On working with an agent

Having made it over a major hurdle on the track to getting your work published, I thought I'd send a secret communication out to let people know what it's like working on your book with an agent.

That was the idea, anyway -- problem is, I'm not sure that I have that much to tell.

Yes, I'm working with my agent on my book, but I'm starting to get the sneaking suspicion...

... wait for it ...

I'm starting to think they all do things differently.

Now, the (wonderful) person I'm working with does a lot of the sorts of things that I had compartmentalized as "editor stuff." Some of her feedback is along the 'agenty' lines of "the scene on page 8 feels kind of off" or "would Joe really ask her that?", but just as many of her notes are detail-things like "you're missing a 'the' on page 48" and "you switch to the wrong verb tense in the scene with the giant chicken."

Now, I might begin to believe that I'd simply misunderstood what it is that an agent does for their author -- I'm a tyro in many things literary; it wouldn't be that big of a surprise -- except for the fact that I work around (if not with) another agent, and her approach involves feedback like:

"What if the main character were japanese instead of romanian?" or...

"What if they were in high school instead of the CIA?"

Big picture stuff, if you see what I mean. Agenty-stuff.

I'm told that another agent I know doesn't do either of those things, and approaches her job as something between a therapist and a legal representative the mentally unfit.

Are any of them wrong? Are any of them, in some strange way, not agents?

I don't know. I don't know if I ever will. I'm glad I found the one I did, and I think that will have to be enough.