The Revelation Brought on by Literary Agent Blogs and Charlotte's Web

This morning one of my kids frantically yelled to me for help. I immediately ran to her aid, almost breaking my neck in the process. I expected to find her drenched in blood or on fire. Instead, I found her staring, wide-eyed, down the hallway, pointing at something. I followed the direction of her finger and there, on an almost invisible piece of a web hanging down from our ceiling, was a small spider.

Now normally when I see a spider, I yell for my husband or I grab the largest object I can find and hope my aim is on target. However this morning I did neither of those two things.

The reason? This past weekend we saw the movie Charlotte's Web. After watching poor Charlotte (the spider, in case you're not up on the story) give so selfless of herself only to die in the end before she could even see her children born just broke my heart. And it changed how I look at spiders. Well the small ones, at least.

So instead of callously taking the life of the spider hanging in my hallway, I gently picked up the string it dangled on and walked it outside. Actually ran it outside when my visitor started quickly crawling toward my hand.

The same revelatory experience I've had with spiders also happened the first time I read an agent blog. Now I'm not trying to suggest I think of spiders and agents in the same category. Exactly. I'm just saying there are similarities between the two.

For instance, spiders scare me. So do agents. Or at least they did. But that was before I discovered something very important about powerful publishing people. They're human.

Sure, I knew they ate, breathed, and slept like the rest of us. But I figured most agents were the hard-boiled types, callously sending rejection letter after rejection letter and dashing the dreams of promising aspiring authors in the process, all before lunchtime.

But then I visited the Nelson Literary Agency website and realized how wrong I was. I went there looking for submission guidelines when I stumbled across agent Kristin Nelson's blog. I didn't think much about it but decided to take a quick look.

What started out as a glance turned into a forty-five minute laugh fest. Filled with agent advice and business related info, this blog is worth checking out. Kristin tells readers what she has on her iPod when she blogs, what she's doing agent-wise, and how her jury summons went this past Tuesday.

After reading Kristin's blog, I not only realized there was a human side to agents but I also discovered something else. I want Kristen to be my new best friend. Never mind reading my query. Forget publishing my book. I want the two of us to have coffee at Starbucks. I want us to go shopping at the mall together. I want us to have a girls' night out.

Okay so maybe I'm exagerating a bit (although she does sound pretty cool), I have now changed my mind about agents. I guess they're not so bad after all.