Instead of getting stuck in the morass of grief, the widow Lisa orchestrates her comeback.
2. Antagonistic force:
Orchestrating her comeback means that Lisa has to fight against her enemies called grief and wallowing. She fights the urges to lay about in bed drinking her husband's bourbon and crying for her old life that was picture book perfect.
3. Titles:
The Widow’s Checklists
The Widow’s Comeback
Hope and a Future: A Widow’s Chapter 2
Orchestrating My Comeback: A Widow’s Slog of Laughter and Tears
In Stephanie Land’s Maids, we get a peek into the life of a maid and a domestic abuse survivor who refuses to let her circumstances dictate her future. So, in Lisa’s The Widow’s Comeback, we get a peek into the life of a widow as she refuses to let her status as a widow end her adventurous and fun life.
In Michelle Zauner’s breakout memoir, Crying in H Mart, she shows her readers they can forge their own way because of loss. In The Widow’s Comeback, Lisa shows her readers that whatever adversities come their way, they can create their own new life by having the temerity to persevere, solve problems and move forward whether they are crying or laughing.
Can Lisa discover who she is without the man she has loved since she was 14?
Second conflict:
Can Lisa emerge from her husband’s debt and support herself and her family in the manner in which she was accustomed when her husband was alive?
Third conflict:
Can Lisa find room in her heart for love when she doubts her dead husband wants her to?
7. Setting:
The setting of this memoir takes place through the lens of a widow’s eyes. We see the world as she sees the world, completely skewed through grief and what she perceives as “widow scrutiny.” She badly wants to create a second chapter in her life with some of her old familiars: love, ease and financial comforts. Many of her successes feel like failures and failures turn to successes as she takes the little incidentals of life and examines them from the perspective of where her fight with grief has led her that day.
Life is in a comfortable suburban small town where she moved from Southern California just eight months before. Virtually everyone is a smug married. Lisa is the widow of a politician and small businessman, she is a former executive and newly house mommed, raising two tweens, and is a growing Christian. Lisa has lived her entire married life in the bubble of upper middle-class ease. She is grateful and enjoys her former life as she struggles to keep as much of the storybook for herself and her kids.
In the chapters we meet neighbors, friends, family, all of the usual cast of characters in a conservative Kansas small town, but we also are introduced to the stink of desperation that follows online daters.
In order to get her life back on track, Lisa questions the entrenched ways the staid institutions of her burb do business. She impersonates her husband’s voice to unlock bank accounts, sells her Porsche 911 to pay bills, dodges her husband’s $250,000 small business loan, submits to receiving welfare, gives her children swiggies of Benadryl before bed, and teaches them to yell out cuss words to deal with anger. Then the Holy Spirit leads her to challenge her church, and she begins her own ministry to widows and widowers.
As dating begins, the haughtiness of the professional men she encounters, men like her husband and friends, cause her to search elsewhere for companionship. She used to judge men by their wallets, she now thinks upper middle-class men are soft in the belly entitled and decides to date blue collar men with hard muscles, tattoos, and simple earnestness. She judges them by their capacity to withstand her floods of tears induced by a million memories of her husband.
Her life’s setting is the same as when she was married but the way she now succeeds at life is different.
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New York Pitch Assignments - March 2022
in New York Write to Pitch 2023 and 2024
Posted
1. Story Statement:
Instead of getting stuck in the morass of grief, the widow Lisa orchestrates her comeback.
2. Antagonistic force:
Orchestrating her comeback means that Lisa has to fight against her enemies called grief and wallowing. She fights the urges to lay about in bed drinking her husband's bourbon and crying for her old life that was picture book perfect.
3. Titles:
The Widow’s Checklists
The Widow’s Comeback
Hope and a Future: A Widow’s Chapter 2
Orchestrating My Comeback: A Widow’s Slog of Laughter and Tears
4. Comps
Like in restaurateur Erin French’s memoir, Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch, Lisa’s draws her audience in by taking them on a raw and honest journey of survival.
In Stephanie Land’s Maids, we get a peek into the life of a maid and a domestic abuse survivor who refuses to let her circumstances dictate her future. So, in Lisa’s The Widow’s Comeback, we get a peek into the life of a widow as she refuses to let her status as a widow end her adventurous and fun life.
In Michelle Zauner’s breakout memoir, Crying in H Mart, she shows her readers they can forge their own way because of loss. In The Widow’s Comeback, Lisa shows her readers that whatever adversities come their way, they can create their own new life by having the temerity to persevere, solve problems and move forward whether they are crying or laughing.
5. Hook line:
After living a near perfect life, can Lisa conquer villainous grief and emerge a new woman, ready for a second true love as her villain’s squadron of financial problems, emotional snags and children problems pile on?
6. Inner conflict:
Can Lisa discover who she is without the man she has loved since she was 14?
Second conflict:
Can Lisa emerge from her husband’s debt and support herself and her family in the manner in which she was accustomed when her husband was alive?
Third conflict:
Can Lisa find room in her heart for love when she doubts her dead husband wants her to?
7. Setting:
The setting of this memoir takes place through the lens of a widow’s eyes. We see the world as she sees the world, completely skewed through grief and what she perceives as “widow scrutiny.” She badly wants to create a second chapter in her life with some of her old familiars: love, ease and financial comforts. Many of her successes feel like failures and failures turn to successes as she takes the little incidentals of life and examines them from the perspective of where her fight with grief has led her that day.
Life is in a comfortable suburban small town where she moved from Southern California just eight months before. Virtually everyone is a smug married. Lisa is the widow of a politician and small businessman, she is a former executive and newly house mommed, raising two tweens, and is a growing Christian. Lisa has lived her entire married life in the bubble of upper middle-class ease. She is grateful and enjoys her former life as she struggles to keep as much of the storybook for herself and her kids.
In the chapters we meet neighbors, friends, family, all of the usual cast of characters in a conservative Kansas small town, but we also are introduced to the stink of desperation that follows online daters.
In order to get her life back on track, Lisa questions the entrenched ways the staid institutions of her burb do business. She impersonates her husband’s voice to unlock bank accounts, sells her Porsche 911 to pay bills, dodges her husband’s $250,000 small business loan, submits to receiving welfare, gives her children swiggies of Benadryl before bed, and teaches them to yell out cuss words to deal with anger. Then the Holy Spirit leads her to challenge her church, and she begins her own ministry to widows and widowers.
As dating begins, the haughtiness of the professional men she encounters, men like her husband and friends, cause her to search elsewhere for companionship. She used to judge men by their wallets, she now thinks upper middle-class men are soft in the belly entitled and decides to date blue collar men with hard muscles, tattoos, and simple earnestness. She judges them by their capacity to withstand her floods of tears induced by a million memories of her husband.
Her life’s setting is the same as when she was married but the way she now succeeds at life is different.