Cecilia Aragon

On Tuesday, I described how to handle “The Call” (an offer of agent representation), how to evaluate an agent, and how I ended up finding exactly the right agent for my memoir.

In today’s post, the last one in this series of 10, I’ll talk about the final step: how my manuscript was sold to a publisher.

In November 2018, on a Monday morning, my agent, Lane Heymont, emailed me a submission list of editors. I didn’t know any of the names he suggested, but he said these were folks he knew would resonate with my story. I approved the list. That very day, I got a call.

“Cecilia, this is a new record. I’ve sold a book in a day before, but this is the first time I’ve sold one in five hours.”

Yes, he’d gotten an offer from a publisher that very day.

Within a couple of weeks, we had four offers. Yes, four! For the memoir that had been rejected 35 times.

I got amazing comments about the memoir. One editor called it “exhilarating, adventurous, and thoughtful.”  “Screaming out to be published.” “A story that will resonate with anyone who’s ever dreamt of overcoming challenges.”

In the end, Lane and I sold Flying Free to Vikki Warner at Blackstone Publishing in a pre-empt. That means Blackstone made an offer that was so good we decided to go with them right away rather than trying to set up an auction between the four publishers who had made offers.

Wow.

Book Deal

So now I have a book deal. I still can’t quite believe it. The dream of publishing my memoir has come true. I signed a contract for more money than I ever thought I’d receive for a book. And above all else, I’m so excited to be working with Vikki at Blackstone. I feel that she and the publisher “get” my story, and that they will pour their hearts into working with me, promoting the book, and making the memoir be the best it can be.

I’m unbelievably happy and excited.

My manuscript due date is September 15, 2019. I’ll keep posting here about the editing process, and eventually about publication. I share more specific details about my writing journey in my newsletter (which you can subscribe to here). My memoir’s publication date will be in fall of 2020.

Thanks for following along with me on this series of blog posts about the 7 Stages of Memoir Writing! Please leave a comment if you have other topics you’d like to see covered in this blog, or if you have any questions or critiques.

I can handle criticism. Maybe I might even learn from it.

Last week, I talked about the query slog: wading through the depths of depression and rejection, and what I did to keep motivated and how I tried new approaches. In today’s post, #6 in the 7 stages of memoir writing, I’ll discuss what happens when you grab that brass ring of agent representation, and how to handle it: what to do if you get one or more offers of representation, and how to know if you’ve found the right agent.

When success occurs, it all seems to happen so fast. I’d only gotten a single favorite on my #PitMad tweet, but I followed the agent’s instructions on his website and sent him my materials, not getting my hopes up. That week, I received an email from the agent, Lane Heymont at the Tobias Literary Agency in New York:

Hi Cecilia,

Thanks for the opportunity to review FLYING FREE. I am absolutely in LOVE with your story.

Do you have time to chat later in the week — Thursday or Friday?

Such a short note, and so momentous. It had now been two full years since I’d begun writing my memoir in a serious way. I’d been working over twenty hours per week on the memoir—sometimes many more—from September 2016 through September 2018, except for a period of about five months while I licked my wounds after that first period of rejection and worked on different writing projects.

I freaked out. I had a feeling this was a potential “yes,” but I couldn’t quite believe it. So I reached out to my friends and mentors, who confirmed it. And I spent hours searching the web for “what to do to prepare for The Call.”

How to prepare for a phone call with an agent

Here’s what I learned from my research:

• Google the agent and their agency
• Are they a member of AAR (Association of Authors’ Representatives), which requires agents to adhere to its code of ethics?
• Look for interviews and mentions by others
• Check for red flags, like reading fees or complaints
• Sign up for Publishers Marketplace (they have a free one-month subscription) and look up deals by the agent. Do they make deals in your genre? How active are they? How many deals have they made, and how recently?
• Create a list of questions you want to ask the agent but that you haven’t been able to find out online. For example, what terms does their author contract include?
• Let everyone else who has your materials know you’ve received the offer of representation, and give them a deadline to respond.
• Make sure to ask the agent to give you time to make the decision. A least a week. (I was anxious about this. What if the agent wanted me to sign right away? How could I turn them down?)

The Call

At the end of the week, Lane called me on the phone at our scheduled time. I was ready with my list of questions, but very nervous.

I shouldn’t have worried. Lane gave me answers to many of the scripted questions without my even having to ask. Without any prompting, he offered me two weeks to make my decision, and gave me the names and contact info of three references — two current clients, and one former client. I was particularly impressed that he was willing to let me speak with a former client.

I got off the phone with him knowing in my gut I’d finally found my dream agent. But now it was time to do my due diligence and follow all the proper steps.

After I peeled myself off the ceiling, I sent out emails to the other agents who had my materials. I let them know I had an offer of representation, and gave them a date a couple of days before my deadline with Lane so I’d have time to think over my decision in case someone else was interested in representing me.

I looked up Lane on the web, checked Publishers Marketplace and AAR, and contacted all three of his references. They each raved about him in a way that led me to know I would work well with him.

A second offer of representation

But then another of the agents I’d contacted called to offer me representation as well. I was astounded. Not one, but two people believed in my memoir enough to put their careers and livelihoods on the line for it? This validation made me unbelievably happy, but it was also agonizing. Now I’d have to say no to one of these two people. After talking with them, I knew I would’ve been fortunate to work with either of these agents.

In the end, though, I signed with Lane Heymont. He was obviously passionate about my memoir and about the larger values and themes that resonated through my writing and my life. And I have to say my decision has been validated. Throughout the time I’ve worked with Lane, he’s impressed and delighted me. He has my back, and an author couldn’t ask for more.

Why Pitch Madness works

In my newsletter, I go into more detail as to exactly why I believe Pitch Madness works, and why I never would have found my agent by searching in the traditional way. (Sorry, but this post is already getting too long.) I also include a much longer, uncensored version of this post that describes how I almost made a big mistake on The Call. You can subscribe here.

If you have questions about any of the topics I touch on briefly in the blog post series, please let me know in the comments section and I’ll add them to my list of newsletter articles.

In the next blog post on Thursday the 25th, I’ll give even more evidence that Lane is a fantastic and effective agent. I’ll describe the sales process to publishers, including how he generated multiple offers for my memoir.

On Tuesday, I covered my querying process – and all my rejections – in detail. In today’s post on #5 of the 7 stages of memoir writing, I’ll explain why it’s important not to give up, and how to keep looking for new approaches to the querying process.

I’ve kept Stage 5: More Querying separate from Stage 4: Querying because it felt so different from querying when I still had a lot of hope. During Stage 5, after I’d hit bottom in my belief in my own writing, it was hard to keep going. I had to deal with a lot of despair about my writing ability, and it was challenging to keep up the enthusiasm necessary to keep querying and pitching and revising.

And Now for Something Completely Different…

So over the next few months I gave myself a fresh start and worked on a middle grade novel, The Algebra of Dogs and Silence. I didn’t even open the memoir manuscript, and I couldn’t bear to think about querying again.

In March 2018, my job took me on a three month trip to South America, where I stayed until May. I wrote my novel on the bus and while walking to work. I poured all my feelings of loneliness and rejection into my story about a 10-year-old Latina girl who can’t talk and a dog nobody wants, and how their friendship helps her find her voice.

When I got home in May, the middle grade novel was finished. That gave me the energy to revise Flying Free again and get back to querying. I researched and queried more agents while I was revising. I bugged friends and critique partners for feedback. I sent drafts of my queries and proposal to professional editors.

I hit a lot of walls. Friends who once seemed eager to read my memoir stopped responding to my emails. One editor-for-hire told me there was nothing she could do to help me with my proposal. The market for memoir was too tough, she said. She wouldn’t even take my money.

That was pretty depressing.

New Approaches to Find Agents

I tried some new approaches. I attended writing conferences and took more classes on how to pitch at Hugo House and online. Then I polished my queries and my loglines and my pitches. I made dozens of revisions. I can still see the draft files on my computer.

As I continued my research, I discovered many new ideas on how to use social media to help get published. My next attempt was to pitch agents on Twitter, although I didn’t have a lot of confidence it could work, especially since I was still a novice user of the platform.

I participated in Pitch Madness, also known as #PitMad, a “pitch party on Twitter,” where over a 12-hour period of a specific day, writers tweet 280-character pitches for their “completed, polished, unpublished” manuscripts.

Okay! I’ve got one of those. Actually, I had two, the memoir and the middle grade novel.

Pitch Madness

The first time I participated in #PitMad, I tweeted the following for my middle grade novel, The Algebra of Dogs and Silence.

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE x ALVIN HO in 70s Indiana

10yo Claudia’s a first-generation Latina who can’t talk in school.
Luna’s a dog so traumatized she won’t let anyone within 20 ft.
Through their unlikely friendship, Claudia finds her voice. #PitMad #MG #INSP#STEM #POC #DIS #OWN

— Cecilia Aragon (@CeciliaRAragon) June 7, 2018

At the end of the day, I’d gotten four requests for queries from agents. Wow! Maybe my memoir wouldn’t sell, but I could find an agent for my novel.

With tremendous excitement, I carefully prepared packets for each of the four agents and sent them off.

Within a few weeks, they were all rejected.

PNWA Conference Pitching

I was racking up the points for those 100 rejections this year.

Next, I went to PNWA, the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference near the Seattle airport, in September 2018. I signed up for two “pitch blocks,” where agents and editors sit at one end of a big room, and hopeful authors line up behind a masking tape stripe, waiting for their four-minute turn to pitch.

It was kind of nerve-racking to stand in line waiting for those make-or-break minutes. Still, I’d practiced my pitches for the memoir and the middle grade novel, and friends said they were good. I’d even made business cards, and my talented author/illustrator friend Rebecca Thornburgh created a design for the novel. I was as ready as I’d ever be.

Here’s how I prepared my pitches:

• I started with a one sentence description of each book’s genre and its hook, including the word count.
• For the memoir, I described my platform and my marketing efforts.

I pitched to over a dozen agents and editors, screwing up my courage to stand in line and jump into my prepared speech for my four-minute chance for glory.

By the end of the conference, I’d gotten interest from nine agents and editors. Exciting! Besides, everybody was nice, even when they rejected me.

More Querying

I eagerly went home and wrote up query letters, personalizing them for each agent or editor.

Then I sent them off and moved on with my life, steeling myself for yet more rejections.

I also applied to writing mentorship programs, including one sponsored by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and #PitchWars on Twitter. It couldn’t hurt to keep learning more about writing.

A few rejections trickled in, and I shrugged and moved on. They still stung, but I made a tick mark for each rejection and told myself I was one step further to my goal of 100 rejections in 2018.

Pitch Madness Take 2

For the September 2018 #PitMad contest, I spent days revising the Twitter pitches for both my middle grade novel and the memoir. I was fortunate enough to get help from author Brittney Morris on my memoir pitch, and this was the end result:

WILD meets HIDDEN FIGURES in 80s Silicon Valley:

Timid first-generation Latina uses math to face down bullies and
her own fears to become a celebrated airshow pilot in
Cecilia Aragon’s inspiring memoir FLYING FREE.
#PitMad #Mem #STEM #POC #OWN

— Cecilia Aragon (@CeciliaRAragon) September 6, 2018

I only got a single favorite to my tweet.

Still, I submitted material to the agent according to their submission guidelines.

In the next post on Tuesday the 23rd, I’ll talk about what happened afterwards, and how I (finally!) found agent representation.

Last Thursday, I talked about the months I spent researching how to get a memoir published, and how I built my author presence on the web and social media.

In today’s post on #4 of the 7 Stages of Memoir Writing: Querying, I’ll explain exactly how to go about querying agents to improve your chances, and how even if this work seems to include a lot of rejection, the research and knowledge will put you on the right path in the end.

Sending query letters

In October 2017, I started contacting agents. During the summer, I’d researched exactly how to write a query letter and how to select agents to pitch. I asked friends and writers for suggestions and connections. I read the acknowledgment sections of memoirs similar to mine. I attended Hugo House seminars and spoke with agents after their talks.

In the end, I considered over 200 agents from online directories, word-of-mouth, personal contacts, sites like Manuscript Wish List and others, and agent websites. Out of all this data, I picked the 20 “most likely” agent matches for my manuscript. I put connections from friends or teachers at the top of the list. Hey, don’t they say it’s “who you know” that matters in this field?

(Spoiler: all the personal connections rejected me, though usually gently. I ended up finding my agent through the internet equivalent of the slush pile. He wasn’t even on my longlist of 200 possibilities. More details to come.)

Organization of queries

I created a spreadsheet for my queries, color-coded agent names, listed their emails, what they wanted from articles and interviews, their submission guidelines, their favorite books, and relevant links. I made a column for the date the query was sent, the date the response was expected, and the date the response was received.

One column listed requests for the proposal, and requests for the full manuscript. I prepared a space to note whether I received no response, a form rejection, or personal rejection.

My spreadsheet for the month of October 2017 lists 20 names, each representing many weeks of research and hours of careful attention to detail.

To summarize, the spreadsheet contained the following columns:

• Agent name
• Agency
• Email
• What they’re looking for
• Submission guidelines
• Links
• Date query sent
• Date response expected
• Date response received
• Proposal requested/rejected
• Date full manuscript sent
• Result

Agent spreadsheet I used while querying

I color-coded the agent names based on whether they had requested a proposal or full manuscript, and changed them to dark red when they rejected me.

I had a lot of hope at this stage of the process. I’d gotten a great deal of positive feedback on the memoir by then, and in my heart I knew it was a good story.

Of course, I also worried deep within my heart: could I tell that story? Or did my writing suck?

Personalizing for each agent

Every agent had a different set of submission guidelines. Some wanted you to email. Some sent you to an online submission site. Some said “no response means rejection.” Others said “contact me again in three months if no response.” Some said “a no from one agent in our company is a no from all,” while others said, “if it doesn’t resonate with me, feel free to try others in our agency.”

I spent many hours creating a batch of individualized queries for these 20 agents, and then I sent them out in October.

One agent rejected me in five minutes.

Most of the others took about a week or two to reject me.

But!! Out of the 20, four agents requested a copy of my full manuscript!

Someone liked my story! More than one person liked my story. Validation at last!

It felt like success. I was jubilant. I was on my way. These agents had confirmed what others had told me: the story was great, and they wanted to read it.

More revising

But there was a problem. Although I had a complete 99,000 word draft in October 2017, it wasn’t polished enough to send out to agents. (I didn’t want to hear “pretty good for a first draft” again.)

I’d fully edited my proposal and nothing more. The rest of the book had a LOT of rough spots.  I’d assumed I could edit the full manuscript later based on what my (still hypothetical) publisher wanted. But now these four agents were all telling me they needed a copy of the manuscript before they could make a decision about representation.

I panicked. I turned to my writing teacher Theo. By then I had graduated from her class, but we were still in touch. I asked for help editing the manuscript, and she graciously agreed to provide it.

(Yes, it was expensive, especially on a single income, but I’d decided to invest in my future writing career and skip eating out, going on vacations, or — as my colleagues at work can attest — buying new clothes.)

Over the next three weeks, Theo and I worked together intensively. I rewrote and edited as many as five hours a day, twelve to fifteen hours daily on the weekends, squeezing it around my job and family obligations.

By December 1, 2017, I had a full polished manuscript ready to send to the four agents.

I was on my way. I sent off those four emails with tremendous excitement.

More rejections

But by December 11, 2017, three of the agents had passed. (The fourth never responded — although about a year later I did get a note from her wondering what had happened with my manuscript.) These were the closest matches out of the 200 agents I’d researched. All the others seemed like real long shots.

I plunged into the depths of depression.

Despite all that work, despite all the time spent crafting queries, proposals, manuscript, despite the positive responses from friends and critique partners and editors about my story, it seemed it just wasn’t good enough.

My writing was no good. I was worthless. I might as well just give up.

A new goal

But then I thought about my flying career, about the story I’d just spent all that time writing. About all the times I’d hit bottom. When I was so scared to fly that two instructors gave up on me. When I ran out of money. When it turned out my legs were too short to reach the rudder pedals. When the only airplane I could afford wasn’t competitive at the national level. When I was trapped by bad weather and thought I was going to die.

I never gave up then. I kept plugging away. I found a way around or over or through all the obstacles.

So in January, I started a completely new writing project, a middle grade novel. And I set myself a new goal: 100 rejections a year.

In my next post on Thursday the 18th, I’ll write about exactly what I did to make it through the valley of rejection and keep myself motivated to continue – as well as the new approaches to querying I tried.

In my most recent post in this series, I explained how I wrote a rough draft of my memoir, Flying Free, in 3 months. In today’s post on #3 of the 7 Stages of Memoir Writing, Revising and Research, I shift from art to business. I’ll go into the amount of time and research it took to write a book proposal and to create an author presence before querying agents.

Self-publishing vs. traditional publishing

After spending the summer of 2017 revising my memoir, I felt like I’d successfully written the story, but now I wanted people to read it. But how to actually get the book into people’s hands?

I researched self-publishing versus traditional publishing, and decided to go with trad because the thought of marketing made me want to curl up into a ball and cry. I prefer to have a team on my side when I’m going out in public.

So now, “all” I needed was to find an agent who could represent my work to publishers. Since I’d been focusing on the mechanics of writing for so long, I had a lot of research ahead of me. I knew close to nothing about the process of finding an agent.

I’d heard only 5% of writers had agents, and only about half of those had book contracts. Those were scary odds. I had to figure out a way to overcome them.

Improving the odds of finding an agent

Luckily, I was fortified with the expertise I’d gathered in Theo Nestor’s memoir-writing class, and I’d become part of a supportive community of writers in Seattle, a city second only to New York for the size and opportunities of its writing community.

Stages 1 and 2 of the writing process can be completed alone, but by stage 3, when you’re revising your manuscript and researching the publication process, it’s critical to be part of a community of friends, critique partners, and beta readers. It’s said that it takes a village to publish a book, and I’ve found that to be absolutely true. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the kindness and support of my many writer friends.

During this stage, I did a lot of research on the publishing industry, and realized I’d need to prepare query letters and a memoir proposal. Another major writing project.

Writing a memoir proposal

My writing teacher Theo told me I could probably sell my memoir on proposal. And even if the full manuscript was requested, editors and agents would still need to see a complete proposal. So, my next job was to improve the first few chapters of the book and produce a professional-quality proposal.

From June 2017 through October 2017, I researched how to write a book proposal; wrote an overview, author biography, marketing and publicity section; researched my target audience and wrote a description. I read maybe twenty potential comparable titles (books whose audiences were similar to mine), and selected six of them for my proposal. Then I polished several sample chapters, got feedback from Theo and friends, refined my outline and had it edited by my friend Bonnie Dixit from the memoir class.

In the meantime, I took more pitching and marketing classes at Hugo House, attended lots of talks, spent hours doing research on the web, and talked to critique partners and friends.

It seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it? But it was also lots of fun, and hanging out with other writers on the same journey made it kind of exciting. (One of the best parts of all this is watching your friends—who started from nothing along with you—find agents or get book deals.)

Creating an “author presence”

Every author has a website, right? So I needed one. I asked my writer friends for advice, evaluated several platforms, found a web designer, played around with a bunch of stuff, and finally came up with the site where you’re reading this blog: CeciliaAragonAuthor.com. It’s surprising how many decisions go into the creation of a website. Even coming up with the URL took days, believe it or not. And then there was the color scheme. And the selection of images. It drove me crazy. Luckily my writer friends were patient and generous with advice.

Next, social media. Ulp. It’s hard for an introvert like me to put myself out on the internet. I didn’t want to be doing a bunch of self-promoting. That felt kind of icky.

Then a friend told me to think of it as a way to connect with like-minded people, make friends, and share with my community. Yes! That made it a lot easier. So instead of a constant barrage of “buy my book,” what I try to do is share information others might find interesting, funny, or helpful. I can live with that.

Social media

So that summer I created a Facebook author page, a Twitter account, and even got my teenage son to help me make an Instagram account. (It’s too embarrassing to admit how long it took me to figure out how to post to Instagram the first time, even with his help.)

To establish my author presence before I began to query agents, I started posting (infrequently of course, because introvert). And yes, after a year I admit I only had 5 Instagram posts. Still, if an agent checked, I was out there. I was making an effort.

When all that was set up, I researched the query process itself.

In my next post on Tuesday the 16th, I’ll explain how I organized my querying process to maximize my chances of getting a response.

In last week’s post on my writing journey, I talked about overcoming the sting of rejection, and how rejection might actually be a sign of needing outside help. In today’s post, I’ll share the process of getting down a first draft of my memoir, Flying Free, in 3 months.

I call actually writing the first draft Stage 2 of the 7 stages of memoir writing. (Hey, after 15+ years, I was really glad to get out of Stage 1, Wanting to Write.)

By the summer of 2016, I’d learned a lot about writing in general. Once I’d accepted that I needed to learn craft — that it wasn’t enough to write “naturally” — my writing style began to improve. I drafted several more (still bad) novels, multiple short stories, and essays. I took classes at NILA, Hamline University, Hugo House, and online. I made many, many writing friends. I published a handful of short stories in magazines and learned enough about writing to realize how much I didn’t know.

I finally understood what my friend must’ve felt when she read my novel back in 2014. I’d made ALL the novice-writer errors then — I just couldn’t see them.

But now, I knew better. Well, at least my characters no longer sighed or “turned and looked” at each other every second line.

The Craft of Memoir Writing

Memoir, though, is a different type of narrative from fiction. It requires some completely different insights as well as skills.

Also, I think the underlying reason I couldn’t write the memoir before 2016 was that I didn’t know what it was about. I was writing about events that occurred between 1985 and 1990, an intense and transformative period in my life.

As is often the case with periods of great transformation, they’re hard to make sense of until long afterwards.

And writing memoir, like any other long-form narrative, is a craft that needs to be learned. Probably some people can learn the techniques on their own. But for me, the most fun and effective way to learn has always been from teachers who can distill and curate the information I need to know, and who can guide me through exercises that improve my skills. (Ahem, full disclosure: I make my living from teaching.)

Inciting Incident

So the inciting incident for the story of producing my memoir occurred the day in August 2016 I decided to apply for Theo Nestor’s year-long memoir writing class at the University of Washington.

I’d heard good things about the program, and hoped it might be the real impetus to turning the corner on my memoir writing.

For the first few months I attended Theo’s classes diligently and did all the homework. I completed every class exercise and even wrote extra scenes. I read all the assigned books and many more that weren’t assigned. (Yes, I was one of those annoying students.)

I produced a lot of words describing my miserable childhood. Flunking out of nursery school.  Being put in the slow reading group by my teachers year after year, and not being allowed to go to the bathroom in second grade. Getting assaulted by a group of boys who called me racial epithets.

It was cathartic but not very pleasant.

At this rate, it was going to take me a very long time to get to 1985 when my flying story really began. So, I started jumping ahead in time and sneaking in scenes from my flying life.

For the first time, I found myself eager to sit down and write.

Finding My Story Arc

In March 2017, we read the memoir Wild by Cheryl Strayed in class. Wow. I loved it. And it hit me that flying across the entire US in a single-seat, single-engine airplane with no instruments was a lot like walking the Pacific Crest Trail with an unbearably heavy backpack. The journey seems impossibly long and insurmountable when viewed on that first day.

Plus, what I’d done had a recognizable story arc. I’d started my journey as a fearful child afraid of heights and ladders, whose palms sweated before shaking hands with a stranger. I’d started as a Latina daughter of immigrants who’d been told to “go home to Mexico” by my classmates in Indiana.

I’d finished as an aerobatic champion, as the first Latina to win a spot on the United States Aerobatic Team, as a representative of my country who brought home a medal for the US in world competition.

Just like in Wild, I’d journeyed across the earth, following an external storyline paralleled by inner growth.

How to Write a Book in 3 Months

I sat down one day that March and wrote an outline of the forty aviation scenes from my journey that were most vivid in my memory, stringing them on a thread of time like pearls, just as we learned in Theo’s class.

Then I set up a schedule to write. I had a demanding full-time job and a family, so the only time I could write was very early in the morning, before anyone else was awake.

To hold myself accountable, I asked another good friend if I could send her my drafts. I promised to send them every few days, and she agreed to give me unconditional support for each piece. Thank you so much, Toni.

I got up at 5 AM every day, and the words poured out of me. The good part about having an outline was I didn’t need to worry about what to write.

To fill in the details and get the dates correct, I went back to my old flying logbooks, to articles written about me, to photo albums. I gathered all those images and emotions and strung them on my strand of pearls. I looked forward to writing each morning, and I wrote steadily for at least two hours every day.

By June 4, 2017, using this process, I’d produced 130,000 words of rough draft.

“Pretty Good for a First Draft”

I’ve had authors tell me their rough draft is about 90% close to their final draft (*cough* Nina LaCour *cough*). For me it’s not that way. My draft contained a lot of rough prose, repetition, and just plain bad writing that I needed to cut.

After I’d polished the draft and rewritten it about ten times, I sent it to a critic.

She said, “This is pretty good for a first draft.”

Ouch.

Still, feedback is always a gift. The comments from my friends and beta readers, from my classmates in Theo’s class, and from Theo herself, were all incredibly useful. I tightened and improved the memoir yet again. After more revising, I ended up with a draft of 99,000 words I was fairly happy with.

Notice that? I got it under the magic number of 100,000 words. Memoirs above that length seem to make most agents and editors wince.

In my next post, I’ll explore Stage 3 of the Memoir Writing Process: Revising and Research. See you Thursday the 11th!

What Rejections Taught Me

In my last post of this series on Tuesday, I talked about my inspiration for wanting to write my memoir and my growing need to tell my story. In today’s post, I’ll share how I not only dealt with rejection and criticism but used it to jump-start my writing.

I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. I’d written my first story when I was four years old, and had amassed a smattering of short story publications and writing awards while I was still in my teens.

But once in college, I deferred my writing dream. I needed a more “practical” career, a way to earn a living. I loved math just as much as I loved writing (my earliest notebooks were equally divided into “Words” and “Numbers” sections). So I decided on a career in math and computer science. Besides, I’d learned in my elementary school in Indiana that teachers might accuse me of plagiarism if I used advanced vocabulary on an essay, but they couldn’t charge me with copying if I got the best score in the class on a math test.

Still, I kept on writing, though I never showed any of it to anyone. Of course, I assumed my awards proved I was “talented” enough that should I ever decide to write for publication, I wouldn’t even need to take any writing classes.

Of course…

Writing a novel

In 2014, I took a big step: I shared a novel I’d written with a good friend of mine, a professional writer. (Secretly, I was hoping she’d be dazzled and impressed.)

But she frowned, weighing my manuscript in her hands like a slightly spoiled slab of meat.

“You hate it,” I said.

“Well… it’s not bad for a first draft.”

The version I’d given her represented a couple of years of work, and at least eight complete rewrites.

“And it’s not my favorite genre.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “But you can fix it. First, your characters sigh too much. And they’re always opening their mouths. It’s annoying.”

I was bewildered. “I’m just writing how people actually behave.”

She sighed. (See what I did there?) “You can fix it.”

About ten rewrites and several discouraging critiques later, I finally admitted that my style could use a lot of work. Although it was hard for me to accept, my friend did me a big favor with her honesty. Despite my belief in “talent,” narrative writing didn’t just come naturally, at least to me. I needed to learn more craft. Also, since I seemed to have a hard time finishing projects, some external motivation might be in order. I decided I’d improve most under the discipline of a formal writing program.

Going back to school

Several months and a great deal of research later, I’d narrowed my choices to two writing programs, both less expensive than most, and located near Seattle so I could attend without having to leave my full-time job. But in order to apply, I’d need a writing sample, transcripts, letters of recommendation.

Ugh. It had been a long time since I applied for anything. My college transcript dated from the 80s. I wasn’t even sure how to get one sent.

Also: a writing sample. The whole point was that I wanted to go to the program to learn to write. Nothing I had was good enough. But I pulled up one of my short stories from an old folder. It was terrible. I spent several weeks polishing it and getting it into the best possible shape.

Rejection

The first rejection arrived on a business trip. I was working out on a stair climber in the hotel exercise room when I saw the email on my phone.

I still remember that moment. Drenched in sweat in that bright, mirrored room, I eagerly pulled up the email, only to have my hopes dashed. The months of work I’d spent crafting an application had been for nothing. I wasn’t good enough.

My eyes stung. (“Your characters cry too much,” my writer friend had said. “It makes them look weak.”)

Rejection always hurts. No matter how many of them I get (and I have gotten literally hundreds of rejections), they always make me feel like someone has sliced open my skin and poured acid on the cut.

But I’ve learned the only thing to do is to keep going. After all, cuts heal with time. Whenever I get rejected, I try to analyze the reasons for my failure, and then I apply again. I rewrite. I try another avenue.

Finally, acceptance

A few weeks later, the other program, the Northwest Institute of the Literary Arts (NILA), accepted me into their MFA program for creative writing.

Of course, if they accepted me, my first thought was they must accept everybody. (Didn’t the other program reject me? Didn’t that mean I wasn’t very talented at writing after all?) And I didn’t really want an MFA. I had enough degrees: a BS, MS, and even a PhD. What did I need with an MFA?

Still, I needed to learn to write better, and the program sounded like a lot of fun. I signed up.

It was my first step into the larger world of the writing community, where I’d make many friends and many wonderful discoveries.

In the next post, I’ll go into Stage 2 of the 7 Stages of Memoir Writing: How I wrote the first draft of my memoir, Flying Free, in 3 months.