Here is my whole adventure in writing and publishing my
memoir thus far:
In May, 2007, after listening to one too many rants on right
wing radio about how illegal immigrants are ruining this country, bringing
typhoid and burdening our welfare system for generations with their malingering
ways, the thought came to me: that’s me
they are talking about.
Having grown up in NJ undocumented, then being shut out of
returning to the country when my mother and I went to Argentina for
her father’s funeral, I finally came back at age eight by being crossed
illegally over the Mexican border. That
right-wing radio-fueled summer, it occurred to me, for the millions of others
who have one version or another of that story to tell, not many of them are
telling it. What’s more, not a lot of
them are in the unique position I am – fully assimilated, white, the soccer mom
next door, poised to tell you that undocumented immigrants don’t grow up into
what you may think.
So I started writing.
I was done with draft one by August, 2007, and in my hubris
and eagerness, I looked up the most successful New York Times bestselling
memoir I could find, checked out who the agent was and – with no one having
read my work but myself, enamored of it like a mother with a newborn – I sent
it off to him in a stunt designed to get his attention (I’ll withhold details
here to spare agents other unprepared, unedited writers copying it).
And the stunt worked. He wrote back politely, letting me know that I should workshop the thing
before ever letting human eyes fall on it again.
I sobbed for a week, of course. Then I applied for Charles Salzberg’s Works
in Progress class, a room full of published authors and professional
journalists and other masters. Somehow,
I snuck in under the radar.
When Charles asked for volunteers to share their work, my
hand shot up, Welcome Back Kotter style. “Ooooo, Mr. Salzberg, Mr. Salzberg, pick me! Pick me!” I was hungry for validation.
The class returned a week later, having left their
validation at home that week.
“I was really frustrated with this,” said one student.
“Me too. I wanted you
to stop telling me what you were going to tell me and just tell it to me already.”
“Yes, I agree. And
stop apologizing for the writing!” said Charles. Apologizing? I thought that had been witty repartee, self deprecating humor.
“Oh, and this passage here, ugh…” said another, quoting.
“The thing is,” said another, tentatively, “is that you have
such a strong voice, and I just want that voice to tell me your story.”
“Oh,” I said.
They were completely right. I had made amateur mistakes, telling instead of showing, giving my
version of events only, excusing, justifying, instead of just writing down what
happened and letting other people make their own decisions.
I scratched the whole first draft. It was a great reference for the timeline,
but relatively useless for everything else.
I began again.
The first time, I had wondered how I would make it to 100
pages, double spaced. By the time this
second draft was done, it was just over 400 pages, nearly 100,000 words.
I decided I was really ready for an agent. I met one at a Women in Publishing panel
early in the winter of 2008. She was
introduced by one of her writers as one of the 3 best agents in
New York City
, a woman who
took such great interest in her writers that she held their hands not just through
publishing, but through the PR push and the conception of the next book. With trembling hand, I went up to her at the
end and pitched her my story.
“Oh, here’s my private e-mail address. Send me your first 40 pages.”
I shook all the way home. By this time, I had wised up and had professional line editing done on
the first few chapters, so I felt strong about it when I sent it off to her
that very night.
A few weeks later she wrote, “Oh, can you send me your bio
and market analysis too?”
I did. Surely I was
getting close!
A month later I followed up with her. Any decisions?
“I’m so busy with my three other memoirists, but I will
definitely let you know by the end of next week,” came the reply.
And that was the last I heard from her.
A few months after that, after several unanswered e-mails, I
decided sadly that relationship had given up the ghost.
By now halfway through draft two, I decided I was going
gangbusters and really needed an agent. I wrote to nine. Three
responded. Later, I heard those were
really good numbers, and I should be impressed. But instead I mourned each of the six who rejected me, or ignored me.
Finally, one wrote me that she wanted to meet in Soho, in an all-white café across the street from her
office. I left work in Westchester early and slogged through an hour of heinous traffic to get all the way
downtown, attempting to look fresh as a daisy, pulling off wilting weed
instead.
“So, how did you get to be such a good writer?” was the
first thing she asked when she sat down.
“Uh,” I stuttered in delight. Finally, it was in the bag.
“So here’s the thing. This is great. Good, timely story. Strong writing. But I won’t offer you representation until
this is ready to go out. And here’s what
it needs to be ready, in my view.”
She was five years out of college, a tiny slip of a thing,
and I felt like she had my fate in her hands.
I hated her suggestions, mostly because I knew they were
spot-on, and impossible. She wanted me
to flesh out the character of my father. My father, who had turned increasingly abusive through my teen years
was, needless to say, not exactly the hero of the story.
“Nobody wants to see a two-dimensional character,” she said.
She wanted more nuance. She wanted to understand them.
Understand them? How
could I make her understand them if I didn’t understand them myself?
“The thing is,” she said, “You can write the woe-is-me
book. And it can be wildly
successful. It’s been done. But that’s not the book you want to write,”
she said. “You can do better.”
I left the meeting completely dejected. I had hoped to leave it having signed with an
agent. Instead, I left with an unachievable
assignment.
I put the book away. I hated the thought of it.
Then, in May, my company was sold and the VCs who bought it
laid everyone off. Including me. Suddenly, I was home for the summer with no
job, and nothing to do but stare at my screen.
Thanks a lot, universe.
I began writing again. I reached the point in the narrative when things started to turn ugly
with my father, then stopped again. I
went to the town pool a lot. I played
with my children.
“You are a quitter,” the book hissed at me late at
night. “You never finish anything.” At this point, the book’s tone
sounded a lot
like my father’s.
But a new voice piped up in my defense. What if I wasn’t a quitter? What if I knew that it was really going to
hurt to write what needed to be written and there was some tender part of me
trying to protect me?
I would do what I could, I decided that night. I would read the diaries – I had kept
detailed diaries all throughout my teen years – and let that be enough, an act
of preparation.
That night, I stayed up until 2:00 a.m., sobbing at my
rivulets of sad, teen-angst words.
You might have guessed by now I am something of a sobber.
The next day, I got up and wrote 36 pages.
The day after that, I wrote 30, and finished the second
draft.
That was about three weeks ago. In the intervening
time, I have added 50 pages of missing dialogue and description. I have
taken a stab at the ending, although I think the perfect final
chapter remains unwritten. And I have
started a few essays to submit to big publications to drum up interest
in my
writing.
Next steps: sending
it out for reading to two trusted readers. After that, it’s back to my “agent” (not yet, but hopefully) and, if
that fails, back out to the big, scary world of other agents with their power
to reject and wound and give awful assignments.
But I feel such a strong drive to get this work out there,
that that is more important than the potential pain. I’m not sure why this is supposed to happen,
but I know strongly it is.
