The Book Proposal—An Update

One day at a time

Hey Team, so the book proposal is ninety percent done. It’s written and just needs a few rounds of edits before I send it off to agents and see if I can get any bites. For those who might not know the publishing process—as I didn’t before starting this, a book proposal is a roughly sixty-page summary of the book, including an introduction to the author, chapter summaries, a sample chapter, and more.

It is not a full manuscript, which is a completed book.

So, unfortunately, I’m not done writing 18 Uncles the book just yet and am maybe ten-ish percent done with that. The dream would be to have a completed manuscript by July, the two-year anniversary of starting this journey, but a lot of things can happen between now and then.

It’s a very tentative timeline.

But getting the proposal done this fall has been the objective and what I’ve been working on in my off hours at school and every evening when I’m home. Whenever I’m drowning in work, I make the joke that I’m working like one of my uncles. They’re still probably putting in more hours than me these weeks, but I’m surely competing.

It’s looking like the book will start similarly to the first few blogs, introducing the Keweenaw and the church, going deeper into growing up in the U.P., and unpacking my father’s death and how that shaped our family.

Then, it’ll have more about me and my time in Europe, explaining how those years shaped my perspective on life and the world and turned me into the type of lunatic who’d take this leap in the first place.

The second half will be about my year home, my uncles, and what I learned.

And that’s about as brief of an outline as I can give. I debate how much to reveal and how much I would like to be a surprise. But I also have so much to write still anyway, that I don’t think it matters much yet.

There’s quite a long way to go. I knew it’d be a long journey, but of course, it’s an order of magnitude greater than expected, a proper challenge that has me grinding like an uncle.

My flatmate tells me I need to enjoy life more, but he really means I should be joining him for beers more often. And I can’t afford those late nights, hangovers, and loss of focus.

I did visit the Portuguese city of Porto, went to A Coruña, and have spent a decent amount of time in the city of Santiago de Compostela.

And next weekend I’m going to visit brother Dylan and his girlfriend Maria in Madrid for my birthday.

I’ll be posting another letter to my father, my new birthday tradition.

I’ve also been working on a few blogs about the Apostolic Church. Those should be posted in the coming weeks as well.

And I’m thinking of a way to release bits and bobs of book writing I’ve been doing in blog form, again, debating how much to show now versus save for fresh eyes in the book.

We’ll see.

All in all, pretty satisfied with how these first seven weeks have gone productivity-wise.

Time flies.

I truly truly truly appreciate everyone who is still popping open the weekly emails.

The support and kind words mean the world and keep me focused on the long rainy days when things don’t seem to be clicking. It’s always up and down, and this week was way up, so that feels great.

Thirty-four next week, stay tuned for that post.

Thank you all again for reading.

One Love,

Mitch

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