When Having an Agent is Not a Good Thing

When Having an Agent is Not a Good Thing In 2007, I was a new author basking in the glow of the success of my first self-published book – a collection of short stories, that had won several awards and some serious press. My head was full of ideas for my next book. After completing the manuscript of my literary novel, I started shopping it around. Imagine my delight when several agents showed interest in it. I soon landed an agent at a very reputable New York agency with a proven track record. The young agent I signed up with was enthusiastic at the prospect of selling both my collection and the new novel I was working on. His head was full of ideas, but then came a series of â€Å"but firsts.† The first few rounds of editing were easy until a bombshell dropped. A senior agent at the agency quit and the bulk of that agent’s high profile clients came to the junior agent who suddenly lost all interest in me. He was no longer as responsive as he used to be, and it would take him days to respond to simple requests. After a few months of dodging my requests to seek updates, he hired an intern to work with me on doing the rest of the revisions. In a few days, I received a marked up copy from the intern that involved cutting 30 percent of my manuscript – to the point that pivotal moments in the story no longer made any sense. I put my foot down and refused to do those edits. The intern quickly backed off and the junior agent took charge again. After a few rounds of reasonable revision requests, I was promised that my book would be shopped around, except it never was. I was told it would be presented at book shows and that too never happened. After 18 months of waiting for my agent to fulfill his side of the obligations, I decided it was time to leave. I thanked him graciously and bowed out of the relationship.   Two months after that, I sold my novel to a reputable small traditional publisher In 2014, researchers from Washington and Lee University used an excerpt of Saffron Dreams to show that reading literary fiction like my novel can actually make someone less racist. The study was published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology. Interestingly enough, the passage that was selected for the study was one that my agent’s intern had marked for deletion. I leave the moral of the story to your imagination.

Time Saving 101 Topics to Avoid Reading

Time Saving 101 Topics to Avoid Reading I read a lot of blogs, newsletters, magazines, and websites. As a fast reader and research guru, I can hardly resist to let some resource pass me First and foremost, give yourself credit for knowing what you need and what you dont. Not everyone is an expert and not every piece of expert advice is worth reading. Topics I will immediately discard: 1) Writers block. This is so dang personal that nobody can tell someone else what to do. I happen to be one who believes in either writing through writers block or taking a nap to wake up and start writing refreshed. I dont believe in it much, and I definitely dont want to hear about someone elses. 2) Self-editing. There are so many ways to self-edit, so many angles, so many levels. There isnt one right way. If you understand good writing and appreciate proper grammar, then figure it out. 3) The best way to market. Marketing depends on your extrovert level, your wallet, your tech savvy, your social media appreciation, your genre, your platform, your region, your experience in other arenas. The best way is to analyze your strengths, and the strengths of a handful of successful people you trust and admire, and just do it. 4) Outlining or pantser. I delete those instantly. Each writer has to test both ways and figure it out. 5) Religion or politics. Enough said. 6) Finding time to write. This isnt a secret. You make time, or you dont. You prioritize, or you dont. So many of these topics are the result of someone needing filler so they write about an evergreen subject. Some writers talk about these subjects because they are avoiding their more serious writing. Some want to sound experienced when they are not. Fact is, they are not unique topics. They are washing machine items, constantly spinning around in the tub. How do I know to discard them without reading them? I read the email subject lines, first lines in the first paragraph, and/or titles. Yes, I practice what we hear preached all the timeletting the opening hook dictate whether I read further or not. When I have 300-500 emails per day, I need some sort of gleaning mechanism, and why not that which we teachopening with a bang, or at least with enough meat to suck me in. And if the writer still wants to pick such a mundane topic, then they need to show me they have a new twist that will totally wow me.