I heard from a new client today who remarked — it seemed somewhat wistfully — that we hadn’t emailed or talked for over a week.  I am familiar with this phase in the agent-author relationship. We go into the selling mode after many weeks, sometimes months, of working on a proposal together. During this time, we speak or email many times a day as editors call with interest, or to reject, and sometimes we grumble about why no one is calling. The point it, contact is intense and frequent especially when interest from publishers is shaping up into an auction.

After we sell the book, we talk about the contract, and a few other details, but basically, it’s time for the writer to go write her book, and for the agent to work with another writer. It’s like breaking up with someone but staying friends. Not quite. The relationship can stay very close, but there is nothing like that intense period during which you are selling a proposal for a writer. They entrust you with their baby and your professional abilities are on the line. It’s the high-wire.

For the writer, it must feel, in some way, to be in free fall after the sale. All that attention and focus suddenly turned elsewhere. The idea that somehow your life will change when you finally get that book contract, and, unless you’ve gotten an advance in the millions, life is pretty much the same: Cheerios for breakfast, check e-mail, procrastinate with random household chore, teach a class or whatever, go to a movie, be irritable with spouse. Hey, doesn’t anyone see I’m going to be PUBLISHED?!?

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