Barely Contained
“Some agents still want the full proposal treatment anyway, manuscript be damned.”
From my house on the hill outside town, it looked like the whole city was ablaze.
That was August 1st. If you're not local, here's the picture: a series of fires broke out in Spokane and our community is still, right now, at a loss. My Starbucks — the one where I wrote most of this manuscript — still stands, but it isn't open, because a large part of the neighborhood around it burned down. The house my brother raised his boys in is gone. Josey's friends from school have lost their homes too. Parts of the hillside are still burning as I write this, which means the route we normally drive into town isn't even an option right now.
Containment is at 37%. To give you a sense of scale — 1,500 people from 20 states and over 100 jurisdictions are working right now to get this beast under control.
The miracle upon miracles: 60,000 people evacuated and no one was hurt.
I keep thinking I should post some photos for the people reading this from somewhere else, so you can actually see it instead of just hearing about it. Comment if you want me to.
I know that once I can finally drive through and see the carnage myself, it's going to wreck me. Right now it still feels like a horrible dream I haven't fully woken up from.
Everything else has felt small in comparison this week. Which is a strange place to write from, because my daughter turns 14 on Tuesday, and if there was ever a week I needed to slow down and actually be present for that, it's this one.
The book, since I suppose that's why I'm here.
I worked on another query this week — submitted through QueryTracker, which is its own special kind of form-based hell. I'd researched this agent and landed on her because she's represented authors writing in a first-person voice similar to mine. Albeit less cussy. A bit more refined. Story of my life, guys.
I got through 9 steps. A f*ck ton of words. All the way to the very last box.
And the last box asked for a full proposal.
For those who don't know — a proposal is basically a pitch deck for a book that doesn't exist yet on a shelf. Overview, author bio and platform, comp titles, chapter outline, marketing plan, sample chapters. It's built to convince a publisher the book will sell before it's even finished. Memoir sits in this weird spot in publishing — usually the manuscript comes first, fully done, and then you query. But some agents still want the full proposal treatment anyway, manuscript be damned.
So that's what's on my desk now. Alongside a birthday cake to pick up, a family dinner to plan, and some shopping for the birthday girl.
I could keep going for days. But I have a proposal to build.
I'll leave you with the line that slapped me across the face during quiet time this week. Honestly I'm not sure anymore if I wrote it or read it:
"We've all gone through things. The fire, the sick, the pain. Walking through the fire hurts. May it be pushed out. May it be broken. May you receive grace and be met in your place of weakness. Knowing this struggle will come to a close."
🎤Mic drop.
MANUSCRIPT STATS
📝 Query #7: made it 9/10 steps, hit a full-proposal wall
✅ 19/19 chapters, still locked at 56,747 words
👀 Proposal-building mode: activated
