Almost 10 years ago, in September 2014, I had what is known as “The Call” with a literary agent: the conversation that precedes an offer of representation.
I had spoken to agents a few times before (including two long calls back in 2008 with an agent who had chosen not to sign me as a client, but took the time to chat with me about my writing anyway, a kindness I’ll never forget). I had also had a few agents and small-press editors get close to the point of offering after reading my manuscripts — I’d had some exciting recommendations, some high praise from mentors, some “we’re doing second reads” or “we’re having internal conversations” emails. But I’d never made it to The Call. I’d dreamt of having a novel published since I was a small child. It was my only real life ambition. I was 37 years old, had been trying more or less continuously, and it just never happened.
To put my state of mind in 2014 in perspective, I have to go back a couple of decades. I finished my first novel in 1996, when I was 19 years old and in my second year of undergrad. It was a contemporary, realist coming-of-age literary novel. I can’t remember now who I sent it to. Not many places, since it cost an arm and a leg to print out. I know a few publishers were in the mix, and possibly a few agents. I knew almost nothing about publishing, and there was not much on the internet yet to help. Also, the book was not very good. So that was that.
Over the next 18 years, I wrote four more novels. In the meantime, I went to grad school, got a fulltime job as a journalist, bought a house, moved out to the country with my partner, had a child. And every few years, I’d finish a novel, and query it, to no avail. I started the querying journey with a dot-matrix printer and SASEs (self addressed stamped envelopes), so I don’t even have email records of half of it. My querying continued into the email era. It never occurred to me to keep a spreadsheet or anything like that, and I pre-date query-tracking websites. I have no idea how many queries I sent out over those 18 years, but it is somewhere in the hundreds, probably the high hundreds. I had reached the point where I wasn’t even telling anyone about my writing anymore, because I hated the look of pity I’d get in response.
Every novel I wrote taught me a lot, though. I kept at it because I loved doing it.
The fourth manuscript, Hold My Body Down, is the only novel I’ve written that’s set in Ottawa, where I live. I loved a lot about that novel, which was written in a state of bloody-minded exhaustion when my baby was a newborn. (Fun fact: I later distilled everything I liked about that novel into a very short story, which was published in the inaugural issue of Lackington’s.) Almost immediately after I sent out my first small batch of queries for that novel in 2013, I realized it was so broken it was not worth the energy to fix. (I look back on this moment as a good sign; I was really focused by that point on learning how to write the books I wanted to write, and on making those books as good as they could be, which was what ultimately got me out of the long rut — that, and persistence, and luck.) I was so confident about this decision that I stuck to it even when an agent responded to my withdrawal with “actually I loved it…”.
I threw Hold My Body Down into the trunk (my trunk is bottomless) and I wrote another novel, The Humours of Grub Street. At that point, I had a toddler and a hectic day job at a newspaper. I sent it to a pretty short list of agents who seemed likely to be a good fit for it. One of them was Jennie Goloboy. I liked that she was a fiction writer herself, and a historian.
In the early summer of 2014, Jennie emailed to tell me she liked The Humours of Grub Street, but she thought it would benefit from some revision, and she said she’d be willing to read it again if I chose to do that work. Her main suggestion was a pretty major one: instead of telling the novel from one character’s perspective, I should try telling it from two. Her reasoning made sense to me. I knew very well that a “revise and resubmit” is no guarantee, but I liked her advice, and by that point, my biggest concern was learning how to write novels better, so any learning experience was gold. I did the revision, and I liked the result.
So did Jennie. She emailed at the end of August to tell me she had enjoyed what I did with the revision. A couple of weeks later, we had the call.
I don’t remember much about what we talked about during that phone call. I do remember the little involuntary squeal I made when Jennie told me she wanted to represent me. After that came the standard tying up of loose ends — I contacted another agent who was considering the book, as etiquette demands, and I read over the contract and signed it toward the end of September.
Three more are in the works.
The Humours of Grub Street has never been published (long story) but Jennie and I have been working together for 10 years, which is pretty cool. By my count, we’ve signed 9 novel or novella contracts together (for 14 books if you count Humours and if you count The Chatelaine and Armed in Her Fashion as separate books; 12, otherwise.)
Having Jennie in my corner through the bad times (and believe me there have been bad times; this is publishing) has kept me going, and she’s part of the reason for any success I’ve had. No agent is the right agent for everyone, but Jennie has been a great agent for me. I think part of it is that we have a similar communication style and the lines are always open so when things are stressful, I never have the added stress of wondering what she means by something or why she’s not getting back to me or anything like that. She’s always supported my artistic vision and my career goals. I’ll refrain from turning this newsletter into a therapy session, but it’s helpful to have an agent who complements one’s own psychology. It’s a partnership — a business partnership, but a partnership nonetheless.
So what would I like other writers to take from all this, especially those who might be querying? It’s trite, I suppose, but I hope it’s helpful to know that just because it sometimes takes a long time doesn’t mean it’ll never happen. Another truism I’ll repeat: it’s worth the effort to find a good fit, on a project you both believe in. When I look back over the last 10 years, it strikes me that the relationships I’ve formed — not only with Jennie but also with editors and with fellow writers — have been my biggest source of strength, and a gift in their own right.
A few little bits of news:
The Ottawa Citizen, where I worked for many years, has published an excerpt from the first chapter of The Tapestry of Time. If you’d like an advance look, here’s your chance!
I mentioned in my last newsletter that I’ll be doing a panel at the Toronto Festival of Authors on Sept. 28; I’m also giving a masterclass there called From Outline to Draft on Sept. 29.
And a reminder that I’m doing an online workshop for the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival on Sept. 7, on the joy of revision. Maybe this newsletter goes part of the way in explaining why I’ve come to regard revision as a joy.