After coming out the other side of a long consideration period with a well-respected literary agency, the search for the right agent continues. In many ways, it feels like walking over the same ground–passing the same trees and bumps in the trail, even–as last year at this time. Tempting as it might be to embrace that logic, I think that attitude reflects a very close-minded view of the process. While it has taken a bit longer than I might have suspected to reach this point, the gains from the journey have been considerable.

For starters, I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about the project, the sort that could only happen by thrusting the manuscript in the wild. Crossing the threshold also led to several really good contacts. Additionally, I now know two great proof readers who I can trust to find every fuck up, and gained tremendous insight on how others with no emotional investment in the project view my writing. Reaching out has forced me to become a better listener, which has improved my writing in ways I could never have imagined. A lot of people have great ideas for improving a story. Plenty of those ideas are better than anything I might have mustered.

And there were less obvious, yet just as welcome benefits, too.

Despite the fact that every agent I pitched to lives in the fast lane of the publishing world, only two out of what is a considerable list were . . . well, I guess rude is the charge. Honestly for all I know, those few words of bile might have come not from the agent at all, but rather via the mouth of a embittered assistant. So the legend of the sharks of New York and Los Angelos eating the unagented writer alive seems to be a fallacy. And for any missives to the contrary, I’ve got a paper shredder and a blow-torch.

Perhaps a few other legends–surely those tales are true, the Internets tell me so–warrant a second look, too. For instance, the time from manuscript to market. Reviewing the origins of the most successful commercial writers, the amount of time each invested in placing their novel later deemed their breakout work varies wildly.

Here’s a few numbers I consider relevant:

Stephanie Meyer and John Grisham drew fourteen rejections apiece before placing their work. William Kennedy’s Iron Weed got slapped down thirty-four times, by well regarded editors. Stephen King had three unsold novels circulating between publishers in addition to Carrie, whose success brought enough interest in the first three books to net sales.

Regardless of the time, place, and author there is one intrinsic problem every writer faces when wooing someone to pick up their novel: figuring out how many desks a manuscript must land on before it reaches the right set of eyes. One writer tries thirty-five times, another two. Yet another, one hundred and twenty-two times.

Ah, but what if there was a mechanism to get a project onto a lot of desks at once? To end run the hordes of assistants and interns and even the agents themselves. Get right at the decision maker. What might happen to a project then?

If obstacles provide a means for someone to prove how bad they want something, I just may have found a solution to the problem. Check back in a few weeks for a Randy Pausch inspired announcement.