How I Got My Agent

Well this was harder to write than I thought.

I think like some (many? most?) people before me, I struggled to figure out when my querying journey began or whether it was a story even worth sharing.

Technically speaking, I spent 2 months in the trenches.

Not quite short enough to be one of those crazy fast querying journeys that writers dream of (but are few and far between).

But not quite long enough that anyone familiar with the average time spent in the trenches would call it long.

If you’re like me (and other writers I know), you probably know just how much these posts can vary. I used to devour How I Got My Agents posts, and try to envision how my querying journey would go once I got into the trenches.

So naturally, when I signed with my agent, I thought writing this post would be easy, because I’d read so many. I knew what mine was supposed to say! But once I got down to it, I couldn’t finish. Something was missing. And it went on for weeks.

Eventually it clicked.

I would do myself a disservice if I considered my querying journey just the two months I spent in the trenches. If you read my previous blog post, you know that I’ve had kind of a roundabout writing journey. And thanks to that, it’s hard to tell where it all began.

SO! If you are here only for that two month period I was in the trenches, do not fret! You can skip to Part 4: Down in the Trenches and I promise you I will not be offended. I ramble a lot and it’s a long post.

However, if you choose to accompany me on the whole journey, buckle up kids because I’m a serious overwriter.

Part 1: Miscalculated Right Answers

I think in a way my querying journey began when I was 15, looking up how to get published using my sole internet source, my Kindle 3G (this tells you basically all you need to know about me in high school).

But in a completely different way, like many writers before me, it started with a teacher…or a few.

The first was Mrs. Tallman.

Before her, I hated reading. I think it had to do with the fact I didn’t speak English until I was 8. I wasn’t very good at reading (duh) and I hated being bad at something (I don’t take failure well). And I just didn’t get it. Why did “th” make the “d” sound? Why was “a” pronounced like “e” and “e” pronounced like “i”?

Before her, I hated when we split for English Language Arts because I was still in ELD and I was hopelessly ashamed I hadn’t mastered English yet. But math? I fucking loved math. Math was universal. My grandpa taught me the alphabet when I was 3, and my numbers soon after. But then I moved to an English-only school, and the former didn’t matter anymore. It was like I didn’t know how to read. Not really. I saw letters on pieces of paper but they didn’t make sense. But math? No one could take math from me.

And I was good.

Or at least as good as a third grader could be. I made it to the division timed tests months before my classmates, but I couldn’t pass my fluency test or get into the Gifted program. I wasn’t smart, not really. I was just good at math.

It’s so funny to think back on it now, that once I was a math kid. To think that I always scored higher on my math standardized tests than in either reading or writing. That is until Mrs. Tallman.

Here’s a thing you need to know about Gail Tallman—she was fucking terrifying. I think she used to be in the Navy or something? I don’t remember, it’s been 16 years. Anyway, she was fucking terrifying. But she was also incredibly sweet and kind—only I didn’t know that when I met her. I just knew her as the scary fourth grade teacher and I’d lucked out with the nice one. Until I didn’t. I’d been in a 4/5 split class with a teacher who was known to be kindhearted. Then a month into the fourth grade, the school decided it was a bad idea to have split classes because it deprives the kids of a cohesive experience.

And so they switched the fourth grader’s out of one class and into another. Into Mrs. Tallman’s.

Right off the bat, she noticed something my other teachers hadn’t caught on to—I didn’t actually read for my reading logs. I just copied the back of the book jacket and turned that in for my weekly assignments.

And after that, I kinda had to read.

But before long, I realized I actually really liked it? And I was moving on to bigger, more complex books? And reading more than just the required thirty minutes? At some point, I was reading a book a day. It was like a switch flipped and I became a completely different person.

By the time I got to seventh grade, I identified as an English person, and not a math person. Which is when I came to encounter the second important teacher in my writing journey.

Part 2: A Series of Almosts and Not Quites

Now this is the part of the story I struggled to write about.

Mostly because 2016 changed the way we view the world and the people in it. Or at least, it changed the way I did because as the daughter of immigrants, I walk through it differently than many people I grew up with. And for that reason, I can’t bring myself to name the second teacher, to whom I owe many thanks, but cannot give a platform to.

Letter from March 2010

Seventh grade can’t be excluded from this story though, because a series of almosts—that in retrospect are more like not quites—are part of the exposition.

Anyone familiar with my last post, already knows once upon a time, I wrote a Tuck Everlasting rip-off. By that point in my life, I had developed enough of an ego to tell my English teacher all about it, proud as hell I had finished writing a whole ass book. Was my book anything I should be showing to anyone, much less my English teacher? Absolutely not. Did I do it anyway? Fuck yes I did.

Dear reader, let me tell you, this is where I truly became insufferable and anyone I was friends with at the time, once again, I apologize for the years you had to hear me talk about my dumb little books.

But here is where I reveal something I have been hiding from the new people in my life.

My English teacher had a friend who owned a small press. At the time, I was twelve and literally had no knowledge of the publishing industry. So when my teacher offered to send him my book, I jumped at the chance, not realizing that is simply not how it works.

And this friend of hers was absolutely wonderful and he took the time to read my book and pass it to his wife, who is also his editor! And they both gave me detailed notes!

They obviously didn’t offer to publish my book. For one, it was trash. And also the press focused on Western romances which my book very much was not. But for years, I re-read his letter. I engrained his compliments to my memory and tried to revise based on his criticism.

It made me feel like a real writer. And no one could tell me otherwise. For years, I told people I was almost published (I really wasn’t. He offered to read again if I revised, but like, I wasn’t going to suddenly write a Western romance, I was literally twelve). But what matters is it gave me confidence! And it propelled me for a long time!

Until I had to apply to college (lol).

Part 3: A Few Misses and a Bullseye

If you know me personally, you know I am very stubborn.

And while I was set on majoring in English and pursuing a publishing career for a while, when the time to apply to schools came, I chickened out. Partly because I convinced myself I needed to do something with the useless AP Chem knowledge taking up brain space. Partly because my senior English teacher told me studying English was a bad idea.

Whether Chemistry was a good alternative is debatable but she was very right about English for me. I loved writing, but English classes were not my cup of tea. Even the ones I was required to take for my Creative Writing minor were hard to get through, because I simply wasn’t interested in the classics.

I just wanted to read YA.

Again, I detailed my long back and forth journey in college in another post, so I won’t get into it again—but all of this is to say that I think there were a few misses in my life, but something along the way was a bullseye. I just haven’t figured it out yet.

Part 4: Down in the Trenches

Alright, anyone who has been along for the whole ride, thank you for your time. Everyone else joining for the dirty details about my time in the trenches, welcome!

Like I said before, I spent two months in the trenches with the stats summarized for easy access at the end of the section.

After getting into AMM in February, I dove headfirst into revisions with a goal to be in the trenches by April. Again, I’m stubborn as hell, and I somehow managed to do my AMM revisions in less than a month and got cleared to start querying April 5th, two months after getting accepted to AMM.

Apologies to everyone I annoyed the shit out of during that time. Going into the trenches as I was getting ready to graduate and wrap my life as a scientist up at the same time was not my brightest idea.

By the time I flung my first 5 queries into the ether in April, I was desperate to be in the trenches. I was tired of FS and wanted to just get it over with. I lied to myself and convinced myself that I was going to just send out my queries and not think about it for a long time.

HA.

That didn’t happen. I sent my first 5 before midnight on a Sunday night and barely slept that night. I was literally on my email the second my first full request came in the next morning.

I screamed.

My poor roommates were making breakfast in the kitchen when I barreled down the hallway and showed them my email from—spoiler alert: my now agent— Alex Rice. I was ecstatic! I hadn’t even let myself wish I’d get a quick request, yet I already had one! Two hours later, on a whim I checked my spam folder—and I had another request from a big agent!

And that is where I discovered the danger of the querying trenches.

The high of a full request is exhilarating—but coming down fucking sucks.

After getting two full requests, my AMM mentor instructed me to send my second wave of queries, bringing my total to ten the first week. On the second day, I was hit with my first rejection. It hurt a little, but I was still riding the high of the two requests. I didn’t let it get to me.

Until two days later I got another rejection, and then another. The following Monday started my second week of querying off with two more rejections, and it really set the tone for the days after.

I was crushed, suddenly the hope I felt the first day completely faded away. At the two week mark, a partial request from my first batch gave me a much needed hit and got me to send another set of queries.

At end of that week, I finally got what I’d been waiting for—a response from a full request. This was it! I thought to myself. My time of torture was over!

Only it wasn’t an offer.

It was an email detailing all that the agent loved about my book—the characters, the dynamics, the writing—followed by why they couldn’t offer representation. The wind was knocked out of me. I had gotten my hopes up so much, reading and re-reading this agent’s MSWL, convinced she would be the one. And she did love my book, but it wasn’t quite there.

Later my friend helped me realize it was an R&R, not a rejection, but for some time, I didn’t see that it was a positive sign. I just saw that it wasn’t a yes. I still had a full out (with my agent, mind you) and a partial, but I was so focused on the negatives and immediately started thinking of ways to revise. It didn’t take me long to realize that after doing my AMM revision, I wasn’t ready for another overhaul.

So I chose to wait.

In the following weeks, I sent more queries every so often, receiving requests and rejections as agents began to close to unsolicited queries for the summer. I graduated. I went on vacation to visit my grandparents and planned a romance set in rural Mexico.

While I was away, I received my first full rejection. After letting myself cry it out, I decided to embark on a revision after all. It was the last week of May, 6 weeks into the trenches, and June PitMad was right around the corner. I told myself I’d do Pitmad before pausing to revise if I got another rejection.

The week after getting back from Mexico, I planned out my tweets and started jotting down ideas for my potential revision. I began to wrap up in lab and started my transition process.

That Thursday, I participated in Pitmad and did surprisingly well. I ended up with 9 agent likes, which was 9 more likes than I could have asked for. By the time the event wrapped up, I had already sent off five requests, once again feeling a renewed sense of hope.

On Friday, I was still riding the high from Pitmad when I got an end of the day email that I was not expecting.

When Alex requested my full in April, she’d been kind enough to warn me that she was behind on her reading and wouldn’t get to my manuscript for a while. I’d known her timeline was in the three to five month range, so I hadn’t been expecting to hear back for at least another month.

But it had only been two months and she was asking to call me.

Part 5: The Call

The weekend that followed was torture. As many emails of this nature are, it was vague, so I had no guarantee it was an offer. I just had a very good feeling. So I did what everyone else told me to do. I sent off my final queries, got my questions ready, and pulled up my account on Publisher’s Marketplace.

By the call Tuesday morning, I was a mess.

What if it wasn’t an offer? What if I vague-tweeted too soon? What if this wasn’t actually THE Call and there were more calls I was unfamiliar with?

Once we got to it though, I realized I had nothing to worry about.

Alex was phenomenal and I knew immediately she was the right agent for me, but I was scared of messing up. Even after she made the offer, I was still convinced she’d change her mind. The hours after the call, I hesitated sending my nudges, still unsure if it was really happening.

Then the requests came flooding in.

Well not really, it just sounds cooler if I put it like that. I got a lot more requests in the hours after my offer than I did the two months I was querying. It was kinda invigorating but also overwhelming. And as each one came in, I realized how much I didn’t want them to offer.

Looking back, I could have ended it early, but I think it’s good I went through the two week waiting period. As the days went on, I got rejections of all kinds, some more subjective than others, some so beautiful I don’t even look at them as rejections. By the end of the second week, I had no doubts whatsoever.

Alex saw something in FINDING SOCKS that few others could see and she was the perfect champion for my book. I hadn’t even heard back from everyone by the time I had already drafted my email accepting her offer.

It’s so funny to think I signed with the first agent I queried, and that had she not had a random free weekend two months ago, I might still be waiting to hear from her now. But even if I had, it would have so been worth the wait <3

Final Query Stats:

Queries Sent: 40

Full Requests: 14 + 2 Partial Requests

R&Rs: 1 (+ 1 if I hadn’t gotten offer)

Offers: 1