Beginning The Quest For a Literary Agent

I must admit, I'm enjoying the query process. I'm researching agents, chatting with interesting people, learning all about the infamous query letter. Writing a query letter takes almost as much sweat as writing a 97,000 word ms. It's scary. It's also necessary to finding a literary agent.

I'm not going to detail query letter writing here. My friend Denise Tompkins did a great job of that already, so be sure and check out her post on the topic here. Remember that query letter writing is not an exact science. Some of the oddest (to me) query letters have been posted on the net as success stories, and some of the ones I thought were fantastic don't seem to generate results. Read all you can about writing a query letter and then do you.

In any case, I've written my query letter and tweaked and polished for about three weeks. I'm not sure that's enough. I've tried to think like a literary agent <snicker>, put my inexperienced self in the shoes of a literary agent, and still am not sure it's where it should be. Nevertheless, I've started sending out those query letters.

One piece of the agent puzzle some sites and books forget to mention is reading directions. A lot of agents have web sites. Why is it then, that people fail to follow directions, despite the fact that it will get them rejected? Jennifer Jackson is one literary agent who mentions rejections on the basis of failure to follow directions. Think about that. If you cannot follow basic directions, what agent will ever want to work with you?

So far, I've been told my baby is ugly three times. Well, not really. No agent has told me my ms is hairy or warty. It just feels that way. Details to follow.