Writing Life
How Not To Get an Agent

by Monique Fields

When it comes to finding an agent, I've made every mistake and even invented a few new ones. I have chased down writers, cornered them for agent names and walked away empty-handed. I have queried widely and have been rejected widely. I even got some face time with an agent and flubbed the pitch.

For four years, I've been trying to sell this book, a memoir about my mother, me and our depression. It's about a little girl whose mother is an alcoholic, a little girl who decides at a tender age not to ever drink and keeps that promise only to find out she and her mother suffer from depression. That revelation puts the girl's tumultuous childhood in perspective and effectively ends what could have been generations of problems down the family line. The mother drank and drank. The little girl takes a pill everyday, breaking the cycle of depression.

The flub happened at Personal Pitch, a program of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. I had dreamed of Personal Pitch, where I would finally tell someone my story and walk away with some serious interest in my book. Personal Pitch is a little like speed dating, and there are only eight minutes between you and rejection.

On my first date, I took the time limit a little too seriously and delivered my pitch in 5.5 seconds. The agent wanted more. When I didn't respond, she started asking questions.

"What's the arc?" she wanted to know. The arc, the arc, the arc. What is the arc? More importantly, what is my arc? I couldn't tell her.

"Okay, then what's the competition?" That was a question I could answer. I quickly threw out a title but couldn't come up with any more, though I had read countless memoirs and spent hours and hours in libraries and bookstores researching my competition, and—this is the good part—had written an entire section on competition in my book proposal.

The agent quickly dismissed me as a novice.

"If the rest of my pitches go like this one," I told my husband minutes later, "I'm going to shelve the book." My newspaper-copy-editor husband talked me down, started talking about the arc of the movie, The Jerk, and then I recounted the arc of my story. He then read a list of my competition to me. If anyone asked that question, I would know that answer, too. The pitch that went wrong, though, was another lost opportunity on my journey to representation, and ultimately publication.

As I reflected on this latest misstep, I knew there was only one thing to do. Learn from it, move on and help keep others from repeating my mistakes.

So, here goes:

1. Finish the book, stupid. A new author, a virtual unknown entity, has to finish the book. Agents and book publishers want to see how the story develops from beginning to end. I have heard this over and over again. Until recently, I have resisted writing the entire book, figuring I could land the agent and the book contract based on the proposal or the first 100 pages of the manuscript. Not anymore. I am finishing my book.

2. Remind yourself it's a business. Agents may love books, but they also want to make money. Some books I read early on suggested nonfiction could fetch an agent and a publisher with a proposal. Not memoir, I later learned, unless you're Alice Walker.

3. Jettison procrastination. Going to writers' conferences is a form of procrastination for me. I talk about my book with other writers; they say that's interesting and I return home renewed. But I don't write. I'm swearing off conferences for a year. More writing, less talking.

4. Beware of the Web. First of all, many excellent agents don't have Web sites or aren't listed online. Second, there is plenty of bad and outdated information living on servers.

5. Don't believe your friends. Well, you can believe them, but also understand they are biased and you're not selling your book to them. They like you and your work, but they can't offer representation, let alone a book contract.

6. Constantly shift gears. Stay on top of the trends and what's going on in book publishing. Memoir is hard to sell, but it does sell. Competition for my book changes almost daily, and I need to update my proposal as more books come on the market.

7. Don't assume anything. Being a writer of some sort doesn't necessarily mean you have the chops for book writing. I wasted a lot of time because I thought my newspaper journalism background would suffice as experience.

8. Forget about right and wrong. There is no right or wrong way. Some authors immediately snag an agent and then editors clamor for the chance to publish the book. Others, like me, take a more circuitous route.

My story doesn't have a happy ending. I don't yet have an agent. My meetings with five other agents went well, meaning there weren't any more awkward silences. As of this writing, I've written 125 manuscript pages and often remind myself it's not the destination that's so important but the journey.

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Monique Fields a journalist living in Alabama.