My Dream Is Dead But My Book Isn't
Putting the Fun Back Into (Book) Funerals
After receiving the last rejection letter for my autobiographical novel, Family Plots: Love, Death and Tax Evasion (reviewed here) I held a very public funeral to bury my dream to land a publishing contract that would lead to a best-selling writing career. When I came up with the idea, I had no idea how much it would catch on—how many friends and strangers would embrace the idea. It turned out I wasn’t the only one who had a need to bury the pain of dead dreams, dashed hopes, and disappointments. By the looks of the attendees dancing in the aisles after the event, I also wasn’t the only one who felt a great release.
Why is it we are guided and supported when it comes to grieving the loss of loved ones, but often at a loss about what to do about the other things in our lives that die? Marriages, relationships, careers, artistic endeavors, businesses, youth, beauty, bank accounts—or in my immediate case, writing a best selling novel. What happens when the lofty dreams for our lives tank, and we’re left feeling, well…what? Isolated? Angry? Depressed? When a treasured dream has died, how do we avoid that urge to crawl into the coffin with it?
For those who haven’t read my book, life has put me on a path that has given me a lot of direct experience with loss. In fact, it was all the death that led me to write the book in the first place. The idea for Family Plots: Love, Death and Tax Evasion arrived after I sat at the respective deathbeds of my husband and his parents over a period of four years. My role as reluctant midwife to each of them as they made the mysterious passage also positioned me as repository of their secrets and stashes. In an attempt to keep these lovable characters alive, I sorted through the grief and the mess they left behind by writing down this crazy story. And through most of the process, it seemed like my book had a fair shake at finding a publisher. A few renowned authors went on record saying it was a page turner, a New York literary agency signed me, and two psychics told me there would be a bidding war—one even claiming the book would be optioned for the big screen. Imagine my excitement….
But that’s not what happened.
Nope. Instead, over the period of one year that my agent and I worked to strategically position the novel, I was rejected by all of the sixteen targeted publishers. And I didn’t take it well. There was the shame. The humiliation. The unfathomable disappointment. And when anyone innocently asked me what was happening with the book? Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.
I know what you’re thinking. Sixteen lousy rejection letters and she decided to kill her dream? Quitter.
But it wasn’t like that. This is not one of those stories you read about where an author gets an idea for a book, God dictates it to her in thirteen days, and then she miraculously meets a famous agent on a flight to Kalamazoo, who promises to sell the book. No, no, no. Labor and delivery of this baby was harder and possibly more expensive than the one I raised and sent off to college. I wrote four versions of the manuscript, over four years time. Before even finding an agent, I’d hired three professional editors who helped me cut, trim, revise, and re-pace.
I spent another year finding the agents, who took me through two more revisions to polish the prose, and get it into the shape necessary to make it appeal to the commercial publishing world. The whole process took seven years—the time it takes for a human to replace every cell in its body. I’m not even the same person I was when I started. That girl is gone.
Perhaps that’s why when anyone suggested I should do anything else to the manuscript —tighten it, serialize it, turn it into a screen play, sell it to a smaller press, self-publish or even shove it in a drawer and start a new one—an invisible curtain closed over my eyes and I’d chant The Prayer of St. Francis to keep from screaming.
Everyone who turned me down was incredibly upbeat and complimentary in their “pass letters,” so much so that I used their remarks on my book jacket in a section titled, “Praise from the Rejecters,” (this along with a gold seal that reads: “Awarded 16 Rejections from Prominent NYC Publishers 2008”). A number of “the rejecters” mentioned that my book might be tricky to market because of its “genre.” Though the story was based on the facts of my life, I’d collapsed time, conflated characters, invented dialogue, and rendered some fictional scenes and characters purely for dramatic impact and thus could NOT call it a memoir. But given that the main character shared my name and all the salient facts of my life, it would be a bit ridiculous to ignore the autobiographical elements too. Because I am not the first or last writer to sensationalize the verifiable data of my personal life, I think there should be a genre recognized for this category of work. If it were up to me, I’d call it “Pulp Faction.” But no one else was going for this.
After the final rejection, I struggled to avoid wallowing in the black hole of shame that arrived with my failure — second-guessing myself on insisting to create a book that didn’t really have a genre to blend into. Many sleepless nights later, it occurred to me to stop struggling. Instead, I decided to nose dive right into the center of the black hole, and cuddle up with my misery (we spooned, in fact).
Of course, that’s when the miracle happened. Once I was deep inside that dark hole, a light bulb went off, and a chorus of angels sang. Not only would I embrace my failure—I would flaunt it. I decided to do what I said I never would (never say never, eh?): Self-publish—and bring my dead book to life at its own funeral. After all, no one knew how to throw a funeral like I did. And what could be a more perfect book launch party for a story about the dead people I loved? Plus I wouldn’t have to shove my story into the available categories for marketing. It could go to press as Pulp Faction (or autobiographical fiction) and I’d stop making apologies for that choice.
Planning the book’s funeral party turned out to be more fun than any aspect of the creative process thus far. Oakland’s famous Chapel of the Chimes, where remains are stored in book-like containers on library shelves, even donated the space. The event had an open casket, pallbearers, gay singers, people carrying dead flower, a Holy Roller preacher, dancing in the aisles, and a buffet of finger foods that included tombstone brownies floating in a misty cloud of dry ice. Of course the rejected (and now self-published) book was on sale, too, and I’d sold over 125 copies before we closed the coffin that day.
This experience confirmed my belief that we all must put the fun back into funerals. Not by making light of the dead, but by acknowledging that grief and loss are our constant companions and we have to find a release. In the moment that I decided to let my dream die, bury it completely, I felt more empowered than I had throughout the entire process. What did I really bury, after all? Not my book. Not the seven years of work. Not even my beloved dead husband and his family (again). All I buried was the idea that I couldn’t have my dream without getting outside approval by the established booksellers—a world that is changing as rapidly as technology these days.
DID YOU HEAR THAT–CRAZY CONFUSING PUBLISHING WORLD? I STOPPED SITTING AROUND WAITING FOR YOU TO CALL.
(Not that I left them out. I invited each of my rejecters to serve as a pallbearer.)
And here’s the good news. By deciding to let my dream die, it seems I’ve given it new life. The book is published. It’s getting great reviews. It’s selling at the local bookstore and online and it’s getting press. Plus, to get to this point, I got to plan and attend my own funeral.
If you have any doubt that launching a book’s life at a funeral might be depressing, just take a few minutes to watch the last act to see how the event made people feel.
Who knows what will happen now? Like the plot of a good book, in our lives, careers, relationships, or even death—we never really know what’s in store for each of us until we turn to the next page.
Mary Patrick Kavanaugh’s video of the funeral highlights, book reviews, and author interviews can be found at http://www.MyDreamIsDeadButImNot.com.
See our review: http://reviews.armchairinterviews.com/reviews/family-plots-love-death-tax-evasion
Family Plots: Love, Death & Tax Evasion is an autobiographical novel that recounts Mary Patrick Kavanaugh’s life between the years of 1989-1999. After Mary’s boyfriend leaves her and their young daughter for another woman, she must find steady employment to handle the mounting debt they amassed during their time together.