One of the best emails I ever sent - led to a marriage proposal - How I got my agent

Basically, sometimes it’s worth pressing the send button

I genuinely did not think I’d be taken on by my agent.   I didn’t have a full draft of a manuscript. I had thirty pages.  I hadn’t got anyone else to check those words before I sent them. 

I had googled and read the stats.  Basically, it’s impossible to get a literary agent and you need to follow all the suggested steps to be in with a chance - you need a full draft manuscript and your work has to be faultless.  

And the person I was forwarding my thirty pages to, the only thirty pages I had, is like a superstar agent. Like seriously. 

So when my finger hovered over the send button on the 23rd December 2021, the most I was expecting was that Nelle Andrew might read my work, give me some pointers, and maybe a sign to encourage me to keep going. 

I remember thinking, based on the google results, of ‘what to do to get a literary agent’  that I was probably really messing up this contact - you go to an agent only with your bestest work, you only go to an agent when you’ve got the whole book, maybe it’s been through a number of readers.  And yet, with everything I didn’t have and hadn’t done,  my finger hovered over the send button.

I should say I wasn’t just randomly emailing Nelle out of the blue.  I  met Nelle at an evening ‘get to know the agent thing’, years before I sent the email.  I’d done ‘meet the agent’ events before and I was, if I’m being  honest, cynical about them.  As part of my MA in screenwriting I’d done a pitching and meeting the agent thing - then I had been super excited and optimistic, but several emails later it was obvious the agents weren’t interested in me or my work and I realised that meeting the agent didn’t mean being taken on by the agent.  It was all quite depressing really.  

But I’d been introduced to Nelle, she’d shown a genuine interest in an idea I had pitched (not the idea for Miss Hortense) and I had her email address and an introduction (thank you Katie!) and with that brief interaction, I kept in touch.  

Having an email and the ability to say ‘do you remember me’ was like having a little bit of gold.  It felt like something to be handled carefully though.  I kept in touch, mainly to say why I hadn’t yet forwarded any writing - genuine excuses - working on a play - it’s being toured nationally, sorry, will send something soon and then that Christmas 2021, I thought, shall I just send these thirty pages I’ve been working on for a completely different idea? My hand hovered over the send button.  I pressed send on 23rd December 2021 at 4:41pm. 

I got an out of office  -  of course I did  it was Christmas!  I didn’t really expect a response but Nelle got back to me! Firstly an acknowledgement (thank you!), then a request for a short synopsis (really?), then a zoom meeting (no way…!).  Even then I thought about best case scenarios -  feedback to help me keep going because that’s what I could really do with at that time.  

And then Nelle asked me to marry her - What? She wanted to represent me?  She was telling me how she worked -  highly editorial and all the reasons why she would have my back.  And I knew then that if I did what needed to be done, what Nelle must have thought could be done, my life could change forever….