The Writer's Journey on I-5

A four-hour road trip with literary agents is a golden opportunity for a budding writer. Usually you’re lucky to get a few minutes pitching an agent at a writer’s workshop, but what if you could spend time in the car with two agents driving them between writer’s conferences? Last weekend, on a clear Friday afternoon, I had the opportunity to do just that along the I-5 corridor between Portland and Seattle.

The conversation with people from outside my usual circle and their thoughts about an industry I’m still learning about stuck with me. Not only did they talk about different conferences and upcoming shows, but they were avid readers. One of the agents had her nose in a book in the back seat for much of the ride, looking up from time to time along the long stretches of road between towns to chime in about recent book releases.

Their personal stories about chasing their aspirations in publishing were inspiring. Both had started as writers and still had dreams of publishing their own works, becoming agents to better learn the business and support themselves. I asked if they would represent their own books, but they said they wouldn’t even go through their own agencies. I thought maybe it was because they wanted an independent set of eyes on their work. While they agreed that was helpful, the larger issue was the professionalism behind it. As one of them put it, a lawyer wouldn’t represent themselves. Publishers would doubt that an agent could objectively represent their own work.

We stopped for a delicious Assyrian restaurant along the way, a recommendation from one of the agents who insisted she wasn’t a foodie (spoiler, she is). Somewhere between the duck confit biryani and the Mourvèdre we got to talking about our personal backgrounds and journeys. At one point the conversation turned towards trends in the publishing space, and how difficult it is to sign a book that might look promising now knowing that tastes will change in the years before it’s published. A big part of the job as an agent, I learned, is staying ahead of those current trends and knowing what’s next. But what surprised me was that not only did these two agents have different opinions about what the next trend was, they’d had internal debates within their own agencies. I didn’t hear one opinion over dinner, I heard four. So take heart; while one agent may not think your work will be easy to sell, it doesn’t mean they all will.

With the stress of pitches and queries, it was nice to have a drive that wasn’t a transaction. We were just people on the same road, chasing our own dreams.

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