September 14 2024
Dear All,
I’m writing to you from Key West, where brain fog due to heat and humidity nearly made me forget my date with you and the newsletter…
Apart from the pleasure of watching a smart woman demolish a bullying man in a so-called ‘debate’ on TV this week, not much going on here except hoping that a majority of Americans will come out and vote for her.
Exactly a year ago this week, I was in Paris, having lunch at the Closerie des Lilas with my wonderful agent, Kimberley Cameron, and her husband David. I was standing by the statue of the Napoleonic general, Marshal Ney, and watching the water gush from the most striking fountain in Paris, when Kimberley walked up to me and led me into the restaurant where Hemingway used to eat his lunch. I’d been there once before, with my husband, 30 years ago, as we embarked on a new life together. We still remember the ‘canard in its dangerous sauce’ as I wrote in a poem at the time. And the profiteroles.
I’m reminded by this last year’s memory to write something here about the role of an agent in a writer’s life. Without a literary agent, it’s hard, almost impossible, to get anywhere in publishing. From my earliest days as a writer, when in the 1960’s I was introduced to my then agent, Richard Simon, I’ve considered agents as my friends and chief allies. The good ones hold your hand, listen to you when you complain or moan or even weep about publishers’ rejections, encourage you, return your phone calls at once, let you believe once again that you may be a really good writer. (The not-so-good ones scare you, remind you of your least favorite teacher at school, don’t get back to you, don’t stick up for you and leave you in the lurch when they can’t sell your book: they exist too.)
I first met Kimberley at a Writers’ Conference in San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico. My former agent had retired, and her successor had not been able to sell my current novel, and dropped me – it happens. So I set in train publishing that book, “The Third Swimmer” with a ‘hybrid’ publisher I knew, simply because it mattered so much to me, I knew it had to exist. Then I met Kimberley. She was on a panel of agents and one thing she said struck me – “We need you more than you need us.” Really? I found her after the session and asked her – prompted by my friend Galen - if she’d like to have a drink. We sat in the lounge of the Hotel de las Minas and sipped white wine and chatted and I gave her a copy of my novel “Becoming George Sand.” She later told me that she read it on the plane, loved it, and would be delighted to represent me.
That was in 2015. We met again at her house in San Francisco in 2019, when I was in town for a reading. Altogether, she has sold four books for me – and what’s more, she has seen me through arguments with editors, difficulties with plots, plans for future work and everything that comes up in a writer’s life. It’s nearly ten years since we got together and I consider her a close friend.
So, the lunch at La Closerie was a celebration of all that, and in the middle of our three-course lunch behind the screens and bushes that protect the dining room from the street, she even came up with a title for my latest novel. She’s sending it out as I write, after I did a rewrite (her suggestion) during this last year.
A shout-out for agents, then. But, how do you get one? My answer is, go to events, show up for things, maybe ask writers you know who their agent is. Don’t waste time sending out thousands of letters to people you don’t know. Go for the personal connection where possible, trust your gut response, dare to approach them. They are human, too. And as Kimberley said, they need us more than we need them.
Back to election time now – and fingers crossed for the woman with the great laugh and the ready wit and a lot of good ideas. It’s time.
Affectionately, Ros