Agents & Editors Recommend

Somehow, nearly half of the novels I have acquired were written by poets. I’ve never been a poetry editor, and, while I read and enjoy poems, I’ve always been drawn back to the novel. So why has it turned out this way? I think it’s because the novelists I most admire possess a poet’s interest in style, in the music of a sentence. In publishing, we’re less likely to talk about this than we are about a book’s themes, character development, or plot. But style is the force behind what makes us feel those other elements most deeply and convincingly.

Remember that every conversation with an agent or editor should start with talking about the work itself. Listen carefully: Is the agent attuned to your vision of the book and your creative goals? Does the agent offer editorial insight that makes sense to you? Does your conversation inspire you, make you confident that this person really “gets” this book? Here is where the connection begins, with an easy rapport based on a shared sensibility. If this is there from the outset, it’s likely to be a wonderful, lasting relationship that will carry into the future.

I’m captivated by the ethos of innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking at the heart of the modernist literary movement of the twentieth century. The modernist imperative “make it new,” attributed to the poet, critic, and translator Ezra Pound, a champion of the movement, was a call for writers to revolt against the conventions of the time and break new ground by reinventing their art forms. Provocative as it was, Pound’s dictum was borrowed and thus hardly new in and of itself.

As a writer, the act of writing matters, of course, as does reading, but they are hardly the only things that matter. In the process of creating a world or trying to capture the world on the page, it is easy to forget the simple, material reality of the people and the communities around us. These days, we speak often of mutual aid, whatever that might look like for everyone and their individual abilities.