Tweets by Literary Agents: A Portrait of Condescension and Arrogance

@mastersurgeon  Routine open heart surgery patient decided to bleed internally.  I am not in the mood for this, people!!!

@criminalesq  A word of advice, drug dealers: kindly stash away $1000 with each sale for my $20,000 up-front non-refundable retainer.  Thanks.

@traumadoc  Let's see: another 24-hour shift at the trauma center treating ppl that used to look human or internet porn?  Bring on the porn, bitches!!!

@drsmith I hate when ppl say 'my chest hurts.'  Use some common sense and tell me something, morons.

@crimattyhotshot  Sorry to my client in federal prison that has legit grounds for habeus corpus.  It's almost Christmas, you know. 

@heartdoc  Don't ever question me.  Which one of us went to med school?  Thought so.

None of the above tweets are from the twitter timelines of real doctors or real lawyers.  Not only would they be considered unbecoming of their professions, but these fictional attorneys and physicians would lose clients left and right and serve up some great fodder for malpractice lawsuits and professional misconduct hearings.  But literary agents?  You'll read this kind of stuff on their pages with alarming regularity.  As a yet-to-be-published author, it doesn't give me much confidence or hope for success.

I used to think that doctors and lawyers had cornered the market as far as professional arrogance.  I know first-hand, of course. I was trained as a lawyer myself and worked for some of the biggest bastards that Philadelphia has ever seen.  It doesn't matter if an attorney is a two-bit ambulance chaser or someone who delivers nine-figure jury verdicts to clients; there is a general, sickening air of superiority at work in many quarters that taints the members of the profession with a shiny veneer of filth.  I've seen some of the nicest, low-maintenance people completely cast aside their soul as the law and the dollar begins to hold sway over their friends, their families, or anything in their lives unrelated to filing Plaintiff's Emergency Omnibus Motion to Compel the Responses of Defendant Smith Operating Systems, Inc. to Plaintiff's Sixth Request for Production of Documents, Answers to Second Set of Interrogatories and Request for Admissions and Responses of Third-Party Defendant Harrison Waste Disposal, LLC to Plaintiff's Third Request for Production of Documents, Answers to Interrogatories and Notice of Deposition for Corporate Designee under Pa. R.C.P. Rule 1026(c)(i)(A).  It's not a good way to spend 30 years of your life.  

Then I made the mistake of writing a novel after I lost my last job at a high-end law firm.  I knew that actually getting published and making a little bit of money from my efforts was a dicey proposition at best, but the job outlook for attorneys in this economy has literally never been worse. Even temp work is hard to come by these days, which made my gamble a bit more palatable.  My main concern was that my writing can be raw and contains characters that are sometimes extremely offensive and obnoxious.  If you're writing chick lit, that's completely acceptable.  But if you're writing from a male perspective, you get lumped into a genre derisively coined 'fratire' and no one really gives a shit about your work or wants to represent you.  That's probably because it generally caters to a limited audience of college students and single people under 35 that don't spend their days banging the Bible and praising Jesus.  (I don't begrudge people who praise Jesus.  They're just not going to be interested in reading about drugs, sex, and mental illness.)

As the first draft of my manuscript slowly crawled toward completion, I began to perform research geared toward finding a literary agent who might be interested in representing me.  I spent countless hours on amazon.com and google finding books that may be similar to mine as far as the target audience and trying to discover who represented the authors. It's not easy. Everyone seems to be writing a novel these days, and some agents have stopped accepting queries or make themselves extremely hard to find.  It's a very, 'Don't call us; we'll call you' kind of business and everyone seems to assume that your manuscript is garbage unless you've been referred to them through a close contact.  I understand that time is money.  For a guy like me, though, who poured a lot of thought into my work and whose written word has helped obtain settlements from $5,000 up to $500,000 and even $10,000,000 it can be a very frustrating process. (I'm not stating this with my 'lawyer arrogance' hat on.  It happens to be the truth, believe it or not.  I sometimes don't believe it myself.)

A few months ago, I began to follow a number of literary agents on twitter.  Some of their tweets of advice have been very helpful, such as:

"When querying for your novel, there's really no need to sound apologetic about not being previously published. Everyone has a first book."

"Writing Tip of the Day: if you aren't convinced, at some point, that your manuscript is terrible, you're not human." 

Now, that second tweet is something that's right up my alley and I sent a query to this agent.  Though I know I have some ability, I'm a born self-doubter.  I used to get orders back from judges granting my motion that I was 'never going to win' and stare at it for what seemed like hours in a 'Holy Shit!  I can't believe we won!' kind of daze.  Not every tweet I've read from agents have been so encouraging, though.  Many agents use twitter simply to bitch about their job and the submissions they receive- and the condescension and arrogance places some of them into doctor and lawyer territory.  I don't care if they've been doing it 30 years and have written and/or sold 12 New York Times Best Sellers.  Consider some of the following:

"Guys, we can't define what's too quick or too long. There's a certain amount of common sense here that should be rather inherent."

Sorry ur brain so big and mine so small.

"Was just about to follow up w/ an editor before remembering "day before holiday break - she will want to stab me." Take note too, writers!"

Thanks for the patronizing advice on a topic that anyone with common sense knows, anyway.  Wait...we don't have common sense says the agent above.

"Fighting w/ an agent about her opinion, which you asked for, about your book only makes you look unprofessional. Opinion=subjective."

You know what else is 'unprofessional?'  Bitching about it on twitter.

"For those who were curious, Christmas shopping (and other preparations) handily defeated submission reading during my weekend."

No one was curious, and no one gives a shit about your pat on the back that you didn't work through the weekend.

"My agency is "no response means no", and I've always given responses anyway. But I am seriously over being yelled at for being nice."

Wow!  You respond to your potential clients?  Anyway?  Revolutionary, my dear.

"It's December and THAT means... (drumroll please)... I am now CLOSED to queries for the rest of the year. Pass it on."

Us writers, on whom your livelihood depends, are sorry for bothering you.

"A form rejection doesn't mean please send the exact same query again in a few weeks and see if my answer changes. It means no."

I guess we're not allowed milk and cookies during recess, either.

So here's my condescending word of advice: many of your followers don't know you personally and internet text lacks the inflection and facial expressions associated with actual face-to-face speech.  I get the sense that most agents don't bother with people they don't know already, but the above tweets come off very poorly and don't reflect kindly on a very serious and potentially lucrative profession.  Potential clients aren't going to send submissions to lecturers that mock a writer's common sense, professionalism, or make you look like you hate your job.  We know that you're already flooded with work and don't need to be bothered any further.  But maybe- just maybe- you should stop to think before hitting the 'enter' key after writing your next tweet.  It's possible, though highly improbable, that one of us idiots out there looking for representation may have written the next New York Times Best Seller. 


And, of course, the link to my own twitter:


http://twitter.com/#!/KennerRMcQuaid