Moving to www.gillianmarchenko.com. Join me!

After careful consideration, I have decided that in the interest of sanity, design, and simplicity, I will no longer post on Pocket Lint.

Instead, I will post at least once a week at www.gillianmarchenko.com. I hope that all my friends from Pocket Lint will join me over there. Please? I have so enjoyed our interactions here and look forward to continuing relationships in my new digs.

Why it is hard to tell the truth in my memoir

 (NOTE: I added this post to Joy in this Journey's life: unmasked linky. Read more here.)

Most of you know I recently completed a memoir and am now querying agents for representation.

So far no one's bitten. I have received a handful of polite rejections regarding my project. I suspect I will continue to get rejections for a while. There are just too many aspiring writers trying to get their work in print. Some agents claim over 100 new query letters hit their inbox every day. EVERY DAY! And so I trudge on, do my research, send the queries, and continue to work on my craft.

But I have a confession: sometimes when I get a rejection, I breathe a slight little sigh of relief. It's not that I love rejection ( I mean, come on, I was in Junior High once). It's not because I want to tell one more person in my life that I have spent over three years writing a book and it seems that no one, as of yet, wants to read it.

I breathe a slight little sigh of relief because of fear. I made a commitment to the story and to God to tell the whole truth about those first years of Polly's life. In memoir, (as in life) its a no-no to lie. When I got serious about writing our story, I knew that I would have to be real about everything that happened after Polly was born. As a missionary and pastor's wife, my response to having a child with Down syndrome was much less than Christian. The bottom of my faith easily fell out. I got depressed. I stopped showering. I drank too much Chardonnay. I struggled to love my baby.

Do I really want people to read all of that?

To tell the truth, the answer is no. I don't want people to read the whole story because I am afraid of what they will think of me. I would rather hide the hard parts of my life and let them think that I scooped up my child with special needs and said a prayer of thanksgiving for her life and moved on. I would rather them think that I am always a woman of faith, worthy of the call to be a child of God.

But Flannery O'Conner says the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

I would also add that truth loses its power when altered.

Even though I am afraid, I realize that my story isn't worth telling if not told in its entirety. The very essence of my memoir's power (if there is any) is brokenness. The fact that God came in and rebuilt me and my faith and my relationship with my baby after I fell apart is the real story. The redemptive story. And I am convinced the very thing people need to hear to truly get a clear, non-superficial, non-judgmental idea of Jesus.

I used to think of redemption as a one time thing. I believed in Jesus when I was sixteen years old. His payment for my sins on the cross equaled a done deal. I still believe this. It is the very core of my beliefs.

But I also believe that we are all a work in progress. There is a continual need for everyday redemption. The kind of redemption that heals a mother's heart. The kind that sets a person back up on the wagon after he has fallen off, that helps someone apologize to her kids for freaking out over spilled milk, or causes a shoplifter to put the bra in her purse back on the shelf in Target. A redemption that showed me that the child I was afraid to mother was the exact child I needed to reach depths of joy and wonder otherwise unknown in my life.

So I will keep putting myself out there. If my memoir publishes one day, not everyone will like it. There will be criticism (well deserved, I should add). There will probably even be disappointment. But most importantly, there will be the truth of everyday redemption and unexpected beauty, displayed in the birth of a child with slanted eyes and the widest smile on the planet.

And I think, that's enough.

Sorry I haven't posted... but I finished my memoir!

Sorry this blog is being neglected... again.

But I am happy to report that I have finished the third draft of my memoir and compiled a list of agents to query for representation. These next few days I hope to complete my book proposal and then, God willing, I plan to begin the process of finding an agent to help sell my book.

Here's a little blurb about my memoir:

The day I was told my daughter had Down syndrome, I was alone, holding my baby’s heel in the former Soviet Union. My book entitled KRASATA (beauty in Russian), A Memoir of Motherhood, Down syndrome and Unexpected Beauty, starts with a mother whose faith nearly bottoms out by the birth of her daughter with special needs. With humor, poignancy, and honesty, spanning two continents, the story ends with the unexpected beauty of an unwanted child who points out the benefit of brokenness and helps position her mother’s heart closer to God.

Oh, and I need a favor. Not only do agents want proof that you can actually write, but fore non-fiction, they want proof that people will buy your book. If you haven't done so already, please click over to my author page on facebook and "like" me. I have a goal to get to 1,000 likes. I am currently at 885. Also, subscribe here on Pocket Lint, or through network blogs on facebook. I promise I won't bug you too much with new content, even though I probably should.

I have been working on this book project for three years. Now that I am close to actually showing it to people, I'm a little freaked out.  Edna St. Vincent Millay said that a person who publishes a book appears willfully in the public eye with his pants down. I get that. There are parts of my story about having Polly that aren't pretty. There are pages in the book that are down right embarrassing. Nonetheless, I think that God wants me to get my story out there.

So I will forge ahead and perhaps, invest in a good belt.

Some of my favorite books about Down syndrome

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. Great fiction! Click on the book picture to get to Amazon to buy a copy :).

Jewel by Bret Lott. I read this book in Ukraine when I was pregnant with Polly. I didn't know she had Down syndrome. The book is fiction, about a woman in the backwoods of Mississippi. Her last child was born with Down syndrome. It is a wonderful read.

A friend in the Down syndrome community :). Jennifer Graf Groenberg wrote a beautiful book called Roadmap to Holland. Check it out!

Expecting Adam by Martha Beck. Another true story. Phenomenal writing.

What are your favorite reads about Down syndrome?