How I Got My Agent!

I am so, so, so excited to announce that I'm now represented by Jennifer Azantian of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency!

I've always found "how I got my agent" posts to be very motivating--so in the hope that others might feel the same way, here's mine. (Fair warning: it's long!)

THE LONG-TIMERS is the third novel I queried. I started writing seriously in 2010 and banged out what I thought was a pretty decent YA paranormal novel by the end of the year. I sent off a whole bunch of email queries (75 or 80, maybe? I remember it was a lot!), to pretty much anyone who represented the genre. This shotgun approach resulted in a handful of requests to read fulls and partials, and while every single one ended in a polite form rejection, it was enough to convince me I wasn't completely nuts.

Figuring I'd probably do better with another genre, one that wasn't quite so saturated, I decided to try writing a MG sci-fi novel next. As with my first manuscript, I got a handful of partial and full requests, but each one ended with a polite rejection.

But around this time, I lucked into my first real critique partner (hi Laura!). We met through our husbands and discovered we both wrote YA, so we decided to meet once a week and work through our previously completed manuscripts, critiquing a chapter a week.

Holy crap. Seriously, if you've never had a real CP, one who's also a writer, one who's willing to dig into your work and discuss it with you for hours, you NEED ONE. My writing improved immensely after just a few months of weekly meetings.

In late 2011, I figured I'd try my hand at another YA manuscript. I'd just finished the first draft of THE LONG-TIMERS when I stumbled across an agent's blog post promoting the 2012 Big Sur Writing Workshop--which was only a six hour drive away from where I was living at the time. The idea of going to an actual writing conference terrified me, to be honest. I wouldn't know anyone there. I'd never had more than one person actually critique my work. I'd have to meet (and talk to!) live agents. But somehow I screwed up my nerve and signed up. And I'm so glad I did! The conference was amazing. Not only did I meet my future Thinking to Inking co-bloggers there, but I also had actual conversations with several agents and got amazing feedback from editors and fellow attendees.

Just as I was finishing up the revisions from the conference and getting ready to start querying, I found out about a Twitter pitch party and signed up for an account. Suddenly (seriously, I still can't believe how fast this happened), I was a member of a thriving, awesome, incredibly supportive Twitter writing community.

I started querying THE LONG-TIMERS in June of 2012. This time, I was determined to query in small batches. This turned out to be really smart, because I got some tremendously helpful feedback early on which helped me make the manuscript much stronger. While I was waiting for responses, I entered contests--and to my surprise and delight, I started getting lots of requests! One of these was the Gearing Up to Get An Agent (GUTGAA) blogfest pitch contest, hosted by the lovely Deana Barnhart. I was thrilled when I made it to the agent round of the contest and even more thrilled when I got multiple agent requests to read partials--one of them from Jennifer.

I had over three times more requests to read material for THE LONG-TIMERS than my previous two manuscripts combined, but then the rejections started to roll in. Most of them were personalized--a big change from my first query attempts--and they were incredibly nice (I'm convinced literary agents are some of the nicest people on earth). But almost every rejection said the same thing: I really like these specific parts, but I'm not connecting with the whole thing/don't love it enough to represent it.

Well. As you can imagine, I felt a little discouraged. At the end of November, Jennifer emailed me to say she had loved the first fifty pages of the manuscript and wanted to read more, but I told myself not to get my hopes up. She probably would be another in the string of agents who liked it, but didn't like it enough.

So when I got Jennifer's email telling me she loved it, I just about fell off my chair. When she called me to offer representation, I was bowled over by her passion and excitement for the manuscript. I am beyond thrilled to be working with her and so happy that I finally found the exact right advocate for my work.

The moral of this particular story: get yourself out there! If I hadn't gotten together with critique partners, gone to conferences, and hooked up with a larger writing community, there's no way I'd be writing this post today.

I am incredibly grateful to the friends who helped me get to this point: my wonderful first CP Laura; Jenn, Stacy, and Lauren (seriously the nicest co-bloggers/critique partners I could ask for); Erin and Andrew for the great critique notes; Dee and Summer for being amazing and awesome and incredibly supportive; and my husband Gavin, who's stuck by me through all this craziness and makes everything possible. I love all of you guys!

Stats (because I know I always like to see them, heh):
Queries sent: 55
Rejections: 31
No-response: 13
Partial requests: 14 (9 from contests, 3 from queries, 2 from in-person pitches)
Full requests: 15 (8 from queries, 3 from contests, 4 upgraded from partials)

GUTGAA Tag: I'm it!

Participants in the Gearing Up To Get An Agent blogfest are having a game of tag! I was invited by the lovely Rachel of You Are What You Write to answer the questions below about my current manuscript.

What is the working title of your book? THE LONG-TIMERS

Where did the idea come from for the book? The seed of the idea came from a Popular Science article that talked about one man's quest to slow down the aging process.

What genre does your book fall under? It's one of those slightly tricky ones, but the closest I've come is YA sci-fi/thriller or thriller with sci-fi elements. At conferences, I've had agents/editors call it speculative fiction and light dystopian too.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? I have the perfect person in mind for Remy, the book's narrator: French actor Gaspard Ulliel. I was so excited to find a picture of him—he looks exactly like I pictured Remy.

For Marisol, the main female character and one of Remy's best friends, I'd go with Columbian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno. Isn't she adorable? 

What is the one-sentence short synopsis of your book? When a privileged teenage boy learns the horrific truth behind a miracle drug that prolongs the life of the rich, he must try to bring down his parents' all-powerful company from the inside.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? I'm interested in getting representation from an agency and doing the traditional publishing route.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? About three months, which is average for me for first drafts. Then I probably spent another four months revising—also average.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? I tried to include all my favorite elements in this book: action/adventure, humor, romance, sci-fi, suspense, some dark moments, and a (hopefully) satisfying ending.

I'm tagging three other GUTGAA bloggers who might want to answer the same questions on their blogs (apologies if you've already been tagged!):

Sarah (@SJSchmitt)

AG (@agwickedspirits)

John (@ABoredAuthor)

Writing a Short Pitch

I'm currently in the middle of querying my third novel, and this time I'm doing it right--sending out queries in small batches, waiting for responses, and tweaking my query and pages based on the feedback I receive. But as I'm sure Tom Petty would agree, the waiting is the hardest part.

One of the things that helps pass the time is entering writing contests. These are a recent discovery of mine. Fabulous people in the online writing community generously donate their time to run contests on their websites, blogs, or even Twitter.

I've participated in four contests over the past month and have gotten several requests from agents to see partial or full manuscripts, which is super-exciting (and helps ease the pain of waiting for query responses!).

A lot of my waiting time has been taken up with putting together pitches that fit the guidelines of each contest. I thought it might be fun to take a look at a few of them.

My comments on each pitch are in blue.

First, for comparative purposes, here's my long pitch (the one that goes in my query letter).

Long Pitch:

Remy Bardin’s parents invented a drug that extends human life by two hundred years—as long as you can pay the Company for those daily pills. Society has fragmented into the long-timers who live in constant fear of losing everything, and the short-timers who would do anything for a few extra years.

Remy isn’t worried—he’ll have a guaranteed supply of the drug when he comes of age next year. But his perfect life dissolves when an old man who threatens to expose his father’s secrets winds up dead. Remy can’t help but wonder what his parents had to do with the old man’s death, and what secrets they could be trying to protect.

After breaking into their lab in the heavily-guarded Company stronghold, he finds out things that make him question the morality of his existence… and he must decide if a few hundred years can possibly be worth the price.

I've gotten a decent request rate on my queries, so I know this pitch isn't too bad, but way too long for most pitch contests.

Three Sentence Pitch:

Remy Bardin's parents invented a drug that extends human life by two hundred years, which is why society has fragmented into the long-timers who can afford the pills and the short-timers who would do anything for a few extra years.

Seventeen-year-old Remy's got a guaranteed lifetime supply of the drug, but his perfect world falls apart when an old man threatens to expose his father's secrets and then is murdered.

After breaking into his parents' lab, Remy finds out the horrible truth behind the drug... and he must decide if a few hundred years can possibly be worth the price.

I took out a few details from the first paragraph and combined two sentences into one. Not too bad.
The second paragraph was harder--I spent a good long while trying to figure out how to get all the details into one sentence. I had to cut the part about Remy wondering what secrets his parents are keeping, but I felt like it was at least implied by the shorter sentence.


The last paragraph was technically only one sentence already, but I felt like it was a bit long for a short pitch contest, so I tightened it up.
I must have done something right, because this pitch won me a blog contest and a full manuscript request from an awesome agent at a top agency!

One Sentence Pitch:

When a privileged teenage boy learns the horrific truth behind a miracle drug that prolongs the life of the rich, he must try to bring down the all-powerful Company from the inside.

Here's where it starts to get reeeallly tricky. Distilling the whole plot of a book down into a few paragraphs is hard enough--but when we're talking one sentence, it seems impossible.

What worked for me was to really think about the core of the story--what did I say when someone asked me what my novel was about? I wrote a line or two off the top of my head to answer that question.

Then I started looking at the individual words. In a pitch this short, every word counts. At first, it said "a spoiled teenage boy", but then I thought about the exact concept I wanted to get across and changed it to "privileged"--which really is a better representation of the character's background (and bonus: a less generic word).

Twitter Pitch:

A teenage boy learns the horrific secret behind a life-extending drug and must try to bring down his parents' company from the inside.

And you thought the last one was bad... this pitch, for a Twitter contest, had to be no more than 135 characters long (Twitter allows 140 characters, but 5 were needed for the contest's hashtag-identifier).

I started with my one sentence pitch and started cutting. But even after I got rid of all the extra words, I still had too many characters. Then it was time to look at shorter ways to say the same thing. "A miracle drug that prolongs the life of the rich" became "a life-extending drug". "The all-powerful Company" became "his parents' company", because I saved 4 characters!

This pitch also got me a request for material. Despite its length, I think I spent just as long on it as any of the others.

Have you had to work up short pitches for your manuscripts? Do you find them easy or difficult?