agented

the vision board is vision boarding

I’ve dreamed of saying this for years and now I get to: I signed with an agent and I am so fucking excited.

Still, for some reason I’m finding this newsletter hard to begin.

Maybe it’s because I shouldn’t be writing this at all, I should be working on revisions. Or maybe it’s because a part of me thinks I should play it cool, thinks that serious writers (what does that mean?) don’t celebrate things like this, they just expect them to happen and then shrug once they do. Or maybe it’s because I know many great manuscripts by great writers struggle to find their advocate, and I want to acknowledge and be sensitive to that without making anyone else feel bad.

But the point of dear diary has always been to take you with me on my individual writing journey & share the thoughts and feelings that come up along the way.

So here it goes <3

I didn’t post about my querying process because I judged it to be something better left private. Whether I was successful or not, I figured I’d write about it once I was “done,” and hearing about my in-the-moment neuroses would be boring for readers and unappealing for agents that might be (professionally) stalking me. I’m glad I didn’t share, because it was full of ups and downs: days I was so sure I would be the freak of nature who only queried for a week before getting an offer; days I was so sure no one would ever love my book the way I do and I would come out of this lost and defeated; days I declared to my partner that I was never going to write again; days I felt a sudden, miraculous resurgence of hope motivated by nothing but a better-than-average sleep and sunshiney day.

Rather than sharing my stats or getting into the nuts and bolts of how to query, what I really want to do today is to tell you that it happened to me, and it could happen to you, too.

signing a docusign doesn’t make for a very dramatic picture but you get the point

I don’t have an MFA, and I don’t have any connections—at least, not any that I took advantage of during this process. I have a few publications from online mags that I love, though they ain’t The New Yorker. Haven’t won any awards, don’t have any prizes. And here’s an interesting tidbit for those of us working to build a platform to boost visibility: I thought my modest but respectable Substack following might get some eyes on me…but tbh I think it barely made an impact. Two agents I’d previously connected with via Substack took a look at my manuscript, and maybe my writing on here encouraged them to do that, but otherwise none of my requesting agents even mentioned it. I don’t have a platform bigger than this one. I do have white woman privilege, that’s for sure, and I don’t know, maybe that overrides everything I don’t have. But what I mean to say is that I have often lurked websites of other writers working on debut novels, and I have often felt intimidated by their accomplishments. I have assumed they would get an agent because of these accomplishments, and I would not, because I didn’t have them.

But here’s what I did have: a completed manuscript that I wrote with every inch of my being. If it wouldn’t dramatically alter the tone of this piece, I would dare to tell you I put my whole pussy into it. I had a story that I was proud of because of how Truthful, terrifying, authentic, and vulnerable it was. I had pages I drafted, revised, revised, revised, over the course of several years, no shortcuts, no rushing through anything. I had the book I wanted to read, the book I didn’t think had been written by anyone yet. The book I didn’t think anyone else could write. I had an accumulation of days I showed up when I wanted to, when I didn’t want to, when I was high on caffeine, when I was depressed on herbal tea, when I thought this was the best novel in the world, when I thought it was total shit, when I had just miscarried, when I was pregnant, when my baby slept on my chest.

And I really think that’s what you need, more than any of the other things. And then you need the raw hope and faith that your agent is out there, waiting for you just like you’re waiting for them.

I’m going to tell you something I did that you might think is crazy.

When sending out my queries, I visualized my email traveling through cyberspace surrounded by white gold light. I closed my eyes and imagined each individual agent receiving my query, reading it, and feeling an unmistakable fire inside them. In my fantasy, sometimes they were refilling their coffee mug in the office and telling a colleague, “I just got this query and the sample pages are soooo good. I’m going to go email her back right now.” Other times I pictured them reading my full manuscript and reaching the end, barely able to contain their excitement. For some reason in my head they kept saying, “Let’s get this girl on the horn!!!” which I hope & pray did actually happen at some point in this process. I’d hold my hands over my computer screen, performing untrained pseudo-reiki, and I’d say, “Universe, if [agent] and I are meant to be, help us find each other.”

I really did that, with every agent I queried.

It’s possible that I am an angelic light being with high vibrational powers that magnetized my dream agent to me. But what’s also possible is that this ritual allowed me to move slowly, with intention. When I got rejections, of course it stung, but I also held a small but sure belief that rejection in this case was not personal, that rejection genuinely was redirection. At the end of the day, what I really wanted was an agent who felt my work deeply like I did, and if a rejecting agent didn’t feel it deeply, then it just simply made sense for them to move on to someone else, and for me to do the same. This mentality was not always easy to hold, especially on the days I was really disappointed by a pass or by just hearing crickets, but I kept trying to bring myself back there, because deep down I knew it was true.

And the wild thing about querying is that it can feel like total agony and then one day, you get the email. The email begets The Call. And all the pain and fear sort of vanishes in favor of this new thing, which is total and complete gratitude and awe.

Right before querying I took The Fountain’s Dream Agent course, which encouraged me to reflect on what a “dream agent” really meant to me. Of course I knew some of the big, shiny names, and I knew the agents my faves work with, but I didn’t actually know these agents—I didn’t know how they worked, what their personalities or styles were like or how that would mesh with mine. So I let go of the idea that my dream agent was a specific person and instead felt very clear on the truth that my dream agent was someone who got me, someone who loved my voice and my story. I wanted to connect with someone who could not put my novel down and was dying to work on it with me.

When Arielle Datz of Dunow, Carlson & Lerner reached out, she told me she read my book in a day and it made her feel insane. This is what I’d always wanted: someone to read my work with such intensity that they ended up a little crazy. She said she texted her colleague about it throughout the day, which sounded eerily similar to the vision I held before sending off my query. She told me she had to touch her face while reading to check if she was blushing, both from secondhand embarrassment and also because it was like…kinda hot.

It was pretty much my dream reaction.

The call with Arielle was this wild, surreal pot of gold at the end of the writing rainbow. To hear a stranger talk about your work, to feel truly seen by them, to receive their specific, spot-on, careful interpretation of the project you have been thinking about for years—it’s something I wish for all writers reading this newsletter. It was special in a way that I don’t think I’ve fully comprehended yet. Going on submission is sure to bring up a whole bunch of feelings, but no matter what happens, I am truly so grateful to have had agents (who read so, so many books) understand and love my novel in a way that aligns with how I understand and love my novel. That in itself feels like such a reward.

Thank you all for being with me along the ride. I really hope you’ll get the chance to read my book one day. It still feels impossible. But after years of wanting, I got my baby and I got my agent. Maybe nothing is impossible.

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+ a quick note to admit that I believe my days of writing this newsletter on a weekly basis are over. How did I ever have time to do that? Lol. I’m gonna pop in here as much as I can, but in the meantime, follow me on Instagram if you wanna see what I’m up to and chitchat in the DMs and stuff <3

+ I’d be remiss not to mention my village and all the people who helped me get to this point. I’m trying not to make this sound like an Oscars speech, but I’m just grateful so I want to say it. I could not have ever achieved this dream without Peter, who not only encouraged but fully participated in my years-long brainstorms about how it might feel to have an extramarital affair with a hot, young, androgynous microcelebrity. My group chat—Erika, Meg, and Olivia—who gave me figurative and literal flowers, who told me they believed in my project in the moments I was afraid no one would. My parents-in-law, who watched my baby when I slipped away to write query letters, make revisions, and attend The Fountain Intensive that has helped deepen my relationship with the work. And honestly all the writers I have met in the past six years through lit twitter (rip), lit mag publications, the writers whose DMs I slid into, the writers who slid into mine, the writers who didn’t follow me back, the writers I met at summer conferences, and the writers who I’ve met on Substack, with your beautiful, kind comments and messages cheering on my novel even when you haven’t read a single word of it. I just feel grateful for all of it.