“Why why, what a terrible time to be alive
If you're prone to over thinking and
Why why, what a terrible time to be alive
If you're prone to second guessing"-George Ezra, Pretty Shining People
The chairs in the one-to-one room were among the most comfortable institutional chairs I’ve ever sat in. The view of the lake, too, was inviting and refreshing and almost enough to distract from the tension in the room, so long as I focused on the paddling ducks and floating swan out there and not on the bouncing knees, restless fingers, and aimless flipping of paper coming from the rest of the chairs.
As we sat there, the agents filtered in as if they were regular people and not gatekeepers who have the power to hold our careers in their hands. I checked my watch. 9:58. The woman next to me opened her mouth to say something to me, but thought better of it. I think she sensed, like me, that the wrong sound would tip our already chaotic minds over the edge and maybe even cause the entire building to spontaneously combust, agents and all.
“Make your way to your first session,” the director called. I’d checked the seating chart already, but there was no need. I’d seen a lot of this agent the previous evening at the competition - the one I’d just missed qualifying for. I’d watched, longing, as she gave out her business card to one, two, three, of the contestants before I lost count and turned away, wondering if there would be any interest left for me.
I sat down and smiled. Probably I giggled, because I do that kind of thing when I’m nervous. “Thanks for talking with me,” I say.
She nodded with a tight-lipped smile. Polite or disapproving? I couldn’t tell.
“Do you have any specific questions?” she asked, placing a thick packet of papers on the desk in front of her. My packet. The top page had black scrawls all over it, arrows and brackets and lines. Oh, boy. Those probably weren’t love notes. At least the ink wasn’t red, I guess?
I shook my head. “I’d love to just hear your impressions,” I said, “and then I’ll have a few specific questions at the end.”
She nodded again. She looked down at the first page of the packet, waving her pen up and down over it. “Okay. Well. I think you would benefit from doing some research on how to write a query letter.”
My ears stopped working. Research writing a query letter? I have taken entire classes on how to write a query letter. Two of them! No, three! I have paid two different consultants to look at my query letter. I have had at least two other agents give feedback on it at sessions like this.
*ahem*
Address the agent by first and last name. Include a one-line elevator pitch of the book, stating its genre, word-count, and comparable titles. Include a one-paragraph teaser. Write a little about yourself and why you chose this particular agent.
I know how to write a damn query letter. This one might not have been perfect, but it was well-researched and professional.
“Uhm-hmm,” I said. Now it was my turn for the tight-lipped smile. It was a monumental effort, I tell you, to continue listening after that first comment. But listen, I did.
She gave me a quick suggestion on the synopsis. Those things take forever to write, and agents rarely look at then, but the fact that she only had one minor edit was encouraging.
And then she turned to the first page of the actual book. “Have you ever thought of starting at a different place?” she said. I had to suppress the manic laughter that rose up in my chest. If you’ve been here for a minute, you know how much I have agonized over the beginning of this book. The original beginning was useless. Nothing happened, the only thing I did was describe two characters, and the descriptions meant nothing to the story overall. And that’s only the first beginning I can find. I’m sure there are more early versions that are even worse.
Then I took a novel-writing class and when my teacher read the book, she said she enjoyed it but the beginning was maybe a little slow. Maybe I should cut the first chapter and start with the scene where two characters have an argument at the bar. Oh, how I resisted.
After a round of fruitless submissions, I worked with a consultant on the beginning. But instead of changing its substance, I made the language in that first chapter really sing.
After that, my friend and favorite editor, Suzann, read the novel. She was hooked into the story and writing comments in the margins as she read like, “Is THIS person the same as THAT person?!” and “I KNEW IT!” when her predictions were correct. But at the end, guess what her feedback was. Not enough is happening in the opening.
OMG FINE! I’ll change the freaking opening.
They were right, of course, every last one of them. Read the old version of the book and you’ll know - after the first few chapters, the action flows out of it. But that’s not good enough for: agents, commissioning editors, publishers, and - most importantly - readers who aren’t my beloved friends and family. Download a free sample of a book you’ve never heard of from an unfamiliar author, and if nothing consequential happens, you’re unlikely to buy the whole book because why?
I deleted not the first chapter, but the first three chapters. And, of course, the book is better that way. I was able to distill all I deleted into a phrase here, a sentence there, and at most a paragraph somewhere else. Funny how all that backstory, which seems so important, can just slide into the fabric somewhere else in the book and make the work even better.
And then this agent was sitting in front of me telling me to cut even more. Thankfully, it was just the first two paragraphs. And again, she was right. Too much scene setting, too much telling (remember that?), and not enough intrigue. I even went back later and adjusted the query letter to tighten up some of the storytelling. Reluctantly, of course.
Now, it’s good. It feels right. Will something else feel right tomorrow or next week? Maybe. who knows? But for right now, I won’t overthink. I won’t second-guess. I will march on according to plan. Agent queries and research into independent and self-publishing simultaneously and, in a few weeks, I’ll start putting some of my thoughts onto paper for the next book in the series. Things are going to move, one way or the other.
Until then,
Hey pretty smiling people, we're alright together
We're alright together
Hey pretty shining people, we're alright together
We're alright together, he-eyGeorge Ezra, Pretty Shining People
The beginning is a **rough** place to start.