THE ONE WITH THE (ALMOST) LITERARY DARLING
Category: Adult literary fiction
I was fresh out of college when I finished my first literary novel for adults. Finding an agent was a long, slow process, even though—in retrospect—I only queried about thirty people; I just did it really slowly, frequently falling into despair. Finally, though, a big agent at a major agency was interested in my book. But she didn’t sign me right away; instead, I worked on exclusive revisions for her for a year and then she signed me. By this point, about two years out of college, I felt like I’d gone through so much stress and anxiety that I was relieved to have someone else taking care of everything, even though I was still nervous.
From the beginning, my agent seemed convinced that this was going to be a Big Book and that I was destined for literary fame and fortune—which honestly seemed and still seems a bit strange, as the novel, while containing some plot, was nonetheless a meandering, introspective literary novel with a deliberately passive narrator. Still, she “comped” it in her pitch to other literary novels that had made decent splashes and spun me breathy tales about six or seven-figure advances. It went out late in the publishing season—near summertime—to twenty-five Big 5 editors.
A week into the submission process, my agent wrote to tell me that she was BAFFLED by the lack of news. She simply didn’t understand why everyone was silent! My stomach clenched on receiving that email and never unclenched. Over the next month, half of the editors passed. Many of them were very complimentary—I wrote beautifully, they liked the style—but now that I’ve seen other sub stories on this site, I recognize that none of them were close passes. There were no R&R requests, no calls about going to acquisitions. At most, one or two editors said I was “talented” and that they’d happily see another book by me in the future.
I started asking my agent whether we should add in any medium-sized presses, but she said no. She said there was very little money in them and that, if this didn’t work, I should probably revise the novel substantially and we’d go out again to the Big 5. So, we waited. Almost all of the editors passed within two months—again, nicely or neutrally, but without any indication that they’d really considered buying it. I had asked my agent to forward me the passes, which she did, and a lot of them painfully told her that they’d “wanted to love” my book so much because they liked her so much, BUT… finally, after about two months, when I could tell that my agent had lost all faith in the submission, I asked her to set a deadline for the remaining handful of editors. By the three-month deadline, everyone had passed.
Next, my agent told me it was time to revise. The rejections we’d received mostly cited one of three reasons for passing: either they couldn’t quite tell if it was YA or adult (I’d begun the novel when I was eighteen, so this made sense), or they couldn’t quite tell if it had thriller appeal or not (it did not), or they thought the narrator was too passive (interestingly, all of this was shortly before Sally Rooney’s CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS took the world by storm and started a huge trend of passive female narrators). In any case, I set about working on a revision that would address the first and third problems: the book would be solidly adult and the narrator would be less passive. And—because I’m a slow, anxious person and especially writer—these revisions took me another year. I occasionally checked in with my agent, who told me not to hurry.
When I finally sent the revision to my agent, she confirmed receipt and said how thrilled she was to have this in her hands! Two months passed and my anxiety mounted; I knew how quickly she liked everything to move and this felt like a long time. I was right to worry because, in the end, I received a breakup email from her: she simply no longer believed in my novel, and cited a reason that had nothing to do with any of the revisions—that had been present in the novel from the very beginning and that none of the editors had complained about!—as something that intrinsically didn’t work for her. It was over.
Now that my novel had been seen by so many editors, I knew that it would be impossible to find another agent: my book was ruined, like a girl in a nineteenth-century novel who’s allowed herself to stay overnight with a man without getting married. So, I shelved the book, fell into a depression, picked myself up from the depression—anyone who's read this far will guess that this took me a fair bit of time—and finally set about writing another novel.
Today, that second novel—another meandering literary book!—is out on submission with a new agent. It’s been almost ten years since I finished the initial version of my first novel, which is less publishing’s fault than my own, of course. This time around, I found an agent much faster (in about three months), even though I queried more people (around fifty). I’ve been trying to overthink things less this time and not let one book swallow a decade of my life, even though I’ll never be someone who can write a book in a year.
My new agent, so far, seems great: she’s young and enthusiastic but doesn’t expect a huge advance from this quiet novel. In fact, we went out to the Big 5 publishers a month ago, and—since we’ve only had a few passes so far and no interest—she added in the medium-sized presses and “indies” a week ago. I’m trying not to let myself see “the writing on the wall” yet, even though I’ve been conditioned to think that sales come quickly or not at all (which is the main reason I decided to write this story up, as other writers’ stories were so eye-opening for me).
Wish me luck, everyone!
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The stories on this blog are posted anonymously so that authors can speak candidly about their experience. If you have a sub story you’d like to share, drop me an email at: katedylanbooks@gmail.com
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