http://greenhouseliterary.com/index.php/blog/article/time_after_time/

We all know this in theory but it's so hard to put into practice.

Oh, that is a good post, isn't it. Particularly love this:

this is a business forever poised between frantic haste and the ponderous stretch of time,

oh, that rings so true! Brilliant post, thanks for alerting us to it

When it's not glacier-time, it's flash-flooding...

Serendipity - pretty much just what I needed to read right now. Thank you.

Must say, if I wrote childrens I'd so want to be represented by an agent who thought like that. Good agents know how writers work, and when their and our thinking is similar, and when it isn't.

<Added>

Duh! Haven't had enough caffeine yet - sloppy editing. What I was trying to type is:

if I wrote childrens I'd love to be represented by her - because we need agents who think like that.

My own agent said in an interview that the reason she switched from being a Managing Editor (i.e. managing editors, not having much direct contact with authors any more) to being an agent, was "Because editors have all the same problems as writers, with none of the rewards". It's nice to know that at least some agents actually LIKE us writers and our peculiar neuroses and needinesses and blind spots...

And they work so hard too - I think when you first sub to an agent, you fondly imagine them dropping everything to read your sub. When you've got one, you realise just how snowed under they are most of the time!

Yes they do - Their office hours have to be devoted to their existing authors, so they read the slushpile at weekends, and on aeroplanes.