Foray into the Fanciful: Finding a Literary Agent

I feel like an idiot.

That, in itself, is an uncomfortable feeling. Add to it the fact that I will, quite possibly...no, most likely, end up feeling like a failure, and the entire experience is definitely frustrating.

I've begun the close-to-hopeless search for a literary agent. Has anyone else ever spent days and days and days trolling the internet for literary agents who are currently accepting submissions from NEW WRITERS? It's funny because I don't consider myself to be an inexperienced writer. It is, quite honestly, all that I've ever done. Even before teaching writing at the college level, my jobs were serving in the advertising field (ahem...writing) and then serving as the public relations person for a college honor society (more writing). In college, I earned scholarships writing for the yearbook, then editing the yearbook, and finally serving as the Editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. Writing is what I do.

So, why is it that this process of basically selling myself to anyone who will take a gander and actually READ my writing is so completely nervewracking? I'm taking a foray into the fanciful world of book publishing, and frankly, it's not much fun.

Over the weekend I sent out a handful of carefully written and edited "query" letters to agents. I know that I need to send out about a hundred or more of these letters, letters that basically beg an agent to read a few scant pages of my novel. The task of querying is rather formidable though. One must first locate a agency that is actually accepting submissions, probably no more than 1/2 of agencies are accepting unpublished writers. Of those that remain, each agent has a specialty or a certain type of writing that they especially like to represent. Of course, not all of them want to represent an action-oriented romance.

I'm learning a lot about the publishing business. The main thing I'm learning is that getting published by a reputable firm is really, really, really...REALLY... hard. What I don't understand is how the crappy books that I often stumble across in my own pleasure reading ever get past this stage of the process. Seriously.

So, if anyone has a great Uncle Charlie who happens to work at Random House or perhaps a cousin Bess who is a literary agent over in Nashville, please (pretty please?) pass me their info. I sure would appreciate it!