Finding the right tone for a memoir proposal
Craft decisions on the syntax level, dignified desire, and how I'm learning to translate English into English for a book proposal that I'm writing.
Hello my writer friends (and supporters of Savanah!)
As a refresher, this section of my Substack gives subscribers a behind-the-scenes look at book proposal writing. Many—if not most—memoirs and nonfiction projects are sold in the US via book proposal, so knowing how to write one is a highly useful skill.
Though I’ve written my own book proposals and frequently help clients get their own proposals back on track, this is the first time I’m building a book proposal with someone from the ground-up.
The Montana-based Savanah McCarty is the owner of the equine-therapy ranch S&S Stables in Bozeman that specializes in helping children overcome trauma and stress through positive experiences with horses. In addition to being a colt trainer and expert horsewoman, she’s also the proprietor of a capital L Life— not much of it easy. During the pandemic when Savanah was living in a silo on a prior Bozeman property, she started putting her thoughts about life as a single woman in a male-dominated industry into the beginnings of a memoir. Sadly, she had to press pause on these efforts when a riding accident led to a traumatic brain injury that made it impossible for her to do the deep, sustained computer-work that writing a book necessitates. Through a writing friend, Savanah found me, and we decided to both resuscitate and expand her project. (Originally, Savanah had envisioned sharing a self-published pamphlet with her followers rather than enter the maze of traditional book publishing, but I told her, take my hand, let’s go into the maze.)
Our partnership for the memoir we are calling “The People Left, the Horses Didn’t: Loving Hard and Forgiving Harder in the Wild West” is ripe with challenges and singularities, many of them, exciting. While Savanah doesn’t identify as a writer, she has a natural gift for writing. Whether it’s in her candid, vulnerable and sardonic Instagram posts and stories or in the tender pages of her memoir that she handed over, she’s got grit and talent, and the elegance of her natural voice is something I want to channel on the page. But how?
In college, I majored in translation, and in my twenties, I lived and worked in Paris as an off-and-on again translator. So for the Savanah project, more than my writing skills, I’m going to harness my translation skills when it comes to highlighting Savanah’s natural voice. Today, I’m going to give you a sneak-peek into how I plan to do that.
As with all of the Savanah content, these posts are behind a paywall. I’m doing this proposal-building work pro bono because I deeply believe in Savanah’s mission to help foster children feel loved and seen and buoyed through equine therapy work. If you would like to aid our efforts to push this proposal past the finish line, there are three ways you can do so if you have the time and means:
You can upgrade to paid if you are a free subscriber.
You can change your current subscription to the “Support Savanah Project” option on my Subscription page.
You can donate via PayPal.
Thank you for your support thus far in any and all ways. Now I’m going to game-out how to establish tone in our proposal.