Points: 0
Thinking of defecting to the dark side? Here's what I've learnt.
Early autumn last year I steeled myself to take a call. I was publisher of Sphere Non-Fiction and lighting up my screen was an agent whose client I was due to be publishing the following year, except my boss at Little, Brown had just told him I was leaving to become an agent myself. I already felt guilty about leaving my authors, so I was self-centredly imagining that he was about to add fuel to that fire. In actual fact, he was just calling me for a nice gossip - about why I'd done it, how great it was to be an agent and how if I ever wanted a chat he'd be around. "Welcome to the dark side," he said and I laughed.
The next day, I had a conversation with a similarly helpful agent. "Let's get lunch. Welcome to the dark side," I laughed again.
But then when the next agent said it and literally every other agent after that, à la Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn't help but wonder what the hell this dark side was I was letting myself in for.
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'Short stories demand a certain awareness of one's own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus.'