How I Got My Agent: Kirstin Chen

“How I Got My Agent” is a recurring feature on the Guide to Literary Agents Blog, with this installment featuring Kirstin Chen, author of SOY SAUCE FOR BEGINNERS. These columns are great ways for you to learn how to find a literary agent. Some tales are of long roads and many setbacks, while others are of good luck and quick signings.

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AN AGENT SEES MY SHORT STORY AND CONTACTS ME

Near the end of my first year of graduate school, I published a short-short story in an online magazine. Not long after, I heard from an agent who’d read the story and wanted to see more of my work. My elation was short-lived; I had nothing to show her. At that point I’d written about thirty pages of what I hoped would be a novel—pages that I was reluctant to share with my workshop, much less a literary agent. I asked a professor for advice, and she firmly cautioned me against sending out my work too early, not just because I only had one shot at impressing an agent, but also because I needed to avoid distractions and focus on writing. I took my professor’s advice to heart. Tamping down the fear that I was about to push away my only shot at representation, I told the agent I wasn’t ready.

Again and again, throughout graduate school, I’d hear similar advice from teachers and more experienced peers: Don’t even think about querying agents until you’ve written the best draft that you can.

Three and a half years later, I had completed draft number four and was still far from my goal. That summer, I attended the Sewanee Writers Conference, and when the opportunity arose for a five-minute, one-on-one meeting with the agent Michelle Brower, I went ahead and signed up, even though I had nothing to show her.

MEETING MICHELLE BROWER

Our five-minute meeting flew by. I gave Michelle my two-minute pitch: my novel was about an artisanal soy sauce factory—a family business in Singapore that was the last of its kind and fighting to stay alive. The protagonist was a young woman, a member of the family’s third generation, who’d tried to escape the family business by building a life in San Francisco. A series of misfortunes—the breakdown of her marriage, her mother’s illness—had forced her to return home. When I was done with my pitch, Michelle took the lead, asking question after question that impressed me with its thoughtfulness and specificity.

At the end of those five minutes, she asked to read my novel as soon as possible, and even though I was thrilled to hear this, my heart sank. Here I was yet again. I told her I didn’t have a draft that was ready to be seen; I didn’t tell her that I was months, possibly a year away.

Michelle remained unfazed. “Send me what you have,” she said. “I’ll read the first forty or fifty pages, whatever you’re comfortable with.”

After our meeting, I consulted other, more experienced writers, and they told me to wait until I’d completed a good, solid draft, as I knew they would. Besides, everyone knew agents never took on debut novelists without having read full drafts. Again, I swallowed my elation and resolved to be patient and to focus on the writing.

RESOLVED TO CONTINUE WORKING: DRAFT 5 OF THE MANUSCRIPT

Back home in Boston, I attacked draft number five with renewed energy. As I worked my way through the early chapters, I saw that although there was much I needed to untangle in the novel as a whole, the opening pages were starting to come together. I was proud of them. I wanted them to be seen. I spent the rest of the fall revising the first three chapters until they were the best three chapters I could write. When I was done, I put aside all the advice I’d accumulated through the years and sent the pages to Michelle, hoping that she would like them enough to ask to see the entire manuscript when I was ready.

A month later, to my great surprise, Michelle called to offer representation. When I finally recovered from the shock that she would sign me on a mere forty pages, I accepted her offer. We’ve worked together ever since. In addition to all the other reasons for which I’m grateful to Michelle, I am forever grateful that she saved me the heartache of going through the agent-query process—there’s enough heartache in our field of work as it is.

All this being said, I’m not sure what the moral of the story is. On the one hand, I wholeheartedly believe that as writers we need to shield ourselves from distractions in order to do our best work. On the other hand, if we wait to perfect our manuscripts before sending them out, none of us would ever get published. In the end, all I have to offer is this: good writing will speak for itself, and our ultimate goal should always be to put our heads down and write as well as we can. But sometimes opportunities present themselves, and at those moments we need to stop what we’re doing, look up, say yes.

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