Face-Lift 101

Guess the Plot

10 Years, 20 Jobs, and $30,000 in Debt

1. Male prostitute Taylor Reed, released after a 10-year prison term, discovers his long lost daughter floundering under a $30,000 school loan. Determined to help her, he returns to his old profession but discovers he's impotent. Able to afford only a twenty-count bottle of Viagra, Taylor must pull out all the stops to earn $30,000 in 20 jobs.

2. A woman who hasn't held a steady job for ten years writes a book about her experiences and tries to convince a literary agent she's ready to stick with her new career, meet deadlines, and finally realize her vast potential.

3. Forty-year-old adjunct professor Maria Fibonacci longs for a steady job, a steady paycheck, and a steady man. Instead, the mathematical topologist finds herself head over heels and her pockets inside out, all because of her infatuation with the pyramid-scheming statistician Johnny Bayes.

4. When Apple's low-budget CEO-cloning project goes awry, the company is left with no choice but to bring in Wozniak to clean up the mess.

5. When Pamela Turlington finally leaves her husband Bubba and moves to Nashville to pursue her dream of a singing career, her bad marriage becomes the biggest hit in country music history!

6. Fictionalized account of Geraldo Rivera & Connie Chung's parallel slides from powerful news anchors to basic cable's where-are-they-now? file.


Original Version

Dear XX,

At twenty-nine years old, I’ve had over twenty jobs in the past ten years and yet, I haven’t had a savings account since I was frying bacon at Wendy’s when I was fifteen. [Coincidentally, Evil Editor got his first bacon job when he was fifteen, also at Wendy's--although in my case, we're talking about Wendy Wasserstein's basement.] I’m part of the slasher generation: people in our twenties and thirties who respond to the question, “What do you do?” with a slash in our title that separates what we really do for a living from what we want to do. At present, I’m a personal assistant/yoga teacher/comedian/writer. [Only four? Evil Editor is a blogging icon/forklift driver/makeup artist for mannequins/curling coach/harpsichord refurbisher.]

10 Years, 20 Jobs and $30,000 In Debt is a completed 75,000 word collection of humorous personal essays that would appeal to fans of Laurie Notaro, David Sedaris, and Susan Jane Gilman and to all twenty- to thirty-something souls [who've never heard of those three people, but] who have made a career out of changing careers in search of their dream. Or, in search of discovering what their dream might be, exactly.

Creative visualization works. I’ve read that over and over again in a pamphlet entitled, Creative Visualization Works!, and have been told that by mom, who gave me the pamphlet, so I know it’s true. [Evil Editor is testing your theory by visualizing Jessica Alba standing behind my chair at this very moment . . . hmph.] But sometimes (say, when you’re $30,000 in debt and are no further in your comedy career than when you started ten years ago), it doesn’t feel that way. I graduated college summa cum laude and immediately landed the ideal job, one my degree prepared me for, only to give it up a year later to pursue delivering sushi at three o’clock in the morning. I then landed a paid gig performing improvisational comedy regularly at a theater in Denver, only to give that up after two [shows?] to move to New York City to pursue performing comedy…for free. [Evil Editor knows the feeling. He's finally doing the job he was born for, and it turns out blogging pays about as well as eating and watching TV--my other talents.] My life path hasn’t been so much a path as a game of Twister, but I know that others of my generation will relate to the misadventure that unfolds with a life where you choose not to choose. (And I’m putting a picture of you, XX—my dream agent—choosing me into a pink bubble, and now I’m releasing that pink-bubble vision into the universe.) [So that if I don't find what I'm looking for here, maybe 3000 years from now I'll get a contract offer from a publisher on the fourth planet from Betelgeuse.] [Your dream agent is going to want you for more than one book. Maybe it's not such a good idea to trumpet the fact that your life path veers off in a new direction every six months.]

I have been writing and performing comedy in all styles for the past ten years. Most recently I performed my one-woman show, Bone-a-fide: A Tumorous Comedy, about my struggle with a rare bone cancer, at the acclaimed People’s Improv Theater in New York City. (You can still reply to me! I’m not going to die or anything! Just limp for a while.) I was also a winner of the Up All Night College Campus Comedy Tour, which aired on the USA Network. [So what do you mean, when you say you're no further along than you were ten years ago?]

Please let me know if you’re interested in reading my manuscript in part or in its entirety. I appreciate your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Revised Version

Dear XX,

At twenty-nine years old, I’m part of the slasher generation: people in our twenties and thirties who respond to the question, “What do you do?” with a slash in our title that separates what we really do for a living from what we want to do. At present, I’m a personal assistant/yoga teacher/comedian/writer.

I graduated college summa cum laude and immediately landed the ideal job, one my degree prepared me for, only to give it up a year later to deliver sushi at three o’clock in the morning. I then landed a paid gig performing improv comedy at a theater in Denver, only to give that up and move to New York City. My life path has been like a game of Twister, and I know others of my generation will relate to the misadventures that unfold when you choose not to choose.

10 Years, 20 Jobs and $30,000 In Debt is a completed 75,000 word collection of humorous personal essays that would appeal to twenty- to thirty-something souls who have made a career out of changing careers in search of their dream.

Recently I performed my one-woman show, Bone-a-fide: A Tumorous Comedy, about my struggle with a rare bone cancer, at the People’s Improv Theater in New York City. (You can still reply to me! I’m not going to die! Just limp for a while.) I was also a winner of the Up All Night College Campus Comedy Tour, which aired on the USA Network.

Please let me know if you’re interested in reading my manuscript in part or in its entirety. I appreciate your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

Unless specifically told not to, be sure to include a sample essay or two with your query. This kind of book is tough to sell if you aren't famous, so show them it's worth a look. Better yet, get famous.

I don't know how much of the book is about the struggle with cancer, but a novel about a character based on yourself, with your comedic perspective, might be more appealing to the book-buying masses. And your one-woman show will provide some of the material.

Chapter 1. Your hilarious conversation with the boss who gave a young college grad her big break, as you explain you have a better offer from Sushi-To-Go.

Chapter 2. Your hilarious conversation with a Japanese guy who speaks no English, as you try to explain that he still owes you forty-three cents.

Chapter 3. The ominous first twinge in your leg as you're pretending to be a cowboy on a pogo stick in a game of Party Quirks at the Denver improv club.

Etc. etc. Just a thought.