by Jessica
(For details on Slush Week, see Chasya’s introduction.)
We’ll start with the query on its own, then the response after the jump:
Dear (Agent’s name):
My dad made his living off people’s inability to keep on living.
Dad, who called himself Digger O’Dell, was the gravedigger and cemetery
caretaker in small-town Waseca, Minnesota. Death was our family business,
and I spent long summer days in cemeteries. I wandered graveyards, reading
names off tombstones and wondering about the people in the ground. I
absorbed the stories and images of those who had gone before me: a mother
and her six kids killed by a train, a rosy-cheeked 15-year-old girl, a
county sheriff shot on duty.
Yet, as I write in my memoir, We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down, a
strange silence about death pervaded our lives. A large divide existed
between working with death each day and actually understanding grief. Dad
and Mom were no strangers to mortality-they bought their own giant tombstone
in their early 40s, and they knew death intimately through the loss of loved
ones. But in this stoic Midwestern place, our stories were not ours to tell,
and I sought answers and explanations through the stories of others. After
my dad died from a fast-growing cancer when I was 15, the silence in my
family grew exponentially. But I realized that just as the stories I grew up
with kept the dead alive, words would be the only way to prove that my
father walked this earth. Our stories must be ours to tell.
Eight excerpts from my 68,000-word memoir have been published in print and
online literary journals. A short chapter earned first place in creative
nonfiction in the 2009 Missouri Review audio competition. Another chapter
was selected runner-up for the 2006 Bellingham Review Annie Dillard Award
for Creative Nonfiction. It was published in the Spring 2007 issue and
subsequently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. My memoir earned me a spot in
the competitive mentorship program at The Loft writing center in Minneapolis
in 2007-08, and I also received a Jerome Travel and Study Grant for my
creative nonfiction work.
I spent seven years as a journalist for a small daily newspaper. I have
written more than 20 nonfiction books for children, and I teach journalism,
English, and history at the college level.
I would be happy to send you a book proposal, sample chapters, or the entire
manuscript. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you
at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
(Author’s name)
Dear (Agent’s name):
My dad made his living off people’s inability to keep on living.
Nice first line.
Dad, who called himself Digger O’Dell, was the gravedigger and cemetery
caretaker in small-town Waseca, Minnesota. Death was our family business,
and I spent long summer days in cemeteries. I wandered graveyards, reading
names off tombstones and wondering about the people in the ground. I
absorbed the stories and images of those who had gone before me: a mother
and her six kids killed by a train, a rosy-cheeked 15-year-old girl, a
county sheriff shot on duty.
Again, nice details. Colorful, unusual childhood-obviously one that lends itself to musings on mortality, grappling with big questions.
Yet, as I write in my memoir, We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down (Great title!), a
strange silence about death pervaded our lives. A large divide existed
between working with death each day and actually understanding grief. Dad
and Mom were no strangers to mortality-they bought their own giant tombstone
in their early 40s, and they knew death intimately through the loss of loved
ones. But in this stoic Midwestern place, our stories were not ours to tell,
and I sought answers and explanations through the stories of others. After
my dad died from a fast-growing cancer when I was 15, the silence in my
family grew exponentially. But I realized that just as the stories I grew up
with kept the dead alive, words would be the only way to prove that my
father walked this earth. Our stories must be ours to tell.
Although the writing is engaging, here’s where I start to worry. What, precisely, is the story? Where is the narrative arc? Memoirs chronicle actual events, but they must be as carefully constructed as any novel. The narrator will perhaps break the silence that surrounds death, but what does this entail? Presumably, the painful and sudden death of her father is central to the action, but what actually happens? What keeps the pages turning? What is the engine driving the “plot”? Is the struggle to reclaim and tell our own stories solely an inward one? Over what period of time does this take place? The author’s quest to prove, through narrative, that her father “walked this earth” smacks ever so slightly (and to me worryingly) of writing-as-therapy, a distinctive strain in memoir. While I do not make light of the powerful process of recording one’s one story, it seems to me that only a tiny percentage of such efforts are suitable for a broader audience. The truth is, there are more worthy tales than buyers for them, and at some point, we need to remember that publishers take on projects that they believe they can sell.
It seems to me that a memoir needs to succeed on three levels:
1) The story itself must be pretty remarkable, the dizzying number of personal narratives that have been published in the past 15 years means that the bar has been set high, or low. So many of these memoirs have underperformed that for the most part, publishing houses regard the life stories of non-celebrities as a difficult sell.
2) In addition to being extraordinary and specific, the particulars of your individual story must speak/be relevant to a larger readership. You need to engage the universal, make it clear why folks who don’t know and like you should care about your story.
3) The writing. If it’s good enough, and I mean superb, revelatory, inventive, true, with a voice that is distinctive and winsome and real, well then…other rules may or may not apply.
Eight excerpts from my 68,000-word memoir (Hurray! It’s compete and not overlong. My heart sinks when I read my memoir is “complete at 150,000 words.”) have been published in print and
online literary journals. A short chapter earned first place in creative
nonfiction in the 2009 Missouri Review audio competition. Another chapter
was selected runner-up for the 2006 Bellingham Review Annie Dillard Award
for Creative Nonfiction. It was published in the Spring 2007 issue and
subsequently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. My memoir earned me a spot in
the competitive mentorship program at The Loft writing center in Minneapolis
in 2007-08, and I also received a Jerome Travel and Study Grant for my
creative nonfiction work.
Here I sit up and take notice. Even if I have only a hazy idea of what this memoir is about, and wish that the author had thrown in a comparison title or two to show me that she knows the market, these credentials mean that I will certainly give the author the benefit of the doubt.
I spent seven years as a journalist for a small daily newspaper. I have
written more than 20 nonfiction books for children, and I teach journalism,
English, and history at the college level.
Again, all to the good. This is someone who has honed her craft. My concerns about writing-as-therapy are receding.
I would be happy to send you a book proposal, sample chapters, or the entire
manuscript. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you
at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
(Author’s name)
On the whole, I’d request to see this.
Thanks for sending it in!
March 10, 2010 
DG&B 