Sabbatical

Read Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature by Bill Roorbach with Kristen Keckler. Cincinnati,OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 2008 (fully-revised 2nd edition). In an appendix, it lists memoirs in the form of journals and diaries, so I looked these up in Amazon and the libraries to see their form and publisher (May Sarton’s journals use a similar format as Nouwen’s and the sabbatical journal of John Royston Coleman (Blue-collar journal: a college president's sabbatical), which I then used for my manuscript). None of the others were really appropriate to list as “competition” in proposals. None of the publishers appropriate for my manuscript.

Faith Adiele, in Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun, (NY: W.W. Norton & Company 2004), used the margins to comment on her diary entries and to put quotations relevant to the entries. Not really a format I aspire to, but interesting.

Also read The Autobiographer’s Handbook: The 826 National Guide to Writing Your Memoir by Jennifer Traig (ed.). NY: Holt Paperbacks, 2008. It listed a memoir about faith, Jesus Land, from Counterpoint LLC (http://www.counterpointpress.com/about.html). I can’t see if they accept unsolicited mss. Wrote an email to them to ask. The 2 relevant titles from them are:
• The Scent of God: A Memoir. BERYL SINGLETON BISSEL
• Jesus Land: A Memoir. JULIA SCHEERES
Received an answer from Counterpoint Press: they do not accept manuscripts from individuals, only from agents.

Revised all proposals, sample chapters, & the manuscript itself by removing double spaces & replacing with single spaces. Wrote 1st proposal in 2nd tier of publishers. Wrote 2nd proposal in 2nd tier of publishers--I'm not too hopeful about this one as it seems be be primarily focused on Baptist materials.

Because it has been 6 1/2 weeks since I sent the very 1st proposal out (the only one in my 1st tier that did not want simultaneous submissions) & they haven't responded (they say they respond in 4 weeks; a directory said 4-6 weeks), I sent out the other 5 proposals in my 1st tier (all allow simultaneous submissions).