FEW events create more stress at writers conferences and workshops than agent speed-dating sessions. These short one-on-one meetings can be great opportunities to discuss your literary work with literary agents and have personalized, specific conversations about your writing career and book publishing. But the prospect can also feel daunting: Trying to summarize your creative work in five minutes or less to an agent while you both shakily balance cocktails on your knees in the over-air-conditioned ballroom of an airport hotel is a rough task.
As a literary agent I also approach these events with trepidation—partially because the writers who come in tend to be anxious, which makes me immediately want to spill they enter the room.
