Agents

[minervaK]

OK, I may be painting a target on my ass, but here goes...

Every agent's blog or website or article that I come across seems to be geared toward knocking the wind out of a writer's sails. I find myself thinking dark thoughts about agents, and am interested in hearing peoples' experiences with them.

MK
www.minervakoenig.com

[Dana King]

I agree; both of your previous comments were correct. There are a lot of good writers out there still waiting for a break. (Maybe not a plethora, but definitely a surfeit.) There are also a lot of people who think they're writers and can barely string two coherent paragraphs together. The reputation of all self-published writers suffers because there's no way to weed out the latter.

I'm a little torn on the idea of good writers who can't edit well. A certain amount of editorial skill is implied in being a good writer. At some point anyone who wants to be considered a writer has to develop a minimal set of editorial chops if they want to be taken seriously.

[Jon Loomis]

It's easy to romanticize the old days, but plenty of writers went broke, went crazy and drank themselves to death back then, too. And I know lots of living writers who have actual, personal relationship with their agents/editors, for better or worse. I actually prefer a bit of professional distance--I want an agent, not a confidante. Also, because of my geographic distance from New York, I'd find it hard to function in a writing world that required a lot of physical face-time with agents and editors in order to make things happen. Not that I don't wish it were otherwise from time to time--it does help to be in New York, I think.