So happy to share another contest success story. Laura was one of my picks from Query Kombat and didn't even need contest help to sail into a call with her very own agent! She was actually my very first yes pick! See her agent round entry here!
You hear that finding an agent takes
forever. And you hear those awesome stories about people getting offers
overnight. For me, it was both very quick and very slow (and completely
awesome).
I’ve always loved writing. I have random
first pages of unfinished novels saved all over my computer. But I never really
got the push I needed to finish a novel - life always got in the way. Then, in
2013, when I was on my honeymoon, an idea gripped me that wouldn’t
let go. I raced to put it on the page when I got home. Soon, the words just
poured out of me.
The first draft took about six weeks.
Then I walked away, researching publishing for a few weeks before editing. I
sent it to a friend for fact-checking while I revised. Then I edited it again.
But my next step was what many new writers do: I queried too soon. Those two
revisions weren’t enough. It took weeks of rejection
to figure out what was wrong with the manuscript. Finally, I stumbled across
the idea of getting a creative partner (how did I not know about this
earlier?). After a couple of false starts, I found an awesome CP, and we went
through the manuscript, chapter by chapter. Finally, after two more full
rewrites, it was ready to go out again—about four months after I finished the
first draft.
Starting in March, I sent groups of
query letters. I entered contests, and as my manuscript slowly improved, so did
my contest luck: I was runner up in Sun vs. Snow (between rewrites), featured
in NestPitch (with no requests), and made it to the agent round in Query Kombat
(with two requests). Each time, feedback helped me make my query and opening
pages stronger.
I knew not to expect The Call within a
couple of days after querying: everyone knows those stories are the exception.
Still, every time I sent a query, part of me hoped, this time, I’d be the overnight success story. I even walked
around Target for an hour once, constantly refreshing an agent’s Twitter feed because she said she liked a MS
she’d just gotten. (The fact that cell
phones barely work in my local Target did nothing to diminish my excitement.)
It wasn’t mine. But I
kept querying, incorporating feedback as necessary, and I started to get a lot
of full requests.
July 7 was a crazy day. Around 9:30
a.m., I got a rejection from a partial I’d sent months earlier. At 9:45 a.m, I
sent a query letter to an agent I’d heard good things about. At 10:30
a.m., she sent me a full request. (Yes, that’s right. 45 minutes later.) This was
the fastest request I’d ever gotten. Still, I’d
gotten requests in a couple of hours that didn’t pan out, so I knew not to get too
excited. About 10 minutes later, I received a rejection from another agent,
helping me keep my feet nailed firmly to the floor. If usual querying is a
roller coaster, that hour was like being inside a martini shaker. I wondered if
I was going to make it.
Tuesday, I happened to pull up my email
while at the gym. (I swear it was an accident—usually, I go to the gym to unplug and
de-stress, not think about queries.) The agent I’d queried on Monday wanted to know if
I had time to chat about my manuscript.
Of course I did! I raced out of the gym
to charge my dying phone (didn’t even finish my workout). We
scheduled a call later that night. I asked a friend if they ever called to
personally reject you. Then, I calmed down enough to speak coherently, the
phone rang, and less than 36 hours after I sent that query, I had an offer from
an excellent agent. It really can happen that fast.
I danced. Cheered. Screamed. I
remembered that I had other full manuscripts out (plus some regular queries).
So, the next step was to sit down and let the other agents know that I had an
offer. To agents that had the manuscript more than a month or so, I offered a
slightly revised version. Some replied right away to let me know they’d
read it next. Some bowed out politely. Some didn’t reply at all. One emailed back to
request the most updated version.
The next morning, I found a message from
one of my friends. “Did you leave [often misused word] in
your manuscript? I think this agent is reading it now.” The
same agent I’d once tracked walking around Target.
My heart plummeted. I’d forgotten to cut that problem word
before sending. I clicked on the agent’s Twitter feed nervously. But she
liked it! She tweeted about how much she loved the manuscript she was reading.
My hopes soared. It had to be mine, right? It was. I opened my email and found
a message asking if I was free to talk about the manuscript.
We arranged for a time the following
afternoon. Then we talked, and I absolutely agreed with everything she had to
say about the manuscript—including removing things I’d
added because I thought the reader would like them. (Note: Don’t
try to write for other people.) Before we even got off the phone, I knew I’d
found my agent. The first agent I spoke with was great, but the second really
got me and my work. I still had some full manuscripts out there, and I waited
for responses before signing, but there was never really a question in my mind
who I would pick after that conversation.
The day I’d promised to give my decision, I woke
at 5:00 a.m. My phone was in hand before I decided that my new agent probably
wouldn’t appreciate hearing from me in the middle of the night
(especially since she’s not on the East Coast). I couldn’t
contain my excitement, though, so I scanned the contracts and sent her an email
at around 5:30 a.m. Then I sent another email to the first agent, who was very
gracious and sincere in responding with her congratulations. I know that I
would’ve been in good hands with either of them, but my gut told
me to pick Jen Karsbaek, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.
Laura writes women’s
fiction, represented by Jen Karsbaek at Foreword Literary. She wrote her first
"short story" when she was five years old, detailing a family's
Saturday morning on their Commodore 64 (it may have somewhat
auto-biographical). She’s been writing ever since. In her
spare time, she loves playing board games, baking, and binge watching anything
by Joss Whedon. She also really likes parenthetical phrases (but not in
fiction) and the Oxford comma.
Follow her on Twitter: @LH_Writes
Hurray! Congrats, Laura!
ReplyDeleteFab story, congrats Laura! :)
ReplyDelete