u/poemsiwroteinstead

Below is my first attempt at a query letter, followed by an example essay from my manuscript. I'd appreciate any and all feedback or advice!

QUERY:

Hi [Agent],

I am seeking representation for poems i wrote instead of killing myself, a 62,000-word memoir-in-essays about a woman trying to understand how she became someone who wanted to die--and what happened after she tried.

This is a book about suicide, but not really about suicide. It is about everything that happened along the way: growing up with a blind, mentally ill mother, an absent father, death, grief, bad decisions, self-sabotage, obsession, love, heartbreak, and the creative ways I found to cope with it all.

The essays move through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, relationships, and the aftermath of losing my parents, ultimately arriving at the suicide attempt that gives the book its title.

Some of the stories are devastating, some are embarrassing, and some are just outright ridiculous. My half-sister was sold to her adopters for drug money. Allegedly. My mother’s ashes were stolen from the trunk of my car. I faked my own kidnapping. I was unhappy in my career as a social worker, so I thought I wanted to become a mortician. I became a taxidermist instead.

The circumstances of my life may be unusual, but the feelings underneath them are not.

I am interested in the places where contradictory things can be true at the same time: loving someone who hurt you, grieving someone whose death brought relief, being both victim and perpetrator, wanting to die while still finding things worth living for.

It is essentially a girl’s diary about wanting to die.

The poems and essays in this book are what came out instead.

poems i wrote instead of killing myself will appeal to readers of I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, particularly readers drawn to memoirs that are dark, irreverent, intimate, and unwilling to make pain pretty.

[Bio]

Thank you for your consideration.

Cheers,

[Name]

EXAMPLE ESSAY:

i faked my own kidnapping

I used to lie a lot as a kid.

Small lies, like telling a nice lady at church that it was my birthday when it wasn’t.

She would pick me up and drive me home each week because my mom didn’t drive.

She didn’t have a license. Or a car.

I told her my parents didn’t get me any birthday presents, so she took me to the Dollar General and let me pick out a few toys.

I walked up to my front door, shiny new toys in hand, and the nice lady standing next to me.

It’s not her birthday?

My mom was so pissed at me.

I never got gifts on my birthday. That was true.

It just happened to be August and my birthday is in November.

One evening, when I was particularly bored and restless, I went to play outside and didn’t tell my mom where I was going.

There were a few empty houses on our street.

I went to one of them and sat in the carport, playing with my new Barbie.

I later heard my mom calling my name and I ignored her.

Shortly after, I heard a lot of people calling my name.

And I ignored them, too.

It’s dark now and the street is lit up by police cars.

They’re looking for me.

I don’t want to be found.

Eventually, one of my neighbors finds me hiding in the carport.

I pretended to be scared.

I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I told them a strange man tried to hurt me.

I had run away and hid from him.

And that was true.

Except that it had happened a few years earlier and I never got to be dramatic about it.