SermonsDr. Who

On Literary Agents and Boundaries

 

Back when I first started sending out manuscripts a few decades ago, I relied on books like Writer’s Market and Jeff Herman’s Writer’s Guide to Book Editor’s, Publishers and Literary Agents.  The internet has, of course, increasing supplanted these books, and today researching agents means following their Twitter accounts and blogs and this Brave New World has led to a new problem: squishy boundaries between agents and writers.

When I inserted "squishy boundary" into Google image search, this picture came up. If it were a literary agent that loved my novel and wanted to represent it, I'd probably be okay with that.

When I inserted “squishy boundary” into Google image search, this picture came up. If it were a literary agent that loved my novel, The Price We Paid, and wanted to represent it, I’d probably be okay with that.

Back when connections with agents were primarily made through the postal service,  the lives of agents were more opaque to writers.  Now, writers get a much more intimate glimpse into agents’ lives and thought processes, especially when they follow agents’ Twitter accounts.  And, I have found, that I start liking certain agents and relating to them as people, quite apart from my wanting them to represent my novel (I especially enjoy reading Sarah LaPolla and Jessica Negron’s opinions).

Strike that, I really WANT them to represent my novel because I like them.  I hadn’t realized how many bookish twenty-somethings in New York City loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek and Doctor Who, and care about feminism and racism and oh, so many other things I care about.

And that’s another thing: the age of these agents. In Christian Peacemaker Teams, the human rights organization I have worked for since 1993, I am a veteran activist, accustomed to initiating people their age into the work or putting some of the problems with which they are struggling into historical perspective.  I am the chief writer in CPT, the one who has written two histories, the one who can put out a breaking news release fast, or add a little literary flair to bland reporting.  I edit all the releases coming in from our field projects in the West Bank, Iraqi Kurdistan, Colombia and Aboriginal communities and post them on our website.  I help new writers write better, and enjoy the challenge of preserving the voice of CPTers for whom English is a second or third language as I change what they have written into Standard English.  I am, in a word, competent.

But with the agents, I am a supplicant, someone who has never had a novel conventionally published, and who has never gone through the standard MFA/writing conference literary mills.  I am old enough to be their mother, but they pretty much have all the power when I send them my queries, asking them to consider representing my novel(s).

So it’s kind of a weird relationship, especially with the agents whom I have come to like based on their tweets and blogs.  I have these feelings of kinship with or even maternal fondness for them based on the background research I’ve done and my age on the one handright hand AND I am an unagented fiction writer who desperately wants them to love my novels on the other.

I suppose it keeps me humble.

 

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NEW TWITTER ACCOUNT

And speaking of Twitter and not having an agent, in September, I wrote about entering Brenda Drake’s Pitch Madness Contest and finding that I was better at inventing fake pitches than real pitches.  Like this website, my @KathleenKern Twitter account is a mixture of my author stuff and my human rights stuff.  Fake Novel Pitches (@FakeNovelPitch) is devoted exclusively to fake novel pitches, such as the following:

  1. #YAParanormal genre: Brittany must choose between a mucus-sucking vampire and a werebeagle. “Umm,” she thinks, “why?”

  2. #Mystery: Ace Tabby investigates dating service #ObamaCare set up w/ #RobinThicke; Ace is not prepared for the depravity

  3. #MagicalRealism genre: Unicorns and vampires join forces to save NW old growth forest. They are alarmingly successful.

  4. #Thriller: After #Obamacare kills fox, Detective Ace Tabby accepts mission to find out what it said before it died.

  5. #AlternateHistory: Modern retelling of Book of Judges w/gender roles reversed. Who’s cutting up concubines now bitches?

  6. #Mystery genre: When #wombat corpses begin appearing streets of LA, Detective Kate Nguyen thinks it’s really really sad.

  7. #HF genre: Christians terrorized by Roman empire draw comfort from Book of Revelation Yes that’s what it’s really about

  8. #PoliticalThriller genre: After years at Catholic #madrasa, terrorist #PaulCiancia undertakes suicide mission at #LAX.

  9. #CorporateThriller: After #ObamaCare claims to have co-created #Twitter, journalist Ace Tabby must uncover the truth

  10. #PictureBook: Tuxie the Penguin and Shimmy the Naked Molerat decide to switch homes for week. Of course they both die.

  11. #LegalThriller: #ObamaCare assassinating Supreme Court justices to repeal laws of physics. Only Ace Tabby can save them

  12. #YA genre:When Toby learns Maya’s secret he must choose. Will her disability tear them apart? My Gluten-Free Girlfriend

  13. #Thriller: Only Ace Tabby’s heroic dolphins can stop #ObamaCare‘s radioactive sharks from terrorizing U.S. coastlines.

  14. #Memoir genre– Pathos and Fervor: My Life as a Seatbelt Retractor Box Designer and Manufacturer.

  15. #PoliticalThriller genre: Detective Ace Tabby foils #Obamacare plot to kidnap #PopeFrancis and shoot him into space.

  16. #Biography She Made Ego Her Monument: Author Dared to #FF Her Own Spinoff Twitter Acct @fakenovelpitch

  17. #Dystopian genre: Trombones are reserved for the aristocracy. Secret society of peasant trombone players arises.

    I will retweet submissions (at least the ones I like, anyway). Send them to @FakeNovelPitch.  Make sure you begin your pitch with a genre and to leave at least 21 characters, so that it can be retweeted–and thus attributed to you.