Saturday, August 04, 2007

My New Memoir



I may be interested in weight issues, but I'm also a writer who has just completed a memoir titled I, Driven: memoir of a teen's involuntary commitment.

When I was 18, I was committed, against my will, to a mental institution, The Cherokee Mental Health Institute in Cherokee, Iowa, pictured in this post (I snapped this photo in 2004).

The institution is still in business, but has added a new twist to its business: incarcerating sex offenders.

I'm in the process of shopping the memoir around to agents and editors. For those of you who are writers, you know how difficult it is these days to gain the attention of the powers who decide what gets published. So I have decided to try something a bit different:

I have set up a web page with an open letter to agents and publishers regarding my memoir. I'm also going to try the old fashioned way, but the other night, as I was checking out a domaining blog, I got this brainstorm: why not find a generic domain name and put my promotional information on it?

Amazingly, some great generics having to do with memoir were available and just ready for the plucking (for cheap), so I grabbed several variations. For now, you can see how I have used one of them (I'm still a bit slow with creating web pages):


This domain name was parked on Sedo for less than 24 hours and received three browser type-in hits, so I decided to pull it and DO something with it--that's my goal for all my parked pages; I just need to find the time without devoting my entire life to creating web pages.

But this one felt important (at least personally).

Don't be afraid to promote yourself and your artistic endeavors on your own blogs and web pages; it may be the only free advertising you will ever get.

Best,

Jennifer

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