How I Got My Literary Agent
I found my literary agent with the first book I ever finished (a tale from the 2022 query trenches, told in three acts). In this blog post: Author Mentor Match, #DVpit, and detailed query stats.
Act I: Discovery
In 2015, I started drafting an awful, self-indulgent fantasy romance. At that point, I’d only ever written mediocre fanfiction. This was my first attempt at writing an honest-to-god novel. Although I never got past the first act, I kept coming back to this story over the years, rewriting it with different settings, premises, and POVs. The hook didn’t change: it was about a young queen whose husband betrayed her at the start of her reign. I couldn’t get the lover’s betrayal out of my head. A similar story thread would later manifest in the manuscript that became The First Book I Ever Finished.
After graduating college, I decided to move to Paris and become a Real Writer. I quickly realized becoming a Real Writer was going to be Very Hard. I was in my early 20s and brimming with self-doubt. So I gave up. I tried to be pragmatic and went to grad school. I stepped into a few more versions of myself. I forced myself to dream more attainable dreams. It wasn’t enough.
During a lull between grad school and my first “adult” job, I tried to write “seriously.” I assumed Serious Writers plotted out their books in meticulous detail. So I read up on story structure. I studied beat sheets. Then I plotted out hundreds and hundreds of scenes. When I got to drafting, the prose fell flat. The characters came out uninspired. This process didn’t work for me, but I was clueless about plotting vs. pantsing. I started and abandoned a dozen WIPs before I finally learned: I was a discovery writer.
Act II: Tragedy
May 2021. I started writing The First Book I Ever Finished while stuck home with a mild case of Covid. By then, Paris had been in and out of lockdown for over a year. In lockdown, I got better at silencing the self-doubt. And in the quiet of quarantine, the characters’ voices roared. I didn’t have a premise. I didn’t have an outline of a hundred scenes. But for the first time, I could hear my protagonist clearly, and her imagined voice was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. Once I opened a new Word document, I couldn’t stop writing.
Two months later, my life exploded in my face. Personal tragedy struck (which I won’t get into here). By then, I’d already fallen in love with this story, and I refused to stop. Writing became my favorite source of solace during those tough months. A way of processing my emotions. An escape.
I poured everything I had into The First Book I Ever Finished. By December 2021, I had a complete manuscript. I’d done some hefty edits while drafting. Although my draft was far from perfect, I knew I could turn it into something special. I just needed to find someone who could help me first.
Act III: Community
February 2022. I was selected as an Author Mentor Match (AMM) Round 9 mentee. Before getting into AMM, I didn’t have many writing friends. I squirreled my drafts away out of fear of humiliation. That’s no way to grow as a writer. You need mentorship. You need community. And I’m so grateful to have gotten into a mentorship program like AMM, which opened my world to all of these things.
In April 2022, after two months of intense editing, I entered the query trenches. The old querying guidelines (e.g. send in small batches and hope for feedback) no longer applied. In total, I sent two batches (about 12 cold queries per batch). The moment I got a couple requests in May 2022, I sent out the second batch (scroll down for detailed query stats).
On top of helping edit my manuscript and query package, my AMM mentor AM Kvita helped me prep for two Twitter pitch contests: #APIpit and #DVpit. I was fortunate enough to get support from the amazing writing community plus agent interest from both contests.
By August 2022, I had a few requests out from my two query batches and pitch likes. I’d spent most of my summer watching miles-long lines of rejection-red smileys multiply on QueryTracker. Just as I started preparing myself to hunker down until winter, I opened my inbox. An email had arrived during the evening U.S. time after I’d already gone to sleep.
An agent who liked my #DVpit pitch wanted to set up The Call.
I spent the rest of my morning screaming.
Query stats
Total queries: 36 (sent April-August 2022)
CNR: 4
Rejections: 22
Requests: 10 (28%)
Requests from cold queries: 3
Partials: 2
Fulls: 8 (4 after offer of rep)
Offers: 2
