Day 655

Thursday, October 30, 2014

I saw my guru Phil Ziegler this morning to help me deal with a major change in my life.  I let go of my agent of 15 months this week and it was gut-wrenching.  I'd made up my mind Sunday, but when I expressed my unhappiness and frustration on Tuesday, my feelings were met with shock, anger, disappointment and defensiveness.  In retrospect, I can understand how my decision came out of the blue, but that was part of the problem and why Sharon's agency wasn't the right agency for me.  She'd taken on a large contract job in NYC that had nothing to do with being an agent.  That meant her time with writers was limited.  As a result, the quick, timely response to emails was gone, as was the energy and sense of urgency with projects.  It has been a noticeable change since last spring, but I stuck with it because I like Sharon and wanted to land a sale with her.  She has a partner named Ella Marie who runs the agency fulltime and had worked with me on my present manuscript.  She's a great editor-agent who has good instincts and offered me a laundry list of ideas and suggestions, which I adopted into the revision that I turned in six weeks ago.  I was told I'd hear back within a week; however, I never heard anything.  When I sent a nudge email two weeks later, Sharon responded instead of Ella Marie, telling me my manuscript would be reviewed by an editor who was teaching a class Sharon was taking.  I said that was fine, but still requested Ella Marie's feedback.  Sharon said she wanted the editor's feedback first, so I never heard from the one person who had suggested all the changes in the first place.  That bothered the crap out of me.  Another few weeks went by without hearing anything, so I emailed Sharon again last Friday, to which she said the editor/teacher was super busy and had no time to read the manuscript (no surprise there...why on earth would a professional editor read a manuscript for free that wasn't even ready, from an actual agent representing an actual client...the whole thing made no sense at all), so instead, she sent me his lecture notes and asked that I consider each element of my story and write down how I succeeded or failed in delivering each element in my revision.  Suddenly, I was back in college taking a course on how to write a story well.  Needless to say, it was time to move on, which I did, but man, it has really been an emotional roller coaster.  Phil is a master at helping me work through my issues (guilt, insecurity, shame, etc.) and moving on to the next stage of my writing life.  It only took one session to get back in the game and recognize what I needed to do to get through this temporary setback.  I'm at a stage where having an agent isn't good enough anymore.  I need to have the right agent for me who understands the children's lit terrain, understands writers, has confidence in his/her instincts and can sustain their occupation fulltime.  I didn't have that, but I will with my next agent.

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