Guest Post-Mortem: That Time I Sobbed in Front of a Literary Agent
The highs and lows of turning difficult memories into a pitch-worthy product
Background
June 2021: I couldn’t shake the mental image of cracking open my skull, reaching inside, and excavating the memories of the past decade. It was time to do what I had been avoiding: write a memoir, transfer the pain to paper. Over the next few months, a draft came together, my burgeoning attempt at making sense of my mother’s later-in-life severe mental illness.
March 2022: I sent in the first chapter to the Writers’ League of Texas annual manuscript contest, largely to receive the optional editorial feedback that was included for an extra fee, and not because I thought I had a real chance at winning.
May 24, 2022: An email arrived, and holy shit: I was somehow named a finalist?!
June 25-26, 2022: I hadn’t been planning to attend the Agents & Editors Conference, but now it seemed imperative. All contest winners and finalists got special badges to wear, and there’d be a little ceremony at the evening happy hour. Sure, after cranking out a draft so quickly, I was still a little emotionally raw, prone to sudden mood shifts and panicky feelings. And sure, I had gotten ahead of myself by entering the contest. I wasn’t ready to query my book. But who cares?! This was exciting! I’d get a special badge! I might even find an agent! I signed up to go.
Pre-Incident Lead-Up
During the first day of the conference, I almost immediately felt like I had found “my tribe.” Everyone was in the same boat as me. My new identity as an “author” started solidifying; my imposter syndrome suddenly was not overwhelming. I could do this. I could get a book published one day, maybe.
Although I was having a great time, I also was a little flustered by some of my fellow attendees’ no-nonsense attitudes when meeting other writers, using the opportunity to hone their pitches. Fiction writers were especially obvious about it. It usually went something like this:
“Hi I’m Kevin. I write thriller fiction.” I’d shake my head yes, go on, having learned it was the expected response.
“OK, so, fortysomething Sarah Smith just wants to move on with her life after retiring from her career training cadaver dogs. But one night everything changes when a dog named Spartacus shows up at her backdoor holding an item so shocking Sarah immediately rejoins the force.”
“Oh, wow, that sounds…intriguing!”
“And you?”
“Oh, um, I wrote a memoir. It’s about trying to stay sane through my mom’s repeat suicide attem–well, you know, hard stuff she and I went through recently. And it’s about nature, the creatures that live on Padre Island, where I’m from.”
“Oh, OK. Good luck!”
“Likewise!”
This dispassionate back-and-forth happened so many times it didn’t take long for my clunky pitch to get a lot more polished. I lost track of how many times I recounted my book’s premise, always watching the other person’s reaction: Were they intrigued? Bored? Confused? From what I could tell, everyone liked it, but the exchange felt so…corporate?
Bottom line: Never before had I talked to strangers about my trauma, and now it was becoming a pitch-worthy product. It was both exhilarating and terrifying.
The Incident
The second day was jam-packed with events and sessions, and I’m not sure I even ate lunch. The hunger situation didn’t improve when I walked into the banquet hall that evening and saw a long line of people waiting for hors d'oeuvres. I waited in the drink line instead. As I mingled with a group of writers, I thought, wow, this is going great, but what about meeting editors and agents? I looked around for their differently colored badges, noticing they had flocked to one side of the room, like we were at a junior high dance and it was up to us to go ask them to awkwardly slow dance. Ugh.
After having a gin and tonic (or was it two?) I started to think maybe it was time to approach their gaggle. But which agent to single out? Earlier, I had seen an agent named Susan speak on a panel. She seemed so soft-spoken and kind, not at all like what I envisioned an agent to be. Also, she had repped several memoir authors. Maybe her?
I looked around and saw her talking to another writer not too far from me. Perfect! When it looked like their conversation was wrapping up, I went for it. I told her I loved one of the authors she represented, a memoirist. She looked a little confused, then asked me about my book. As I spoke, and she nodded her head politely, I could feel my eyes welling up, the alcohol sloshing around in my empty stomach not helping. It was like talking to Bambi’s mother: She was rapt, she was kind, she was maternal.
It was too much. I started crying.
“I’m so sorry! I don’t know where this is coming from,” I said, knowing full-well where it came from. The tears accelerated from light sobbing to full-on ugly crying, snot included. Susan kept her face neutral and murmured something about how much she likes passionate writers. Then she motioned us to the exit. She did not suggest I send her my pages. She did not seem interested in my “product.”
I had blown it. Big time.
Post-Incident Twist
Once I got home, I looked Susan up online, hoping to find some random detail that would make me feel less embarrassed. Instead I realized I had told her I loved an author she didn’t actually represent. No wonder she had written me off from the start: I could barely do my research. I could barely hold my alcohol. I could barely hold my trauma. GAH!
Impact
I didn’t tell anyone what had happened–not my therapist, not my friends, not even my husband. I was too humiliated. Reliving the memory became an easy way to berate myself about being too emotional: You’re not ready to be an author. It took another year of writing (and more therapy) to look back at what happened not with shame, but compassion.
What I'm Doing Different Next Time
The 2024 Agents & Editors Conference is coming up again in a few weeks, at the same hotel near my house. Because I was named a finalist again, I’m definitely going! But:
I will eat meals.
I will gently poke fun at any fiction writer who refuses to make small talk before pitching.
I will attend the happy hour and approach agents, but stick to seltzer with a squeeze of lime.
I will check in with myself to make sure I’m staying grounded, not crossing the threshold where I can feel myself getting emotionally deregulated. (A large part of this is revisiting the PACE strategy, which I found useful when I started revising my book.)
I will pack snacks and Kleenex – just in case.
Recommendations:
TV: Girls5Eva. This hilarious Netflix comedy about a girl band getting back together as middle-aged forty-somethings is full of memorable one-liners. Plus, Tiny Fey makes a cameo as Dolly Parton. What more do you need?
Podcast: We’ve all heard of the hero’s journey, but what about the heroine? On this fantastic episode of Let’s Talk Memoir with Ronit Plank, Maureen Murdock unpacks how ancient myths can add meaning to memoir, especially for women.
Book: The Pisces: A Novel by Melissa Broder. A prickly, depressed young woman falls in love with a midnight swimmer with a sexy supernatural secret. A great beach read.
Music: I’m a longtime fan of the hard-to-define band Khruangbin, who have a new album out. You’ll instantly find yourself transported to a remote beach with a caipirinha in hand, or maybe that’s just me.
Joy Victory is a writer and editor in Austin, TX, and author of The Shrieking Cactus newsletter. A two-time finalist in the Writers’ League of Texas manuscript contest, she’s working on a memoir about the impact of her mother’s severe illness on her own mental health, interwoven with stories of the resilient wildlife that thrive in South Texas. Her work has been published in Texas Monthly, The Sun, Cosmopolitan, VICE News, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, West Trade Review, Lit Mag News, The Quarterly, 3Elements Literary Review, San Antonio Review, CHEST medical journal, Montana Mouthful, among others. She lives with her husband, daughter, and their rotund cat BlackStar.
Say hi to my new Managing Editor for Post-Mortem, Farah Faye! She is the host of the Scrappy Reading Series, and is an emerging writer living in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and cat. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Spalding University and her work has appeared in Business Insider, Medium, and her Substack, art monster magazine. You can find her on Instagram @whoisfarahfaye and @scrappyreadingseries.
Nothing better than honing your pitch on your feet--congrats on surviving that! I once had a panic attack during an audition and started sobbing... of the thousands of auditions I've had, that's one I still cringe over.
I love your plan for the next event. Keep us posted on your manuscript!
This: "I could barely hold my alcohol. I could barely hold my trauma. GAH!" Love this post. So relatable. Love the premise in your bio and can't wait to read your book.