Writers are genius reclusives, right? They’re ornery individualists sitting in cold, poorly lit garrets spewing both vinegar and roses upon the heads of the great unwashed.
Don’t you love fantasy?
In a fast-paced two days late last month at the Red Lion Inn, the most successful agents conference in the Writers’ League history saw some 200-plus writers get the hard-knock world of real publishing described to them gently but firmly by a dozen agents and editors from both coasts. As one participant described it, the labyrinthine process of getting published felt like “pushing rope.”
Newbies certainly had the rose-tint knocked off their RayBans. Finding an agent or an editor who will give you a read is not quite like buying a lotto ticket, said another participant, but it’s close enough to be depressing. “So will you give up?” I asked.
“No,” he immediately shot back, giving me a look like I’m crazier than he is.
Many participants are returnees. Even published and agented writers returned. There is always that possibility of lightning striking twice and there is the simple issue of entrée, face-to-face conversation. One thing they learned the first time around seems obvious but apparently isn’t to a number of writers. Many came here believing they would be pulled up into the light. The problem: They had unfinished fiction they were trying to peddle. And then there are those who proclaimed about an agent, “I’m not changing a word.” As in, not even if her agent were the second-coming of Dostoevsky would that work.
That attitude may doom them, but the idea of editors spending much time actually changing words is one that, according to Tim Bent, a senior editor at St. Martin’s Press who attended, is almost quaint these days. Editors just don’t have the time to edit. They want things polished. They want things ready to roll. They get so many submissions that it sometimes seems impossible to actually enjoy literature or establish the kind of relationships that got them into the business in the first place.
Indeed, according to Elizabeth Pomada of the Pomada-Larsen Agency in San Francisco, the odds of getting a pitch through to an agent who will look at it or listen to it is about 1%. And that’s at a conference where if you’re brave enough, shameless enough, you can actually corner one and hold their attention for two minutes. Editors and agents have extremely short attention spans, and they know it. They don’t necessarily like it, but it’s the nature of the beast.
Ah, but we’re all human. That hoary sentiment was why at least two of the agents came to this conference. They know they seem like Olympians to many would-be writers. They know that in the mad crush of the mindless money machine that publishing has become, they seem to forget that humans live on the other side of those queries. These editors wanted to remind themselves of the passion that created the mountain of paper and ink that passes too often unseen before their coldly professional eyes.
Writing is about relationships, after all. It is about connecting all the way down the long line of culture. Not from garret to high tower, but pushing the rope side by side, face to face.
This article appears in August 10 • 2001.