Super Agents: A How NOT to Get One To Save Your Literary Life List

Quote of the Day:
"Writing is the only profession where no one considers
you ridiculous if you don't earn any money."
~Jules Renard~

Current Local Forecast:
Chicken Little was right.

Currently on My iPod:
Sara Smile
Hall and Oates

Dear Family and Friends and my Family of Friends,

Sorry for the delay, my editor hit me up with the expected fly-by first phase of red-ink bombings. More on that later. It wasn't as painful as I had heard it could be, but it's still become somewhat of a Sophie's Choice in the Jazz world and I'm not really enjoying it. Enough of that. Onwards...

This week marks my one year anniversary for WRITING AWAY RETREATS. Not only is this uber cool, but in one year I took it from being a small-ish crowd of coolness over four days to a LARGE crowd of forty peeps coming and going over two weeks. Very excited to meet and greet and more importantly, feed all ya'll. See you all soon. And, for those of you who aren't attending this retreat'o'greatness this year, May will be coming up soon. Contest details and website updates will happen after this one is over. I've already had some folks sign up, so beware. Spots will go fast. Also, we're taking it international in 2011. More details on that soon!

Now...for the meat of the blog. Got your forks and knives? Travis? Let's have a sit down conversation about agents.

First off, let me give a little clip about mine.

Gary Heidt. And, no, not this one:

Yep, you guessed it, Gary is a supah stah agent. I often call him Super Agent G. After all, wouldn't you if he had sold not only your first book, but your first book which happens to be on the impossible non-fiction topic...JAZZ...to that Randomish House chock-full-o-jazz fans? Yeah, so ya get it? Gary pretty much rocks, he saved my literary life from an uncertain and seemingly doomed fate.

But that's not what this is about. Ask him, I can go on and on about his Texas twangy pep talks and editing skills and more...but kids, that's for another episode, this is reverse how to list. I can't tell you exactly how to get one to answer your silent cries and beckon call, but I can definitely tell you how NOT TO...So listen up and pay attention and all those sorts of things. Put down the red crayons and magic marker's that you're writing your query letters with, as I believe that yes, they can be a telephone booth change of undies and tights away for you too!

Here's a top ten list on how not to get an agent : (If it doesn't work, I'll refund the money you paid to read this blog, pronto!)

10. Tell them your book is "just right" for Oprah.

• Really? You know her? Seriously? Can you tell her that I want my book on her list? If you think you're going to be picked out of everyone else in the world to be her latest annointing, then get in line and get a life. Unless, of course, you REALLY do know her. If this is the case, I would have a letter signed by her, and maybe a snap shot of her with you included in your query.
  

9. Dear Sir/Madam, Thank you for this opportunity to present to you my Raging Hormonal techno-thriller detective romance YA crossover manuscript known as Old Yeller: the first years, the prequel to Old Yeller.

• A nice, impersonal query letter that doesn't even know the gender of the agent screams, bite me. Plus those "services" that you pay for to query all those agents in those big cities are rip offs. Do your own damn research and find out who's truly right for your project. If you can't do this on your own, then how are you going to do the research on your own when the marketing team from your pub. house sends you a 30 page questionaire for your book's marketing plan? Yeah, good luck.
  

8. Ring them.

• After all, isn't it just so much better than that impersonal email and it's soooo much easier to just talk for fifteen minutes or an hour or two about the cool parts of the techno thriller Old Yeller knock off you just wrote that's still in its first draft, but is sooo perfect rather than just shoot over an email that sums it up in five to fifteen lines, right? Yeah, right. Sod off. That's the nice thing about phones, the hang up is such a greater insult than the delete button. It makes a bigger, louder sound.

7. Set up your novel with the weather. OR. A great scene that opens with:

• He hit the snooze button and a feeling of dread came over him. This is when Little Timmy realized that today would be the day that he would DIE.
  
• Little Timmy looked outside and realized that not only he would die, but the sky was cloudy.
  
• Little Timmy was not only a schmuck, but he knew he would die and the weather was really cloudy and humid and he would have a really bad hair day on the day of his death and this made him sad.
  
• Little Timmy said, wow, you write really bad and should have thought out your writing a smudge better before you submitted that first draft to that agent, eh?
  
• Little Timmy realized, just moments ago, before he said that to the writer, that today was the last day of his life. Then a bus hit him and smashed him into little tiny shards of bloody bone and other matter went flying and splattering all over the windows and made a horrendous mess out of what we all knew as this very boring and pitiful life.
  
• Yeah, get someone to critique your writing or get an editor or at the VERY LEAST, DO NOT SEND AN AGENT THE FIRST DRAFT. They're like Vampires and blood and stuff. They can smell a virgin draft a mile away and they want to destroy them as soon as they get their hands on them. (sorry, that was very bad.)

6. Fake it! Works in other areas of life...(ref. When Harry Met Sally)

• I may look like a doctor, but really, I only play one on TV. Yeah, doesn't really help to lie about platform, pub. credits or any other occupation. Go for it...really, I double, no, triple dog dare you.
  

5. So you nailed me for drinks and I asked for more, I want dinner...now what?

• You met the perfect agent. And guess what? He/She gave you googly eyes across the table too! Oh my...text your friends. Text your mom. Text EVERYONE YOU KNOW. Now. Get on twitter. Tell the WHOLE WIDE WORLD that you got a request for a FULL. Follow that with Facebook. Then you cross your fingers that they don't write you back with a, sorry, I found someone else, I was seeing someone else, I think I could be a lesbian and or gay and or bi, or one of those commune dwellers and I'm inviting everyone but you and you wouldn't be the right gender anyway, I think I might just would rather stay home and wash my hair lines or whatever.
  

• MOST IMPORTANT HERE: DON'T TEXT THEM OR CALL THEM OR EMAIL THEM UNLESS YOU'RE ASKED TO. You're not official until they ask you to be official. Just because they ask you for a full, doesn't mean they're asking for literary marriage. That's like calling your date after ONE date and asking for a key to their place. Yeah, not cool. (ref. The Rules.)

4. Go into the job interview with the expectation of becoming the CEO right away. (ref. Mr. McFerrin)

• As the quote up top says, no one expects any of us fools who like to put words in logical order to make money anyway, so what's your hurry. Sure, easy enough for me to say,as I have a contract and this huge lump sum of DEBT from writing my first major book and all the other goodies that come along with it...including the self-imposed pressure of putting another prop. on the market (soon, VERY soon) so I can make up for the last debt and what not. You can't write for money anyhow. Unless, of course, you're already making money writing. Then, by all means, go for it! Share the wealth with the rest of us peons. Regardless, if they take you on, relax, you do your job, let them do theirs and trust them. If they trust you enough to take you on, reciprocate.
  

3. Get rid of your email, your twitter, become anti-web presentable and what not. After all, the more rugged and believable you are as a "real" writer, the more mystique surrounding your actual presence, the better.

• yeah, so not true. No communicato via email, no agent.
  

2. Agent site reads: Taking submissions year round: Historical Romance and Techno Thrillers only. Definitely No Stories about Bambi, was traumatized as a child and have severe PTSD. Please query first as we do not take full manuscripts unless requested. And definitely do not query between August and May each year, we are busy catching up on lunches with other agents and editors and our already established clients. ***Potential client submits: Dear Cool Agent X, I'd like to present my manuscript in full to you titled: Bambi's Mom: Carnage, Conspiracy, Corruption and Capitalists Behind One of Disney's Oldest Full Length Cartoons. The MS is in its first draft at about 9,064,825 words and is ready for publication. THanks for lookin' at it dudes. ~The real murderer of Bambi's Mom... www.Stillsearchingforbambi.com***

• Agent receives the following letter after sending out obvious rejection letter and having to increase prozac and therapy sessions: Dear Sur, CAn you just send me an email explaining why I don't get acceptance from your agency? I plan long time to be accepted by you and even catered to your excitement for Bambi...MAKE SURE YOU READ THE REAL GUIDELINES and writing them back is an extra special dose of terrible horrible no good VERY bad karma! Remember, they're looking for a reason to reject you...they get hundreds of submissions a week and take only 0.01% of those on as clients.
  

1. Have simple mistakes on your manuscript and/or your query letter and then fail to follow MS submission guidelines.

• Dear Mr. Agent,
  

I have the perfecet querey letter for you. Not only is thsi novel the best thing ever, it falles in line with the last one your agency represented and got your cliente a novel piece prize...If you'd like to see it, let me know. It's realley cool and I thnk you could like it forever.

~Potential client perfecto.

Yeah, not so much.

• Regardless, in order to get an agent to really pay attention, you need to write well, know your materials, your genre, and act cool. As fun as stalking may be (not that I would know) it's not cool in this situation nor will it win them over as a potential literary love interest.
  
• Make a big impression in a small way. Again, play it cool. Give them your very best voice, characters and or proposal. The bulk of your work should already be done before you even THINK about hitting one up for representation. If you're just beginning a proposal or novel, IT IS NOT THE TIME TO THINK ABOUT THE MONEY, THE REPRESENTATION OR THE FAME! (*a note on fame...yeah, right?! Keep dreaming) Take the right kind of time to build your platform and let it fall into place. No one walks into the position of super star without hard work and persistence and years of crafting their craft ahead of time...trust me. I'm still WORKING hard at it every single day.
  
• Once you land one, they can be your strongest and most trusted ally in this world known as publishing. If they say to keep your mouth shut and listen to them or to let things happen and be cool, then for god sakes listen. If they give you a gaggle of edits to do on the proposal and its the last thing you want to do, do it anyway. Writing is not a job for those who want to only work a few minutes or hours a day. Writing, is well, as G-man says, fun until it becomes work. It's always work, and it's always fun in some way, but sometimes that way is only when you have great people to lean on and those that become an unexpected champion that get you through the tough times.
  
• Agent's no matter the personality or the house they land you in or how you got them to say yes to your characters and your writing project, are in the end, people too and need to be treated as such because they work very hard and their success depends on your success and your career can be made or laid to rest by their hands in some cases. It's up to you to cultivate and work that relationship into the place it needs to be from the very beginning on.
  

Yours in Agents, Auspicious Beginnings and Always Being the Best You Can Be,

Cicily