STATUS: The appointment schedule is firming up! Get ready for some posts on what editors will be looking for in 2012.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? THIS IS IT by Kenny Loggins
It’s pretty simple. We agents go to conferences and really drive home the fact that writers need to master their craft. Wow us with masterfully written opening pages. Stop butchering the English language.
Then a work comes along and blows that advice out of the water.
Readers have called 50 Shades of Grey any number of things: campy, fun, spirited, hilarious, worth the money, a fast read.
But well written has not been one of them.
So what do we say when a novel inexplicably becomes wildly popular, sells like crazy, and part of the cultural lexicon?
You got me. Maybe I can say this is a one-in-a-million happenstance of all stars aligning.
But I can say it does make our jobs harder. There will be any number of writers who will be convinced they can do same. Gosh I hope my query inbox doesn’t become inundated. No matter what 50 Shades is, I would not have been the agent to spot its “genius.”
Plain and simple.
