Bearing The Unbearable — Pitching Memoir
“I will not write sales copy about the death of my mother.”
Writing, even under the best of circumstances can be an excruciating endeavor.
Authors, like most wizards, are supernatural in their ability to create something from nothing. Memoirists are a special breed altogether. I don’t know how they do it, how they manage to let us inside their lives, warts and all, literally turning themselves inside out— (I’ve seen it up close…it’s messy) and in the process wringing every emotion from their raw and ragged guts, and then managing to translate all of that pain, joy, grief, and love into words that live on the page long enough for our eyes to devour them.
It gets me all verklempt when I even try to imagine it, the tears running brown from the emotional-support chocolate that’s smeared all over my face.
Anyhow, my best friend, Steph Jagger, her life a seemingly endless series of Heroines Journeys (which comes in handy because nobody, except you guys, wants to read about a person’s mundane life) writes memoirs. Tales of courage and triumph, love and loss. Her latest,
Everything Left To Remember — My Mother, Our Memories, And a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains
centers on her mother’s slow decline into early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and how that profound loss effects Steph and her family. Here, her editor describes it better than I ever could:
“An inspirational mother-daughter memoir that follows two women on a poignant journey through a landscape of generational loss. As they road-trip through the national parks of the American West, they explore the ever-changing terrain of Alzheimer’s, deep remembrance, and motherhood.
A staggeringly beautiful examination of how stories are passed down through generations and from Mother Nature, Everything Left to Remember brings us the wisdom of remembrance under the constellations of the vast Montana sky.”
I mean…come on!
And this is where you all come in. I love my blog community so much, wickedly loyal, you have been with me since 2012 so you know I love writing, connection, and passing along all the things I adore—And I adore my friend, and LOVE this book!
Here’s the deal, since the advent of social media, authors are expected to build an audience, publicize their own books, and endlessly pitch their stories to the various mediums. It can be soul-sucking, especially when your story starts living a life outside in the world while still inhabiting all your exposed nerve endings. There comes a breaking point. A boundary that begs to be set. I’ll just let Steph explain in her own words:
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to be able to write about my mother, to put our story into words. I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude about the opportunity I have to share that story. And I am terribly excited about the idea of those words being in your hands.
I’m also looking forward to being on podcasts, to visiting book clubs, to talking with you about your mothers, and fathers, and sisters, and friends who have been, or are on, a similar journey.
I cannot wait to weave my mother’s aliveness, all the things she has left to give, into the world at large.
I am committed to doing that by way of words, shared in as many ways and in as many places as I can.
And . . . I will not write sales copy, for my mother and I are not things to be sold, but precious beings to have and to hold.”
So, I suppose as an author you leave that to your council of writers, right?
Your friends.
Your sisters of the pen.
You let them be your hallelujah chorus and shout your name from the rooftops, “Come, pre-order and read Steph’s book, you will be the richer for it!”
You guys, when have I ever steered you wrong?
Carry on, xox
Pre-order made simple: Amazon link
Hate Amazon? Here’s a link for Indie Bound —and Eagle Harbor Books, Steph’s local bookstore, where you can get yourself a signed copy!
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250261830
https://www.eagleharborbooks.com/signed-everything-left-remember-steph-jagger
More Steph: https://www.stephjagger.com
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