How I got my literary agent
This is a question I get asked a lot, and I thought it warranted its own blog post. I was lucky enough to sign with the fabulous Joanna Moult at Skylark Literary, around August/September in 2018. Like with many authors, my journey to finding an agent is intrinsically linked to one particular book. For me, that book was EVERY LINE OF YOU.
In 2017 I was taking writing classes at a local college. One evening we were all given a little bag of items and told to build a character based on those items. In mine, I had a mini-screwdriver, a box of fuses and a couple of other electronic bits. I decided they might belong to a teen hacker, and I named her Lydia after a character I liked from Skyrim (!) We then delved deeper into our characters by doing a character questionnaire. When we were finished, we had to partner up with the person next to us and we picked random questions from the list and asked each other for our character’s answers.
It was at this point I discovered Lydia had a very sad home life. I piled the stress on her: her younger brother had died – an event that tore her parents’ marriage apart and forced her dad to leave the family home, resulting in Lydia being left with her mum who was barely coping herself. She was bullied at school and there was nowhere she got any respite. The character questionnaire told me that, in a nutshell, she was lonely.
What would a lonely teen hacker get up to?
It seemed obvious to me that she would create her own AI, and I loved the thought that she would name the AI after her younger brother, Henry, because she missed him so much. I picked the name Henry because I wanted a name that had more than one syllable – something that could be said a couple of different ways with different inflections. This was an idea I jotted down in my notepad, and it went on to make it into the final copy:
I went home from my writing class and I wrote and wrote – staying up until two/three in the morning in some cases – and did not stop writing until two weeks later I had a first draft of around 60,000 words. I named the novel HENRY. I knew then, when I printed it off, that I had poured my heart into it and I loved everything about it. It was me if I were a book. It was everything I would have wanted to read as a teenager. It was the second book I ever wrote, and whilst my first was a steaming hot mess, it had helped me define my writing voice that made HENRY possible.
I sent it to a beta reading service and forgot about it for a few weeks until they got back to me. They were excited. They said I had written something unique and that they hadn’t seen on a shelf. They asked me to make some changes and to re-submit because they wanted to scout the novel to an agent they were affiliated with.
Their excitement was infectious and in true Naomi style, I edited the book and sent it back within two weeks. (I would never advise doing this – now, as a more seasoned writer, I always make sure to dwell on my edits before knee-jerking into a rewrite.) I re-titled it I, HENRY. Whilst they re-read the manuscript I dreamed of getting an agent and a publishing deal. I realised this was my now my goal. I wasn’t writing for fun anymore, I wanted to do something with my manuscripts.
A few weeks later the beta reader said they liked my changes and scouted it out, but the agent ultimately rejected it.
The rejection encouraged me. It was just one rejection, after all, and I knew there were a lot of literary agents in London and at some point one of them was bound to say yes to me. I realised I was onto something with I, HENRY, and launched into cold querying.
After a while, the rejections started to pile up. I tried my hardest to write something else but it was very difficult. Lydia and Henry were still possessing me to the point where I wondered if I would ever write anything so good ever again. I started a new book to take my mind off it all, but it didn’t feel as fresh or as unique and I laboured over it because I was so unsure.
Rejections for I, HENRY were coming thick and fast and the spreadsheet I’d made to track responses was covered in red.
I began to doubt it would ever happen for me, but I still believed in my book and the characters were still the best characters I’d ever written. I kept querying.
Around four/five months after my initial round of queries, one agent got in touch. Joanna Moult at Skylark Literary wanted to call me to discuss I, HENRY. I had initially written off my submission to Jo because it was past the time frame of when I thought she would reply by, and I’d learned by this point that most rejections are non-responses. I was excited. I prepped for the call and the next day we spoke.
Jo was lovely, complimentary and excited about my book. But there was a problem. The ending wasn’t right, she said. The news came as a blow because I had received such a positive response from the beta reading service, and I wasn’t prepared for someone to dislike any part of my book baby. She said as a reader she was expecting certain things to happen – things I’d never considered. I’d written this book in a hot and messy two weeks, possessed by two characters who had come to me so fully formed they might have been real people. I was still enamored with both of them. I didn’t want to make ANY changes.
I think Jo could tell I was unsure because she said if I ever wanted to re-write the book a certain way, to send her the edited manuscript. I thanked her for her time and we hung up.
Another few months passed and during that time I wrote another book. I forced it out of me because I felt if I never got over the hangover Lydia and Henry had given me, I would never write anything else. I sent it to Jo and she rejected it. She repeated her interest in seeing I, HENRY if I ever made the changes.
I too kept returning to I, HENRY because I was so in love with it. The manuscript went through several more drafts and the word count grew to 80,000 words. My title changed to I, LYDIA and went back to I, HENRY a few drafts later. My ending remained unchanged.
At this point I had piled up around fifty rejections. I was still emotionally invested in I, HENRY and liked my ending the way it was. But fifty rejections was a lot – it told me something wasn’t right. I decided to send it to another editorial service, one that was extremely expensive and I used my savings to pay for. About six weeks later I got an editorial letter that was enthusiastic – they wanted to scout it – but my ending was all wrong.
The news made me pause. This was two professionals who had both said the same thing independently. At this point my spirit had been broken. I was no longer the naïve, enthusiastic writer I had been when I started querying. I’d got FIFTY rejections.
I took some time and dwelled on the editorial letter and revaluated what I wanted. I decided I still wanted an agent. I still wanted to get on a shelf. I resolved to re-write my book if that was what I had to do to achieve those goals.
I re-wrote I, HENRY and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I dug into my beautiful ending and re-wrote it in response to the professional advice I’d received. I sent it back to the beta reading service. They called me, said they loved it, and wanted to scout it out. They asked if I had any agent interest and I said yes, and that I’d like to get in touch with them first. I sent my new draft and an updated synopsis to Jo, and told her my book would be scouted out but I wanted to see what she thought first.
Jo called me without reading the book and said she could tell from my synopsis I’d made all the right changes. Then she said something I’ll never forget: “I can see you’ve worked hard. How do you feel about working even harder?”
During my re-write I’d severed my emotional connection with Lydia and Henry. I was no longer on their path, they were on mine. I was still raw from making the change, but I’d done it. It had felt like the right thing. I told Jo, “I’ll do whatever it takes to get on a shelf,” and she said, “Based on your response, I would like to offer you representation.”
After signing with her, she sent me an editorial letter for all the changes to make before submitting to publishers. Jo’s editorial letter was a marked step above what I had seen up to that point. My plot was finally in the right place. Now the focus was on adding complexity and quickening the pace. I was asked to chop out around 20,000 words. She wasn’t kidding when she said there was more hard work.
Ultimately, Jo had signed me on a synopsis. This was her note when she saw my new ending for the first time:
Nailed it.
I made the other changes Jo suggested. These revisions were easier for me. I was over the emotional hump and Lydia and Henry were no longer on the pedestal I’d put them on. Cutting out 20,000 words was easy street - I actually found it liberating putting red pen through page after page.
After reading through and approving my changes, Jo sent my book out to around 20 UK publishers in January 2019. Chicken House made me an offer in March 2019.
I did a final draft with my editor, adding even more complexity to relationships and pulling out the emotional root of the book. Then we did line edits and copy edits. There was one final title change: EVERY LINE OF YOU.
If I hadn’t made that change to my ending, I never would have signed with Jo and I never would have landed my wonderful publisher.
Thank you for reading about my publication journey!
EVERY LINE OF YOU is now available for purchase at these places in the UK:
Forbidden Planet (Limited edition red-sprayed edge)
It’s due for release on 7th December in the US and can be pre-ordered here: Barnes and Noble