Book proposal saga, & fruit from unexpected trees

I completed even the "About the Market" part of the book proposal. It took a marathon of days. Again, I began with an "I have no idea of what to do, here" and over time--lots of time--ended up with a section so solid and filled with relevant statistics that it ended up convincing me.

So as they say in spiritual life, all of God's qualities are available to us. It is our own conditioning and limitation that shrinks us to fit the boxes we were put into long ago.

Not that I fully enjoyed this part. Searching for statistics on how many books were sold in various categories so I could build a case that there is a real market for my book was not my idea of a good time. My right brain hungered for poetry, perfume--hungers I ignored, while searching on the Web for figures. I didn't always find what I thought I was seeking, but what I did find kind of suggested the route I ended up taking. I know this is a teaching of value. The back-road approach, even to statistics.

I come from a family of artists--writers, and my father was a visual artist as well. This was my legacy, my dynasty. Much suffering in, perhaps because of, being creative--or because there was no place for it in the culture, or even in their own families. Survival was so paramount--the lives of post-Depression second-generation Americans, brought up in one language, fending for themselves as children in another, bridging the worlds at the kitchen table. Self-creation was my parents' avenue to liberation.

My father, who had what might be called a pre-self-individuated tribal consciousness (sometimes called "enmeshment" in the psychological literature) liked to talk of the family as "we." "We are artists," he would announce, bringing me into the fold by patrimony rather than direct calling (at the time). And, the corollary: "We aren't good at math or science." This was his effort to console me when I came home crying in high school after failing my upteenth math test. It was as kind a gesture as he could give: don't worry, it's not your fault. You simply aren't constituted to think as a scientist, a mathematician. Because we aren't. Because you are of the we. And we are artists.

Well. That one was years in the seeing, the dispelling. It still is. Sometimes, in my spiritual life, calling on the inner witness to my unconsciousness, I think that witnessing oneself is not only a spiritual act but a scientific one as well. Any development of objectivity, in the service of a larger perspective, has a kind of science about it. And what about just childlike wonder? "Why is this like that? How does it work? I wonder what will happen if I take this part and unscrew it..." Such questions have led me to become the "mechanical one" in my family (in my second marriage). My first husband was exceedingly mechanical, and I his clueless shadow. So it's all relative. But I think the resurgence of wonder and courage accounts for a lot of that kind of scientific mind. Also, a kind of self-protection, a kind of distancing, such as I experienced when a biopsy was recently done on my arm and I discussed it, with surprising interest (once the life-threatening aspect was put to rest) with my dermatologist as she froze the spot, inserted whatever it is that pricks the skin, extracts a sample.

Is this a digression? Or a winding curve towards something?

Book proposals--statistics--yes, that level too was beyond me and of no interest before. I have a first cousin with a Ph.D. in statistics, and it was like we were from different planets when he spoke of such things. Nevertheless, in the service of putting forth my book in a way that a publisher will take it, I researched book clubs, statistics on women's purchasing decisions, tracked down publishers for sales figures on the 4 books that appear in my "Competitive Book Analysis" section (which I would really rather call only "Complementary" books, since they are all pieces of the puzzle--Jacob Needleman's Money and the Meaning of Life; Lynne Twist's The Soul of Money; Liz Perle's Money, a Memoir; and even Suze Orman's The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom), only to discover--after calling New York City (my birthplace) from Oakland, California--that "We don't give out sales figures, sorry."

Pushing against closed doors. Tired, computer-logged, pushing. Then remembering to stop. And in that space, a whole other idea came. It came while I was walking to the kitchen, washing dishes, doing ordinary things. A break in the pushing. A time-honored method: steep, then stop. The "Eureka!" bathtub method of inspiration.

I didn't have to lean only on sales figures. I could envision the situation for myself. I could find my own comparisons of value. I was a writer; I could write it.

So the prelude to the categories led into them. I wrote:

SIZE OF THE MARKET

There is a huge, untapped market for The Blessings Ledger. The very fact that financial pundits, credit counselors, and psychologists have acknowledged money as "the last taboo" (sex having well lost that position in the last 50 years) speaks to how universally money has a deep, unspoken place in our lives.

While there are countless books about the making and managing of money, there are fewer that deal with the intimate, human-journey details of the effect of money on the psyche and soul that eventually show up as financial conditions and patterns. Liz Perle’s recent book, Money, a Memoir, goes in that direction by connecting childhood conditioning with dysfunctional adult spending patterns. However, it does not begin to address the psychological and spiritual root of why we suffer so much around money; why it separates, rather than connects us as human beings. The need for such a book is profound, because human beings in our culture—no matter what their level of income—most often experience separation rather than connection when money comes into the picture.

The Blessings Ledger fills a hole in the market by making visible, for the first time in a truly evocative way, the inner experiences regarding money that play out in outer alienation and the healing path the journey can take. Studies have shown that after a certain point of income has been reached, money does not buy happiness. So it is not enough just to seek money. But to seek how money and the heart come together fills a real need in today’s readers, who are more spiritually inclined as well as more financially savvy. The Blessings Ledger fulfills a soul-hunger as much as a need for financial wholeness.

Comparable Categories Whose Readership Includes
The Blessings Ledger Market

Readers hungry for memoirs. That this book is told as a narrative nonfiction journey, with the evocative language and rhythms of seamless fiction that so easily draws readers into an identification with the narrator and thus into their own lives, strongly suggests a larger audience even than those who are consciously seeking more clarity on their finances. The ongoing popularity of memoir attests to the human desire to find meaning, healing, and beauty in one’s life.9 Reading other people’s stories is one significant way to discover the depth and breadth and value of one’s own, and I believe that people will read The Blessings Ledger for this reason as well.

Spiritually minded readers. Another large audience is made up of people, primarily women, who buy spiritual books. There are various kinds of spiritual books—books that give inspiring advice; books that reveal other dimensions beyond what we see; books that open the heart and soul; books that take the reader through darker places in the human journey in the process of illuminating them. In reality, The Blessings Ledger speaks to all these subcategories of spiritual-book readers, at different points along the way. Volume 1 (the subject of this proposal) illuminates the darker places on its way to the light, and opens the heart and soul (Books 1 and 2 are more shadowed; by Book 3, when the Blessings Ledger proper begins, more light is visible). Later, Volume 2 sheds more light and speaks to the soul; finally, Volume 3 reveals other dimensions and provides inspiration.

I would encourage reaching out to this market not only through bookstores (including specialized spiritual bookstores, nationwide) but also through spiritual organizations, both those I already belong to and others existing around the world. The Internet, for example, provides a huge market for such readers, each site potentially a node for reaching many other clusters of readers.

Readers of books about money. While it’s less likely that readers of Forbes Magazine will seek out The Blessings Ledger unaided, it is likely that people who want to understand the world, themselves, and the place of money in the world will also want to read The Blessings Ledger. This includes readers of such books as Money and the Meaning of Life and The Soul of Money (see "Competitive Books"), but it also includes people who know about such alternative economies as The Heifer Project, and microcredit. In all these examples, money is addressed directly, but less in terms of its management, only, than in terms of the human context in which financial exchanges take place. This readership already thinks "outside the box." In addition, as The Blessings Ledger sales grow and gain momentum, I anticipate a widening outreach to readers who have not thought or looked in The Blessings Ledger direction, but now are willing to and even eager to.

From there, I went into the statistics. I even had footnotes--13 of them as endnotes, to back up my claims. Amazing. I went looking for certain things, found other things, and turned it all into a persuasive sales document. I persuaded myself. With the footnotes, it's a research paper. As I told my husband, my equivalent of a Ph.D. thesis.

As I told a friend, doing all this has shown me capacities I wouldn't have expected in myself, or even needed before this. And I have gained immense confidence in the book--have "sold" myself, that it is worthwhile, there is a market, I can promote it, and so on. At this point, having put all this together for a publisher, I am so engaged in it that I know I could carry it out myself if I had to (though I hope I won't). But there is that about total engagement, about the semi-miraculous process of beginning a task because someone else has asked you to and eventually choosing it, making it your own.

Is this the mystic's path to book proposals? No intermediaries? Everything direct experience, knowing only by really intimately, inwardly knowing?
Scholarship in service of mysticism. Perhaps this is a healing with my scholar-father after all. (In his service, he had to stop schooling after high school to support his family. He was a hungry learner, would have loved becoming a tenured professor; was a voracious reader, an autodidact, my most intimate and pervasive teacher of sheer knowledge. He wanted me to live his dream, insisting I go to college (I would have anyway; we all did, in my generation), insisting I join Phi Beta Kappa when I was nominated (I soared into achievement only once in college, where it became a mix of genuine exploration and compensation for life otherwise feeling out of control in those days), paying for my membership, the metal pin that came with the honor I eshewed) because it was what he would have wanted for himself....

I don't hold this against him. It's good to be able to meet other's agendas, and make them one's own. Only, as with all held-back parental dreams, it would have been so much better if he had been able to have the courage to pursue his own and leave me room for mine. That I'm finding my way so late in life is a blessing; only, sometimes I wonder, what would it have been like to have my way lighted with undemanding love from the beginning? Would I have become, as I wished to in junior high school, a person who carved baskets out of fruit?

It is almost 7 in the morning. I've been up since 2, with conscience things, working them out. This is being written with little sleep, but an appreciation for my life, and the challenge of becoming more and more real and self-accepting. Digressions often appear in my non- non-fiction writing; my husband Ralph, a very succinct writer and editor (a wonderful poet) says my writing tends to be "Faulknerian" in its length and floweriness. This morning I acknowledge the rambling. But I like blogs for this reason. All I see as I type this is a box about 3 inches high. I don't stop to examine what I've said. There is no revision. It is raw; it is the dirt from which the gold may come. (I'm not endorsing mining the earth....)

So, the book proposal again: One more part remains--the Overview, the part that declares what the book is and why it matters. The first thing a publisher/editor/agent reads. I was advised to write it last. I see why. Now I know what all is in the rest of the proposal. I haven't written it yet but I don't seem to be afraid.

I will end with the letter I sent off to the editor at the publishing house who invited me to submit the proposal. I sent it a few days back. It was intended as a kindness to myself. I find I am really coming to enjoy writing letters:

"Monday, November 06, 2006

Dear Vanessa,

In the ongoing inner debate about whether or not to be transparent with a person on whom one wishes to make a good impression, I have decided that I will.

I want you to know that I still treasure your invitation to submit my book proposal for The Blessings Ledger—it has meant a great deal to me for you to actually ask for it. So the fact that you haven’t yet received it, it now being early November, does not mean that I have ceased to be interested, or ceased to work on it. Quite the contrary. It really only means, as Orson Welles used to say in an ad for some winery (I recall the ad but not the brand), 'We will sell no wine before its time.'

From our conversations by email, I have good reason to believe that the 'slow-food' approach is actually welcome to you. This seems to be what’s happening even with the book proposal. While occasionally I wonder if I’m being perfectionistic (as I have been known to be in my artistic creations, though hopefully not in my actual life), in fact I believe I’m being incredibly thorough, scaling mountains of research and promotional potentials that I have not had to scale at this height and rigor before. I so believe in the healing potential of The Blessings Ledger—all of it, the darker as well as the more illumined parts—that I want to present a book proposal that every single person involved in making the acquisitions decision at NWL will actively want to get behind.

There are many learning curves for me in doing this proposal. I think I mentioned that the instructor of my class said that people would rather write the book than the proposal. And in terms of sheer sweat, stamina, and the requirement to grapple intelligently with the kinds of subjects that, if taught in school, I would consider obligatory rather than electives, I find this has been true.

On the other hand, I would not have missed this opportunity for the world. I have learned so much about what it is to present a book—to find your real credentials; to open to promotional avenues and ways you would actually take up on even if no one helped you; to locate a market real and large enough to convince not only a marketing/PR department, but your own worst inner critic; in short, to believe in the book enough to go to these lengths—that now I feel willing and ready to take it into the world with full presence. I am grateful, too, for the personal capacities I have been given and developed in order to do this proposal; the inventions brought about by that great mother, necessity.

So please do bear with me as I stir and simmer and cook this good brew. I wish this book to be out in the world, and I hope it will be through you.

I will drop you an email line as soon as the proposal is ready to put into the mail….

In gratitude,

Naomi"

And today she wrote back:

"Dear Naomi:

Hi! It’s good to hear from you as always, and I am happy to know about the depths you are exploring in preparing your book proposal. Sounds like solid, worthwhile progress to me.

Please be assured that there is no arbitrary time limit ticking away here at NWL. I would MUCH rather receive a fully evolved proposal than to try to evaluate/pitch an idea that both author and editor know could be further explored/expressed. Nothing rings more hollow to the acquisitions team. Doubt spreads like wildfire when we are around the table at our ed mtgs. It is key to get ’em from the get-go if you know what I mean—well obviously you do know what I mean, and I am grateful for your sensitivity to all the factors involved in acquisition.

Should we decide to go forward (allow me to skip ahead a bit here), I would ideally want to publish this as a Winter title. So W-08 or even W-09. But if that is too soon/late, such a book could be published well at any time of year. We do see a bump in our Personal Growth and Prosperity titles in the New Year zone. These are the only timing-relating thoughts I have right now, and they remain secondary to the organic development of your ideas.

I will gladly have a look at your material when you feel it is ready, whenever that might be. My only tidbit of advice at this point is to not let your perfectionist tendencies become relentless. Otherwise, just stay on your path. Best of luck!

Kind regards,

Vanessa"

Isn't that lovely? And it sounds so possible. Talk of the editorial team, publication dates. Wow, this might happen. If I could get an advance large enough to live comfortably on while I finished the book....

And yet already, this is already a dream come true. I always wanted to be invited to submit a book of my heart, and to have a deep, warm human being on the other end. And to this extent, at least, it is here. Such a far remove from my old days of terror at sending my heart-on-paper out into the void. I understand, in this moment anyway, that that was an extension of family dynamics--the absent father, the void of his listening, my lonely heart searching for a place to land and be seen and met. So all this work of attempting to do that for myself bears fruit in unexpected ways and places; and all the prayers, and all the being present for my beautiful clients, in their own fears and doubts--understanding them all but sharing none of them in their case--ah, fruit comes. Fruit comes from expected trees, and gifts spread by the wind of not-even-whispered breath of prayer. God knows what is in our hearts. It is our courageous task to hear, to not project family hurts onto the largeness of God, and to be thankful.

Thank you for reading. If you have read this and have anything to share, please do in the comments. Blessings.