Secret Agents . . . Continued

(continued . . . )

Now that I knew that my new-found literary agent was going to make me a star, I had to get busy on the rewrites. It was a daunting task. Hundreds of pages. Thousands of words. Millions of letters and spaces and tiny pieces of punctuation. But I got to work. I rose early every day and/or stayed up to write well into the wee hours of the morning. I burned the midnight oil, the two a.m. oil, the four a.m. oil. And, of course, I was still doing all of my pastoral work: writing sermons, counseling, visiting, small groups, Bible studies, youth.

I was one tired puppy. But in less than three weeks, I had rewritten the novel according to (what I believed) were Warren's specifications. I boxed the sucker up and shipped it out to Warren in old New York.

Then one afternoon, weeks later, Warren leaves a voice mail on my home phone. "I'm shipping the manuscript out to some publishers," he tells me. "But it doesn't look promising."

This is my first experience in literary agent "double-speak". I love your book, man BUT it ain't any good! This is great stuff BUT nobody is going to want it. I've never met a writer like you BUT why can't you write any better than this?!

But heck, I'm learning. And I learn fast. More weeks go by. Months even. I leave Warren to his devices, to his schemes and dreams and fancy dinners with top editors in big publishing firms like Knopf and Crown. And one day I decide to call his office and just "check in" to see how things are progressing. Has he received any rejections? Has there been any progress, any conversation about my novel?

I hold the line for minutes until Warren decides he will speak to me and when he does, he says it simply, "The book is dead, man. It's a dud. Do you have anything else? Any other ideas? Can you write anything else that I can shop around the Big Apple?"

I tell him about a few other books I am working on (all of them non-fiction) and then he tells me that he doesn't represent non-fiction. "Gotta go find yourself another agency for that stuff, man. Call me back when you write another novel."

And so ends my relationship with my first agent. It was nine months in length, and we never did have a chance to fall in love. I never sent him the chocolates either.

(continued)