Several lovely writers I know through Twitter have been blogging very candidly about their various experiences on the road to publication – I’ve decided I’d like to join in and tell you about what it was like for me a few years ago, finding an agent, in the hope that it will be of help to anyone in the process of search for an agent of their own.  

I think it’s only fair to warn you before you begin reading that it’s quite a long story! 

I decided that I was ready to send ‘His Last Duchess’ out into the world for the first time in 2006.  A very experienced writer-friend of my sister’s – a retired professor of literature and creative writing – told me to “pack a bag, and prepare for the long haul.”  Ever the enthusiastic optimist, I thought he was just being cynical and Eeyore-ish.   But of course he wasn’t.  Pack a bag?  Hhmm.  In the event, I needed a blooming great wheelie suitcase.    

Looking back now, my inexperience and my totally unreasonable expectations seem just plain daft,  but I suppose they were fairly normal for any writer at this stage of their career.

To try to give you a proper picture of how it all happened, I’m going to tell you everything, including how it felt at the time.  

How did I start the search?  A very good friend of mine has a very good friend who is a literary agent.  Annoyingly for me, this agent, Jane, only deals with non-fiction, so I knew she was never going to take ‘Duchess’, but as a favour, having once worked in fiction publishing, she agreed to read the book for me and offer an honest opinion.  Knowing now how busy agents are – that was some favour.  A couple of weeks later, Jane and I spoke on the phone.  She told me that she liked the book a lot, and she suggested two fiction agents whom she thought might be interested.  She was happy for me to drop her name, too, which gave me a bit of confidence as I wrote my synopsis and covering letters.  

At this point in the book’s history, I had written my narrative with a series of six different first person narrators (which at the time I thought was very William Faulkner-ish and courageous) but Jane warned me that any agent who took the book on might possibly want me to re-write it in the third person.  I’m afraid I just laughed at this idea – appalled at a) the notion of changing what I thought was completely finished, and b) the prospect of all that work! 

I sent the first three chapters of ‘His Last Duchess’ to the first suggested agent, and within a couple of weeks she emailed me and asked for ‘the balance of the material’.  ‘Hurrah!’  I thought.  The first agent I try, and she likes it!  She’s taken me seriously! Who needs to prepare for the long haul!  Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Eeyore!  A couple more weeks down the line, however, the aforesaid agent politely declined, popped my manuscript into the self-addressed jiffy bag and sent it home.  It’s not quite ready for publication, she said.  

I was devastated!  I had been SO convinced she was going to take it.

 The second suggested agent (who shall remain nameless) told me rather irritably, when I emailed to see how much of the manuscript he wanted to see, that he would like the whole thing as a hard copy, as he hated being kept waiting for manuscripts he had decided he liked.  I of course obliged – at Special Delivery rates which cost me about £25(because I was frightened of its getting lost in the post).  

He returned it unread.  

I know he didn’t read it – because I know how I had packed it and that’s exactly how it came back.  He had read the synopsis – I could see where the paperclip had been moved – but he didn’t bother with a single page of the book itself.  You can imagine my feelings. And some of the comments I made.

 I won’t bore you with the next eleven rejections (yes, eleven!) – a couple were return-of-post, pro-forma letters, but the rest were unbelievably frustrating versions of ‘we really like this but are not in the position to take you on just now’.  One, whose reaction I still really love, said she couldn’t take the book on because she found the central character too disturbing!  Each one took between six weeks and three months to turn around, and each wait involved day after day of soaring and plummeting hopes, and thudding heartbeats as I approached the bloody wheelie bin every day, to see if the dreaded self-addressed jiffy bag had been tucked in behind it.  And eleven times, it had.  I found the whole thing emotionally exhausting and began to hate the sight of my own writing on the front of envelopes.

 Remember, this is pre-Twitter (at least, pre-my-discovery-of-Twitter).  I didn’t know any other writers in the same position and I felt very much alone. 

Each time, though,  I went straight back to my list from the Writers and Artists Yearbook, and moved on to the next agent, taking suggested edit ideas from the previous one into account, tweaking the MS where I agreed with the proffered ideas.  Although I felt miserably flattened by each rejection, I’m SO grateful now that they happened.  The agent I am with (more about her later) is SO right for me and for my writing, that I can’t imagine being with anyone else – I’m really, really glad no-one else took me on before, or I wouldn’t have ended up where I have done.  Does that make sense?

 I was doing an MA in Creative Writing at the time, at the University of Chichester.  The Creative Writing department puts together a Publishing Panel every year, whereby several agents, editors, publishers and other professionals come to talk to the students and offer advice and services.  That year, 2007, I listened carefully to everyone and decided to send my precious manuscript (by now in its fourth draft, but still with the multi-first-person narration) to three of the people there.  One I knew would hate it (he’s a very blokey sort of bloke and mine’s a bit of girly book) but you can’t turn down an opportunity.   Another was an editor from major publisher, and the third was an agent called Will Francis – at that time from the Greene & Heaton Literary Agency (he is now with Janklow & Nesbit).  I spoke to him for some time in the interval and by the end of the conversation, I felt (as they say) ‘quietly confident’.  He was very enthusiastic about the idea for the novel and sounded keen to read it.  And I liked him. 

The blokey bloke turned me down by return of post.  That much I was expecting.  The editor also turned me down, quite quickly, though with lots of encouraging critical comments to go with the rejection.  Will Francis, on the other hand, kept the book for what seemed like ages.  I think it was about three months.   I agonised over what this meant, but I felt rather diffident about chivvying him, because what do you say ?  ‘Could you hurry up please?’ sounds so rude!  Not being a very patient person, though, the waiting was killing me!

 Then something significant happened.  The opening chapter of my second novel was shortlisted for the Impress Prize for Fiction, (http://www.impress-books.co.uk/prize.html) so I thought I might use this as a tactful way to contact Will Francis, without seeming harassing.  I emailed him to explain, and asked him if he might like to have a look at the opening of this second novel as well.  He said he would, and I duly emailed the requisite pages.  Within a week he emailed to say that he ‘would like to talk to me about both books.’  Oh blimey, did my stress levels soar!  This is it, I thought.  An agent wants to take me on!  It seemed a foregone conclusion.  We arranged a time to talk on the phone.  

The phone rang, and my hands were shaking so much I almost dropped the phone when I picked it up.  However, my hopes instantly plummeted when the opening gambit went something like this.  ‘I really, really enjoyed both books, but …’ 

 How devastating can that word ‘BUT’ be? 

What do I have to DO??!! I asked myself silently, near to tears as the conversation went on.  Why, why why, when these people keep telling me how good they think this book is, will they not take the bloody thing on??!!

 Will said that although he very much liked what he had read of both books, they were not really his ‘thing’ and he would like to pass them to one of his colleagues, Judith Murray, whom he thought would be very interested in them.  I thanked him and said I’d look forward to hearing from her.    I was absolutely gutted.   Why on earth would another agent be interested in his cast-off?  “It’s not good enough for me, but you have a shufti at it.”  That’s what it felt like.  But I simply didn’t understand how these things work.  As you will see. 

I emailed Judith straight away, to thank her for taking the time to look at my books, and asked her politely how long she thought she would be, so I could switch my anxiety-monitors off for however long it might be.  About a month, she said, as she had a backlog of reading to do.  Fine, I thought.  That’s good.  I’ll give myself a fortnight off.  Then, when she says no, which I was certain she would do, I won’t send ‘Duchess’ out again.  I’ll wait until I’ve finished the second book, and then send them out as a pair.  Making that decision felt positive – it helped me not to feel too despondent.

 I was teaching the following day, and I came home at tea-time, picked up the phone and listened to my messages.  One boring piece of rubbish, and then … one from Judith Murray.  ‘I just needed to let you know that I haven’t finished it yet, but I can’t put it down.  I’m really loving it, and I’d like you to come up and discuss it with me.’  I’m not sure why she had started reading it before the rest of her backlog, but – well, you can imagine how I felt.

 The meeting we had went on for nearly three hours.  I liked Judith immediately, and knew straightaway that she really understood my book.  She is editorially very astute and was full of the sort of praise I could hardly believe was being aimed at my story.   Despite all the positive feedback, however, she was adamant about one thing – the six first-person narrators had to go!  She loved the story, she loved my writing, but the structure wasn’t working, she said, and wouldn’t sell in its present form.  I felt terrified, but equally certain that she was right.  (As had been that first non-fiction agent, of course, whose advice I had so summarily dismissed!) 

So I left that meeting, almost bursting with excitement, with both a literary agent and an enormous task.  I could hardly believe it.  I had an agent!  She had agreed to take me on, despite the need for a re-write.  And so, buoyed up by her trust in me, I re-wrote the whole of my book.  From page one to the end.  All four hundred and sixteen pages of it.  It was really, really scary doing that.  But it was the best thing that could possibly have happened to my story. 

 I’ll tell you the story of how Judith got ‘His Last Duchess’ into print another time.  It’s another long story. 

Agents will tell you that a story that simply has to be read, will be read.  A book that has to be published, will be published.  Their job is to help those books rise like cream to the top of the pile.  For the writer, it’s a question of maintaining a belief in your work through the inevitable rejections, and holding out for the agent and the publisher who will do best for you and your writing.  It wasn’t until I saw just how much energy and enthusiasm Judith has put into championing my book that I realised why it simply isn’t enough for someone just to ‘see the potential’ in a submitted novel.  They have to love it.  Really love it, the way you do yourself, and unless they do, they simply can’t get it out there for you.  Will Francis, for instance, saw and understood the book’s potential, but he didn’t love it and therefore he knew that he wasn’t the right agent for it.  Judith, on the other hand, did and she was.  It’s seriously worth waiting until you find the right person.  But, that might take time, and, as my professor friend said right at the outset – you’ll need to pack a bloody big bag and prepare for the long haul.