When Literary Agents Avoid Love

You may have been perfecting your query letter since Thanksgiving, but literary agents don't fall in love with manuscripts during the last two weeks of December. The inability to love may even extend into the first week of January.

Holly Root of the Waxman Agency tweeted a subtle suggestion that anyone thinking about submitting to her should wait until after the New Year.

Agents like Kristin Nelson have closed the doors completely for the holiday season. No queries acknowledged, read, or fallen in love with.

I'm fighting off the urge to submit a manuscript that's been revised based on some agent feedback, but I know it's absurd to send off anything right before Christmas. Of course, there's always some go-getter agents working, but there's no way to identify them.

It would be a good time for writing, if it wasn't for the press of holiday duties. Today it's lunch in the city with friends, window gazing and a hunt for the guy who sells hot roasted chestnuts. All in the face of an east wind howling off Lake Michigan.

I'd rather be writing. Indoors. With central heating.