Back in October, I signed with my incredible literary agent—Rebecca Eskildsen at Writers House.
Weirdly enough, my querying process started with me giving up.
It was spring of 2022, and I’d completed a YA fantasy novel that just…wasn’t working.
I knew it wasn’t working. I really loved the concept and the characters (especially my stabby, scowly protagonist), but several things about the story didn’t feel quite right, and I’d gone through dozens of drafts without figuring out how to fix it.
My critique partners suggested that I put the book away and start working on a new one, because they were tired of watching me bang my head against the wall, and I knew that was a good idea. I did start drafting some new projects, but it was so hard to let go of the things that I loved about this particular novel.
Fast forward to May 5, which was the day of #APIPit. (If you haven’t seen that weird-looking jumble of letters before, it’s the hashtag for an annual Twitter pitch event, where writers pitch their books to agents within 280 characters, and agents “like” the pitches that they want to see in their inboxes.)
I’d always wanted to participate in a Twitter pitch event, and I decided there was nothing to lose. I had a complete manuscript on my hands, albeit a frustratingly broken one, and I figured I might as well give it a shot before I put it away for good.
This is the pitch I used:
Unexpectedly, the mysterious Twitter algorithms worked in my favor that day, and my pitch ended up getting liked by 10 agents.
I was both shocked and grateful—and a little dismayed, too, since that meant I had to send my broken book out into the world. (At that point, nobody had seen the manuscript except my critique group and, briefly, the inside of my garbage can.)
I sent queries to most of the agents who’d liked my Tweet, including Rebecca. When I started getting partial and full requests, I felt more confident that my query package was working, so I queried a few more agents aside from the ones I met through #APIPit.
In total, I sent out 16 queries over the course of a month. Those resulted in:
- 8 full requests
- 6 rejections
- 2 no-responses
On June 9, I got an email from Rebecca, saying that she’d finished reading the manuscript. She adored the same elements I did, but she had some concerns about the worldbuilding, pacing, and ending—pretty much all the things that I knew were broken, but didn’t know how to fix on my own. And she had some really eye-opening suggestions for how to resolve those issues.
We talked about her feedback over the phone, and it just felt like we clicked right away. By the end of the call, we were just bouncing ideas off each other. It was the most energized I’d felt about this story in a long time. Rebecca invited me to do an R&R (Revise & Resubmit) based on the ideas we’d discussed.
So, I asked all the other agents who’d requested my full manuscript to hold off on reading it. Then, for the next four months, I worked my butt off.
The R&R basically involved blowing up the second half of my book and building a new story out of the resulting shrapnel. It took a lot of work, but by the end of that process, I had a manuscript that I actually felt proud of.
I sent my revised book to Rebecca on October 3.
On October 26, she replied to tell me that she loved the revision and wanted to set up a call.
(Yes, I cried.)
We’d agreed to an exclusive when I started the R&R, so I didn’t get the chance to consider offers from any other agents, but to be honest, I can’t imagine any agent making an offer that could have possibly changed my mind. Rebecca’s editorial vision was spot-on, and it was already clear that we made a fantastic team.
A big part of querying comes down to luck, and I know I got really, really lucky. It only takes one person to see the potential in a broken book.
We’re planning to go on submission soon, and I’m so excited to hit that milestone.
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about my querying process, and subscribe to follow along on the rest of my writing journey!
Comments
One response to “How I Met My Literary Agent”
Interesting evolution.