FAQ You

Due to the influx of emails asking the same writerly questions, (not to mention the question and answer periods during my live readings when the same questions are asked), I've decided it's high time to do a post with Frequently Asked Questions, so that I can easily refer askees to it in the future. This FAQ isn't here to make you feel like you are completely typical if you've emailed or asked me one of these questions, but I suffer from a particular feeling when I start to believe that I'm trapped in repetitive cycles, or that the world is set upon a looping track and progress is futile. So I just can't keep answering these things over and over. It's not nausea I experience exactly, but nausea is the sensation that it's closest to. The feeling is just more like a brief hollowing out of the skull, where I begin to freak out that my head is a passive carrier for the unimaginative habits of time. If this doesn't make sense, that's fine. There can always be a FAQ Part Two, if I get enough emails asking me to further explain the unimaginative habits of time.

Question 1:
How did you get an agent?

I blind-queried. I don't feel like explaining what a query is. Go do a search for it.

Question 2:
How did you decide who to query?

I bought these two books at Barnes and Noble: The 2001 Guide to Literary Agents (Writer's Digest Books) and The 13th Edition Writer's Guide To Book Editors, Publishers, & Literary Agents by Jeff Herman. You don't have to be anal about securing these particular editions of the books because I know there are new, more recent editions published.

The 2001 Guide was my main source of information, since it has all the really good agents, tells you who those agents represent, and lets you know how those agents prefer you to contact them. The most important thing to me was being able to see who the agents already had as clients, since that's really the only way to gauge their possible interest in your own stuff. When I saw my agent had Don Delillo, I was like, "Perfect. I can be assured that she's already into depressive characters."

Jeff Herman's book is amusing because he gives agents little questionnaires that are supposed to allow the reader to get to know him/her better. I used to do the same thing in middle school, handing out computer-printed questionnaires with happy-face sun clip-art to my friends with probing questions such as, "What do you like most about Andrea?" This book is entertaining if you want to know that agent Rebecca Kurson of Liza Dawson Associates watches The Sopranos because "I live in Jersey-- of course," and other things of that nature, but my agency declined inclusion in the book, so I never was able to use any TV proclivities to my advantage.

Question 3:
What was your query letter like?

Well, here's the actual document: (Before I paste it, I just looked at the letter for the first time in ages and saw that I forgot to underline the title of my own book. So there you go. Proofreading isn't all it's cracked up to be.)

September 2, 2002

Agent
Agency
Address
City, State, Zip

Dear Ms. Connolly:

In high school the boys had Holden Caulfield, Huck Finn, Dorian Gray, Stephen Dedalus, and Jay Gatsby. They were all troubled and romantic, the stuff that legends are made of.

The girls scoured through Jane Eyre, the only book on the curriculum with a female protagonist. We kept waiting for someone to throw the woman in the attic a bone.

I have completed my first novel, Like the Red Panda. It is narrated from the first-person viewpoint of Stella Parrish, a Princeton-bound senior who, two weeks before graduating, decides she will kill herself in fourteen days. The narrative follows her as she unexpectedly befriends the silent best friend of the most popular girl at school and grows closer to her indifferent grandfather, even as he plans his own death. This book is a response to the notion that psychological complexity is a necessity for the classic male coming-of-age novel, while girls are left to swim around in the broader issues of society and marriage. Believe it or not, Panda is funny too.

I am twenty-two and a graduate of Brown University, where I studied under the Advanced Fiction Program.

Enclosed is an SASE for your reply. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Andrea Seigel

Question 4:
How many agencies did you query?

I sent out somewhere in between 20-30 of these queries. About half of these people wrote back and asked me to send the first 50 pages or 3 chapters or whatever. About eighty percent of the remaining people sent back letters saying that they weren't looking for new clients or that my material didn't sound like something they'd be into. And then there were the remaining handful of agencies who took anywhere from 9 months to 1 1/2 years to finally send me form letters saying, "No, we can't sell this." By then the book had already been purchased by Harcourt, and I'd send them emails saying, "You're stupid," except nicer.

And seriously, I know this this should be common sense, but don't forget to include your self-addressed-stamped-envelopes.

Question 5:
Who's your agent?

Cressida Connolly and Lois Wallace of The Wallace Literary Agency. You can query them at:
177 E. 70th Street
New York, NY 10021

(UPDATE: FEBRUARY, 2005:  I am now represented by Douglas Stewart at Sterling Lord Literistic for all rights.  You can address business questions to him.)

But you cannot say something misleading like, "Andrea Seigel recommended me to you," because then I will be asked who you are, and I will say you are a moron and a very bad writer, and then you will go into the trash.

Question 5:
Can I send you excerpts of my own work, with the hopes that you'll pass it onto your agent?

You can send me one page. One page. My editor decides whether she's going to buy a book based on the first sentence, so I think I'm being generous. And no, I'm not reading anything of yours if you haven't read my book and have admitted this to me in your email (baaaaad move, Jeffrey T.)

Question 6:
Do you mail out autographed pictures of yourself?

No, but I've thought about doing panties.

Comments

[basquette]

it never gets boring, andrea, and this one's particularly entertaining and well-written. congrats on your success, thank you for sharing your experience, and i hope you don't come to regret that one-page thing...

[Mickey]

Just read this post which was referenced over at another blog I happend to be reading.

I'm a sophomore English major, and well, I'd love to be a novelist. Just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to write a novel you were happy with and proud enough of to actually send out to agents? Was Panda your first one?

I'm twenty and starting to feel like I'm behind.

Thanks.