Editors and Agents are People
When I was a teenager and still a little bit as a young adult, if I thought a boy was cute, I could not talk to him. At a dance, I might find enough courage to ask the cute boy to dance, but I could not talk to him. I was too much of a fan girl.
In fact, the only reason my cute husband and I started dating was because of the way I met him. He was a blind date. I was in my early 20’s and I had just had a different blind date where the guy treated me like I was a charity date. So when I went out with my future husband, I was already geared up to be treated like a charity date. In short, I didn’t get my hopes up and I figured he was just doing his roommate, my brother, a favor. The funny thing was that he was impressed with me because I wasn’t trying to impress him. He was smitten. It took me longer to see how I felt about him, but if I had met him any other way, I would have thought he was cute right away and not been able to carry on a conversation with him.
It has been the same with me and editors and agents. Can you say social anxiety? What do you say to them? You are suppose to pitch them ideas for stories and get to know them and help them like you so they will want to represent you or hire you or buy your project. It is just SO MUCH PRESSURE. I hate sales. Most conferences don’t help because they separate the agents, editors, published authors who are faculty from the unwashed unpublished masses. This really doesn’t help the social anxiety, imposter syndrome, fan girl inside of me.
Lately, I’ve been praying that the right person would see my work.
I’ve been putting my work out there in the form of exhibits at libraries, art portfolios, writers groups, and paid critiques from professionals. This last June I went to the NJ SCBWI conference.
After I registered and figured out my schedule, I felt the wave of social anxiety overcome me. NJ is close enough to CT that some of the people looked familiar but I didn’t know them enough to remember their names. “Natural and normal” I kept telling myself. “Just choose a spot to join people that feels comfortable.” I was drawn to a circle of chairs and I asked if I could join them. Of course they said yes. This is kid lit after all.
As I sat down, I realized I was sitting across from someone I recognized AND I knew her name. Can you say “The Hand of God in my life”? As I continued to sit there, another woman joined us and the woman across from me introduced me and we fell into natural and normal conversation. The fact that she was an agent that I had overheard another author fan girl-ing over while I waited in line didn’t phase me. My friend had introduced me. And in a very natural and normal way, we ended up talking about how we both work from home and how that impacts our children and before I knew it, we were walking in together to the opening meeting. She asked me what I was working on and in the middle of telling her, I realized I was suppose to have an elevator pitch. I probably botched it up pretty good. She was kind. I asked her about her agency and how many authors she represents. And I found that I liked her as a person. As I left to go to my round table, I told her it was nice to meet her. And it was. I hope I’ll have something that I feel she would like to see of my work. But even if she doesn’t want to represent me ever, she was nice and kind.
And that is the way it is suppose to work. Somehow, I missed that message. I’ve been trying say the right thing and I keep getting in my own way. Agents and editors are just people. My new goal with any conversation with an agent or editor is to get to know them on a human level to see if I like them. Because if I like them as a person and they like me as a person, I’ll like working with them.