By Clare Langley-Hawthorne
www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com

With Halloween just gone and having faced my own agent transition I started thinking about the perennial nightmare for the unpublished (and often published) writer – getting, keeping and enjoying having an agent…Cue spooky music…

I have been incredibly lucky so far. I sat next to my first agent over lunch at the first San Francisco Writers Conference and it was sheer serendipity that she and I began working together. I had actually attended the ‘speed dating for agents’ horror-fest earlier that day where writers lined up at agent tables and had 2 minutes to pitch their work. Although I still get chills thinking about it, there truly is nothing like terror for concentrating the mind and by the time I finished I had my pitch down pat (even if my sanity was a little frayed). Funnily enough I didn’t select my agent to pitch to – she had said she represented literary fiction and I felt as though my work wasn’t literary enough (now that’s a whole other blog post!) but after we chatted over lunch we agreed that I would send her my work. When I realized she had been the original agent for Jacqueline Winspear while at the Amy Rennert agency and after I read Maisie Dobbs I couldn’t believe that I had sat next to her. When she read my manuscript she told me she couldn’t believe it either –Jacqueline Winspear is now the author I get compared to the most.

So after that fate-filled experience (and three years later) what was I to do when my agent told me she was hanging up her hat?! I immediately had visions of the nightmare agent stories: The endless queries, the unreturned phone calls, agents that disappear into the night… Cue spooky music again…

Luckily for me my agent had joined a boutique NYC agency about a year ago and the head of that agency had indicated an interest in continuing to represent me. I felt relief and trepidation in equal measure because I had forged a relationship with my agent and I wasn’t sure I’d find that same relationship again. This got me thinking again – what makes a good agent? Obviously selling your work and having great contacts in the industry but what else???

For me the answer was clear I wanted someone who loved my work, had experience in the industry but also someone who provided me with three things:

1. My severest critic – I had an agent whose advice I trusted – whose criticism I took on board each and every time and so I wanted to know that my new agent would provide me with the same level of feedback – the same sensibility if you will that would ring true to my ears. I was horrified by the prospect of getting an agent whose feedback made me scratch my head or worse, put my head in the oven!

2. A willing ear even if only via email. Unlike many writers I have spoken to, I communicated with my agent frequently. I cc’d her on most of my emails to my editor and publicist and I kept her in the loop on my publicity events/review etc. I felt as though we were partners in this whole publishing quest (or jest as the case may be!) and I needed to know that my new agent would be okay with this. I don’t demand any reply but I do want to know that my agent is watching, listening and looking out for me.

3. My strongest supporter – okay that’s not strictly true as my mother and my mother-in-law already fill those shoes! But I did need to be reassured that there was someone there who, even if things looked bleak, would be the one to tell me that my writing was terrific and that we would overcome whatever the hurdle might be. I’m as insecure as the next writer and prone to neurotic jitters and deep pessimistic depressions – any agent of mine would have to be able to cope with that (poor thing!) I recall my agent last year telling me (via email) “don’t you have anything better to worry about?! Go do the Christmas shopping!!” and I had to admit that she was right.

God, you must all be thinking what a nightmare client I must be but I think for many unpublished authors the ‘agent quest’ is one which they feel is all one-sided – that they must grab hold of whoever sends out the lifeline. That isn’t the case and I realize as I say ‘au revoir’ to one agent and ‘bonjour’ to another that the relationship aspect is critical. It is a partnership in a way that the editor-writer relationship really no longer can be (hey I’m on my third official editor!)

Luckily, so far so good with my new agent (so I don’t need to cue any spooky music this time…I hope!)

So what about you all – what do you expect from an agent? What horror stories have you experienced? What advice would you give to those in search of an agent? Oh no…hear comes that spooky music again…