Shaping and sharing my book description and pitch
is scarier than sharing the personal writing within the book itself
I posted last night, on my Wordpress blog and on Facebook, that I finished the second draft of my memoir, Girl Next Door: A Coming-of-Age Memoir of Early Loss. In both posts, I included my book description and the pitch I expect to use when I start querying agents and other helpers.
Posting my pitch and book description was more nerve-wracking than posting personal writing related to the memoir itself -- because it will be the first thing seen by a gatekeeper. Maybe it's logical to be nervous about people seeing my pitch. Like a resumé (whose goal is to get you an interview), the pitch is the thing that earns an invitation to send the manuscript. So, of course it will be judged.
Then again, there are different types of judgment. The pitch -- like the book -- isn't me. It's a thing I made, and it may or may not fit the needs of any individual gatekeeper. I can always change it, and undoubtedly I will. Every time I open my collection of pitch drafts, I pick the most recent version, copy-paste it, and revise it. Judgment of it is not personal. Still, I didn’t sleep very well after posting — my head seemed full of dreams about every type of work I’ve ever done, and I woke up tired.
I'm proud of having a pitch and a book description at all, at having begun to coach myself over the hurdles of creating marketing materials. I want to keep my eye on the goal of getting my book published, and not be afraid of the projects that could get me there.
I've found inexpensive, valuable help in iterating the book description and pitch from book coaches Marion Roach (who also helps with finding your storyline), Courtney Maum, Mary Carroll Moore, and Dan Blank.
And here are the pitch and description I'm talking about:
GIRL NEXT DOOR: A Coming-of-Age Memoir of Early Loss
A mom who dies in her 40s leaves her little girl with inner strength to get through the hardest of times, and to make a safe-enough path to adulthood.
An eleven-year-old only child in Chicago, alone with her feelings, Fran resolves to have the life she thinks her mom intended for her: a life with her mom’s family in their beloved, beautiful rural Arkansas.Reality erases this childhood vision, but to Fran’s surprise, happiness trickles into her real world. Journal-writing, bike rides, and well-chosen neighborhood friends ultimately help teenaged Fran appreciate the real life that is uniquely hers, and she begins to integrate her loss into her memories and her pathfinding.
This is The Tender Bar meets Harriet the Spy plus lyrical natural beauty.
Sound like something you would like? Want to be a beta reader of a high-quality draft? Let me know. Oh and tell me if you like the title, versus former working title ENOUGH SOLID GROUND, which refers to a metaphor in the book.
I like Girl Next Door much better.
When is the tentative read of the draft?