agent saying she loved the book. I wanted to throw up my hands and run screaming out the door. “Good-by forever, desk jockeys. I’m off to be a writer.”

Fortunately, I did not flee my day job. My agent sent the book off to one publisher, who didn’t like it, and said she said she didn’t want to over-expose me by sending it to others. Then she decided to quit the agent business and become a writer herself.

Agent number two, also recommended by a friend, said yes, she liked my work and would take me on, but it wasn’t my turn. I needed to wait my turn. I waited eleven months and she sent the book out to four publishers. When they turned me down, she billed me $200 for copies and said it wasn’t my turn anymore. I would need to get back in line, and did I want to write a cookbook instead. Good-by agent #2.

I tried the agent-finding method recommended in Poets & Writers: join Publishers Marketplace; identify agents who have sold books similar to yours; send out multiple query letters. I did that. I did it over and over, sending out forty, eighty, a hundred queries. No luck.

The emotions I ran through over those years.

Picture
My present agent was already a friend. He represented writers who wrote about politics and war and didn’t take what he called “women’s books.” But he agreed to make an exception. The memoir (enough people had died to change my “fiction” to truth) was finally published in 2011.


Don’t give up, but the operative word in my tale is “friend." Go to a Writers Conference and make a friend of the agent—which means listening, accepting, revising, and most of all, staying in touch.

I would love to hear how any you out there found an agent, lost an agent, loves an agent or wants to murder one. Names may be withheld.

Norma’s Writing Regimen: I've taken Ann Patchett's advice—to  set a time to write and stick to it. Aristotle said we are what we do. I get up every morning at 5 a.m. and write for two hours. It takes (according to the infamous web) 66 days to form a habit—something you do without thinking. This early morning writing has become my habit and I've finished the draft of a new novel (to join the other three in my drawer?). Working title: When We Were One, about two girls, raised as orphans on a farm in Missouri, and sent away after high school. How they find their way in the world and return to discover the secret of their birth. Like all my books, it’s about women finding their power. 





    CONFERENCE WEBSITE:
    www.MCWC.org
    Blog Posts Via E-Mail

    RSS Feed

    (RSS Feed) Chrome users who see code: get Google RSS extension
    Submission Guidelines

    Tags

    All
    Amie McGee
    Art Car
    Believe In Yourself
    Blake More
    Chapbooks
    Diverse Books
    Ellen Bass
    Essay
    Evoke Memory
    Evoking The Muse
    Find Prompts
    Find Publisher
    Find Time To Write
    Flockworks
    Frame
    Hether Ludwig
    Indigo Moor
    Influence Of TV
    Interviews
    James W. Hall
    Janet Self
    Jasper Henderson
    Jessica Kotnour
    Karen Lewis
    Kate Erickson
    Kat Meads
    Kenyon College
    Kim Addonizio
    Laura Atkins
    Les Standiford
    Malcolm Margolin
    Marcela Griffin
    Marketing
    Mary Karr
    Maureen Eppstein
    Meet Agent
    Memoir
    MFA
    Molly Dwyer
    Montage
    Motivations
    NaNoWriMo
    Nicole Idar
    Nona Smith
    Norma Watkins
    Noyo River Review
    Passionate Writers
    Peter Orner
    Poetry
    Poetry And Photography
    Poetry Manuscript
    Poets & Writers
    Printing Press
    Print Power
    Promotion
    Publishers Marketplace
    Reyna Grande
    Romance Novels
    Scene
    Scott Hutchins
    Self Publishing
    SFSU
    Sharon Dubiago
    Teen Experience
    Titles
    Tragic Poetry
    Traveling Sprinkler
    Why I Write
    Writers Conference
    Writers Groups
    Writing Contest
    Writing Critique
    Writing Discipline
    Writing Goals
    Writing Time
    Young Adult

Proudly powered by Weebly