Updates From the Agent Search

I'm actively seeking an agent -- a nervewracking process punctuated by fits of euphoria and bouts of depression. Several of my friends are applying for business school, and while their applications are much more time-consuming (pages upon pages of essays, packets for recommenders, and of course application fees and GRE scores), they at least have the solace of knowing that by April or May, everything will be decided and they will know where they are going. Looking for an agent offers no such guarantees -- an agent may take a month to get back to you because they're just that backlogged, or they may never get back to you because your email was eaten by their spam filter. It would be nice to know that by X date I will either have an agent or must switch gears, but that won't happen.

Instead, I'm keeping a close eye on my submissions and sending out more letters when agents I've queried have not gotten back to me within their self-set guidelines. I'm actually doing pretty well -- I've had three requests for partials (the first fifty pages)! I rewrote my query letter in January and have sent out six queries since then. Three resulted in partial requests, and the other three have not been responded to yet.

At the very least, it's good to know that I can apparently write a decent query letter. The waiting is nervewracking, but I feel like I'm taking tentative baby steps towards my goal of publication. Seriously, I cannot remember a time in recent memory when I was as blissfully happy as I was the morning that I got my first request for a partial from an agent. Hopefully I'll have more of those feelings and less of the "why doesn't anyone like me?" feelings in the coming weeks.