It's been over a month and a half or so since I've posted an update about the manuscript I spent a decade of on and off work on, that I finished writing a few days before Thanksgiving. As with a lot of other things in my life since I began this blog, some chronicling is in order. Because this site is all about documenting the human condition and also for sake of anyone who might come across it and find themselves likewise wanting to write a book.
I guess the biggest thing (pun intended, maybe) is that it's occurred to me that I have not written a memoir, but a full-size autobiography. Or perhaps it's two or three memoirs bound up cohesively with one another. A memoir is supposed to be a personal reflection about just a few or even only one situation in a person's life. That is not what my book is and I don't honestly know if what it became could have really been avoided. My life today is the product of fifty years of many bad things as well as quite a few good things, and that is a tapestry from which removing even a few threads diminishes and even destroys the work entire. I could have written an entire book about the swindling operation episode, or made it about pop culture as seen through the eyes of someone who was at the cutting edge of fan-driven Internet activity, or a how-to manual about running for public office. My life has enveloped all of those things and so many more.
This may make pitching the book to a potential agent considerably more difficult. Autobiographies by people who aren't established celebrities can be a tough thing to sell, no matter how colorful their lives may have been.
Then there is the lingering issue with the inherent nature of the book. I may have written something that per the marketplace is nigh on unpublishable. It's too Christian for strictly secular audiences and it's too secular for more spiritual readers. One example: there is a point later in the book where I drive to a cemetery to conduct a ritual at the stroke of midnight. What sensible Christians are going to approve of my doing such a thing as that? And it may rub others the wrong way, also.
Other than those matters, I've been editing and revising and shifting elements around. I've also been letting a few trusted friends read parts of it. Recently I shared the prelude, which is an account of my first attempt at suicide. Many told me that it was especially powerful and that it drew them in to wanting to read more. I guess it's nice that something good came out of that experience after all. I just don't ever want to be in that kind of place again.
I'm not giving up on my dream of seeing this on a store's shelf. Dad believed in me and so have a lot of other people who have asked for a book about my life all these many years. But I'm also having to accept the reality that this is going to perhaps be more difficult to bring to market than most other books are. And I'm discovering that it is a hard thing indeed.
Perhaps next time I'll be able to post something more upbeat.
