Timeline of a Memoir

I have a cold so I’m eschewing complete sentences this week. Instead, I spent an inordinate amount of time on mediocre graphics.

 

 

Graduate with MFA

Go to Key West to celebrate

Start writing memoir

Working title: Memoir

(I’m excellent at titles. Or the opposite of excellent.)

 

 

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Since the title “Memoir” is exceedingly lame, retitle project as “Girl” in hopes that future editor will re-title it for me at a later date

Send first queries while offices are closed for 3-day weekend and therefore can’t respond, protecting my fragile ego that would otherwise secretly hope to get a request for full within five minutes of hitting send

 

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Query

Revise

Query

Revise

Bite fingernails

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Receive offer

Become speechless for first time in life

Sign contract

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Receive first installment of advance

Feel like real writer for 5 minutes

Finally make friends with Twitter

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Start working on cover design

Discover original title, “Girl,” is already taken

Convince Writing Partner to come up with new title because I completely suck at titles and she is most excellent at it.

Decide Girlish is much, much cooler title anyway.

 

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Confirm final-final cover design

Order promotional cards with book cover to hand out at AWP in February

 

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Find courage to solicit blurbs for book

Live in terror as people I admire read my unedited draft

Final-final cover design is rejected by Unnamed Deities of Marketing

 

 

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Receive first blurbs!

Do happy dance in kitchen

Throw out 65 business cards with old cover

Go through several revisions of new design

Admire new cover

 

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Deliver final-final manuscript

Deliver additional blurbs

 

 

 

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Wait patiently for my turn in editing queue

Hire outside publicist

make book trailer to keep busy

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Receive and complete edits

Finally send my mother a draft of memoir

Receive galley/Swoon over galley

Commence nightly anxiety attacks because people will actually read memoir

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Start daydreaming about book release parties

Continue with nightly anxiety attacks

Drink a lot of calming tea

Start publicity campaign with publicist

 

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Book release scheduled for Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author: Lara Lillibridge

Lara Lillibridge sings off-beat and dances off-key. She writes a lot, and sometimes even likes how it turns out. Her memoir, Girlish, available for preorder on Amazon, is slated for release in February 2018 with Skyhorse Publishing. Lara Lillibridge is a graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. In 2016 she won Slippery Elm Literary Journal’s Prose Contest, and The American Literary Review's Contest in Nonfiction. She has had essays published in Pure Slush Vol. 11, Vandalia, and Polychrome Ink; on the web at Hippocampus, Crab Fat Magazine, Luna Luna, Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, and Airplane Reading, among others. Read her work at www.LaraLillibridge.com

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