Month: October 2006

Agents

Hi! I have already asked a question, and I have just recently read the answer. First of all — I admire the fact that you take time and effort to help people. Second of all… I have an issue I would like to ask you as a professional about.

I have written a novel, which I have submitted to agencies, and I have already signed a contract with one. (Children’s Literary Agency). Later, I somehow went on the internet to see what books it has handled, and learnt that it is apparently on of the Top Twenty Worst agencies in USA , who charge, don’t work well and turn out to be a scam. I am quite scared about this. I really am. This could ruin things, couldn’t it?

So I started looking for new agents to see if I could find a new one and work with them instead. It is difficult so far — quite a few rejections. Do you have any advice for this serious issue?

First, if you don’t want to work with Children’s Literary Agency (or any other agent you might sign with), your contract should have some provision for ending the relationship. If it doesn’t, then write them a letter saying that you have reconsidered and will not be seeking representation from them.

If your contract says that you can’t end the relationship, well, don’t believe it. And don’t be surprised if they get a little aggressive with you, and try to “persuade” you into staying with them. Don’t let them intimidate you. No one owns your work until you sell them the rights, and no one “owns” the right to represent you without your fully-informed consent. The worst that would ever happen is that if you work with an agent to sell a book to a publisher, and then you leave the agency, that agency still collects commissions on the future sales of the book they helped you sell. And that’s it. So don’t back down in the face of any bullshit you might get.

There are many wonderful agents in the world, and there are some real rip-off artists. It’s up to every writer to a) do some research (which you are doing, props to you), and b) remember that a bad agent is worse than no agent at all. That can be hard, especially when people make promises that they will get you published if you just sign up with them, pay their reading fees, use the “professional editors” they recommend (or that they say the publisher insists on), et cetera.

The bottom line is that a reputable agent will never charge you an upfront fee to represent you. Never never never. Real agents are paid commission only on what they actually sell for you. They get paid when the publisher cuts a check. They may charge you expenses like FedEx or copying, but only for what they actually sell.

A reputable agent will never insist that you use a “professional editing” service as a condition of representation. Never never never. If an agent doesn’t think your work is ready for publication, she’ll usually reject it. Occasionally, she may work with you to improve the manuscript, but generally agents just don’t have time to groom writers.

There are some excellent resources online that can help you identify piranha-agents. The Absolute Write website has a “Bewares and Background Checks” forum where people talk about agents and scam artists. (In fact, they have an entire thread about The Literary Agency Group, of which Childrens Literary Agency is a part.

Also check Writer Beware.

Finally, you can check Publishers Marketplace. Although it’s a subscription site, they do offer a free-to-all search function that will allow you to search for information on agents.

And you’ll find more of my thoughts on how to choose and approach agents here.

And please remember that agents are a part of the giant relationship web of publishing, and that working with an agent that editors and publishers don’t respect is no help to you. Having an agent is kinda sorta like getting married –- it really does matter who you choose. Any so-called agent who promises that if you work with them you will be published is a lying toad (or very very new at their job). Some of the best work in the world never sells, and some of the biggest crap does, and that’s just the way it is. A good agent will understand your work and your goals, help you improve and refine them, be your champion, and have all kinds of strategies for getting your work in front of the right people. But they will never promise you that they have the magic bullet to getting published. There is no magic bullet.

The very best of luck with this, and let me know if I can be of any more help.

Hope and hopelessness

I just read the question about the election and hope. Wow. That is about the best thing I have read in a long time. I wish I’d had those words these long years of exile from my country (I’m an American living abroad because my partner is British, not because of Bush). Thanks for such inspiring words.

J.E. Knowles

And thank you right back, because I read the post again in order to talk to you now, and it turns out that I need to be reminded right now about hope. Not so much in terms of the government — I’m afraid that I have, at least for now, lost my energy to engage with the soul-numbing horror and stupidity that churns out of the Bush administration on a daily basis — but on a more personal level.

Hope is a concept that occasionally turns my head inside out. It’s a huge, huge part of who I am. And (or But) sometimes it’s challenged pretty radically. There’s a book I read a while back that I go back to fairly often because it smacks down a lot of my ideas about hope, but (or and) I think it’s at least partly right. It’s called The Last Word On Power, by Tracy Goss, and it’s ostensibly a business book, except that’s not why I keep reading it. What I come back to again and again is that Goss urges the reader

to accept — as if accepting a gift — these statements:

Life does not turn out the way it “should.”
Nor does life turn out the way it “shouldn’t.”
Life turns out the way it does.

When I say “life,” I mean your life: the life of the person reading this book. And by “the way it should,” I mean the way you most deeply hope life will turn out, the way you have always expected it ought to turn out in order to be meaningful.
— from The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss

And then she goes on to suggest that going through ‘the eye of the needle of hopelessness’ is a necessary step — and that we can meet this hopelessness with acceptance or resignation. And that acceptance leads to the freedom to take any stand, any action, to attempt whatever you think is good and fail spectacularly regardless of the consequences, if that’s what happens. She says, “Acceptance gives you the opportunity, instead of giving up, to play with full engagement, free from the fear about how things will turn out.”

The first time I read this book, this made me so mad that I actually threw the book across the room. But after many re-readings, I understand what she means, and I don’t disagree. I’m just not sure I am brave enough to believe that I can accept ‘hopelessness’ without feeling hopeless. Because feeling hopeless and bitter and twisted (the resignation she talks about) is not the point. The point is to feel free of fear, and to therefore be bold, to take chances, to make outrageous choices, to be as much of oneself as one wishes to be.

In other words, to be what I’ve always hoped I could be. Except without the hope.

This makes my head hurt, and scares the bejesus out of me because I think she might be right, and where does that leave all my hope stuff? And yet, of course, on some level Solitaire is about this journey through the eye of hopelessness, even though I had not read the Goss book before I wrote the novel.

I certainly haven’t been able to let go of either hope or fear in my life. And the question I wrestle with is, are hope and fear two sides of the same coin? Is it necessary to lose hope in order to conquer fear? This one’s more than a pint, it’s a pitcher. I’d be interested to hear what folks have to say.

And finally, I’m not sure how all this is related, but here is a quote I currently love. It’s the epigraph to The Teachings Of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda.

Para mi solo recorrer los caminos que tienen corazon, cualquier camino que tenga corazon. Por ahi yo recorro, y la unica prueba que vale es atravesar todo su largo. Y por ahi yo recorro mirando, mirando, sin aliento.
— from The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.

Small reasons

Kelley said: “Other points of view are more flexible. One of the things I love about Stephen King’s work is his facility in wandering in and out of everyone’s heads, primary and secondary characters, and combining their real-time thoughts with memory, behavior, observation and feeling to paint a complex picture in a few simple strokes. He’s fantastic at creating character.”

Sticking my thoughts into this: I think also what King does so well is motivation. I guess that’s really covered in “creating character” but it’s a distinction that I like to make because so many writers don’t nail what makes people or any other thing such as a dog or a car do what they do as well as he does.

Sly

I totally agree. People hardly ever do things in a psychological vacuum. But often, the reasons are so…. small. So everyday. An accumulation of little wants, small frustrations, bad choices that seem unimportant at the time. Or just the desire to stand for a minute longer with one’s face in the sun, or stop for ice cream. King has a gift for making those things interesting and recognizable, and for picking the ones that matter most in the character’s overall behavior in the story. What his people do, and why, almost always matters later on in the story.

King has such a generosity toward his characters, even the ones we aren’t really meant to like. He’s always willing to inhabit them, to see them from the inside out. I think that’s what makes it possible for the reader to see them too.

Sunshine

Why do you love Nicola?

anonymous

Well. I have been holding this question for ages (with apologies to anonymous), because it’s really a moving target. Some days it seems like the only proper answer is ‘œDuh.’ Other days it’s the entire 18 years’ list of ups and downs and sideways that we have been together.

The answer you are getting today is not about how much I admire her fine mind and body and spirit, how much fun we have, the values that we share, the hard times we’ve overcome. Today’s answer is that I love Nicola because she gives me, every day, the chance and the choice to be myself, even if I decide sometimes to be the smallest self instead of the biggest.

Nobody makes me brave or strong, or any of the other hard things in the world that I aspire to. But Nicola makes me want to be those things as much as I can. I try harder because of her. And so I am more of myself, more of the things I want to be. And when I’m not brave and strong and true and fantabulous, she loves me anyway.

The thing is, love isn’t really about the other person. It’s about ourselves. It’s about how we feel, who we are, in the sunshine of the other.