Post #87 ? Women?s Memoirs, Book Business ? Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
[BOOK GIVEAWAY: Keep reading for information on how to get a free copy of A Cluttered Life: Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys
How do you feel about clutter in your life? Does it facilitate your writing or hinder it? Want to know more about clutter and how it made its way into a memoir?
Last week, Pesi Dinnerstein wrote quite a funny article about clutter for us. If you missed it, be sure to check it out:
Writing Through the Fog
Meanwhile, we enjoyed our conversation with Pesi so much that we asked her to share with you her story of getting published ? a subject dear to the heart of all memoir writers. She graciously agreed, saying she?d love to share her experiences with you. She has divided her tale into two parts. The first ? a focus on getting her agent and getting a publisher ? we?ve published today. Next week we?ll publish the second part of her story that will include marketing.
About the book GIVEAWAY. Pesi and her publisher, Seal Press, have generously donated a copy of her book to be given to the person with the best comment. Therefore, we invite you to recall a time of clutter (or unclutter) and share it with us in the Comment section below. Win us over with your comment. We?ll contact the winner via email.
You can get extra points if you go back and leave a Note about your clutter on Pesi?s previous article as well as on this one.
AND be sure to come back next Friday when Pesi returns with the conclusion of her writing, editing, publishing, marketing tale.
And now? to Pesi.
PUBLISHING MY MEMOIR, PART 1
By Pesi Dinnerstein, author of A Cluttered Life: Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys
For the first forty years of my life, all I wanted to do with my unmanageable clutter was get rid of it?or, at the very least, make it a bit more manageable. Writing about it was not something I ever considered?maybe because I was too overwhelmed, maybe because it didn?t seem worth writing about, or maybe because I was simply too scared to discover what might be hidden beneath all those piles.
How I got from there to Chapter One is a story unto itself, but not the story for today. What I want to share in this post is the unlikely tale of how I found an agent and a publisher and actually managed to pull together a book.
This part of the journey begins in January of 2008. At that point, I had already been talking for years about wanting to write a book in which I could explore my complicated relationship with clutter. I wasn?t quite sure what form I wanted this exploration to take, but I was leaning toward a collection of essays. I liked the idea of viewing the topic from many different angles without having to delve too deeply into any particular one or reveal more than I wanted to about my own struggle. A novel felt too disconnected, but a memoir definitely felt too close for comfort. A book of essays felt just right?personal and honest, but shared from a safe distance.
The only problem?as you would expect?is that my life was very cluttered, and I never found the time to write. In 2004, my husband and I decided to leave our jobs in New York and move to Florida, where I hoped to sip lemonade under a palm tree and reinvent myself as a writer. Unfortunately, it didn?t quite work out that way.
My husband developed all sorts of health issues, my elderly mother became more elderly and in need of increased care, and we walked into the worst hurricane season South Florida had seen in thirty years. Just as we were getting unpacked and ready to begin our new tropical lives, Hurricane Wilma came along and blew off part of our roof. Our condo was flooded over and over again for many months and had to be virtually rebuilt. By the time our life was restored to some degree of normalcy, it was already 2007, and the only thing I had written was a series of checks to our contractor.
Anxious to finally move forward, I decided that the first step toward writing a book was buying a computer. I had never owned one nor had the slightest desire to do so, but I now saw the purchase as a statement of serious intent.
At this point, my dear friend Yitta Halberstam decided to step in. Since I was no longer underwater and now had a functioning computer, she felt that the time had come to start taking the writing of my book more seriously. Yitta, of course, would have been the one to know, since she herself was a successful writer.
I?ll never forget her phone call.
?Pesi, I told my agent about your idea for a book, and she?s very interested and wants to know more about it. Could you send her a few pages describing what you plan to do??
?What did you say, Yitta?? I replied, in shock. ?Your agent is . . . very interested . . . in my idea for a book?!?
I was too overwhelmed to continue the conversation.
I had never sent anything to an agent before. This was my first attempt?and it wasn?t even my attempt; it was Yitta?s. And now the agent wanted to see more?I couldn?t believe it.
But, then, the reality began to set in. How could I do this? I wasn?t ready to write a book. I wasn?t even ready to write a few pages about writing a book. What had I been thinking all along? I had no real plan in mind and no clear sense of what I wanted to say.
However, I certainly wasn?t about to let fear and anxiety?no matter how well founded?get in the way of an opportunity like this. So, I quickly pulled myself together and tried to do the best I could under the circumstances, relying mainly on my own intuition and Yitta?s knowhow to get me through.
A few days after I sent in the description, Yitta?s agent contacted me; and by the end of the week, I had signed an agreement with Jane Dystel of Dystel and Goderich Literary Management. I may not have had a book or even a plan?but I now had an agent!
Then, of course, the real work began. Jane thought the book would sell more easily as a memoir, so I tried to get over my discomfort at sharing the intimate details of my life with total strangers and agreed to change the genre. Once that was settled, I needed to write a formal Book Proposal for Jane to send out to the publishing world.
This was where I really began to lose my footing. As grateful as I was for the opportunity that had come my way, I wasn?t quite prepared for an all-consuming project to take over my life. I had barely recovered from Hurricane Wilma, and, now, it looked like I would have to devote every waking moment to preparing a Book Proposal, which called for an overview of the book, a marketing plan, an analysis of the competition, a detailed summary of the story line, and a long sample chapter?all on a computer that didn?t seem eager to cooperate. And when was I ever going to get to my lemonade and my palm tree?
It was at this moment, however, that I was reminded of the fact that publishing a book?like everything else in our lives?is the product of many forces that we don?t quite understand. And, so, as I began to panic at the prospect of having to do marketing research on my new and bewildering computer, the Universe apparently took notice of my plight and dispatched a Technical Specialist (call her an Angel, if you like) to come by and save the day.
I hadn?t heard from Heather Burns in over twenty years, but she had received her own little prompt from the Universe a few days earlier and decided to track me down. As it turned out, over these past two decades, Heather had become quite an expert in computer research, and she was now only too happy to hold my hand and walk me through the entire process.
There was, of course, a long road ahead. Most writers have a Book Proposal ready to go before they contact an agent. Not only was I trying to write one while my agent was sitting and waiting, but I was also trying to envision a memoir in my mind where, for years, there had only been a pile of essays.
By the time I finished the Proposal, revised it several times, and updated it to include the changes in the book market that occurred while I was busy writing, the season had changed from winter to summer. Not that I would have noticed, since I spent the entire six months working indoors on the desktop computer I had purchased because I couldn?t imagine why I needed a laptop.
On June 11, Jane sent me the final copy for one last look-over and along with a request for few minor changes. She told me not to be concerned if I didn?t hear from her for a month or two because she would be sending out the Proposal and waiting for responses. I emailed the Proposal back to her immediately on June 13 and began waiting patiently for what I hoped would be good news. June passed, July passed, and we were well into August before I received a rather strange note from Jane. She wanted to know when I was planning to send the manuscript.
?What do you mean?? I asked, totally confused ?I emailed it to you on June 13. I know it went out because it appeared in the ?Sent? column on my email screen.?
?Well,? Jane said, ?it must have gotten lost somewhere in cyberspace because it never arrived here.?
I had heard of such things happening?but to my very first manuscript at the most critical point in the process?! It just didn?t seem fair. But?as I quickly reminded myself?what do we really know? Maybe, in some mysterious way, it would all turn out for the best.
Meanwhile, Jane decided to wait until after Labor Day to send out the Proposal, since she didn?t want it to arrive while people were still on vacation. So, by the time things actually got moving, we were well into September and right on the heels of the stock market crash that sent our economy into the worst recession most of us can remember.
Needless to say, this did not bode well for a first-time author with a weak marketing plan and no platform. And, as expected, the rejections began to trickle in at a steady pace. I tried not to think about what might have been if the Proposal had gone out when it was supposed to, months before publishers became too concerned with their own survival to gamble on an unknown writer. But, of course, I would never really know.
Which brings me to the subject of miracles. You may view what happened next as an interesting coincidence or a random bit of good fortune or just par for the course in the unpredictable world of publishing. But, to me, it was nothing less than a little miracle.
All I knew was that everything felt blocked, and I had no idea how to break through. It wasn?t just that we couldn?t find a publisher; I had a distinct feeling inside me that something was standing in the way. So, I decided to do the four things that usually help me to feel less stuck: I prayed, I meditated, I gave money to charity, and I tried to think of anyone to whom I needed to make amends. Since I couldn?t think of anyone, I concentrated on the first three.
The very next day, however, an old friend called to say that something had come up in therapy that she wanted to discuss with me. It was an incident which had occurred over thirty years ago, but that was still apparently disturbing her. And she realized that it had, in fact, been disturbing her and affecting our friendship for all these years. As soon as we began speaking, I could see that I had clearly been at fault, so I immediately and very sincerely apologized and spent a long time discussing the issue with her. When we were finally done, it felt like something had broken free at last.
Several days later, on October 30, Jane emailed me that we had gotten our first nibble. Seal Press, a division of Perseus Books, wanted to know more about A Cluttered Life. It was only a maybe?and not even a particularly strong maybe?but it was definitely an opening. Over the next few months, they wanted more information, more chapters, more detail?and I did my best to keep it coming as quickly as possible. By January, they decided they were ready to move forward; and by April, the contract was in my mailbox.
I certainly worked very hard to make it happen, and so did Jane; but could we have done it without Yitta and Heather and my friend who forgave me? And would it have happened if the manuscript had gone out in June instead of September? Hard work, good friends, little miracles, serendipity . . . Who knows why anything happens? All I know is that a year after an agent walked into my life, I had a contract in my hand and an overflow of joy and gratitude in my heart.
Please return for Part Two next week . . . .
If you prefer the Kindle version, please use the link to the left.
And please do leave a Comment below. We?d love to hear your story of clutter or declutter. We are eager to hear from the memoir writer?s point of view what clutter means in your life. Leave a Comment and you have a chance to win a copy of Pesi Dinnerstein?s memoir.
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