The Aftermath Of Becoming Agented

It’s been a couple of months since I signed with my agent. Initially there is a lot of hullabaloo. OMG, an offer! Celebration! Scrambling to notify the other agents and wait for responses. Introspection. And not just any old kind, frenzied introspection. Acceptance. MORE celebration!

And then it’s quiet.

Oh, I talked to my agent, of course, but for the most part, writing life goes on. Every day, I must find the time, work up the energy, dig into my creativity, to write a couple thousand words and hope they don’t suck. Writing is a very solitary pursuit, and that didn’t change just because I have an agent.

I still work with my critique partners. I still blog, I still tweet.

I started to feel a certain pressure, though, like I should suddenly have 10 manuscripts all finished and polished and wonderful. It didn’t come from my agent, who has been very sweet the entire time. I just look around at all these authors I admire, and the thing is, they’re on book 25. They are talking about backlist and branding and career and long tail and their editors (plural). In fact, there is often a marked difference in quality between their debuts and their current work, to the point that their debuts are tucked in the back corner, never to be read again except by a few die hard fans.

And I was so proud of my one book, there.

Though I didn’t recognize it at the time, I was something of a “senior” in the current class of writers. I had my finished manuscript with some contest finals and positive feedback from industry professionals. I had my little query list with a decent number of full requests.

Without quite seeing myself that way, I strutted those twitter halls with my letter jacket and picked on gently encouraged the underclassmen. Then I graduated, to much pomp and circumstance, from high school only to find myself dumped, unceremoniously, in college.

This is the fishbowl, this waiting place between contract signage and publishing, and even through the first book. Then there’s the sophomore book to contend with, the one they say will make or break your career. And after that? Well, then there’s all the other books I’m going to write.

So I’m feeling very small right now, eyes wide and wondering. That’s the aftermath.