Blog Post: How I got my literary agent
(Please forgive my back-and-forth tense changes in this post. I think it’s chaotic in a cute way and I want to keep it.)
Picture this: It’s March of 2020, Coronavirus is that bitch, and you – a twenty-four-year-old hot mess – just got indefinitely furloughed from a job you didn’t even like anyway. Except it was your only source of income, and now you’re collecting unemployment and living at your childhood home, drinking margaritas every night and applying for jobs on LinkedIn that would be a 20% pay cut from what you used to make. You are depressed (no, I’m not being cute, you’re actually fucking depressed), and aimless, and building a garden in your parents’ backyard.
Enter WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.
I know, I know. You’re thinking, seriously, Clare, that’s what got you back into writing? WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING?
(I say “back into” because I wrote my first novel when I was fourteen and have written scraps of stuff here and there ever since.)
No, of course WTCS didn’t get me back into writing. It’s a good book, but chill. That book got me back into reading, and over that summer, I read everything. Including but not limited to: ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, 4 Sarah Dessen novels I originally devoured in high school, and, ultimately, SIX OF CROWS.
You know where I’m heading here.
I wrote a copycat SIX OF CROWS. The biggest difference between Leigh’s book and mine was that my book was bad. It had eight POVs and a completely unoriginal western setting / magic system. But when I hurled it into the agent world in October of 2020, I remember googling “Leigh Bardugo’s literary agent” and feeling confident I’d be a smash hit.
Let me pause here to say that it is SO IMPORTANT that book did not get a single request, because it did not deserve one. The book had not been CP’d or beta’d. The book did not have a protagonist. For heaven’s sake, the book was about immortal teenagers, which kind of defeats the purpose of YA fiction entirely, right? Because teens are supposed to be young and silly and figuring things out? On top of a lot of genre conventions I was breaking – again, another thing I hadn’t yet figured out – I didn’t pause to analyze that my query structure had issues because my book had issues, making it DOA.
I know this now, but at the time I recall being floored at the rejection. Maybe it’s gauche of me to say so, but I knew I was a solid writer in terms of line level (this isn’t due to any innate talent – just years of practice). What I had no clue about during that stage of my writing career was actually the most important thing: CRAFT.
Now we’re getting somewhere!
At this point, I’ve gotten my original job back. It’s December of 2020 and I’ve been querying unsuccessfully for a couple of months. I get an idea for a new book, all while reading up on author-provided resources to get a sense of craft expectations.
I watch every single one of Alexandra Bracken’s Quarantine Writing Diaries IGTVs. I secure a spot in Adrienne Young’s inaugural Writing with the Soul workshop. I memorize Shelby Mahurin’s Evolution of my Query blogpost. I download a Save the Cat beat sheet. I do all the things.
And I think, this YA contemporary fantasy book is THE ONE.
(It’s not.)
I start querying that book in February of 2021 and get one partial request – from an amazing agent! Still, the book dies in the trenches. But I walk away from it knowing that I accomplished something, that I’m moving forward. That partial request fed my little author dreams.
Then comes this groundbreaking, earth-shattering, world-altering realization:
I think my voice lends itself better to contemporary fiction?
I have to give Adrienne Young’s workshop all the credit here, which wasn’t as much craft-focused as it was heavy on self-reflection and leaning into your strengths. I began to really discover my author voice, reading books like TWEET CUTE, TO ALL THE BOYS, and HAPPILY EVER AFTERS to get a sense of what was popular in YA contemporary fiction.
My third queried book was cathartic to write – it was as close as I’ll ever come to my high school story, and I still have hopes some version of that novel will be published someday. I think my connection to the manuscript came across in my query too, because it was my most successful querying experience thus far: one partial and two full requests from three agents!
To break this down further:
1 partial turned into a full request. This full later turned into a pass – many months later.
1 partial turned into a pass.
1 more full was requested a month after querying. I never heard back from this agent despite nudging. Eventually, when my offer from Melissa came through on my fourth book, I withdrew the query for Book 3 myself.
So, now we’re in June of 2021. I read RED, WHITE, AND ROYAL BLUE and think to myself, holy crap, I didn’t even know adult fiction could be like this! (I recently researched that book on Publisher’s Marketplace; it originally sold to a YA crossover imprint, Wednesday Books, before getting transferred over to the adult side of St. Martin’s – so clearly it was breaking ground either way.)
RWRB serves as enough inspiration for me to gather up my broken little heart after waiting months and months on my YA Rom-Com to go nowhere slowly. I make a plan to have my Adult Rom-Com completed by October of 2021 because I want to apply to Pitch Wars. I churn it out between June and August, then let the book sit for one month untouched.
I’ve actually never done this with a book before – give it space – and as we head into my querying journey for Book 4, I'm going to highlight all the ways I believe this book got me an agent, but here’s the most important takeaway: I gaslit LOVE INTEREST the least.
How do you gaslight your own novel, you ask?
You believe that it is great without getting a second opinion
You are scared of revision
You do not separate yourself from the manuscript long enough to gain perspective
You fail to read enough comp titles to actually find good ones
You break the vitally important query formula
You query agents solely based on who represents the books you’ve read.
More on that last bullet: the truth of the matter is that you’re more likely to get representation with agents who are hungry for that genre RIGHT NOW, not 2 to 4 years ago (because we all know how long the publishing runway is between a query and a pub date).
Case in point, Melissa – as it stands, she’s got a bunch of romance/WF clients slated to debut this year (2022) and next (2023), but she wasn’t a name you’d associate as romance-leaning when I queried her. I actually discovered her via Twitter. My best advice here is to find and follow yet-to-debut authors in your genre and figure out who represents them! (Thanks for my agent, Meredith Schorr!)
So, we’re in September of 2021, and Pitch Wars is one month away. I spend that month revising my manuscript – heavily. I nail down some pacing issues and romance beat elements. I complete the second draft just a week before the submission window opens, and I spend that week studying which mentors I want to submit to.
October 2021: I create my writer Twitter account (as a side note, it’s actually great for my mental health to now have separate writer accounts from my personal accounts. I think everyone else was ahead of the curve on this, but just in case anyone was on the fence). I meet a lovely CP through the Pitch Wars hashtag, and we swap manuscripts while we wait out the submission window.
I didn’t get any requests during Pitch Wars, which I know is subjective, but I still made two key changes to my query and opening pages as a result:
1) I clarified the stakes in the last sentence of the third paragraph of my query
2) At the advice of my CP, I completely overhauled my protagonist’s inner mind in Chapter 1. Originally, she had a very sharp, confident, brazen attitude about something that was soon to happen to her. My CP pointed out it was hard to empathize with her or feel a sense of foreboding when she had that attitude. I agreed, and made my protagonist a nervous wreck in Chapter 1 instead. lol.
Because my anxiety was so high about Pitch Wars, I started querying about halfway through October. There came a point where the mentors I’d chosen had announced they’d requested, so I knew PW wasn’t happening for me.
Partly out of spite (no shame, it’s good fuel) and partly because my mental health demanded it, I started to query. That decision turned out to be very validating. I got a partial request five minutes after sending my first query (from an agent whose MSWL felt like it was written for my book). I got another full request two days later. I also got a couple of very prompt passes, but so it goes!
Melissa was not the first agent to request from me, but she was the first agent to offer – on November 15th, 2021. It was my first day of onboarding at a brand-new job (finally, I got to leave behind the job that furloughed me!). I got an email from Melissa around 4 o’clock that afternoon asking if she could set up a call. I had to reply with my incredibly limited free time that week due to my hectic onboarding schedule, and we decided it was now or never. She called me about ten minutes after I got her email.
The call was great, but I do remember my voice shaking a little bit. I hadn’t had a lot of time to process that I was on the phone with a literary agent!
Melissa totally got the intent behind my project, and she also had a couple of clear points for revision. To me, that was huge, because I knew I wanted an editorial agent. She asked me about my inspiration, author career goals, writing process, etc. In return, I whipped out Jim McCarthy’s Questions to Ask a Prospective Agent and Melissa answered each question thoughtfully and transparently.
Because my two-week consideration window was going to happen over Thanksgiving, Melissa did not give me a firm deadline for when I needed to get back to her. We agreed on “the first few days of December.” I thought that was just about the most considerate thing Melissa could possibly do for her fellow agents!
I had to practically force myself not to accept her offer on the call, but I knew I owed it to myself to do my due diligence, so I notified every single agent that I had queried and not yet received a pass from that I’d gotten an offer of representation. Cue 6 more full requests! But out of those with the manuscript, only 1 additional agent offered rep.
The call with that other agent was fabulous. She had a strong deal history in the genre, glowing recommendations from her clients, and another sturdy revision plan. I would have happily accepted her offer of rep under other circumstances, but my gut was pointing me in one direction - and that was that!
I accepted Melissa’s offer and signed my contract with Stonesong on November 29th, 2021!
Here is the technical breakout of my querying history for LOVE INTEREST:
Out of 21 queries sent to 20 agencies:
8 flat-out passes
2 no response
1 unread partial that declined the full due to reading timeline on my notification of an offer (with congratulations and best wishes)
1 pass on a full before my initial offer
2 fulls requested that offered rep
3 fulls requested post-offer that passed on offering
1 agent who “ruefully stepped aside” on requesting due to reading timeline (I will clearly never forget this lol)
1 agent who didn’t see the query until after I’d accepted rep
2 more agents who requested the full, but I actually didn’t send it to due to delayed requesting combined with the belief that I would choose Melissa even if they offered
Which puts my request rate at 43% and my offer rate at 9.5%!
If you think my writing timeline is insane, please keep in mind that I’ve been writing for twelve years. However, I am aware that my specific querying window (October 2020 - November 2021) is quick, by industry-wide comparison. We all handle stress and anxiety differently. Once I got it in my head that I was dying to be a traditionally published author, writing at a fast clip was what maintained the (admittedly thin) mental health I’ve established over the past two years. Do what you’ve got to do!
At long last, here’s the query that got me my agent (peep the title change):
Dear Melissa Edwards,
THE HATING GAME meets the magazine industry in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, an adult romantic comedy complete at 86,000 words. This high-concept, commercial novel has urban vibes a la The Bold Type, Taylor Swift’s album Lover, and the Conde Nast YouTube empire (think Bon Appetit, Vogue, Architectural Digest & more!) The book should appeal to fans of Casey McQuiston’s youthful voice in RED, WHITE, & ROYAL BLUE, Emily Henry’s character development in PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION, and Ali Hazelwood’s career niche in THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS. I'm querying you in my search for representation because of your interest in "fun and vibrant adult commercial fiction".
Casey Maitland would do bad things for the job opening at Bite the Hand – a trendy, socially conscious magazine vertical owned by LC Publications, where Casey works as a financial analyst. But she’s horrified to discover she was passed over in favor of an external hire with a family connection: Alex Hyun, the illegitimate spawn of LC’s board chairman.
Casey is offered a consolation prize: responsibility for Bite the Hand’s financials, plus a guaranteed transfer to the coveted London office next year. The caveat is, until Casey hops the pond, she must work hand-in-hand with Visionary Alex, who has way too much extroverted enthusiasm and no clue Casey wanted his job. As the duo takes charge of growing the vertical, Casey begrudgingly admits she pegged Alex all wrong; there’s a complicated person behind the young man she snap-judged. And when they tumble into YouTube stardom – filling an endearingly relatable niche of zillennial biz kids who are shipped by half the channel’s subscribers – maybe there’s a reason.
But when evidence surfaces about the company’s financial state, Casey connects the dots to a fishy corporate merger that points right at Alex’s father. Life changing decisions are on the line: to go to London or stay, to whistleblow or sweep the scandal under the rug, to finally admit or keep denying there’s nothing casual about how Casey and Alex feel for one another. Their choices might cost them everything – or prove their love once and for all. To find out, they’ll both have to learn what consequences they’ll face if they finally bite the hands that feed them.
I work in a numbers-driven corporate environment and drew from my own experience while crafting Casey and Alex’s love story. I have a major in Business and a minor in English Literature from the University of Tennessee. My only publishing accolade is a poem I wrote in high school; it was included in an academic book for English teachers! When I’m not writing, I’m dreaming of travel, analyzing cosmetics industry data, or reading every genre under the sun.
Sample pages are below. Thank you for your consideration! Sincerely,
Clare Gilmore
I’m not going to use this blog post to brag on Melissa’s professionalism, editorial insight, or ability to curate a list of banger client siblings, but please, just know that I could. KNOW. THAT. I COULD.
That’s all for now, but if you read this and have questions, or you just want to chat or commiserate or plot authorly world domination, find me @momentofclarety on all social media platforms and hit me up. I promise I’m friendly (please ignore the resting bitch face I can’t help it ok). All I want to do now is pay it forward with the same knowledge-sharing that so many authors who came before me have already done!
