by James L. Rubart, @jameslrubart
Conference season is now in full swing so I thought I’d run a column I wrote a few years ago about how to get your dream editor or agent—just in case you missed it. Enjoy:
- Pitch editors and agents in the bathroom if possible. It’s where they’re most vulnerable, thus most open to suggestions.
- If you get a chance to sit next to an editor or agent at a meal, scoot your chair so close they’ll feel like they’re in the middle of a CAT scan. They like feeling close to writers.
- If you have a 15 minute appointment with an editor or agent, make sure you talk for at least 14 of the 15 minutes.
- Be sure to ask editors and agents inane questions that could easily be answered with a little research on the internet. They love being asked these questions over and over again.
- When it’s your turn to speak at a round table or meal where there are other aspiring writers, don’t talk in short sound bites. Talk in long run on sentences—without taking a breath if possible. This proves to an editor or agent you have enough words to write a full length novel.
- Before and after your appointment, lurk in your favorite editor or agent’s peripheral vision so they know you’re serious about working with them. Editors and agents don’t think of this as stalking, they think of it as persistence.
- When they ask for your proposal (and they will if you use the above techniques) hand them one that’s a little beat up with two or three strategically placed coffee stains. This shows you’re a true artist.
- Whenever you say their name, pronounce it wrong. This will provide loads of laughs in the years to come when you reminisce about your first meeting.
Have I seen all of these things done at conferences? Yes. Have they killed any shot with an editor or agent? Yes.
Should you do these things or something like them? Uh, no. Unless of course you want to show up in a future column someday.
How Do You Stand Up for Yourself When It Means Losing Everything?
Allison Moore is making it. Barely. The Seattle architecture firm she started with her best friend is struggling, but at least they’re free from the games played by the corporate world. She’s gotten over her divorce. And while her dad’s recent passing is tough, their relationship had never been easy.
Then the bomb drops. Her dad was living a secret life and left her mom in massive debt.
As Allison scrambles to help her mom find a way out, she’s given a journal, anonymously, during a visit to her favorite coffee shop. The pressure to rescue her mom mounts, and Allison pours her fears and heartache into the journal.
But then the unexplainable happens. The words in the journal, her words, begin to disappear. And new ones fill the empty spaces—words that force her to look at everything she knows about herself in a new light.
Ignoring those words could cost her everything . . . but so could embracing them.
James L. Rubart is 28 years old, but lives trapped inside an older man’s body. He thinks he’s still young enough to water ski like a madman and dirt bike with his two grown sons. He’s the best-selling, Christy BOOK of the YEAR, CAROL, INSPY, and RT Book Reviews award winning author of ten novels and loves to send readers on journeys they’ll remember months after they finish one of his stories. He’s also a branding expert, audiobook narrator, co-host of the Novel Marketing podcast, and co-founder with his son, Taylor, of the Rubart Writing Academy. He lives with his amazing wife on a small lake in Washington state.