A crowded market place and then some!

Last year I attended a workshop in Byron Bay NSW on memoir writing with the Australian author Robert Hillman ( The Boy in the Green Suit). The subject: what makes me so interesting?   Critical to know for someone writing a memoir and a question that I was  hard pressed to answer when a friend unexpectedly put it to me.  And of course, has set off a train of thought ever since, on how to answer, a process aided by composing query letters, helping me to comprehend what the book is about? Sounds dumb I know, after all I wrote it and that should put me in pole position! 


Is 'living the dream and surviving the reality' a good hook or just a cliché?  

I was really surprised by how many people attended the workshop, counting forty and all of them women. Amazed too, at how many people are writing memoirs in one small Australian beach town. A golden age for women's memoir if the workshop was anything to go by; perhaps spurred on by Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray,Love?  Or Under The Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes? 

According to a New York Times op-ed from 2002: "81 percent of Americans feel they have a book in them -- and that they should write it." A survey of Internet users in the U.S estimated out of  100 million users there are 8 million unpublished novels and 17 million unpublished how-to books written by that Internet-using population.  

The good news according to Bowker is that  American output of new titles and editions has increased by 1148%  between 2002 and 2010!

After the workshop I ran into my neighbour Laurel, an editor, who explained in Australia you don't need a literary agent to get a publisher, which was news to me. There aren't too many literary agents in Australia anyway and following up I found two major publishers accepting unsolicited manuscripts: 
Pan Macmillan Australia have a Manuscript Monday . Pitch off the web every Monday and Allen & Unwin have The Friday Pitch-every Friday of course.


How easy is that! When i'm not wavering between genius and simply making a fool of myself! But the deed is done and no need even to pick up the phone, which is a relief; as an artist, cold calling galleries has never been my forte although it has to be done. I am a great believer in the work speaking for itself, but try getting a gallery to come to your studio and how can art speak if nobody sees it? 

What I have learnt today (warming up after a southern winter, T-shirt and shorts, surf pounding in the distance):

''There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart, a desire of distinction, which inclines every man to hope, and then to believe, that nature has given himself something peculiar to himself.'' Samuel Johnson.