Going Back To Go Forward [#11]
Now that we're close to publication, I dug out the first email I wrote my agent about the idea that became FLAWLESS.
Hi hi hi hi hi,
Back from a whirlwind six days in Vancouver for TED 2023. I watched something like 77 TED talks live, interviewed nearly a dozen of the brilliant speakers, made glittery new friends (like the British photographer Misan Harriman), ate a parade of free meals and snacks, attended untold number of evening receptions, dinners and parties, caught Al Gore huddled over an end table scarfing down a quick lunch like the rest of us, made a stalkery TikTok featuring the TikTok CEO, and took a full break from book interviews and book-related writing, because the work load and the cognitive stimuli was too much.
One consistent piece of feedback I’ve gotten about this insider newsletter is you like reading insiderey stuff! SOMEWHERE I have all the rejected title ideas for Flawless. But I since I can’t find it, I dug out the very first email I wrote Howard, who became my agent. He coached me from stream-of-consciousness email to a 40-page book proposal, which he then shopped around to various publishing houses until we found a home at Dutton with my editor Cassidy, who you met in a previous letter. Together (along with many, many other crucial people) turned FLAWLESS from a bud of an idea into a full-fledged book.
I don’t think what follows are any trade secrets, and maybe they’re at least mildly interesting…
To: Howard Yoon
From: Elise Hu
Date: January 30, 2019
Pleased to meet you electronically. I'm going to be in DC in the
spring so maybe we can have a brainstorm in person! I am just going to
do a stream of consciousness brain dump for you and see how you react.
Here goes:
The context is, I moved to South Korea in 2015 and lived there for
three+ years as an Asian-American woman/non-Korean. I was prepared for
the travails of setting up a new bureau for NPR, the constant travel,
the juggling family and work, the missile launches from North Korea
every weekend. What I wasn't prepared for was the narrow and frankly,
oppressive, standards for how women should look and behave in that
society.
I went to Korea the same time that K-Beauty and the skincare industry
surrounding it was becoming a big global export and earning Korea its
continued sense of soft power "cool." But in K beauty's home country,
it was dangerous — one in three young women in South Korea
have gone under the knife, sometimes at the expense of their health,
beauty is seen as "social etiquette" and therefore a must, and failing
to look or weigh the "best" cost you jobs and social standing.
While these are unique domestic circumstances, I do think it's worth
looking under the hood about the notions of prettiness (and what that
means) and its links to power (and how that's negotiated in
societies). As a hook, the K-beauty industry is burgeoning globally --
what does that say about "beauty" today? I have personal experience and anecdotes to bring as a start, but it's a lot broader... What's beautiful? How does it differ around the world? What's the cost of it? Is self-care -- now popular in the US -- substantively different than what we used to do to achieve our best look, eg, dieting, facelifts and more? What is the value of "beauty" in this period of late capitalism we're living in now -- how is it
reflected and refracted in much larger structures of power, gender
dynamics, geopolitics and industry?
Lest this sound too much like a research paper, I think we can do it
with verve and voice and funny stories ... I'm imagining a Pamela
Druckerman style take on beauty in the way she did for infidelity, in
her book Lust in Translation.
OK HIT ME WITH YOUR THOUGHTS. Also I really want to know if someone
already wrote this book. If so, NEVERMIND. :)
To: Elise Hu
From: Howard Yoon
Date: February 1, 2019
I think the most helpful exercise for you to start with is picturing who your ideal book buyer is and designing the book content and the voice to appeal directly to those people. With that in mind, I do think that your own personal storytelling and experiences will be a strong jumping off board for you to get into the various aspects of beauty and self-care and image that you want to get into. David Greene's book ended up being very personalized because that was the easiest way for the narrative to hold together. You can also hold the narrative together through your reporting — or through the themes that you construct throughout the book. There are lots of different ways to express your ideas in a book!
I would say the first thing to do, rather than asking you to go off and write a full proposal (which is really hard for someone who's never done it before) is to get two assignments done: one is a personal anecdote/scene of you adjusting to life in Korea and the surprises that you encounter when it comes to beauty and gender. It would most likely be the opening story / lede for the book proposal. Just write a couple of pages, no need to figure out everything in the story, but the goal here is for you to be comfortable enough to tell this framing story in a way that's easy to write so that I can get a feel for your voice. Then the second assignment would be to come up with a mock chapter outline. The outline needs to be somewhere between 7-15 chapters, depending on how long you want your book or your chapters to be, and each chapter description should be about two or three sentences stating what the chapter is going to cover and how you're planning to write it/tell the story. There's no right or wrong to the chapter outline — there's only your best educated guess as to what you should be doing. The thing to keep in mind is that there has to be an intuitive logical flow to it — a sense of progression for the reader, a culmination of tension or resolution, and a distinct feeling of beginning, middle and end. What you don't want are 12 chapters that feel like separate standalone entries that have no interconnectedness to them. Come up with chapters that seem like a sensible way for readers to get through the book, and provides them with enough juicy narrative and reporting for them not to want to put the book down.
Again, don't feel that these two writing assignments need to be perfect. They're really more of an exercise that will help me figure out where your head is and where your voice is, and from there I'll be able to give you much more concrete advice on what to do next.
OK it’s me again. Back in present day. I hope this was fun and maybe even useful if you have a non-fiction idea for a book, and don’t want to just jump into full proposal mode. I don’t have other literary agents so maybe this isn’t even the optimal advice for folks who aren’t me. But for me, taking on these shorter assignments, writing “bird by bird,” as Anne Lamott says, really helped focus me and get me to a finished proposal. I never dreamed of writing a book, but I did wish a book like this existed before I moved abroad, and the way women are still so defined by beauty is one of those niggling things that never stopped bothering me, so in getting a chance to write book length, I got a chance to really burrow into it.
You can get your signed copy from Skylight Books before the offer ends in a couple of weeks. Please RSVP to free book events all around the country. Phoenix’s event page is up for anyone in or with loved ones in Arizona. Or pre-order at any of the places where books are available.
If you are in the media or have a podcast, I’d love to talk with you about the ideas above, and anything else that you’re curious about. Just reply to this email and we can get it scheduled. The book changed a lot between the original email above and the finished product. One of the chapters that didn’t make the proposal is probably one of my favorites — about aging and beauty. And the ways AI-created visuals wind up in filters and set standards didn’t get covered originally, but is something I’m thinking about a lot as I prepare to launch the book. Move over Instagram Face, hello Metaverse Face. We can riff on it!
What else do you want to see in the newsletter? Your request is my command.
Thanks for subscribing and coming along on the journey. It’s better with friends.
Until next time,
Elise
So excited for you and can't wait to meet up in Seattle!
Thank you so much for sharing how you got started with your agent and book proposal, it is very inspiring. Howard sounds like a great agent to work with as well.
Cheers!