Tag Archives: literary agents

Pitch madness

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I’m on a handful of Yahoo forums for writers. One of them is TWLAuthorTalks, owned by Dorothy Thompson.

I joined the list not long ago when I read on another list that she’d invited an agent, Jessica Faust of BookEnds, to join as a guest and answer member questions.

As it happens, Jessica read and rejected my very first completed novel, an inspirational genre romance that I wrote about 7 years ago.

Then last week, Dorothy announced that her next agent-guest would be Jenny Bent of Trident [update: Jenny now has her own agency] — who, coincidentally read and rejected my second completed novel last winter.

That has to mean something! just don’t know what, lol

Anyway, first Jenny was only going to be on for one day. Then she agreed to stick around for a second day, and then (much to her later regret no doubt!) yesterday morning she agreed to critique one-sentence elevator pitches submitted between 4:00 and 5:30.

Just to be clear, this all happened yesterday so it’s too late to send a pitch. However, if you join the group, you can read the pitches and critiques in the message archives. I highly recommend it — you’ll find it’s quite an education.

Seeing this happen in real time was an incredible experience as well. The group had 18 members when I joined a few weeks ago. Now there are over 200. The pitches were FLYING.

Here’s the pitch I sent, for my current WIP:

As word spreads that divorced biologist Libby Samson has seen real live “little folk” on her property, she must decide whether a sexy neighbor’s subsequent betrayal was in reality an act of love, intended to save her dreams of organic farming from being destroyed by unwanted celebrity and the crazy demands of her self-proclaimed devotees.

I was thrilled by Jenny’s critique, because what she liked was the set-up, and what she didn’t care for was the conflict (“she must decide . . .”) — which is a flaw of the pitch, not the novel. I put my poor protag through a lot in this book! But when I was writing the pitch I was trying to figure out how to work in that the book includes a romance — and with only one sentence to work with . . . well. That’s the challenge. What to put in? What to leave out?

Anyway, I have some great feedback to use for when I start querying — which may be pretty soon. I am deep into my second draft of this piece, plus I really have to get it wrapped up this month. I’m in another Yahoo group, Deanna Carlyle’s 52Days, the purpose of which is to write a novel in 52 days — and the kick-off is July 1 . . . tick tock tick tock tick tock

lol

[tags] writing, literary agents, querying [/tags]

Funny scammer. Make me laugh.

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Via Dawno’s blog, the outrage Barbara Bauer triggered today has spread like wildfire around the blogosphere: Barbara Bauer hit number 5 in the top Technorati searches! lol

Click the link to see a screen shot :-)

Scroll down to today’s earlier posts to see what this is all about, if you haven’t heard yet.

Dawno has also posted about a threat Bauer made, in writing, to Angela Hoy, who runs another writer’s forum, Writer’s Weekly. A forum member posted a question about Bauer — there was nothing negative, just a question — and Bauer responded by emailing Hoy that if she didn’t remove the post, Bauer would sue her for one BILLION dollars. Dawno quips: “anyone else hearing Dr. Evil when they read that?”

LOL

Update: more Barbara Bauer hilarity ensues!

Taking action!

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Here’s a link to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFFW) “top 20 worst literary agents.” (UPDATE: link no longer good but list below.)

None of these agencies has a significant track record of sales to commercial (advance-paying) publishers, and most have virtually no documented and verified sales at all (book placements claimed by some of these agencies turn out to be “sales” to vanity publishers). All charge clients before a sale is made–whether directly, by levying fees such as reading or administrative fees, or indirectly, for editing or other adjunct services.

This is the stuff that got Absolute Write in trouble (see my previous post).

And here’s the list.

The Abacus Group Literary Agency
Allred and Allred Literary Agents (refers clients to “book doctor” Victor West of Pacific Literary Services)
Barbara Bauer Literary Agency
Benedict Associates (also d/b/a B.A. Literary Agency)
Sherwood Broome, Inc.
Capital Literary Agency (formerly American Literary Agents of Washington, Inc.)
Desert Rose Literary Agency
Arthur Fleming Associates
Finesse Literary Agency (Karen Carr)
Brock Gannon Literary Agency
Harris Literary Agency
The Literary Agency Group, which includes the following:
-Children’s Literary Agency
-Christian Literary Agency
-New York Literary Agency
-Poets Literary Agency
-The Screenplay Agency
-Stylus Literary Agency (formerly ST Literary Agency, formerly Sydra-Techniques)
-Writers Literary & Publishing Services Company (the editing arm of the above-mentioned agencies)
Martin-McLean Literary Associates
Mocknick Productions Literary Agency, Inc.
B.K. Nelson, Inc.
The Robins Agency (Cris Robins)
Michele Rooney Literary Agency (also d/b/a Creative Literary Agency, Simply Nonfiction, and Michele Glance Rooney Literary Agency)
Southeast Literary Agency
Mark Sullivan Associates
West Coast Literary Associates (also d/b/a California Literary Services)

If you blog about writing, you may want to post the link too. Jim Hines explains why.

Absolute Write taken offline

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Via Miss Snark: the Absolute Write website has been pulled.

Making Light has the story.

Absolute Write was an excellent resource for writers: it publicized the activities of scam agents.

It’s not clear precisely why the site was taken down. The hosting service was apparently threatened by Barbara Bauer, one of the agents whose carryings-on have been documented on the blog. However, the hosting service owner has also just revived her own rival site . . .

The good news is, according to the comments on the Making Light post, the AW owner is already making plans to have the site restored to a new host.

Update: Absolute Write is now here.

Why nibbles aren’t enough

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When you’re shopping for an agent, “they” say, you have to query a lot of them. Dozens, anyway.

It’s the “only my mom knows how special I really am” approach to finding an agent. You have this book, you know it’s adorable, now all you have to do is find that one agent out there who can See what’s Really There– the one agent who will Believe.

Then every once in awhile you come across a writer who sent out a few queries and whoops, next thing you know, he/she has offers from multiple agents.

Kristin Nelson blogged today about that experience from her perspective as an agent:

I wish it wouldn’t happen as often as it does but when I see a great project, chances are good that other agents think it’s good too. I offer and the writer mentions she already has a couple of offers on the table.

“When I see a great project, chances are good that other agents think it’s good, too.”

So what’s that say about a project that’s been shopped to, say, 20 agents, or 50, or more, and none have responded with particular enthusiasm? (Assuming, of course, that your query letter is literate and you’ve done your due diligence about which agents you’ve approached.)

It’s not easy to accept the fact that the wonderful book you’ve written isn’t good enough. But agents aren’t dumb. On the contrary, they are the ultimate novel quality feedback machine: they screen novels for a living, they have a vested interest in spotting projects that can sell.

So personally, I’ll know I’ve hit my mark when I have multiple agents vying to represent me. That should be the target, IMO. It’s my target, anyway, I’ll say that.

Bad agents beware

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Because Writer Beware has published its list of top 20 worst agents.

Via the blog kept by Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss and A.C. Crispin, who also have an interesting post about what happens when a writer’s work is submitted to a publisher by an unprofessional or questionable agent. (Click “show original post” if all you see is comments. Their blog doesn’t support permalinks.)

When good enough — isn’t

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Miss Snark fields a question from a writer whose novel has been rejected repeatedly as “not competitive.” The writing is good, the story interesting, and yet the novel doesn’t seem to have what it takes to make the cut.

Here’s a portion of Miss Snark’s response:

I see quite a few books as partials or fulls that are pretty darn good but there’s nothing there that makes me say “aha!” I have to be able to answer the questions “what makes this stand out from the crowd” “what is going to surprise me” when I send this to editors. Business as usual will not do that.

The bar for becoming a fiction writer is, on the one hand, ridiculously low. You like words, you like stories, you own a computer or at least a bit of charcoal and the back of a shovel, and you’re there.

So it’s disquieting to discover that what you’re writing may not be good enough to get published. (Of, if you get a little further, not good enough to sell out your print run. Or, a little further along yet, not good enough to make you a living.)

Miss Snark’s advice:

I suggest stepping back from the project for a bit. Work on something else for awhile. Then go back and really look at your characters and plot. You have to be able to look at your work with an objective eye. That’s the single biggest weakness in writers: they can’t see how their own work looks on the literary buffet.

But (and I’m making an oblique confession, here) maybe that’s not it. Maybe we can see. Maybe the problem is that we don’t want to see. Because seeing means we have to rewrite, and not just smoothing-up-those-awkward-sentences rewriting, but the sort of rewriting that involves dismantling plot or rethinking characters — the kind of rewriting that takes us almost back to the beginning, and that, with a novel we’ve lived with for so many months already that we’re frankly sick to death of it.

But maybe that’s what it takes.

In the Introduction to Writing the Breakout Novel, Donald Maass has this to say:

Great novels–ones in which lightening seems to strike on every page–result from their authors’ refusal to settle for ‘good.’ Great novelists . . . push themselves to find original turns of phrase, extra levels of feeling, unusual depths of character, plots that veer in unexpected directions . . . Is that magic?

Not at all. It is aiming high.

I have to believe “aiming high” is what gets you to the place Miss Snark references — to the novel that “stands out from the crowd,” that is more than “business as usual.”

Stitching a contemporary plot

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I now have three partials out to agents, which puts me at a crossroads as far as my completed novel goes. I could continue to query additional agents, but my gut says to hold off. See how this goes.

Which means that now, I wait. For quite awhile, probably. Months, probably.

So, the next question becomes: what do I do in the meantime, in my “for me” writing time, while I wait?

I’ve got two other novels outlined that feature the same protagonist as my finished ms, but I am inclined to go off, right now, in a completely different direction. This is partly by choice. I want to add another basket for my eggs. But also, a new character introduced herself to me over the weekend, and tonight, I met one of her companions.

I’m going back to them in a minute. But in the meantime, I am actually feeling a bit nervous, because I don’t know where these two are going to take me.

Contemporary literary fiction, being post modernist, is often stitched together by absurdity; absurdity serves as a kind of surrogate plot. I don’t aspire to be a literary novelist, however. I want something much simpler (ah, yes, “lower,” lol): to tell stories. I want to tell stories and get out of the way in the telling.

So I have this woman. She’s divorced, I can see where she’s landed, I can hear her voice. But I don’t know her story. That’s what makes me nervous. It would be easy to fall back on absurdity, and it’s funny to find how tempting that is, at my age, this distant from my twenties & from college. I’m having to make myself not write, as I hunt about for the story, lest I begin filling up pages with absurdity, which will pass the time, but what good is passing time when the end of it all is a select all/delete?