Sounds like other people have had some rough life patches recently. There were some situations that exploded with a literary agency that seemed to carry over some similar themes. I wanted to share the experience I applied to my situation, which seems to apply to writers trying to navigate professional relationships. First, I want to observe that a literary agent should be a professional relationship, and adhere to norms and expectations for what that should look like to be healthy. I saw another comment this week that another agent yet again made condescending and dismissive remarks about writers as being worthless to their business model, which is an appalling attitude to have toward content creators without whom you would not make money. Second, of course personal relationships too, one would hope, should not become toxic or codependent, as sometimes family relationships drift into those territories. While it might be nice to avoid these dynamics in any relationship, it's really a realistic expectation that your professional relationships do not cross these lines, Recently, I was working with a business coach/ mentor. We seemed to vibe, and she seemed to have the right level of experience, which is why it was strange when sometimes she seemed to be trying to prove to me that she was good enough. I was nothing but respectful toward her. At the start, her "coaching" style seemed to rely heavily on understanding only her own experiences and trying to help other people replicate them, which isn't a very successful style of coaching, and is extremely limiting. At the start, when I hired her, I made a respectful comment that did not belittle her, that I thought her coaching would be improved if I could see her ability to step outside of her own experiences and into my experiences and apply principles she had learned from her experiences. I was looking forward to learning from the different types of experiences she had gained. However, in this situation, I was paying her, though it's never healthy if you have to bring up paying someone to hold over their head in conflict, and I tried never to do this. The dynamic did revolve around her supporting me, and I was in no role nor was I being compensated to guide her in her coaching abilities. There were some strange attitudes or things she would say to me which popped up. I tried to use my experience to express my needs respectfully because I wanted to invest in this being healthy relationship, and not veering into toxic or codependent territory. She was argumentative with me, confrontational, contradictory, in certain instances when I expressed an observation about something based on my experience. Sometimes these were people who had not presented real opportunities over five years coming back like acid reflux. Sometimes they were discussing job openings and career opportunities. She felt it was some kind of job of hers to challenge me, and it was very frustrating to me, because it communicated to me she didn't trust my instincts. That's the opposite of empowering me and building my confidence in my abilities. These were the instances where I gave her feedback, that was respectful and objective, that when she contradicted me and argued with me it didn't work for me. She was dismissive about the feedback, instead of saying "I'm not sure I understand, but I want to make sure we're communicating effectively, so let's discuss this," or anything mature or respectful, in keeping with the attempt I was making to keep the situation healthy and professional. She overexplained her "intentions" like there was some "misunderstanding" I was not smart enough to understand. For me, when I am trying to express my boundaries, which I feel are important and valuable if I value a relationship and want it to stay healthy, someone being dismissive is a red flag. I focused on areas which I felt perhaps were a better fit to her experience and skillset, on proposals with different partners and situations. That's where I was looking forward to her input for the non-fiction book proposal, and disappointed when I could not find other people with her efficiency. However, I reached a week where I had a lot of stress points going on in my life. First, the customer service staff at Reedsy were being petty and vindictive. I was fine to part ways, but needed to retrieve some of my account data. I was trying for a few weeks, with further frustration as they looked for excuses to work around giving me everything except the thing they knew I was asking for. Because of this stress, one of my friends who aggreed to do an interview to provide content for the book was expressing high levels of interest. Because I've known him since University, I thought it would be a pick me up to see him during this time of stress.
However, I also had to conduct this interview for the book, and he presented very extreme content. Since I don't have an editor or support team helping me identify how to handle difficult content, that presented a challenge for me. I continued to communicate with him after the interview with the same level of respect I had treated him no matter how extreme the views he shared. However, his email responses became increasingly conflict oriented, with some questioned phrased in the second person, which felt directed at me, and that presented a problem for me. It upset me on a number of levels. This was a friend. Did I respond to him pushing back as a friend? As a writer who's objective? It crossed some boundaries. The answer was for someone to support me in communicating healthy boundaries with him.
My mentor instead took a borderline approach in her responses to me to gaslight me. She told me that I needed to "be more resilient," which was an inappropriate mental health comment. She compared this relationship of decades, who was impacting the content of my proposal, to random critics online who heckled me because they didn't like the book, as if there was any appropriate comparison between the two.
After the stress induced by petty people at Reedsy, a conflict with a close friend, and uncertainty about how to handle the content of the proposal, having someone who was supposed to be supporting me take a completely inappropriate position toward me was too much. It was incredibly triggering. This would have been very easy, if she had just observed the situation where I needed to communicate healthy boundaries with the friend and help support me in doing that. That was where the communication really started to unravel. I tried to explain this to her, but I was upset and triggered, and this is why the boundaries I was trying to communicate at the start of the relationship were so important. If they had been established, they could have helped avoid her attitude undermining and arguing with me about my observations about my friends' behavior triggering me.
When I tried to provide her this feedback about how upset it made me, she made it about her. I was now belittling her, so more gaslighting, I guess. I cleared my head and observed that she was reactive to certain behaviors from me, and her comment was condescending, that somehow my behavior was beneath her. For me to observe that behavior of other people were problematic and needed boundaries communicated - that behavior was not good enough for her. I spun out for three days trying to understand why she had this disgusting attitude of being better than me, and I realized it was because she didn't understand healthy boundaries herself. I thought to myself, none of this is the behavior of a confident person. None of this reflects that in her own life she knows how to communicate healthy boundaries. It started to click everything into place for me why she had started behaving in such a passive aggressive manner with me. Everything suddenly made sense when I had that realization: why she was defensive when I tried to give her healthy feedback, why she made me communicating healthy needs about her, everything....
I still struggled for weeks now knowing what to do. Customer service for the platform tried to help me find other options, whose experience were not as aligned as the woman I had chosen. I was disappointed. I wanted this woman, who I had respected enough to try communicate normal healthy adult needs and communication, was not treating me with respect. However, it undermined everything else about her performance.
I still did my best to communicate my point of view, perspective, things she could do to recover the situation and put the relationship back on track, and she didn't respond for two weeks. At any point, she could have said "I hear what you're saying." It communicated what I had been feeling earlier in the relationship, which was lack of motivation to show up, or to invest in a healthy relationship.
My tip for writers is not to ignore these things with agents. Lilly Santiago was brave enough to share her experience here:
https://twitter.com/LillyMSantiago/status/1657834407032397824
As well as the longterm impact the experience had on her creativity. That's how I felt for the past few weeks. This non-fiction proposal was supposed to be a break from the drama and emotional abuse. I thought I was trying to invest in this long term relationship supporting me, and I felt deflated and burned out again. However, I have some career opportunities and options on the table opening up, and she didn't have those explicit experiences. I found someone with specific experience for two directions I could go with my career, and thought I should just move forward with that person who will help me describe specific job positions that I would be seeking.
This weekend, I looked forward to Eurovision, and I had an online writing retreat scheduled. In addition, I had to do an online assessment. Those things required some focus. Friday the woman mentor responded to me, but after two weeks of not jumping in and preventing me from feeling alone, I thought the chances were she would have a response that would upset me. I made a decision that I didn't need to be upset anymore this weekend, and not to read that message from her. I canceled our contract, and asked for a refund. It made me incredibly sad this weekend when I started diving back into the proposal because I missed the conversations with her. However, she was the reason I couldn't pick up the proposal for three weeks!
It's better to cut a relationship that's becoming toxic and passive aggressive off earlier than later. It's better to recognise those red flags, communicate your professional boundaries early on in the relationship. Boundaries are because you care about the relationship. You want to continue working together long-term, so if professional boundaries are being crossed, you care that it doesn't become unhealthy - that's your motivation for trying to provide healthy feedback about your needs. It's better to free up that space for you to think clearly about your creative process and goals than to drag out a relationship that will involve gaslighting, passive aggressive behaviour, and all kinds of other toxic elements. Those things will drag you down and make you feel burned out PDQ.
Here are things I've learned the hard way. Trying to please everyone else is going to make the situation worse instead of better. Not at least attempting to express your needs and expectations in the situation then means you haven't even at least let the other person know there's an issue which needs to be addressed in order for you to continiue. In the case of Ms. Santiago's experience, for example, she could have brought this to the attention of the Partners that there needed to be a discussion about the inconsistent behavior of the agent. If the agent is not receiving ethical guidance and professional expectations developed by the agency, and this behavior is normalized, then that gives the writer a clear understanding that they are not going to pursue a healthy professional working relationship, and recognizing that earlier to find a new agent sooner would probably be the best decision.
As a writer living in Europe, I consider options for the English speaking market literary agencies in the UK and the US. I must say I never hear about such complete breakdowns and ethical misconduct from UK agencies, but there does seem to be this regular drama coming from literary agencies in the US. My non-fiction book will be for the US market, so I am heavily considering agencies there for that project. However, I hope that I will go into any agent relationship with the mutual understanding that I have expectations of professional and ethical conduct.
Hope this helps current writers going through this, future writers figuring out their relationships with their agents. I hope Ms. Santiago finds a new muse.
