Okay, so round two of Agent/Author day was a bit more intense. Although, I wonder if it only felt that way to me. It occurred to me as I was waiting my turn to read, that I was far more nervous to read my writing sample than I had been to read my query letter. Whereas this morning I simply found myself nodding along with the agents' corrections and comments of my fellow writers, this afternoon I found myself wincing.
I wonder, does that mean I'm more comfortable with the business end of this (the ins-and-outs of submitting work and defining genres and all that) than I am with the craft end? Possibly. Maybe I need a bit more experience having my word read. Either way, listening to the agents this afternoon was a bit more enlightening than it had been this morning.
In the end, I read my pages two three agents struggling to give me their attention. They were not interested in genre fiction at all, and two of them simply declined to comment. The third made some compliments on my writing ("it's some good commercial writing, for sure...") and said he would ask for more pages<PERK>...if he represented that kind of work<AWWW>.
So I don't know. The end result of my day? I basically spent six hours locked in a room to wait my turn to read 200 words and receive some polite praise. Worth what I spent for this day? I hate to speak ill of the good people at Backspace--the conference is really awesome, I am beyond excited to spend some time in the workshops tomorrow!--but I don't think I'd do agent/author day again.
On the flip side, though, one of my real goals for this week was to find my next mountain top. I am really, really proud of my new book, and think it is such a step beyond what I've done before. But how do I top that? What do I need to do to get better? How can I make my next book even more awesome than the one I am looking at now?
I think that I got some insights into that today...as the fear crept in while I waited my turn to read. And while I didn't get any real comments on my work specifically, I got a few hints from what they said about others. Taken that way, the day had some merit...
Anyway, off to work on polishing my pitch!!!
Comments