It's Not All About You

I used to know this incredible narcissist. She was convinced that all of her “funny” stories were fodder for everyone else to share and would frequently ask, when meeting new people, what stories I hadn’t yet told them about her. The truth was the stories I shared weren’t even close to the stories she was thinking I might have shared. Finally her questions stopped when a mutual friend of ours, upon losing her patience, replied with, “you know, we really don’t talk about you that much.”

And that’s the truth. While it feels that when you’re querying and submitting, agents have nothing better to do but sit around and chat about your proposal, your book, or even your query, the truth is that we really don’t talk about you . . . at all. When getting together for drinks with my fellow agents, I usually have only one thing in mind and that’s the drink. After that, the fun. If I am in a situation where I’m going to share horror stories, it rarely if ever comes down to queries or submissions. Trust me, there are a lot of other things to be talking about.

I understand why authors get paranoid and I can relate. We all get paranoid about things. But the minute you start to think that everyone is talking about you, or worse, laughing about you, take a step back and remind yourself that it’s not all about you. Most of the time when agents and editors get together we talk about things like dating, kids, recipes, TV, published books, and cocktails. Rarely if ever do we talk about an author we aren’t representing or aren’t over-the-moon excited about.


Jessica

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