Me And My Agent by Holly Seddon

Where to start? To be frank, I can’t think of another job like literary agent. It sits in the Venn diagram of creativity, inspiration, career management and business acumen. But that doesn’t really explain it. 

A good agent helps shape ideas, offers editorial notes on outlines and manuscripts, pitches novels to publishers and then argues the finer points of any potential deals while us authors sit at home gnawing our fingers to the bone and refreshing our email inboxes like mad woodpeckers. 

Once a good agent has sold our work to a publisher, they often act as a liaison between editorial team and author, especially when that relationship is new and needs to develop. They ask sales, marketing and publicity teams the difficult questions so that we can concentrate on doing what we need to do: writing the best books we can.  

Good agents are there for the crap days too. The am-I-writing-the-right-book days. The riddled-with-professional-jealousy days. The why-isn’t-my-book-in-that-particular-shop days. A really good agent knows when you need a kick up the arse, and when you need a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes you need both, at the same time. The publishing equivalent of rubbing your belly and patting your head. 

I don’t just have a good agent, I have an absolutely brilliant agent. 

I signed with Sophie Lambert of C+W (@AgentSophieL on Twitter) last year. She wasn’t my first agent. People don’t like to talk about moving agencies and difficult decisions but as you and your career develops, the people you need ‘on your team’ changes. It’s perfectly normal and it happens more than you think.

Even though I’ve not been signed with Sophie for that long, we have developed a good process. When I have an idea for a book, we bat it around a bit and then I write up an outline. This document tends to be quite long and detailed, it’s also pretty ugly – not something I would want to share widely. It’s a working file that covers all the character arcs, the main ‘beats’ of the plot, twists, reveals, and a fairly detailed ending. 

Sophie will then send back questions and ideas, and will flag up the parts that don’t quite work and parts she particularly likes.  

I then refine it to a more palatable one-pager, with all the main plot points, comparisons to relevant books/authors and, of course, the main hook. 

Once a book idea has been signed off and I start writing the first draft, I tend to write a10,000 to 20,000 word chunk and send it over. Sophie will then give me feedback (which tends to be quite broad at that stage – a theme that could be drawn out more, a setting that doesn’t work, a character that needs a backstory, a relationship that isn’t convincing yet) and I edit that chunk then write another 10,000 to 20,000 chunk and send the whole thing over. Sophie gives feedback and the edit-write-edit process starts again. Until the manuscript is finished. 

That’s how I wrote After Dark, my fourth book which is being published by Trapeze in early 2021. When I first signed with Sophie, I had a sloppy first draft that I was rewriting from scratch. Chunk by chunk, it was written, edited, written, edited until it was ready to be sent to potential publishers.

Now that After Dark is sitting with the publisher and ready for copyediting, I’m planning my fifth book. I’m champing at the bit to get started, knowing that while my own nails might get chewed to pieces through this process, I have a safe pair of hands guiding me. 

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Holly Seddon is the international bestselling author of TRY NOT TO BREATHE, DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES and LOVE WILL TEAR US APART. AFTER DARK will be published in early 2021.

After growing up in the English countryside obsessed with music and books, Holly worked in London as a journalist and editor. She now lives in Amsterdam with her family and writes full time. 

Alongside fellow author Gillian McAllister, Holly co-hosts the popular Honest Authors Podcast. You can find her on Twitter @hollyseddon, Instagram and Facebook @hollyseddonauthor.

Find out more about her on her website: http://hollyseddon.com/

Follow Holly on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/hollyseddon

About LOVE WILL TEAR US APART

Bestselling author, Holly Seddon, has delivered another page-turning and utterly enthralling novel.

Sometimes a promise becomes a prison.

Fearing eternal singledom, childhood friends Kate and Paul make the age-old vow that if they don’t find love by thirty, they will marry each other.

Years later, with the deadline of their 30th birthdays approaching, the unlikely couple decide to keep their teenage promise. After all, they are such good friends. Surely that’s enough to make a marriage?

Now, on the eve of their 10th wedding anniversary, they will discover that love between men and women is more complex, and more precarious, than they could ever have imagined. As Kate struggles with a secret that reaches far into their past, will the couple’s vow become the very thing that threatens their future?

Love Will Tear Us Apart is a moving and heart-breaking exploration of modern love and friendship, from the bestselling author of Try Not to Breathe.

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