THE CAREER NOVELIST
clients I choose potential publishers. We then follow our progress
through the list, adjusting as circumstances change. A sense of par-
ticipation is healthy.
About calling ... no one likes to be a pest, but at the same time
waiting for news can be depressing. How often should you call? I
advise my clients to phone any time they feel a need for informa-
tion. Some call every few days. A few call twice a year.
As you go forward, you will probably come to rely more and more
on your agent for advice and counsel. Some of this is mere "hand-
holding" while waiting for offers, contracts, checks. However, some
of the comments you hear may change the way you write. Some may
even change the entire direction of your career.
Given clear goals, hard work, good communication, and a bit of
luck, the author/agent relationship is usually happy and mutually
profitable. Sometimes, though, it does not work out so well. I hate
to drop clients. On occasion they leave, and that hurts, too.
Let us examine the first scenario: being dropped by your agent,
or, more usefully, how not to be dropped by your agent.
KEEPING YOUR AGENT
Oddly enough, I think that the key here lies not so much in your
relationship with your agent as in your relationship to your writing.
Marriages can go stale. So can friendships. So can your engagement
with your own fiction, if you do not strive to keep it fresh.
I am talking about growth. Getting better. Taking joy in your
strengthening command of technique. The occasional creative
plateau will not hold you back, but laziness and/or ego will. There is
nothing sadder than an author who thinks that he or she knows it
all. Such authors do not usually last.
One curse upon creative vigor is anxiety. It can derive from early
success, which is daunting to maintain, or from financial pressure,
common among authors who have gone full-time too soon.
Whatever the cause, if the result is writers' block then it can be years
before the author's career gets back on track. In such cases I am usu-
ally slow to cast a client adrift. I first ask myself if I am part of the
problem.