The “How I got My agent” Post

(this post is copied from my old website. Sorry for the lack of gifs to break up the text.)

I mean, not really. I'm being dramatic. But I told people I'd use this gif when I finally got to make this post, so here you go.

I've gotten pretty jaded about "How I Got My Agent" stories. Don't get me wrong, I used to LOVE them. I probably read hundreds of them when I first started trying to get published. But as one year in the trenches turned into two, then three, then five, then almost SEVEN... They stopped being inspiring. Frankly, they annoyed me. Writers who queried for all of two years would call their journeys "slow" and "hard", and I'd be like...

And I'm sure this post will be annoying as hell to the writers who've been querying for even longer.

Of course there is no such thing as an overnight success, and any writer who gets an agent or a book deal worked hard to get there. But more than one thing can be true at once. You can acknowledge that everyone works hard AT THE SAME TIME as acknowledging not everyone in this industry has to go through the same amount of crap, and a lesser amount of crap IS NOT correlated with greater merit. I'll be getting on this soapbox again. You have been warned.

As should be pretty clear from the title, this isn’t a fairytale success story. I wasn't one of those writers who lucked out on their first manuscript after just a couple months of querying. My path to getting agented was a long, hard slog, and I know I still have an uphill battle ahead of me. I’m sharing my story in the hopes that it’ll make some struggling writers feel better about their journeys, and help them avoid making some of the same mistakes.

I’ve been telling stories pretty much ever since I knew how, and writing them down since the fourth grade. I wrote illustrated fairy tales in elementary school, and launched my very own nine book (I know) fantasy epic in middle school. I didn’t know anything about publishing until around fall 2014.

I was 18, in my junior year of college, and had a more-or-less complete manuscript languishing on my computer. I was pretty aimless at that point, having changed my major twice and walked away from an ROTC scholarship. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, except for one thing that finally crystallized: I wanted to write stories people loved to read. I can pinpoint the exact moment it happened, sitting at a kitchen table in Boulder, Colorado with my housemates.

(Important note: Yes, I was young for a college junior. I was almost three years ahead of schedule, and also taking some graduate-level courses. A LOT of my identity was tied up in accomplishing things earlier and faster than everyone else. 0/10 do not recommend, if you're trying to break into publishing where everything is arbitrary and random.)

So I researched the publishing industry, read KM Weiland's entire blog on craft (full disclosure: I haven't looked at this in years, but I it was basically my bible in college) polished my manuscript, and--in 2016--inflicted it on the query trenches. I say “inflicted” because it was… bad. Like really really bad. It was 97k words of angst, set in a fantasy world with early space age technology. I thought I was writing super serious political intrigue and gritty violence. I was SO sure querying would be an absolute breeze, and I’d have my movie deal in no time.

Spoiler: I was wrong.

I was competent on a technical level—enough to fool a surprising number of agents into requesting—but I had never worked with a critique partner and it showed. Ffs, I used A Song of Ice and Fire and The Hunger Games as comp titles.

I queried slowly, always waiting for feedback before sending a new batch (back in the days when feedback was more common), so it quickly became clear I needed to cease and desist. Agents said my worldbuilding was confusing, they couldn’t connect with the POV, and it wasn’t very original. They were absolutely correct.

Fast forward a little. I graduated college and got a job waiting tables at a nursing home. I still had no idea what I was doing with my life, but now I was determined to Make It as a writer. I cannibalized some parts of that first MS to produce the first draft of Stars and Shadows. I got myself some CPs and spent the year laser-focused on my writing. I wasn't in school anymore, but I'd go with my roommate getting her engineering degree to pull all nighters at Denny's. In early 2017, I got on writer Twitter and entered my thirteenth complete rewrite (I’m not kidding) in Pitch Madness. And I was selected! I got to work with mentors who were actual published authors. I got requests from literary agents in the showcase. The feedback was REALLY GOOD. This was IT. I was 50000% going to be one of those writers with a bestselling series before I was 22.

And then I wasn’t.

The rejections rolled in, and they were devastating. One agent loved the book, but already had a client with a similar concept. Another just didn’t feel equipped to sell it. Another rejected the partial, then emailed me months later to say they were still thinking about it, and had I done a revision? I sent them the revision, only for that to be rejected on the basis of “just didn’t fall in love.” That same agent then emailed me AGAIN a few months later to ask if I’d written anything new. (I hadn’t.) I am not making this up. That whole thing was... one hell of an emotional rollercoaster. I knew I should be flattered, but all I could feel was frustrated. Everyone kept saying the same thing: "This is great, I just didn’t fall in love."

Shelving Stars and Shadows in 2018 was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I gave that book everything I had, and if that wasn’t enough… well, what could be?

I’d written a sequel while querying (lol don't do this), so I didn’t have anything new to start sending out. I took a hiatus from writing. By this point I’d moved to New Mexico, worked as a home health aide for a year, and gotten my EMT-Basic license. Over the two years I worked for an ambulance company, Gods of the Void was born.

GOTV started out as a “fuck it” project after I had to shelve SAS. I think the zero draft came from a twitter thread where someone was like “combine the last book, TV show, and movie you’ve seen, and that’s your new WIP.” I had NO ideas I was remotely as passionate about as I was SAS, so I started brainstorming WTF I could possibly do with “Starship Troopers meets Orange Is The New Black meets Nevernight.” I came up with “ridiculous over the top space opera, but something to do with prison, and a main character who really really really wants revenge.” The first version of Chapter 1 involved a woman getting released from space prison post “rehabilitation” (AKA mind wipe), stranded on a giant bug-infested landfill planet with nothing left but a lot of scars and a burning desire to kill the Emperor.

While I was saying “fuck it”, I decided I’d make the protagonist as unconventional as possible. She’d be in her mid-forties, a physical wreck, and her gender would be completely irrelevant. There was a lot of self-discovery inherent in writing that. I did a lot of unlearning, unpacking every instance of “wait, if she were a male character, would this still be happening? would I still be describing her this way?” I wanted to write a story that most people would assume belonged to a male character, down to the book’s molecular structure of voice, personality, and narrative framing.

I also wanted to really take apart the notion of what makes a villain, and who is or isn’t worthy of a redemption arc. Can you redeem a galactic-scale war criminal? Is that question even important? Does it really make anything better that Mr. War Criminal is working on himself and becoming a nicer person? What DOES matter, then?

The result is the best thing I’ve written to date: a 168k science-fantasy-horror epic.

I finished revising GOTV in August of 2021, and started querying in October. I already knew I’d have a hard time with my chonky manuscript and unconventional protagonist, but nothing could have prepared me for just how awful the query trenches had become since the pandemic. Stars and Shadows yielded a 26% request rate and tons of personalized feedback. GOTV, despite being head and shoulders above anything I’d written before, racked up form rejection after form rejection. I CNR’d agents who’d requested fulls on my previous books (even the first one). The first chapter got long-listed for a literary magazine contest, but when that rejection eventually came, too... I was in a pretty dark place.

I was beginning to think I'd missed my chance. SAS was my safe “good debut” book—shorter, marketable, nothing too out there, queried during a time when I actually had a shot. I’d never be in that position again, and I blew it. I should've written faster. I should've worked harder.

The only—and I mean ONLY—kind of non-form rejection I’d gotten on SAS (the latter drafts) and GOTV was some variant of “this is good, I just didn’t love it.” Good writing, good worldbuilding, good pacing, good characters... And I didn’t know what to do about that. I didn’t know what critical ingredient I was missing that would change that. I didn’t know what was so fundamentally broken about my work that it could be good, even excellent, and not ONE SINGLE PERSON in all of publishing had managed to “fall in love” with it.

I didn’t know how much more I could take. I couldn’t articulate how awful, how heartbreaking, how absolutely shitty it was to watch writers on their first ever manuscripts blaze past me to agents and book deals. To get form rejections and CNRs on my best work from agents who had requested and even claimed to enjoy my earlier books. To wonder if I was missing something, and there was just a certain type of person who got published—a type of person I was just… not.

I’d read so many stories of people’s journeys, where they said the night is darkest just before the dawn. I used to think that was inspiring, but lately, for me, the night just kept. Getting. Darker. Every time I thought, this is it! This is rock bottom! It just kept. Getting. Worse.

I was filled with dread every time I opened my inbox. They tell you not to compare yourself to other writers, but that's damn near impossible amid the constant noise of social media. I couldn’t stop thinking about how there were people my age OR YOUNGER with bestselling series and awards. I was already behind and falling further behind every day. Meanwhile, I was depressed and exhausted at a job that didn’t pay me nearly enough. I spent my days being exposed to a dangerous virus, taking verbal abuse from COVID-denying conspiracy theorists and getting physically assaulted by belligerent patients. Over the last eight years I’d scrubbed toilets, waited tables, and battled an assortment of mental and physical health issues. I was also rejected from every single graduate program I applied to. I was at a point where I’d have joined the Squid Game for just a little glimmer of hope.

Anyway.

I left my job at an Albuquerque ER and moved to St Louis for nursing school. I started drafting a brand new book, not a sequel, that I’m still really excited about. I took a hard look at what it was I really wanted out of writing, and decided I was done sacrificing my mental health for increasingly arbitrary goalposts. I decided: one more book. I’d shelve GOTV, query the next project, and if it died in the trenches I would self-publish.

On Halloween, I got an email.

I saw the agent’s name in the subject line and thought, great, that makes three in one week.

But then it said “call.” It used the word “obsessed.” It compared my book to Red Rising and the Inheritance Trilogy. I threw my phone down and ran across the living room. I screenshotted the email and showed it to my closest friends--the same two who lived with me when I first decided I wanted to do this. I spent the next day in a state of unadulterated panic, terrified to get my hopes up.

The evening before my 27th birthday, over eight years since the day I decided I wanted to be a published author, I got my first offer of representation. Our visions for edits matched up exactly—for example, she pointed out a flaw with the book that I 100% agreed with. She'd had all the right reactions to the story, and really understood what I was trying to do. Her submission strategy made sense, her communication style was PERFECT for me, and I could tell that she loved my book and believed in my career.

It was happening. IT WAS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.

Ngl, I was afraid to go to sleep that night, in case I woke up and it had all been a dream. I thought the "pinch me" thing was something that only happened in movies. At this point I was half convinced that agents were mythical creatures, and writers who signed with them were all in on some grand conspiracy I wasn't a part of.

I was a little apprehensive about the agent’s newness, so I was rigorous about doing my due diligence. I didn’t make my decision until I was sure she 1) had experienced mentorship, 2) had a solid network of industry connections, 3) wasn’t overburdening herself with clients, 4) came with positive feedback from existing clients, and 5) the agency contract didn’t have any red flags (per a lawyer familiar with the industry). I recommend anyone who finds themselves in this position do the same.

I asked for three weeks to make my decision because of the length of my manuscript, the upcoming holidays, and…. *gestures at the publishing industry, which is currently on fire*. Another green flag: the offering agent was totally cool with this.

I woke up the next morning to a kind step aside from one of my nudges, who'd had my partial MS--a Big Deal agent with a lengthy and illustrious client list. I got some very nice feedback over the next weeks: one agent called my query letter "tremendous", said they enjoyed my pages and hoped I did well, but already had something on their list that was just a little too similar. One agent (a request) straight up ghosted me, which... made me feel less great. Those goalposts really do keep moving.

So my deadline passed, and I signed with my agent this week. It's surreal to be in this position after wanting it for so long--I was awkward as hell on the Call--and I'm so nervous and excited for everything that's next.

And I have so much faith in this book. Years of struggling to find ONE PERSON willing to take a chance on my work made me an outstanding writer with a lot of resilience. If I’d had a quick, easy journey, I might a) take the good stuff for granted, and b) not know how to pick myself up and keep fighting after so much crushing defeat.

Finally, I’m going to shout this from the rooftops every chance I get: NOT BEING ONE OF PUBLISHING’S LUCKY UNICORNS DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE A LESSER WRITER. It literally just means the (TOTALLY ARBITRARY) stars that govern this industry didn’t align for you. I did an internet deep-dive on a dozen of my all-time favorite authors, and all but two of them (who are wealthy cis white men) didn’t get published until after age 30. Many of them had to struggle for 5, 10, even 15 years, and came out on the other side with bestsellers, awards, movie deals, and enthusiastic readerships. The commonly cited phrase “Everyone’s journey is different” DOES NOT mean “some people are talented and brilliant and worthy right away, while you’re mediocre and slow and generally less awesome and need to put in a lot more work :/“. This bears repeating because I feel like a lot of people hear it that way. I certainly did. It’s bullshit, ESPECIALLY for marginalized writers. I was writing professional-quality work in 2017, but it took me four years and a whole other book to get here. It would have taken me even longer if I'd shelved GOTV, because I'm the sort of writer who takes over a year to produce one book.

"Everyone's journey is different" literally just means "it's different." There are so many factors at play in who gets agented and who doesn't. Some genres have more people who rep them, which increases their odds--for example, YA, romance, and literary fiction vs sci-fi, horror, and historical fiction. Some people produce more quickly--whether that's because they write shorter books, have more time on their hands, or another reason--and therefore are "buying more lottery tickets", so to speak. Some people have all the right connections, like in any industry. And some people are just really, really lucky.

If you’ve had a long, hard, infuriating, humiliating, heartbreaking journey, I’m putting it out there right now that you can always reach out to me. If you want to vent, if you’re looking for encouragement, my messages are open.

I’ll share my specific stats and query letter in a future post. I'll also talk about my decision to query a 168k book, and what that was like (early spoiler: don't do this unless you really like pain).

I hope my luck continues to turn, but I know publishing isn’t likely to get fairer or easier in the near future—maybe ever. Maybe this book won’t sell, and maybe the next one won’t sell either. All I can be sure of is that I wrote a damn good book, will continue to write even better books, and now I have someone in my corner who believes it, too.

Today, that is more than enough.