Sometimes, I don’t know how much of my life I should share with all of you. I mean, I want to help others, and hearing about my day-to-day feels more like the selfish dragging of my readers rather than the selfless uplifting. If anyone has an article they want to read, please go to my contact page and let me know.
This past week, I had an amazing experience with an agent, and I can’t get it off my mind. I sat in my one bedroom apartment, my laptop on my black desk, watching a Zoom conference with my mentorship group. Here, I had a chance to impress someone that could change my future. Could give me hope for living in a world post-graduation. Could make me more than an optimist who believes in all the wrong things.
The man wore a v-neck sweater and bow tie, dressed in cool colors. His presentation shouted sophistication—I didn’t know that happened in real life. Throughout most of my life, I’d only seen casual or conceited.
Everything he said echoed a message in my brain. You want this man as your agent. This is the one. This is the one. This is the one.
When he answered our questions, he mentioned in passing that he had forty authors he was working with. He didn’t have room for anymore. “Of course, I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to work with someone, if I thought they had a really wonderful idea.” He said something like this.
When it came time to give our pitches—another round of practicing for me to mark down—he gave us advice. “Don’t use more than two or three sentences” to pitch your manuscript.
The internet had told me to have anywhere from thirty to two hundred words. With urgency, I started to edit my one hundred word pitch when my teacher called on me to go first.
Winging it, I reiterated my pitch in a more concise fashion, hoping it made sense. He gave feedback, and something amazing happened . . . I feel shy and uncertain about sharing this.
Do I dare tell what happened? Am I not casual nor sophisticated but conceited?These thoughts stir me up, but I can’t get to my ending without this middle. So, here’s the silly little thing that made me happy:
For the first time, an agent showed genuine interest in my novel.
Wow OH wow.
Let me tell you why this affected me immensely.
Graduation in April has felt a bit like doom’s day. The best doom’s day because at least I can say I’ve finished. I’m done. However, for my family’s sake, I’ll need to find a job with decent pay and benefits, if possible. I’ve applied to thirty-four jobs and counting. Six have rejected me. For one, I found the rejection status on my own. Still waiting on responses from the rest (and I have been for about a month).
Granted, I applied to jobs likely out of my league, and I intend to shoot for the low hanging fruit as I come closer to graduating. Yet, a part of me thought I’d at least get an interview for some of these other jobs. What if I try for positions that seem more reasonable, and I still don’t find anything? I may have to temporarily set aside my hopes of writing for work.
However, no matter what happens with these full-time gigs, I’ve always planned to continue to write my books. Try to get them published, and if that doesn’t turn out, c’est la vie. I did something that I enjoyed. Something good.
The only caveat is that I might get less time to do what I love if I end up with a job that wears me out. That, or I could skip the work thing and go broke and homeless pursuing my writing.
I ache when I wonder about these things.
I guess all I can do is pray, hope, and try my best to make it happen.
This agent reinvigorated my hopes and dreams. When I email him one day, perhaps he will still show interest, or maybe that will have faded away. It doesn’t matter. He gave me precious encouragement to do good with what I love.
I want to encourage you all to do the same. Do good with what you love. Take that hobby or passion and make time for it. Use it to help lift yourself out of despair, and use it to help make others live’s brighter and better. The world would be better, after all, if each person tried to “light up your day.”
Read MRC 