How NOT to Approach an Agent

by Lupe Fernandez

At the 2010 SCBWI Summer Conference, Ginger Clark, literary agent for Curtis Brown LTD, spoke at a breakout session entitled "How to Approach Agents Without Scaring Them Off." This blogger enjoyed the session. I am grateful for Ms. Clark's time. Here are some tips:

• Don't follow an agent into the bathroom.
• Don't follow an agent into the pool.
• Don't follow an agent to the gym, especially if the agent is working out with another agent, and pitch your project.
• If an agent is at a bar and engaged in conversation with another person, do not approach the agent and pitch your project.

Ms. Clark also recounted other horror stories:

After a long conference, an editor returned to her hotel room, entered her bedroom and found on her pillow - a query letter. Can you say creepy?

An agent entered a bathroom stall and commenced her business. To her horror, someone slid a manuscript under the stall door.

A surgeon visited a patient being prepped for an operation. Upon learning the the patient was a literary agent, the surgeon asked if he could pitch his book to her. The agent replied, "you're the one with the scalpel, you can do whatever you want."

After recounting these episodes, Ms. Clark addressed the assembled group and said, "I'm sure none of you would do that."

Not me, says I.

Well...almost. In the interests of disclosure, this blogger did follow a certain publisher into the Mens' Room at the conference. However, I knew the publisher from a previous function and, as he is a busy fellow, I retreated post-haste from the urological premises upon seeing the publisher approach a designated respository area.

Wisdom on Revision

by Hilde Garcia

As the year begins, I reflect on notes I took at conferences and seminars. Last summer, I attended the SCBWI National Conference in LA

Each Key Note Speaker titled their speech and then proceeded to share amazing words of wisdom, tips and techniques. It was inspiring to hear of their successes as well as of their insecurities.

Karen Cushman, author of Catherine Called Birdy and The Loud Silence of Francine Green, among others, offered these nuggets on writing in general. Each point listed below, she illustrated with examples of how she would achieve each it.

(Parenthetical information, if offered by me, is for clarification purposes.)

Enjoy!


Karen Cushman
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

Pay no attention to the rules, once you know them.

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Show Up
-Demark your day and your writing. (She meant actually find a time and place to sit and write).
-Slow down, let ideas grow
-Give power to thoughts
-Write rather than fantasize

(Showing up not just physical but spiritually, ready to let the ideas find their way on to the paper).

2. Pay Attention
-Look and listen- stuff yourself with senses and words (Think about the following themes).
-Love versus Hate
-Excites versus Infuriates
-Stories come from paying attention, so you’ll be ready for your muse (when it shows up).

3. Tell the Truth
-I love research. It gives me a place to stand with facts. (Note, her novels are historical fiction).
-I use 10% of what I find, but the other 90% gives my story strength.
-There’s an emotional connection in the truth.
-So tunnel below the obvious and come back to your words.
-Things that we are morally certain of, like kindness, and evil, love and loneliness, honor and expediency, peace and war, are things I write about because I need a book to be hopeful.

Publications are only one of the reasons to write. We write because we are writers.

4. Write What You Can
-With Passion!
-Do it your way.
-Blaze your trail.
-Trust yourself and then you will write.
-Words are sacred… if you get the right ones in the right order, you will then have the responsibility of that dream.

(I think she meant if you write a powerful story that moves your audience, you then have a responsibility to those words and to that story and that’s a sacred feeling).

Karen Cushman was vibrant and poised, her advice attainable. I was inspired. I wish the same for you.