I said lunch, not launch!

"You've got your agent list. You've
got your killer query. Now it's time to launch
yourself out into the world."

~ Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry in "The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published"

"Far Out Space Nuts" be darned, now it's time! I sent five query letters in the mail to New York agents today, and I emailed eight more into the amorphous internet.

With a bit of coaching from Eckstut, I perfected my pitch for "The Drum Line: A Memoir of a Sex Offender's Wife" and tightened my manuscript. I haven't heard a word from the two agents I queried in July, but Eckstut predicted that if I query 15 to 20 agents, I should hear back from at least two of them. We'll see how good a forecaster she is.


“The Drum Line,” a memoir of adultery, sex crime and the demise of a 16-year marriage, is a modern parable on the nature of betrayal, forgiveness and atonement for those who have endured the shame and mystery of secrets in a family. If you were an agent, would you want to read more?

Finding common ground

On the advice of a published author who reviewed my book proposal, I am digging up memoirs written by journalists. I'm a former journalist, see, so my writing style is, well, journalistic. Theoretically, an agent attracted to straightforward, well-researched writing in another journalist's memoir might be attracted to mine.

I immediately thought of Mariane Pearl's memoir of her husband's abduction and execution, "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl." Danny Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan while reporting on terrorism for the Wall Street Journal. Heartbreakingly, Mariane Pearl was pregnant when her husband died. She effectively portrays her husband's humanity in the face of awful inhumanity, and the book is a real page turner, even though you know how it turns out.


And I recently read "Falling Apart in One Piece: One Optimist's Journey Through the Hell of Divorce" by Stacy Morrison, who was editor-in-chief of Redbook magazine when her husband of 10 years decided he was unhappy and wanted out. Morrison deftly and fairly handles the uncertainty of her milquetoast husband and her own feelings about her marriage and the child they shared. In the space of 239 pages, she makes it clear that nothing is clear. In my experience, divorce is murky like that. Pat answers -- it was his fault, it was her fault -- never really explain what really happened.


The published author with whom I consulted suggested I check out David Carr's "The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life -- His Own." Apparently, Carr was a hopeless drug addict, and he had to piece together his past by retracing his steps. I understand his story is "riveting" but I can tell you his acknowledgements (and website) are less than revealing, at least of his agent's name.

Then I googled "memoirs by journalists" and discovered Amazon has an entire category devoted to the genre: Nonfiction>Biographies & Memoirs>Professionals & Academics>Journalists. No. 1 is "Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship" byCathie Beck. "A Mighty Heart" is No. 90. Interestingly, many of these offerings are e-books. Hmm.

Manuscript optometry

Like an optometrist changing lenses and endlessly asking “better or worse?” I’m trying new word combinations and asking myself, “better or worse?”

Here’s one example:

Before:

Like I was unfolding a pile of laundry, I answered her questions about where I was in life, why I was there, how my work was, how I dealt with stress and my beliefs. I no longer had anything to lose, so I was as honest as I could be and, for her part, she was comforting and nonjudgmental.

After:

Like I was unfolding a pile of laundry, I answered her questions about my crossroads in life, my intentions, my work, my coping mechanisms and my beliefs. I no longer had anything to lose, so I was as honest as I would have been in the raw pages of a diary and, for her part, she was comforting and nonjudgmental.

The 6th draft is the hardest part

Maybe the first draft was the most difficult to write, given that it took me five years. But this editing is like removing one's teeth by oneself. With a pliers. And no pain-killer. Draft 6 is killing me softly.


Draft 1: Written in three parts. The first 15,000 words or so were written in 2006, begun at a memoir writing workshop. The second 15,000 words were written in November 2009 during National Novel Writing Month (you've got 57 days to give some thought to your NaNoWriMo effort this year). The final 45,000 words were written in May and June, when my job was disintegrating and my husband challenged me to finally finish the book I had been talking about for five years.


Draft 2: The first draft was a mess of tenses and unfinished thoughts. My husband was my first editor, pushing me to fill in blanks I was too uncomfortable to fill in.

Draft 3: I sent Draft 2 to my mother, my sister, my best friend since eighth grade, a friend with whom I worked for four years and my brother-in-law. Their suggestions and questions formed Draft 3.

Draft 4: My editor took a clinical unbiased view of my manuscript, and he suggested the removal of the words "a lot" and "things" and encouraged more active verbs. These nuances require deep thoughts. What did I really mean by "It was so much better, being real" in Chapter 26?And who knew an epilogue could be so fraught with telling too much and too little at the same time.

Draft 5: While the manuscript was with my editor, my mother-in-law, a friend of a friend and another friend reviewed Draft 3 and offered insightful suggestions not offered by those closest to me.

And here we are at Draft 6, a compilation of my editor's comments, the comments of the friends once removed and the advice from a former agent who suggested I needed more "beauty" in my writing. Like the Richter Scale, each draft number is 10 times harder than the last. I've been stuck in the quagmire of Draft 6 for six weeks, alternately impressed with my writing and appalled by it.

Let's not even discuss Draft 7 at this point. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.