Thanks for the reply, Liza! But I didn't find Gotham completely useless. You see, I'm someone very much outside the so-called 'literary establishment'-I've worked as an Emergency Room/Trauma Center RN, inpatient psych RN, home hospice RN, NYC policeman, UPS driver, banquet waiter at Tavern on the Green in Central Park back when it was the busiest restaurant in the world, supermarket stock boy, and my only college degree is an associate's from a community college. So for a great-unwashed working-class kinda guy like me, very far from the rarefied MFA world, Gotham provided a valuable introduction to publishing. Discouraging, though. Well, at least the jobs I've worked in my life, which almost killed me, gave me great fodder for a novel-Cormac himself would've KILLED to get his hands on my material.
Wow, Liza, you came around at the perfect time for me. I've been trying to get my first novel published for a while. First I hired a book doctor through Gotham Writers to get it into shape. I thought they would just hand me some unpaid intern, but then I was flabbergasted my book doctor was a published writer whose first novel was even acclaimed in the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. I was even more flabbergasted that after being told to allow six weeks for a close reading, he flew through my novel in two days, called it a 'well written and engaging narrative' and then even offered to help me get it published after I fixed a few things. A perfect opportunity, needless to say, and a dream-come-true for an unpublished writer. But that was almost four years ago, right in the middle of COVID, and at the time I was working in a busy New York Emergency Room (I am a nurse), getting divorced, and helping my sister care for our mother, who was on home hospice back then. So I put my literary ambitions aside to take care of much more important things. Only when I finally got around to the edits and got back to my book doctor almost a year later, he was too busy to look at it. And I understood that, since he works for the State Department and the Ukraine war had just broken out. But I couldn't help feeling I had let a great opportunity slip through my fingers, and now he doesn't even return my emails. So I went back to Gotham Writers and took a much cheaper course in getting published (the book doctor set me back two grand, and the hilarious part is it all goes by word count, so when I found out the small fortune I would be shelling out for my door-stopper behemoth, I edited out 100,000 words over three months: KILL YOUR DARLINGS haha). Well, that was almost two years ago, and I have only sent out about a dozen or so queries during that time. But I think your blog is the shot-in-the-arm I need to get my ass in gear again. I will follow your advice here-68 agents queries in a week! Wow! What the hell have I been doing all this time? Thanks!
I paid Gotham Writers so much money over the years for “query critiques” etc. They are quite useless in my opinion. My philosophy is you are the best judge of your own work.
My son is about to self publish his third book after going through the agent process again. He works with a marvelous editor, he writes fascinating stories, it is just such a slog to get an agent to even sniff much less read or (gasp, please!) accept a book. I wish you luck and opportunity and finding someone to take your book. You’ll get there, don’t give up.
Brilliant. Thank you for sharing. I've had limited success with patience, but I have a story for you of wildly successful results after maniacally hard work and lots of waiting. Is that the same as patience? https://katesusong.substack.com/p/perfect?r=2iyrll
If there is begging involved, I'd say it's already /ipso facto/ the wrong approach.
I know you did not mean "begging" literally.
Well, maybe you meant it ironically.
(The only begging that should be happening here is literary agents begging *YOU* to let them read your novel, and to recommend it to the world's top publishers.)
It was an ironic comment, but behind every ironic statement, there is a kernel of truth. I would love to live in a world where agents begged for my novel, but I don't believe that can be true of any new writer. Unfortunately, in our publishing sphere, it is a constant battle to "sell" your novel to the agent, and I believe that any such "selling" is inherently inauthentic, hence the comment. If I had the opportunity to present the entire novel to them and have it speak for itself, I think that more agents would be onboard. But I do have to "convince" them to read it first by attempting to sell it.
Agents begging writers, writers begging agents…. Let there always be brilliant workers who have a practical self concept and focus on building their own fortunes.
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they pissed me off! - Sarah Ferguson
Thanks for the reply, Liza! But I didn't find Gotham completely useless. You see, I'm someone very much outside the so-called 'literary establishment'-I've worked as an Emergency Room/Trauma Center RN, inpatient psych RN, home hospice RN, NYC policeman, UPS driver, banquet waiter at Tavern on the Green in Central Park back when it was the busiest restaurant in the world, supermarket stock boy, and my only college degree is an associate's from a community college. So for a great-unwashed working-class kinda guy like me, very far from the rarefied MFA world, Gotham provided a valuable introduction to publishing. Discouraging, though. Well, at least the jobs I've worked in my life, which almost killed me, gave me great fodder for a novel-Cormac himself would've KILLED to get his hands on my material.
Wow, Liza, you came around at the perfect time for me. I've been trying to get my first novel published for a while. First I hired a book doctor through Gotham Writers to get it into shape. I thought they would just hand me some unpaid intern, but then I was flabbergasted my book doctor was a published writer whose first novel was even acclaimed in the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. I was even more flabbergasted that after being told to allow six weeks for a close reading, he flew through my novel in two days, called it a 'well written and engaging narrative' and then even offered to help me get it published after I fixed a few things. A perfect opportunity, needless to say, and a dream-come-true for an unpublished writer. But that was almost four years ago, right in the middle of COVID, and at the time I was working in a busy New York Emergency Room (I am a nurse), getting divorced, and helping my sister care for our mother, who was on home hospice back then. So I put my literary ambitions aside to take care of much more important things. Only when I finally got around to the edits and got back to my book doctor almost a year later, he was too busy to look at it. And I understood that, since he works for the State Department and the Ukraine war had just broken out. But I couldn't help feeling I had let a great opportunity slip through my fingers, and now he doesn't even return my emails. So I went back to Gotham Writers and took a much cheaper course in getting published (the book doctor set me back two grand, and the hilarious part is it all goes by word count, so when I found out the small fortune I would be shelling out for my door-stopper behemoth, I edited out 100,000 words over three months: KILL YOUR DARLINGS haha). Well, that was almost two years ago, and I have only sent out about a dozen or so queries during that time. But I think your blog is the shot-in-the-arm I need to get my ass in gear again. I will follow your advice here-68 agents queries in a week! Wow! What the hell have I been doing all this time? Thanks!
I paid Gotham Writers so much money over the years for “query critiques” etc. They are quite useless in my opinion. My philosophy is you are the best judge of your own work.
My son is about to self publish his third book after going through the agent process again. He works with a marvelous editor, he writes fascinating stories, it is just such a slog to get an agent to even sniff much less read or (gasp, please!) accept a book. I wish you luck and opportunity and finding someone to take your book. You’ll get there, don’t give up.
Patience is the companion of wisdom . Good 🤞 luck!
Brilliant. Thank you for sharing. I've had limited success with patience, but I have a story for you of wildly successful results after maniacally hard work and lots of waiting. Is that the same as patience? https://katesusong.substack.com/p/perfect?r=2iyrll
>> It’s Week 5 of begging agents to
>> read my novel THE LILAC ROOM.
If there is begging involved, I'd say it's already /ipso facto/ the wrong approach.
I know you did not mean "begging" literally.
Well, maybe you meant it ironically.
(The only begging that should be happening here is literary agents begging *YOU* to let them read your novel, and to recommend it to the world's top publishers.)
It was an ironic comment, but behind every ironic statement, there is a kernel of truth. I would love to live in a world where agents begged for my novel, but I don't believe that can be true of any new writer. Unfortunately, in our publishing sphere, it is a constant battle to "sell" your novel to the agent, and I believe that any such "selling" is inherently inauthentic, hence the comment. If I had the opportunity to present the entire novel to them and have it speak for itself, I think that more agents would be onboard. But I do have to "convince" them to read it first by attempting to sell it.
Agents begging writers, writers begging agents…. Let there always be brilliant workers who have a practical self concept and focus on building their own fortunes.
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they pissed me off! - Sarah Ferguson
"Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue" - Ambrose Bierce
So you should continue to be actively impatient :)