Hello, everyone.
I am Tricia.
I am a senior Film Studies major--
English minor out of Holyoke, here.
And this summer, I worked at InkWell Management,
which is a full-service literary agency in New York City.
And basically-- like, in a nutshell--
I should start just by saying, I want to write romance novels--
[LAUGHTER]
--which is not something that a lot of people
say-- at least not my age and not openly.
[LAUGHTER]
But through my experience this summer,
I can say it with a little bit more confidence-- no problem--
which I'm doing now.
So back in, like, May--
when was-- I actually--
March, maybe-- I was like-- oh, shit, what am I
going to do this summer?
And--
[LAUGHTER]
Ideally, I wanted to do something involving publishing.
Because even though I had studied film, writing--
not for the screen, but prose-- is my true passion.
And I was worried about what I could do to actually make
money, since people often talk about authors, like-- oh, you
do that thing where you kind of just write stuff,
and maybe unless you're Stephen King,
you won't make any money off of it at all.
So I thought, OK, maybe learning more
about the specifics of the publishing industry
would be helpful.
And that led me to InkWell.
Literary agencies are this important
and sort of overlooked piece in the whole publishing landscape,
between author and the actual publishing houses.
What they do is--
in the same way that an actor will have an agent
or an athlete will have an agent,
authors have agents who handle their contract work,
who sort of negotiate with editors to get them the best
advances and the best terms in their contract agreements--
help edit, market--
do all sorts of things.
It's full-service for a reason, in that agents who
work at InkWell and other similar places,
they work for the author, but it's really
a partnership, where both of them
are working on the projects together.
So in order to find those people who might be good clients,
InkWell-- like almost all other agencies--
invites queries from potential authors.
And that will take me to the two major parts of my internship--
it was reading queries and reading manuscripts.
So when it comes to queries, I--
essentially, what a query is is a small, elevator-style pitch
of what the book is about, followed by some information
about the author and a short sample of 5-10 pages.
It has to be from the beginning of the book--
so, like, the first five pages of the novel.
Is it good?
Did I like it?
If I did, if I thought it was quality writing, if I thought
that it had the potential to be a good story,
I would forward it on to the agent who
would be most interested in pursuing a project like this.
InkWell is interesting in that they do both fiction
and nonfiction work, depending upon what the agent is
personally interested in.
So Kim Witherspoon, for example-- one of the partners--
really likes women's fiction.
So whenever I had something that seemed intriguing in that area,
I could send it on to her or one of the other agents like that--
a George Lucas-- not that George Lucas,
a different George Lucas--
[LAUGHTER]
--did lots of thrillers, which I wasn't really that
familiar with until I got started-- well, my supervisor,
Eliza-- she does a lot of nonfiction work.
So I would send it on to them, and if they
thought it was interesting, and they wanted
to request the full manuscript, then I
would often be the person reading them first.
I would read the manuscript and write what's called
a reader's report, which is a summary of what happens in it,
what's the genre, kind of quick-- who are the characters,
what happens, what's the resolution--
and then a critique that went on, talking about, you know--
what were the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript,
were the characters engaging, was the plot engaging,
was it doing what it was supposed
to do within the terms of the genre that it said it was?
And I would give a recommendation
on whether I thought we should pass on the project,
whether the agent in question should, maybe, give it
a second read and see if they're interested in, maybe,
calling up the author and talking
about possible representation, or if perhaps, they should pass
on it, but provide revisions.
And in that case, a lot of my critique stuff
went into the actual emails that would be sent back
to the author, saying--
this is great, but I think that you need, like,
a couple more rounds of edits, which
was quite exciting, because that formed the crux of, you know,
of course, not the actual clients, themselves,
but the potential clients.
And there are so many people who send out queries.
Like, it's insane the amount of queries
that we got each day-- hundreds of them.
And I was kind of, like, a human spam filter.
[LAUGHTER]
That was the majority of what I did,
although I did get the privilege of working
on some current client manuscripts, which was really
fun.
And InkWell was really wonderful,
in that they do a lot of educational work
for their interns.
So throughout the summer, different people in the office
would talk to me and the two other interns
about various aspects of the publishing industry, which
is how I know a lot more about the specifics
of actually agents--
not just evaluating manuscripts, but what
happens when a book goes out on submission to editors
who might be potentially interested in buying it--
all sorts of stuff like that.
And that brings me to, like, thinking about how
it related to me, specifically.
Towards the end of my internship,
I was lucky to get some really great advice from both
my supervisor and one of the partners
at the firm, Michael Carlisle.
And essentially, they told me not to be an agent for--
which was kind of weird, considering
I was basically doing the work that an assistant, or just
below an assistant would do.
Because a lot of the full agents,
they'd have assistant agents who would see a lot of the stuff
that I wrote before sending it on to, like, Kim Witherspoon,
or whoever was really the crafts of the operation of the agency.
So hearing that, it kind of jived
with what I'd been thinking throughout the summer.
I spent a lot of time on the train,
because I lived on Long Island, so I
was riding on the train for that three hour stretch,
there and back.
And I was having no fun with my manuscript, but thinking--
you know, I definitely could make a good agent,
I could make a good editor--
I could do something in publishing.
But I really just felt like writing.
And it was really nice to hear them be, like-- yeah, you
should just write and do a job that's unrelated
and then not spend your time doing
this full-time job-- which is, granted,
really interesting and wonderful,
but not a path, they thought, would be good for you.
What would be good for me, I'm hoping,
is to get a part-time job.
This is my last semester, by the way.
So this is, like, an immediate plan--
[LAUGHTER]
--part-time job plus writing a lot plus eventually,
querying in the same way that the potential authors
query InkWell.
And feeling that way, like, actually,
really feeling positive, saying that I
want to write genre fiction was a journey
throughout the summer.
I don't know-- it was kind of like, hm,
I really like women's fiction.
Like, romance-- ooh, like, I like reading it a lot.
I'm not going to tell you that.
I'll read it on my iPad so you don't see the cover.
But a lot of people in the office worked with romance.
And honestly, romance is one of those genres
that actually makes money.
Like, literally, romance novels subsidize
those literary fiction novels that we read in class, here.
So in terms of actually being a full-time novelist and being
able to write as a career, doing something that I already knew
that I enjoyed--
hearing people talk about it, like-- yeah,
we should definitely request that full manuscript,
because it has potential, you know, or--
yeah, like, there are so many different romance genres,
and you can write in multiple ones.
And most romance writers come out with several books a year.
Hearing all of that spoken in a positive tone,
sort of outside the bubble of academia,
was seriously encouraging and wonderful.
And you know, by the end, I'm standing up here, and literally
being, like-- yeah, that contemporary romance, kind
of sexy, set of Hollywood, that I'm working on right now,
like, hopefully, it will be on bookshelves eventually.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]