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Bruce Holsinger on how to get an agent. Bruce is a distinguished medievalist whose first novel will appear in 2014 - he knows whereof he speaks!

(I can weigh in here just bbriefly re: the authorial questioning on "what does fifty pages mean?" - use common sense - this goes for graduate admissions as well - it is an automatic huge negative if the applicant ignores the suggested advice about what to submit and sends something on the order of two or three times as long, or single-spaced, or anything else that shows a lack of a sense of proportion.)

"The same goes for the bed"

From Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (translated by John Sturrock):

We generally utilize the page in the larger of its two dimensions. The same goes for the bed. The bed (or, if you prefer, the page) is a rectangular space, longer than it is wide, in which, or on which, we normally lie longways. 'Italian' beds are only to be found in fairy tales (Tom Thumb and his brothers, or the seven daughters of the Ogre, for example) or in altogether abnormal and usually serious circumstances (mass exodus, aftermath of a bombing raid, etc.). Even when we utilize the bed the more usual way round, it's almost always a sign of a catastrophe if several people have to sleep in it. The bed is an instrument conceived for the nocturnal repose of one or two persons, but no more.