Blogger: Wendy Lawton
Remember Alfred E. Neumann, anyone? His favorite line was, “What? Me worry?”
One of my favorite scripture passages is from Philippians 4:6– Be anxious about nothing. . ..” I confess that I fail at this worry-free existence way too often.
So what causes your agent to worry? Let me count the ways:
- Your agent worries when you’re too quiet with a deadline approaching. If you have read our blog for long, you know how crucial deadlines are.
- Your agent worries when you and your publisher forget to keep him in the loop. Discussions about cover issues, scheduling, money, future projects—almost anything you can think of, should include your agent.
- Your agent worries when you have a new book coming out, but you’re not out there stirring the pot. It’s hard to write and market at the same time, but it’s got to be done. No one can get the excitement going about a new book better than the writer. Keep your agent in the loop so she can talk it up as well.
- Your agent worries when you’re more focused on creating concepts for new books than getting the ones done you’ve proposed. We love creative people, but solid follow-through is what builds careers.
- Your agent worries when you seem to be more focused on writing fast to reach the deadline and/or the payday than in creating a book of substance. The need for money is the bane of art. Oh for the days of good old-fashioned patrons of the arts. Writing for the paycheck is the fastest way to kill a career. Each book needs to be better than the last, if we’re to build over time.
- Your agent worries when the ideas seem to be coming scattershot—almost as if you’re trying to hit the market instead of writing out of your passion. The market is a moving target. If you write the book you can’t stop thinking about, chances are it will resonate with readers.
- Your agent worries when you’re spending more time social networking with other writers than with your readers. Your fellow writers are friends. Yes, you need to play with friends, but your readers are your congregation. Take care of them. Spend time with them.
- Your agent worries about the books you published before you came to her. When they went out of print, did someone request a letter of reversion? (It generally doesn’t happen automatically.) Did you carefully file that letter?
I could go on and on. I’ve barely scratched the surface. So what worries you? And does anyone remember Alfred E. Neumann?
I remember Alfred E Neumann, Wendy.
*I try not to worry, but I do try to anticipate problems. There is a difference. The one is spinning your wheels and getting into a dither without developing a plan. The other is looking forward to spot the potholes and planning how you can steer around them.
*Excessive worry is one of the worst witnesses if we say we trust God. It shows that our words don’t reflect our reality. People are watching…
So true, Carol.
My weak point: “you’re more focused on creating concepts for new books than getting the ones done you’ve proposed.” Yep, I’d rather start something new than the final clean-up of the old. I saw that in myself decades ago, and I still have to deliver my own pep talk to get that last 10% of the project finished. My whiny kid vs stern mom personas [sigh].
Shirlee, I’ve always found that the last 10% of a project takes 30% of the time and some of the least fun work. I have that same problem of wanting to start something new. I just let myself do it, but I make myself split the time between old and new.
*I always have the next novel in process while I’m finishing the current one. That’s actually very helpful if you’re writing a series. I’ve found events in the second have made me go back and edit the first.
I understand, Shirlee. I always had the same problem. Get so excited at the concept and then. . . the work of making it happen.
Worry and migraine are things I don’t experience. I cause them instead.
I’d forgotten all about the beloved Alfred E. Neumann. What a hoot!
Are worry and anxiety synonymous? They certainly are related. I’d say I don’t tend to “worry” but there are times I can feel anxiety building within. It runs down the inside of my upper arms, and up my neck. When that happens, I am reminded that I’ve forgotten how to say, “No.” My load is getting too heavy, and I’ve begun focusing on the wrong things. Thus, it is time to offload some tasks. I recently did this (grieved me horribly to do so) by ending the small-group Bible study that was meeting each week in our home.
That’s one of the reasons I like things with a pre-planned end date. If the group can’t bear to end, it can be renegotiated but open-ended usually means an end fraught with angst.
A common theme I hear in your post is the necessity of communication between writer and agent. I know writers worry when they don’t hear from their agents. It’s interesting to learn when agents worry when they don’t hear from their writers.
*What causes me to worry is when I have trouble picturing the story I’m writing/preparing to write. I’m learning I need to trust God to give it to me. And sometimes, He does this after I begin writing.
*There are other things I worry about that are fairly minor, but I am often reminding myself about Phil 4:6-7. One of my favorite passages. And add to that Philippians 4:8, and that helps my mind know where it should focus.
Truth be told, I don’t spend a lot of time worrying. I usually just try to communicate, but worry seemed a good way to tie all these issues together. 🙂
I tend to just stare at the screen and worry that my words will be terrible before I’ve even typed them. That’s why I give myself a stiff deadline when writing a rough draft and try to do it in a month or two. If I don’t just type and allow myself a bad rough draft, I won’t get any draft at all!
Yes, Kristen … I so understand that. We have to write it, and then I’ve always heard that there is magic in the re-writes. I wouldn’t call it magic … I’d call it the Lord helping us do the thing … helping us use the brain He’s given us …. But also, sometimes, I look at things that “worked out” that I hadn’t even planned, that I’m not smart enough to plan … and just know it’s a God-thing.
Hardest thing for a writer to do is allow oneself to write dreck for a first draft. Once you’ve got it down you have the ingredients to create something wonderful.
Worry is really the devil’s most effective tool to poison the moment, and it does so through illusions of control; implying its existence when it’s absent, and implying its absence when it rests in our hands.
* It irritates those around me no end that I don’t worry about my health, and about what tomorrow will bring. I can’t stop the deterioration or the pain, but I can do things – keeping active when it hurts and forcing myself to eat when I don’t want food – to slow the downward arc.
* It’s also a mental game; I could accomplish THIS yesterday, and the day before that,so it stands to reason that I can do it today. There will come a day when my strength will have changed that paradigm, and I’ll fall short, but it won’t be for lack of effort. But that day is not yet, and I may get hit by a meteor in the meantime, so it’s not worth worrying about.
* Paul addressed this quite well in Ephesians 6:13 – Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
Andrew, your worldview is just awesome. I appreciate it so much.
Damon, you just made a dark and difficult day much, much brighter. Thank you for this.
Much wisdom, Andrew.
I like to think I’m not a worrier. Then again, I also don’t think I’m delusional.
Yes, certain things stress me out, but I can’t let worry and fear be what fuels me. I’ve been way too far down that road and it did not lead to a good place.
I tell people, when they ask how my book is doing, “I trust God, and my agent, the rest is complicated.” My very close friends know that there’s a mountain more to it than that, they also know that if something was happening, I’d tell them whatever I was allowed to tell them.
I should tell people that the book publishing business is quite similar to being a pregnant elephant, only, the baby is overdue, and hot and humid, and you’d better find that stash of chocolate soon!
Seriously, though, in the grand scheme of things? When you have a loved one in law enforcement, everything else pales in comparison.
Every. Single. Thing.
I hope that last paragraph didn’t come across as diminishing anyone else’s worries.
And yeah…I’m aware that I’m worrying about how I came across….hmmm…interesting truth, I worry what people think of me.
A saying I heard years ago and love:
When I was 20, I worried about what people thought of me.
When I was 40, I no longer cared about what people thought about me.
When I was 60, I knew they weren’t thinking about me at all.
>> I’m aware that I’m worrying about how I came across
I don’t know if you intended it to, but that line his me as kind of funny. 😉
Ooo, Carol, love that!
I don’t know if this will help, but it seems to me that we tend to worry about the answers to questions we shouldn’t be asking.
* For example, “Will an agent ever choose me for representation?” is essentially meaningless, because it’s too broad, and puts some actions over which we DO have control under the aegis of a larger question that implies lack of control.
* The ‘big question’ that causes worry can be broken down into smaller ones, the answers to which are in our purview:
1) Did I write the best book possible?
2) Is the book’s style, substance and genre a good fit for the current market? Does it fit within the desired agent’s ‘stable’?
3) Did my crit group like the book, and are they representative of the target audience?
4) Do I have a compelling and reliable social media presence? In other words, will readers be able to find me, and will they like what they find?
5) Did I write a good proposal, with relevant comparisons to other, similar titles and a sound and feasible marketing plan?
6) Does my social media presence make me seem like the kind of person with whom an agent would like to work? They do check, after all!
* You can’t force an agent’s offer of representation, but if you do everything possible, you’ve greatly shortened your odds, and it leaves open only the questions you, the writer, can never address, those of an agent’s personal taste and workload.
Wise list, dear Andrew.
Andrew,
Thanks for the reminder to keep our concern and thoughts to what we can do something about.
I love this insight into the worries that plague agents–especially as they contain nuggets of wisdom for us writers! I do struggle with that idea of writing to hit the mark or “for the money” instead of out of passion. To a degree, it seems writers who want to make a living from writing do have to produce what is going to sell in the market, sometimes sacrificing a bit of passion or artistic integrity. I hate saying that, but the modern reality seems to say it is so. But I’d love to have that proven wrong!
It’s a complicated choice, Jerusha. Some people write what they are passionate about and it will never sell. I just hope that my clients are passionate about books that will sell. 🙂
“The need for money is the bane of art. Oh for the days of good old-fashioned patrons of the arts. Writing for the paycheck is the fastest way to kill a career.”
Wow. Just wow. I’d better not say anything more.
I know. We could all do with a rich patron or two.
O.P.M. is what kills creativity and accomplishment. You can have it. I want no part of it.
There’s so much we could worry about. So thankful that we can cast it all onto the One who is control of all our days and all our concerns and will lend us all we need to do what truly needs to be done (and He knows that too, we don’t have to have it all sorted). Good to know the right things to do, sure, and not neglect them entirely, but to worry about those I simply can’t accomplish? Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but gets you nowhere. I heard that recently. Whenever I find myself getting all wound up with worry, mentally rocking myself to nowhere (several times a day on average), I eventually get reminded (usually by the devotional Jesus Calling) that I don’t need to worry, just do what I can and trust God.
Beautiful words, Lori. Thank you for blessing us with a good reason not to “worry like a rocking chair.”
Love that, Lori.
That is great, Lori. And it’s not a pleasant vision of a person rocking with joy … it’s a vision of someone shrinking from stomach pain.
Thank you for this revealing list, Wendy. It reveals a wise and caring agent’s heart.
I worry I’m wasting my time writing; however, when I remember how many life lessons I’m learning along this writerly way, I keep typing because I’m enjoying the journey.
Today, I’ve written down these words of yours: If you write the book you can’t stop thinking about, chances are it will resonate with readers.
Blessings ~ Wendy Mac
In God’s economy it’s the obedience to what he’s called you to do. The outcome is not up to us.
I love that, Wendy Mac. I wouldn’t know you if I wasn’t heading down this writerly way. And I’m so thankful for you.
I guess I feel concerned at times that I’ll never be good enough and that I’ve wasted my time and everyone else’s time, money, etc.
And yet, Shelli, your girls have seen you faithfully working at what you love, writing has made you more aware of settings and characters in real life and writing has commented you to kindred spirits who love you.
Shelli, I’m in agreement with Wendy; your faithfulness to the craft has taught your girls not to give up on something that brings joy to oneself and others. Your Instagram, your Facebook, and your blog bring God’s joy to our tables. Our world is famished for real joy.
Thank you, Wendy Mac 🙂