As If…

What Cousin Ritchie and my old realtor got right

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I have exciting news since sending out my last newsletter: I signed with a literary agent! Last month, I revealed that I’d begun querying agents for my memoir, Hypervigilant: A Medical Memoir of Uncertainty, Intuition, and Hope. My goal is to secure a book deal on proposal.

Getting an agent happened quickly and also it didn’t. As a writer friend pointed out when I shared the news in a Facebook group, this didn’t happen overnight. I’d been working toward representation for years—laying a foundation with every personal essay and reported story I’ve written and published in the last two years, and pouring into the proposal 20+ years of professional marketing expertise.

I approached querying with one rule: Don’t be your own no. In other words, ignore the whispered warnings about how difficult memoir is to sell, how long it takes to find an agent, and how slim the odds for success. Disregard the advice not to query during the summer, and refuse to be thrown off course by the most recent round of publishing layoffs.

Yes, it’s wise to stay informed of what’s happening in the industry, but what I’ve learned through years of uncertainty and turmoil—whether tied to politics, the pandemic, the economy, or climate change—is that life is happening regardless. If I don’t want to get pulled under by fear and despair, I have to focus the beam of my flashlight in the direction I want to go and let the rest (temporarily) recede into the shadows.

Willful ignorance isn’t new to me. It’s a tactic I deployed while caring for a daughter with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening genetic illness. In an essay for The Washington Post, I wrote:

Raising a child with CF was like driving through a blizzard. Gripping the wheel, it took all my strength and determination to keep from careening off the road. I focused only on what I could see in my headlights, relying on blind trust to get through the most difficult patches. I was terrified to look too far ahead.

Of course, the stakes of writing a book are much lower than keeping a child alive, which affords me just enough emotional detachment to keep this process fun.

I may need to be reminded of the fun part as the next weeks and months unfold. I’m now officially on submission, which means while my agent works her magic to get me a publishing deal, I need to summon the discipline to not check in with her every ten minutes like I’m watching a pie crust that might burn.

Act as if what you want is already in motion, which will in fact set it in motion.

Twenty-five years ago, my husband and I decided to put our first house on the market—a twin we bought when the neighborhood was first built—and look for a single family home. The day we met our realtor, he told us: “As of now, consider yourselves moving. Start sorting and packing your belongings.”

I’ve since discovered his advice applies to more than real estate. It’s a version of “dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” Think: Ritchie from The Bear (I won’t say more). Act as if what you want is already in motion, which will in fact set it in motion.

I’m taking that advice now, forging ahead in some areas of my life while others remain poised for takeoff, lined up on the tarmac like airplanes awaiting clearance. With time frames that are hazy, the best I can do is tend to my checklists and focus on the tasks that will best prepare me to fly once I get the all-clear.

I’m waiting for a large client project to begin and because I know from experience that a promise is never a guarantee, I’m doing what I can to keep my workflow steady. At the same time, knowing how rarely I have breathing room in my schedule, I’m pitching several reported features and personal essays I want to write. I’m someone perpetually in search of control, but I’ve gotten better at shifting my attention from what I can’t to what I can. 

I’m also bracing myself for the inevitable goodbyes that are looming in the near distance—a beloved senior dog, a senior mother in Memory Care, a daughter on the brink of moving out. With downsizing on the horizon in the next few years, I need to start sorting and minimizing my belongings, a reversal of my move 25 years ago.

Bittersweet as these changes are, I’m also excited about them. I have a long list of creative projects I want to pursue, places I want to visit, and experiences I want to try. In the meantime, I’m continuing forth as if I already have a book deal and just mapped out a schedule for completing my manuscript in the coming months. If nothing else, it beats packing.

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Three Things That Entertained, Intrigued, or Inspired Me

1) My husband and I just started watching Justified: City Primeval on Hulu and we are HOOKED. We’ll go back and watch the original six-season Justified afterwards. Diehard fans seem to prefer it to this standalone reboot, which takes place 15 years later. The main character, Raylan Givens, was created by Elmore Leonard—my favorite fiction writer of all time. I’ve loved the movie adaptations of his books Get Shorty and Out of Sight (City Primeval even shares a similar vibe and locations with OOS). Bonus points to my husband for putting up with my constant sighs of: “God, I love Timothy Olyphant.”

2) I was scrolling through the rabbit hole that is Instagram reels, when this video came up. I did not expect the chill voice of this singer, Fulton Lee, whom I’d never heard of until then. He looks a little like Weird Al, so I didn’t know what was coming. I ended up downloading his new song, Strawberry Lemonade, which led to this not-at-all cringey conversation with my daughter:

Me: Listen to this song, Strawberry Lemonade. It reminds me of Watermelon Sugar.

Daughter: (listens) It sounds nothing like Watermelon Sugar. The only reason you said that is because you think the title Strawberry Lemonade sounds like Watermelon Sugar and both songs have strawberries in the lyrics.

Me:

Okay, she’s right. Actually, Fulton Lee reminds me of Remy Shand, a singer whose CD I used to listen to in the early 2000s. I had my daughter look him up on Spotify and she agreed. Anyway, I like Fulton Lee’s vibe.

3) I was inspired by this story in Hippocampus Magazine by Andrea Askowitz. She and her writing partner were recently hired by the Center for Ecosystem Science & Society at Northern Arizona University to teach their graduate students how to personalize their science writing. The PhD students are working on ways to slow global warming. The writers will help teach them how to translate their complex research into stories that resonate and capture attention—a win-win project that both amplifies the students’ important work and infuses Andrea’s writing practice with new meaning. How cool is that? It’s the type of altruistic purpose I strive for with my healthcare writing and compels me to keep searching for the next life-changing story to tell.