On Writing: How I Landed An Agent

(spoiler alert: it involves writing smut)

When I was 21, I spent a summer squatting in a shoebox dorm room in Greenwich Village. Not literally squatting—it was technically above board—but it was the kind of place where the elevator worked three days out of the week, the heatwave had me sleeping with my head in the freezer, and my friend was crashing in my closet because she was between nanny gigs. It was the summer of 2010, baby, and I was in NYU’s Writers in New York program, studying poetry alongside a herd of weirdos from all corners of America. Some wrote bad poetry like me. Others had ambitions of grinding out novels. To those particular weirdos, I’d laugh and say, “90,000 words? I’d rather chew glass.”

Fast forward to March 2020. Life’s cruel sense of humor had me staring at my 30-year-old self: a mortgage, a nine-month-old baby who refused to nap, and a world casually teetering on the edge of an apocalypse. COVID was here, and the big question was survival. But all I could think was, when can I travel again?

Of course, we couldn’t go anywhere. Borders were closed, planes grounded. So, like any stressed-out millennial, I turned to escapism. Maybe it was all the My Dad Wrote a Porno episodes I’d been binging, or maybe it was just the wine, but every night at 6:30, I’d put the baby to bed, pour a glass of Montepulciano, and head to my office to churn out two hours of pure, unadulterated filth.

Yep, you heard me. While other people learned to bake sourdough or hoarded toilet paper, I planted my butt in an Ikea office chair, and wrote about hot strangers having sex in foreign places.

And three months later, boom—75,000 words of steamy chaos. Me, the gal who’d sooner eat dirt than write a novel, had created one. Well, sort of. Let’s not overstate things—it was porn. Literary porn, sure, but still porn.

Then came the existential crisis. Did I just write that? And wait, is it... good?

After a stiff drink and some self-reflection, I decided it deserved a shot at daylight. I spent the next two months toning it down—less raging inferno, more simmering tension. I sent it to friends who laughed their asses off at it. I sanded off the rough edges, fleshed out the plot, and gave it a wardrobe upgrade. What emerged was an actual novel: 80,000 words that might not be Tolstoy, but wouldn’t get me banned from book clubs either.

At this point, my friends—the smug novelists who’d heard my earlier 90,000-words-is-impossible rants—urged me to query agents. But they warned me: the publishing world was glacial. Querying is a process where you essentially strip naked and ask strangers to judge you, and in 2020, the line to get judged stretched longer than a Sunday Costco queue.

Still, I gave it a shot. No Twitter pitch contests or gimmicks for me—just cold emails to 30 agents who didn’t seem like psychopaths. To my utter shock, within two months, someone requested the full manuscript. Three months after that, I signed with an agent.

Now, if this were a movie, this is where I’d say, “And the book became a bestseller, and I bought a yacht.” But no. That first book? Still unsold. The second one—which I like better—also gathering dust. That’s the publishing grind for you. Don’t buy the overnight success stories hook, line, and sinker. For most of us, it’s a slow burn. Years, not weeks.

So, why did the first book even get me an agent? Honestly, I don’t have a magic formula, but here’s what I do know:

• Pacing is king. No, your book doesn’t need to explode in the first chapter, but it needs to feel like something’s simmering. A good agent knows pacing the way a chef knows heat—too fast, and you burn the dish; too slow, and it’s raw. An agent wants to feel how far your character is going to go to get what they want from mile one and believe you’ve got the gas to get them there.

• The query letter matters. Be professional, but not robotic. Show a little personality—just enough to intrigue without sounding like you’re auditioning for reality TV.

• Voice is your fingerprint. Early on, we all write like someone else. It’s how we learn. But agents want to hear you. They’re not here for a watered-down Hemingway imitation; they’re here for your unfiltered, weird, wonderful voice. Agents care less about perfect writing and more about an author’s confidence in themselves and where they can drive the story. Line edits are easy. Pacing and character development are not. Get the latter two right.

And here’s the most important thing. That book got cranked out because it was FUN, not because I had aspirations of writing a cosmopolitan extraordinary slice of high-brow literature. It was sexy, it was different, and it let me slide into a warm routine which, as all writers know, is the spine that supports a writer’s career. Routine is key. You’ll never get the agent if you don’t get the project finished. The faster you form your routine, the faster you’ll be in a position to polish a piece of work fit for publishing.

That’s it. No fairy dust, no secret handshakes. Just pacing, professionalism, and voice. If you’re an agent, tell me I’m wrong in the comments. If you’re an author, let’s swap war stories (bonus points if they include smut).