SAMPLE # 1:
WITH ANNOTATIONS BY AGENT GORDON WORNOCK
A Mini-Proposal & Business Plan for:1
From West to East and Part Way Back2: Seeking an Authentic Self
(Memoir: Spiritual, Religious, New Age)3
by
Meg Hill Fitz-Randolph
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OVERVIEW
Pitch:
From West to East and Part Way Back, Seeking the Authentic Self;5 a spiritual road trip memoir that flies free of stale definitions of God. Moving from church to ashram to Benedictine abbey to Vedic fliers meditating for World Peace, Fitz-Randolph—poet, teacher, meditator—experiences holiness in each of these and returns with an understanding of the many faces of spirituality.
Description:
This is a memoir about disobedience. Not in the ordinary sense, bad behavior and the like, but about so-called spiritual disobedience, what from the Middles Ages to present time has been called heresy. Rather than being burned at the stake or fed to the lions, however, Fitz-Randolph has found a way to disagree with the mainstream voices of both her chosen spiritual vocations while maintaining her6 practice and respect for each.
As a lifetime disciple7 of a renowned Indian guru, late in mid-life she returns to her Christian roots, becoming a devotee of Christ, prayer, and liturgical communion. End of story. We’d assume her wandering soul had come home, right? Not quite. Making no claim or even choosing sides, Fitz-Randolph tells the story of one woman’s journey to get beyond dogma and belief and settle into the uneasy paradox between two seemingly very different paths to faith. Is it the church or the guru or something else entirely?
Having grown up “churched,” as it used to be called, and then followed the piper (in this case, think ‘guru’) beyond the familiar confines of Western religion into the deep waters of Eastern meditation, the author and her husband decide early in their marriage to make the move from the fast-paced suburbs to the cornfields of Iowa in order to join a well-known meditation community. Here they begin a new life, and for over twenty years, they peacefully abide, raising their daughter, building careers, and meditating for world peace in the Golden Domes.
Long story short, late in middle age comes the inevitable shift, which means for the author a slow, tortured melting away from the community followed by a solo return to the church of her childhood and a life of prayer. The real kicker8 here is not so much Fitz-Randolph’s return to the Christian fold but her resolve to bring her cherished Eastern meditation practice along with her.
Pulling from ancient Christian teachings as well as sacred texts of India, and simply following her poet’s instincts for knitting unlikely worlds together, the author’s story brings us to a wider place of spiritual inclusion and a more deeply felt relationship to a higher power.
As more and more9 people sample Eastern practices such as yoga and meditation, they can become confused about how this fits into their own traditions. As someone who had to come to peace with these conflicts, the author of From West to East and Part Way Back understands the journey and how her story can benefit others.10
Benefits:11
Here is what a reader might learn from reading this book:
- To recognize the key principles in one’s own religious tradition are similar to those principles of other world religions.
- To see maybe for the first time how two seemingly separate traditions dovetail in ways both illuminating and fulfilling.
- To recognize the many faces of a higher, divine power as expressed in all the great world religions.
- To recognize that at their heart all spiritual practices share the same root: a non-ending and eternal ground of being which is called by different names.
- To understand how prayer and meditation, which arise from this same ground of being, are actually never in conflict with one another.
- To translate this ever-growing sense of God’s presence into right action and good works that help humanity.12
- To naturally grow in deeper tolerance, understanding, and appreciation of all religions, even those seemingly most unlike our own.
Purpose of this Book:
This is a book whose time has come.13 The market today is awash with books founded on both East and West spirituality: from new-age philosophies, meditation and yoga practices, practical tips from fitness and health gurus, all the way to treatises on ancient Christian doctrines and the rediscovery of centering and contemplative prayer. But there is no book out there, memoir or otherwise, that shows a life lived in the center of this divide.14 This book answers the question of how one person gets to be both an Eastern meditator/mystic and a practicing Christ-centered Christian or Jewish or any other religion of one choosing or tradition.15
Markets:16
- Those people on a spiritual path already, whether Christian or from another tradition entirely but curious about other paths
- Those part way down their path, those just starting out
- Those who engage in serious yoga practice for exercise and health but feel some conflict with their Christian faith
- Those who want to know what this journey is all about, who have stuck to a more conservative path following the faith of their childhood or community
- Those just curious about what happened to all those old hippies who joined up with various spiritual movements and gurus first appearing in the late sixties
- Those curious about the nature of enlightenment. What it is and what am I missing?
- Those seeking to live an authentic life amidst a spiritual practice and discipline, traditional or non-traditional
- Those who see themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” the largest group today
Competition:
Memoir: Biography; Spiritual or Religious
Memoirs which are most similar to author’s memoir: From West to East and Part Way Back; Seeking the Authentic Self, provide the most competition. A few examples are included here (in order of ranking on the Amazon.com17 list).
Eat, Pray, Love; One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy by Elizabeth Berg. Harper Perennial (200718). Popular memoir which satisfies worldly appetites for change, travel, romance; weak spiritual content with mostly derivative and superficial understanding of Eastern thought for beginners only19
Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapiro. Harper Collins (2010). A poignant search for her family’s Jewish tradition in which she seeks a way back to that inheritance; resonates with those seeking that way back but does not approach in much depth the actual spiritual concerns or understanding of that tradition
The Adventures of a Bindi Girl; Deep Diving into the Heart of India by Erin Reese. Travel and Soul Media20 (2012). More travel and adventure memoir along the lines of Eat, Pray, Love ; next to no spiritual curiosity of any depth and less understanding of world of the great religions whose temples she visits
Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander. Simon Schuster (2012). One person’s near-death experience in which angels and higher realms are experienced; more new age excitement and fun but little in substance, either medically or spiritually.
Complementary Titles:21
American Veda: From Emerson and the Beetles to Yoga and Meditation: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West by Philip Goldberg. Crown Archetype (2010). Non-memoir but chock full of deep understanding on Eastern philosophy in terms Westerners understand easily.
Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path: Living at the Heart of Paradox by Philip Goldberg. Sentient Publications (2006). Another non-memoir but filled with personal anecdote of one intelligent journalist’s experience and appraisal of the spiritual cornucopia of teachers, practices, quandaries and pitfalls for earnest seeker.
Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. Riverhead Trade (1997). Included here as the model of what spiritual memoir might attain. Focus here on Benedictine spirituality and living a cloistered life. Norris spends time living and praying in the monastery with monks from whom she learns new ways to approach her own life as wife and author.
List of Chapters:22
Section One: Prayer
Prologue: The Gypsy’s Story: Portending the Path
Chapter 1: Growing up Churched: Setting the Foundation
Chapter 2: Motherloss: The First Emptying
Chapter 3: Holding Patterns: Anger, Alienation, and Atheism
Section Two: Meditation
Chapter 4: Finding the Guru: Is This for Real?
Chapter 5: Magical Thinking: Transformation & Rebirth (sort of)
Chapter 6: Fullness & Emptiness: Entering the Paradox
Section Three: Poetry23
Chapter 7: Language Makes the World: A Poet’s Complaint
Chapter 8: Finding Form: Things I Thought I Knew Already
Chapter 9: Emptying the Container: The Second Emptying
Section Four: Prayer Plus24
Chapter 10: Return to Holiness, Return to Wholeness
Chapter 11: Reclaiming Meditation & Prayer: Making It Real
Chapter 12: Authentic Self: The Recalibration Continues
Appendices:25 Exercises, Meditations, and Prayers for the journey to Authentic Selfhood
About the Author:
Meg Hill Fitz-Randolph is a poet, college professor, wife, mother, and card-carrying Episcopalian. She is also a thirty-year veteran of TM (Transcendental Meditation), having spent months at a time in deep meditation while alternately attending countless hours of lectures with her guru, the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.26 With an MFA degree in poetry and another in world mythology, her poems and essays have appeared in a number of national literary journals, including The Antioch Review, The Beloit Journal, Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, A Room of Her Own,27 and others. She has taught poetry workshops and college writing as well as courses in mythology and the creative process at various colleges and universities throughout the Midwest. Along with her poems, she has published in magazines, both print and online,28 articles ranging from mythology to depth psychology (as informed by the work of Carl Jung), meditation, ritual, and prayer. Currently she is the only female living on a mountaintop in the hills of West Virginia with fifty to one hundred Purusha monks who are meditating for World Peace.29 She and her husband, the project manager of this retreat facility, divide their time between West Virginia and another famous TM community in Fairfield, Iowa. Her blog, Transcendent Function Junction, addresses many of the questions that can arise pursuing prayer, myth, and meditation practice, issues more fully explored in the book.
Platform:
Author’s Website: Meg Hill Fitz-Randolph.com30
- The author has created an author’s webpage which introduces an overview of her book and lists publication credits and resume info.
Blogs include:
- The Transcendent Function Junction
- God Drifts: Western Prayer Meets Eastern Meditation
- Open Salon: The Talking Cure
Social Media includes:31
- The author will connect with three32 more forums and communities in order to post33 her ideas on prayer and meditation.
- The author will set up guest blogs with sites like The Huffington Post, Belief.net, etc to post under their religion and spirituality topics.
- The author will continue an active commentary on her topic.34
Promotion:
- The author has in place all necessary social media outlets such as author’s website, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and LinkedIn.35
- The author will arrange readings and book signings at popular bookstores36 in Fairfield, Iowa City and surrounding urban communities.37
- The author will arrange for radio interviews in Fairfield, Iowa,38 home of transcendental meditation
- The author will arrange for radio interview with Christa Tibbets of NPR39
- The author will arrange to give a reading at a popular Writer’s Circle in Brooklyn, New York (where she already has a contact40).
- The author will arrange to travel to Chicago, New York and other large hubs for more readings and book signings.41
- The author will arrange to give a webinars on her website to promote and elaborate on some of the ideas in her book.42
- The author will promote her book in each of these venues.
- The author will purchase a three-to-six month advertisement with Radio-TV43 Interview Report or something comparable.
- The author will blast out information using social networking already set in place on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
- The author will offer columns, essays, and articles to e-zines and print publications in exchange for a promotional bio.
- The author will contact the following opinion-makers for book endorsements:44
- Deepak Chopra
- Oprah Winfrey
- John Gray
- Richard Rohrer
- Thomas Keating
- Thomas Moore
- Joan Chittester
- Cynthia Bourgeault
- John Hagelin
1 State which one you’re providing. “A marketing proposal for” should be sufficient. You don’t want to appear wishy-washy before you even begin.
2 This inadvertently continues the wishy-washy feeling, like you have no real direction. If you’re trying to guide folks, you need to present yourself as knowing where you’re going.
3 Memoir is a unique animal that straddles genre requirements, but you must still write with conviction. I get what you’re aiming for, but you don’t appear to be certain. Pare it down more. Don’t give me a Venn diagram. Give me the intersection. A common downfall of such proposed books is that they try to be everything and do everything for everyone forever. This is my impression, and I haven’t even read the proposal yet.
4 I see these integrated more often than not, but they can be fine separate. As an agent, I’m looking for a robust offering here if the book is to have any chance in the commercial market. When I see these page numbers in a thirteen-page proposal, I’m all but certain that what follows will not convince anyone.
5 Not all agents and editors are quite so uptight about such things as consistency in phrasing and punctuation in your title, but enough of them are that you’ll want to have your proposal proofread before you submit it.
6 Phrasing is very important. You could be selling your audience a new and useful method, but one little pronoun makes this the simple telling of your story instead.
7 What is your relation? Are you one of many followers, or did you share a special connection that places you above the masses? Be specific.
8 If you have to say things like “long story short” and “the real kicker here is,” I get the sense that what you’re offering lacks focus and strength. Present the material so that it stands without the aid of a crutch.
9 Avoid unsupported blanket statements. Though this could be covered in your analysis of the target market, it wouldn’t hurt to slip in a concrete figure or percentage.
10 Here’s an example of how pitching a memoir in the third person can get awkward. It can be done well, but it’s often more natural for you to tell your story as it happened to you. Also, making a point of something that is a given in the genre makes it seem like either you don’t know your genre or you’re trying to reassure yourself of your book’s effectiveness.
11 Excellent. This type of book must have a specific purpose, something applicable that can be gained from reading. Not only having a separate section for this but having seven entries shows your familiarity with this requirement.
12 This appears to be the culmination of the lessons learned into real-world action. I see how it can exist alongside the others, but I’m puzzled about why it isn’t the final item on the list.
13 This is not a purpose. This type of statement, especially in this genre, can be dangerous because it tends to imply that you’re relying on destiny to make your book a success.
14 This is another blanket statement to avoid. One minute on Amazon or at my mother’s bookshelf can prove this false, even for a memoir.
15 My hopes were high when you presented a narrowed focus earlier on, and now they have been dashed in your attempts to make this a book for everyone. That only makes it a book for no one.
16 Instead of listing many, you’ll usually want to explore a few in depth. Choose one primary target audience and a handful of secondary markets at the most. Provide figures and analyses that support your book’s effectiveness in these markets.
17 Amazon rankings fluctuate so greatly and so frequently that they’re almost guaranteed to not be the same when the proposal is written and when it is read. Do not rank them this way.
18 This is most often too old to be considered a comp title.
19 Instead of passing judgment, show how your book compares. This is especially important when you cite books that achieve the status of cultural phenomenon. You had better have a valid reason to choose that book. I’m not convinced that you do here.
20 Aim for books from major publishers first.
21 Though not necessarily a bad thing, I almost never see competing and complementary titles split up like this.
22 Though less necessary for memoir and more so for prescriptive nonfiction, it wouldn’t hurt to seek a foreword by a known author or thought leader in the genre. Having that in hand before you submit can greatly boost your platform.
23 Interesting. I didn’t get this angle in your overview. Might be something worth mentioning earlier.
24 Unless this is your brand, which isn’t evident in the rest of the proposal, you’ll likely want to seek a title that isn’t so close to one of your others.
25 Be aware of additional applications for your material. A wealth of this would make for good bonus content online.
26 You’re citing a potential connection with someone who was fairly well known. If there’s any applicable substance to this, you’ll want to express it in your target markets and promotion plan.
27 Good. Cite specifics whenever possible. These not only vouch for your writing, but they imply what kind of feel your narration could have.
28 In contrast, this kind of general listing provides little of use.
29 This could be seen as beneficial if the retreat or attendees are well known and/or well connected. Otherwise, it makes you seem difficult to reach and a bit removed from society.
30 You get bonus points for proposals with functional hyperlinks, but don’t rely on the agent to click through for the necessary info.
31 As with your website, blog, or any other type of media, specific traffic/follower/audience, figures help. The vast majority of people on these sites don’t have a large enough following to adequately sell books.
32 Why three? And why only three? You don’t want to imply that you’ll give up, especially so soon.
33 It’s best to at least imply purposeful interaction with the target audience, rather than just putting things up online.
34 This conveys no useful information. Be specific.
35 A plan for action is more effective than a state of being, especially when that state is already completely expressed elsewhere.
36 Listing them would show that you’ve done your homework and give a better idea of the potential.
37 Agents and major publishers tend to want projects with national or international reach.
38 One old form of broadcast media to one city in Iowa seems rather limited, especially if you’re trying to convince an agent or publisher in NY or CA, for example. At the very least, provide the appropriate audience figures.
39 Expressing your relation would give me a better idea of how feasible this is.
40 A promise alone is fairly weak. A promise with an appropriate connection is better. An expressed offer in hand is excellent. An expressed offer in hand with prior experience is ideal.
41 A well-organized plan will get you far. Try to group similar efforts and present them so that they build off of each other.
42 This is a missed opportunity to express focus, strategy, and brand. Show that you know how to utilize specific portions of your material. Show that you have a plan already in place.
43 This is a rather passive, general, and antiquated approach. Show me that you know your audience and how to reach them. Better yet, show me that you already have.
44 A list that begins with Deepak and Oprah could almost be detrimental if there’s no expressed connection. Everyone in your genre would love to have their support. Show how you are able to get it. This appears to be best fit for self-publishing, which is perfectly valid.