A dying woman wanting her daughter to find money she’s hidden in her house.
Three people in mid life finding out that their mother has left them money, but who have little idea where it is?
And before they can get some of the money they know is waiting to be claimed by them, it mysteriously gets moved to a different location?
That’s my memoir. Would anybody want to read it?
I’m encouraged by the enthusiasm of people who’ve followed the story of my search for the money my mother left to my siblings and me and all the revelations my quest has dumped into my unwilling lap.
I recently dug up a manuscript I wrote years ago about women and money. A publisher, Basic Books, I think it was, had expressed interest in it.
But just before the deal was sealed, the editor I’d been working with left the company. The next editor wanted my manuscript rewritten in an entirely different format—at my own expense.
Since I’d already spent a small fortune collecting women’s stories of their histories with and attitudes towards money, I wasn’t having any of that. Instead, I just shelved the book.
But, I can see that parts of that manuscript are going to come in handy, as I finish writing My Mother’s Money. Nothing wrong with a little recycling, is there?
Lynette! Don’t lose heart, this is a compelling scenario for a memoir. Editors are curious figures, as individual and idiosyncratic in their reading tastes as, well, most readers. The thing that strikes me most about this post is that the core of your memoir, ostensibly about your mother’s money, is about your own attitude/s to money. The fact that you spent a lot of time and energy exploring other women’s attitudes towards money suggests to me you were probably trying to figure out something for yourself, too, in the process. As writers we’re often clueless to our motivations until well into a project – it has taken me two years and tens of thousands of words to work out what my current manuscript is about. (It is related to, but quite different from, what I originally thought it was about.)
My feeling is that you probably have a ton of relevant material from your original project – let alone a marvellous idea for a separate blog – and that if you can successfully weave the emotional journey you go on as you search for your mother’s money (the latter being your present-day narrative), then you will have a great chance of landing an agent and a book deal.
By the way, “The Root of All Evil” is a fabulous potential title … just sayin’.