April 22, 2025 E-mail: I have career news, let’s chat next week! ~ Your agent, Lucy.
My stomach sinks, shoulders drop, and “Fuck” is the word that escapes my lips. My mind is off on a thousand different ways this could be bad. Really bad.
She’s leaving the industry. She’s changing agencies and I’m not going with her. She’s handing me off to another agent because she’s switching to an editorial position somewhere. The whole reason I’m feeling compelled to create that querying class right now, is because I’m going to have to query to find a new agent again… The constant childhood companions of anxiety, insecurity, and worry flood my body.
I fight the urge to respond with, “Can you just tell me is this career news is bad for me?” and send her tentative times and days for us to talk. With a deep breath, I stand up and head to meditate.
Whatever this means I need to get this anxious energy through my system, because if I don’t it’s going to paralyze me for the next seven days—and I do not want to feel like this for an entire week.
***
July 2023. Mom and BFF cousin are dead, grief has distorted reality for the last few years. My brain is starting to recognize a world beyond loss. Didn’t I see an email from my agent a month ago? Yes. There it is. My agency has merged with another one. Oh, do I have a new agency?… I click on the website. Oh, this looks like it could be ok. I click on the Our Clients tab. I’ve been MIA for close to two years, haven’t produced anything in the dying/grieving years. It makes perfect business sense for the agency to have dropped me. Scroll… There’s my name. I start crying. She has kept space for me in her world, while I was lost in mine.
***
April 22, 2025. Meditation starts all racing thoughts. Breathe. Catastrophizing. Breathe. What if.. horrible thing X. Breathe. Horrible thing Y. Breathe. Horrible thing Z. Breathe. What if this is good for me? Wait what? Breathe. Potentially positive thing? Breathe. Breaking up may be good? Breathe. She’s starting her own agency? Breathe. Think. Breathe. Think. Breathe. Think. Breathe. For an hour.
I get up. Anxiety, fear, worry, transmuted to a firm knowing that whatever is happening is for both of our highest and greatest goods. I don’t know what she will tell me and that is okay. Maybe we stay together. Maybe we don’t. We will both be okay. My writing career will be okay. On with my day. The e-mail a passing thought that occasionally, momentarily draws my attention, but never holds my energy.
***
Late Fall 2023. I reach out to Lucy with a new writing project for the first time since before the Pandemic. Non-fiction. I’m curious what she will think as she signed me for fiction, and this is so far from what I’ve ever shown her before. The next few months we work through things, yet I’m consistently feeling this urge I HAVE to sign a new agency contract.
It’s important. This project NEEDS me to sign a new agency contract. I bring it up to Lucy a few times. The first time she explains my old agency contract grandfathered into the merger. Intellectually, I understand this, but intuitively the NEED to sign a new agency contract is relentless. Lucy says she will have someone send me the merger company contract. It never shows up in my inbox.
I check in with my intuition. I’m not supposed to push now. But I do NEED to sign a new agency contract.
***
April 29, 2025. The morning of my call with Lucy and it’s the first time I’ve felt a twinge of anxiety since my meditation session a week ago. Wow. That’s insane. Before me would have lost a whole week to negative what-ifs and catastrophizing. Unable to function. Current me, has hardly given it a thought.
My curiosity is much stronger than anxiety though, and I eagerly wait for our 2 p.m. call.
I tell her about Dairy Hollow, and she tells me she’s decided to join a different agency. I sit in the moment curious if that means I’m going with her, and she says, “You know I love your writing, Jess. Anything you do. But, I also know we haven’t sold a project together, and if you wanted to use this as a chance to look elsewhere I’d completely understand.”
There’s no undercurrent of her wanting me to go, just a completely mutual feeling of us wanting the best for each other. While I’d initially been worried about her breaking up with me, I realize she could have been just as scared I would break up with her.
My intuition flares. You need to sign a NEW AGENCY contract.
“No. You’re my agent. It’s okay we haven’t sold anything, yet. I don’t think we’ve gotten an offer on this project yet, because you needed to move to an agency where you were energetically aligned.
“There’s a big energy shift happening. Relationships are reorganizing. I’m seeing and feeling it everywhere with, clients, friends, business partners… The people who I’m wholly aligned with.
“We’re being brought closer to the people we don’t have to mask around. The people who don’t need us to dim aspects of ourselves because something about our authentic personality makes them uncomfortable. The people who allow us to unapologetically be ourselves, and who aren’t threatened by our growth or our power. The people who let us evolve and embrace who we are becoming.”
“Yes! That’s exactly how this move feels,” she says.
“What do you like about the move?”
“It’s a progressive agency with a great history of advocacy and forward-thinking authors. I can work on fiction and non-fiction equally. The people…”
As she tells me more that expansive feeling I now know is intuitive confirmation settles into my body. This move is good. It feels really, really good. For both of us.
***
May 2025 e-mail: Frances Goldin Literary has sent you documents to sign.
I read through the agency agreement, note how my address also includes my (she/her/hers) pronouns and smile. I sign my new agency contract, and it feels like a big piece of my writing career puzzle has just fallen into place.
***
For rights inquiries on my work contact Lucy Cleland with Frances Goldin Literary Agency. I have fiction and non-fiction projects available.
If you are a writer looking for your aligned agent, there’s still time to sign up for my FREE Empowered Querying workshop on May 31, 2025.