Novel Origin Stories

To mark the release of his new rom-com, Date Week, which is out June 25, Ted is joined this month not by another writer but his longtime literary agent, Jessica Sinsheimer, the person responsible for helping him develop and then selling both this novel and his first, Schooled.An agent at Context Literary Agency, Jessica has been campaigning for her favorite queries since 2004 and is known for co-creating #MSWL and ManuscriptWishList.com—and, like Ted, for drinking way too much coffee.The concept for Date Week started with Jessica, and she talks about why she suggested this story to Ted in the first place, sharing the mix of highbrow inspiration and decidedly less highbrow reality TV-watching that led to the idea. They then move beyond his work specifically to discuss what she sees as an emerging trend of power arcs in fiction more generally as well as what she looks for in a potential client’s writing when assessing whether she is the one to help that person take their work in progress to the next level.Through the course of their conversation, Jessica and Ted also open up about the challenges, from both the author and the agent sides, of navigating a highly subjective industry built on a strange mix of creative endeavor, business realities, and the unrelenting push to be productive.