Mark Trainer

Remember how aspiring writers used to deal with agents?  You'd mail them something, wait for a letter in response, maybe even talk to them on the phone (usually exactly once).  They were pretty distant characters to the writer sitting down to work with the morning cup of coffee in Anytown, USA. 

But oh, how the times have changed.  It's not even 9:30 in the morning and Betsy Lerner has already given me thoughts on finding the perfect title for my book, Nathan Bransford is ready to show me exactly how he appraises a query letter, and Rachel Gardner has thoughts on making writing your lifestyle, not just a sideline hobby.  Or you can get their thoughts in 140-character chunks on Twitter.

Seems to me this can only be a good thing.  A few months of glancing at agent blogs have told me more about what agents actually do than I learned in the previous 20 years of writing. 

A caveat, though, if you write and you're considering entering this literary corner of the Internet:  Agents' blog entries come in three flavors: 1) purely practical 2)artsy/inspirational and 3)tough love.  Now you might be the kind of writer who's looking for all three of these all the time--I am not.  Mornings, I like a comfy layer of #2 with a light sprinkling of #1.  I do best with #3 in the afternoons, at which time #2 is repellent to me.  And late in the evenings #3 becomes the cudgel with which I beat myself.  Now if you're talking Twitter, you never know which you're going to get when--and that can be a problem.  You don't necessarily want a hard reality check interspersed with Shit My Dad Says and your friends' news of cute things their kids do.

My advice?  Make all this agent wisdom a font to which you journey with your little writer bucket as you need it--don't turn on the tap in your office and let it pour forth all day.  No RSS feeds telling you about your favorite agent's latest post.  And those Twittering agents?  Unfollow them, then corral them all into a Twitter list that you can call up at will when you're ready.  When you're struggling with your manuscript and you break down to go check Twitter, you don't need to hear exactly how paltry your chances of selling that thing are anyway.  Oh yeah, and don't check Twitter and blogs when you should be writing...