I’m Querying My New Novel! (Here’s How That Works)

Quick Note: If you’re a literary agent who’s stumbled across my blog, this might be a good place to start reading ;-)

I’ve had this one in the works for a LONG time—MFA Thesis Novel is my satirical novel inspired by my experiences in grad school at the University of Nebraska.  It’s about a twentysomething writer from the Northeast named Flip (who’s totally not based on me at all, btw) who leaves his mind-numbing office job to start an MFA in creative writing program in an unnamed midwestern state.  The problem, though, is that Flip’s a literature nerd who’s stuck in the past—his heroes are Joseph Heller, John Updike, and Kingsley Amis, and he hasn’t read much of anything from the past twenty years—which means his fellow grad students are more than happy to tear his novel to pieces on the first day of workshop.

While Flip’s main goal is to create great writing, the other grad students…think differently.  Everyone around him is obsessed with getting published, beefing up their CVs, and competing for high-paying tenure-track jobs as professors in academia—except that those professor jobs are disappearing fast.  That’s the novel’s main question: whether it’s more important to create great art, or to have a high-paying job.

I had a lot of fun writing the other grad student characters, and they’re a ridiculous bunch.  One of them starts a new novel every other week, and his latest idea is ripped off from the FX show Nip/Tuck.  Another keeps writing the same opening paragraph over and over, another can’t even start a novel but is already querying agents, and another’s actually a secret racist.

Flip’s main writing rival, however, is Kendall, a pretentious know-it-all who just won a fancy short story contest and won’t even make eye contact with Flip in the hallway.  To make matters more complicated, Flip has a hopeless crush on Kendall’s girlfriend, an aspiring poet who’s questioning whether academia’s really for her.  Can Flip show Kendall and everyone else that good writing’s about more than just landing a job, and in the process turn fiction into reality by stealing his rival’s girlfriend?

Another cool thing about the novel is that it switches between the story itself and snippets of the novels the characters are writing (think of Watchmen, where there are comics and news articles between the sections), so readers can see the ridiculous storylines for themselves.  Flip’s novel within the novel is also a kind of metafiction (fiction about fiction) in that it seems to be emulating his own experiences…leaving readers wondering about the ways MFA Thesis Novel mirrors my own experiences too.

MFA Thesis Novel is about an academic system that’s badly broken, and the grad students struggling within it while living off very small stipends.  It’s also about where great writing comes from, and what kind of stories really move people, whether they’re Pride and Prejudice, The Shawshank Redemption, or Stranger Things.  Finally, it’s also about what it really means to be a writer—and whether that life involves giving up material benefits in what Salman Rushdie called a Faustian bargain in reverse.

 

Wow, I’m Hooked! So What’s the Next Step?

Now that I’m done with the revision process I have to try getting the novel published—which means querying literary agents.

Literary agents have the pretty cool (but super-busy and difficult) job of pitching novels to editors and publishers so they can actually, you know, get published.  But first they have to find awesome manuscripts, which means that aspiring writers can email (or sometimes send in the actual mail) query letters explaining what their book is about and what kind of audience is going to be interested.  For example, my potential audience is other writers, literature nerds, people who’ve been through MFA programs, and anyone who’s interested in the relationship between art and money.

If an agent likes your query, they’ll ask to see your full manuscript.  They’ll take a while to read it over (again, because they’re super-busy), and if they like it and want to represent you, they’ll send you a for-serious legal contract to sign.  After that the agent emails all their editor friends and colleagues to tell them how rad your book is so they’ll want to buy it and publish it.  The agent doesn’t get paid until you do, and when that time comes they’ll handle the specifics and take a commission fee (usually 15%).

The advantages to using agents are pretty numerous—the biggest being that agents have personal contacts with editors at the big publishing houses, and those editors are more likely to listen to agents they know and trust than to some scraggly writer who dashes in off the street.

That’s the way the process works for the biggest publishers, anyway—a lot of smaller presses still read submissions sent by actual authors and will deal with you without an agent.  For example, when I got my chapbook, Eikaiwa Bums, published, I emailed Blue Cubicle Press directly and the editor responded with an acceptance letter and contract.  (You can read about how that process worked here.)

I mostly learned about this process of agents and editors when I was in grad school, but if you’re an aspiring writer looking to get a book published there’s TONS of info online about how to find agents and write query emails, so I recommend just jumping on Google and reading everything you can.

 

That Sounds Easy Enough…But How Do You Find Agents to Query?

Again, Google’s pretty helpful here.  There’s a few major websites like this one and this one that list agents who are looking for new authors, and you can search by genre (nonfiction, memoir, paranormal romance where one of the characters is trapped in another dimension, etc.).  I like to start with the search engines and then branch out—usually they lead me to an agency with multiple agents, which then gives me more to sort through.

Another good tactic is to find books that you like (or books that are similar to yours) and find out which agents represented them, which should provide some more leads.  A good place to find this info is in the book’s Acknowledgements—and if no one there’s specifically referenced as an agent, Googling a few of the names might help you solve the mystery.

Most agents list in their profiles what kind of books they’re looking for, what books they’ve represented already, and varying amounts of specifics (“I’m looking for a new-age sci-fi political thriller with strong female characters, plenty of dogs, and it would be best if it took place on a space station in which a plague has already happened before the novel begins”), so you can see if that agent would be a good fit for your book.  (A lot of times, though, you’ll find agents that are kind of a good fit for your book, or that might be a good fit for your book, in which case I usually move them further down the list of ones I want to query.)

Each week, I try to set aside one day for agent searching (scrolling through websites, etc.) and take notes about who I’ve found in a notebook, with insight into what each agent’s interested in.  I let the list breathe for a while, then set aside a different day to send the actual emails.  Then, repeat as necessary.

After that, its just a waiting game.

 

What Do You Think’s Going to Happen???

I’m really hoping an agent will be interested in this novel because it’s topical, fast-paced, and provides some biting social commentary.  The issue of whether MFA programs are effective is one that a lot of other writers are talking about, so I’m hoping MFA Thesis Novel can add to this conversation and maybe even initiate some real change.

I’m also not sure how long this process might take, so this might be my last update on the querying front for a while—though hopefully when you hear back, it’ll be with some good news ;-)

 

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