While there is much to admire about literary agents . . .

My name is Steven and I’m a failed writer.

One of my favorite movies is The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. The lovely Gene Tierney plays a widow who rents a seaside cottage only to discover that it is haunted by its former owner, a crusty sea captain played by Rex Harrison. Of course, Mrs. Muir and the captain put one another off at first, then fall in love. Toward the end of the movie, Mrs. Muir writes a book about she and the ghost, which she then peddles in person to a London publisher. Let me pause here for a moment so that you can gather yourselves. You heard me right. She went to the publisher in person and he didn’t have Security escort her out of the building. In person; she went in person! Directly into the publisher's office!

I imagine most of my four or five followers have been through the Query First Don’t You Dare Call Or Show Up At My Office-Okay, What The Hell Send Me A Few Pages-Jiminy Crickets You Might Be Worth My Time Send Me A Full Manuscript-I’m Sorry There Is Much To Admire In Your Work, But Piss Off sequence that attends modern efforts to secure a literary agent. In Mrs. Muir’s time, publishers didn’t work with agents. They simply sat around drinking tea until someone who looked as good as Gene Tierney showed up with a manuscript that they promptly published. I imagine there are skeptics among you, but watch the movie yourself if you don’t believe me.

Anyway, it’s tough to land a literary agent these days because THEY ARE VERY, VERY BUSY. I’d repeat that for emphasis, but it’s already in caps. For aspiring failed writers, there’s a tip for you and Rule #5: Either repeat things unnecessarily or use a lot of caps. Your choice. So . . . agents are very busy. They’re like the President of the United States in that regard. He’s very busy, too (although I understand that if you write an email to him, you’ll get a response, so that makes him less busy than literary agents). Because they’re so terribly, terribly busy, literary agents cannot reply to all emails. If they are interested in you, they’ll reply. For me, this resurrects what it felt like to be a thirteen year old boy. I would write a very nice note to a girl I was interested in, including a poll at the end for her convenience:

DO YOU LIKE ME?

YES ___ NO ___

(CHECK ONE)

As with literary agents, I got a response if she liked me. Unlike literary agents, if the girl didn’t like me, she made fun of my buck teeth and got her boyfriend to beat me up.

Literary agents are the Holy Grail for many writers — nab one and all your problems are over; best-seller list here I come. However, aspiring failed writers, take comfort in the reality that even the best agents can’t sell everything they represent. This is why they have to be so selective. They can’t sell everything and they are VERY, VERY BUSY, remember? They need to first be queried with a short letter that reduces your work to as few words as possible; the less words the better. In that regard, literary agents are like contestants on the old Name That Tune show. For those of you younger than 900 years old, Name That Tune was a popular television game show on which a contestant attempted to guess the title of a song in the least number of notes. Many of them were quite good, naming songs after hearing only three or four notes. Literary agents are like that. They can pick a best-seller after reading merely three or four words of a query email. This is why there is a little cottage industry that surrounds the query letter. There are articles, webinars, conference sessions, even books that purport to unravel the mystery of the perfect query. It can be overwhelming, so let me give you the basic drill.

In your query, begin with a plot hook followed by a snazzy description of a character or event. Next, write something about yourself that is humble and yet confident; factual, but not boastful. If you have published and received an award, do not mention it unless it was a really important award. Same for reviews. Unless they’re from important reviewers or publications, nobody but your mother cares. It’s best not to be funny and never, ever waste the agent’s time. That’s a big one. Don’t waste their time, okay? Seriously. They are very, very busy. I think I’ve made that clear. Last of all, make sure you let the agent know why he or she was picked from among all the agents on the planet. Literary agents are people, too. They like to be courted.

My last book: Howling at the Moon, received unimportant awards, good reviews from unimportant sources, and contained short stories previously published in unimportant literary magazines. Therefore, in query-speak, it did not exist. There’s a contradiction here, if you think about it. If everything attached to my previous book was important, why would I be looking for an agent? Wouldn’t I already have one? And what’s wrong with mentioning good reviews, even if they came from the Dismal Seepage, Nebraska Tribune? It makes no sense to deprive a literary nobody from mentioning anything scented with even the faintest hint of praise. It’s kind of brutal out here. We’re creeping along on the laudatory fumes provided by our wives and mothers and the people in our writing groups, most of whom view constructive criticism as a blend of waterboarding and the sales techniques employed by clerks at The Limited who never, ever admit that a customer’s butt looks big in EVERYTHING!

It might seem that I don’t like literary agents, but I do. They have helped me to become the failed writer that I am today and I look forward to a lack of representation for many more years to come. I will, however, not stop sending queries as I know there’s an agent out there capable of rejecting my work after reading not four words, not three, but merely two words or less. That person is my Moby Dick and I shall query the seven seas for the rest of my life in search of her.