On Tuesday, I was exuberant, filled with my favorite robust expectations, as I sent a 70 page book proposal off to Bob, my agent in New York. It's for my long-planned prison memoir. I had visions of his saying it was a masterpiece and he already had six publishers who wanted to get into a bidding war over who got to bring it to the world. But, alas, his email yesterday started with:
Jerry - I don't feel much of a commercial pulse here. There's no narrative arc, no storyline that could evolve into a movie.
It went on a bit, but that's the gist. I had started off on the wrong foot. My immediate reaction was numbness, the feeling that a truck had just fallen on me. I couldn't imagine starting all over, even though I could see his point. I think I was actually depressed, for about 23 minutes, which is pretty significant for me. What prison affirmed and confirmed for me is that it's not that I avoid or don't feel pain, upset, fear, anxiety, but rather than I have developed a very rapid recovery time.
I decided to call Julia Coopersmith, whom I had also sent my proposal. She was the editor at Doubleday who bought my first book, and when she switched careers, became the agent who sold Moneylove. Now she has switched again and is successfully writing her own books. But she's remained a stalwart friend, and while I was still in prison, six years ago, she was urging me to write a prison memoir. I just wasn't ready to do it before last month, when I officially got off my three year parole period.
Julia said almost exactly the same thing as Bob, that it needed to be more about who I was and how I ended up in prison. I had thought to make it more interesting by jumping back and forth over my 12 years of incarceration, throwing in funny, then serious, then uplifting episodes. She said no, it needed to start from my first day in prison and move forward through the experience, in other words, as Bob put it, a "narrative arc." Less depressed as we hung up, I was thinking that I would avoid the project for a week or two, and then begin again.
But then I opened up my daily Nightingale-Conant motivational quote. I confess, I usually don't even open them. Though, about two years ago, I spontaneously opened one and it turned out to be one of my own quotes.
But, again, for some reason I thought this time whatever the quote was, it would speak to me. It turned out to be from a man I knew and admired from our acquaintanceship at National Speakers Association conventions, Dr. Denis Waitley:
"Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence. The extra energy required to make another effort or try
another approach is the secret of winning."
another approach is the secret of winning."
Talk about serendipity. Exactly what Bob and Julia said my proposal needed: another effort, another approach. I immediately opened up my Pages file on my Macbook Pro and started writing, ending up with a new opening paragraph. Bob had said I should call him if I wanted to discuss his email, and I had left a message for him. Almost immediately after writing the new paragraph, my phone rang and it was Bob. We talked at length about the direction I might take, and I read the new paragraph to him. He loved it. It was the reaction I had been hoping for when I had sent him the 70 pages. It was a new start, and I'm already typing away with renewed robust expectations.
I suppose one secret of surviving and thriving in these increasingly fast-paced times is to speed up one's own process, and my prison-enhanced rapid recovery time skills have certainly helped. As a result of this experience yesterday, I will focus even more on how I used this and developed it during my 12 years in prison, and hopefully pass on the skill to many others in my book.
Jerry
A lot of my creative activities go into my other blog, focused on prosperity, so check it out:
1 comment:
Keep trying, keeping marching forward,you would not have the idea if it wasn't something other people would want to hear and learn from. Ned Senderoff
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