Final Analysis: Memoir Madness

Managing Editor
Shoestring Publishers

Dear Sirs:

I am writing to you with the hope that I may send you the manuscript for a very personal, very raw, first-person memoir I've just completed. I've entitled the book Me: Multiply Disordered, and in it I chronicle my many neurological, psychological, and culturally popular afflictions—including not only OCD and ADHD (OMG!), but my idiosyncratic inability to make eye contact with anyone wearing Gap clothing, an obsessive need for my 140-character Twitter posts to include at least one umlaut, and an addiction to watching C-SPAN... naked.

Unfortunately, I am 19 years old, and my research on the popularity of psychological memoirs suggests I may have passed the prime age of marketability for authors of such books. This is very disappointing, and makes me want to binge vomit or cut myself. But both reactions are so last year.

Still, I would love to join the pantheon of very young writers who publicly unveil their dramatic journeys with passion, conviction, and an eye toward adaptation as an After School Special.

If it will further my cause, allow me to note that I also suffer from a host of more adult-oriented disorders (e.g., I am currently juggling addictions to gambling, shoplifting, lighter fluid-and-cranberry juice cocktails, and browsing lumberjack websites). This may help us succeed in creating a new crossover niche market, which I call "Young Adults Developing Disorders Annually, Yielding Acute Depression, Distress, and Anxiety" (YADDA YADDA, for short).

Because I have trust issues, I am not enclosing the manuscript, for fear that you will not return it. However, I will be happy to hand-deliver the manuscript to you upon receipt of a registered letter requesting it. It is currently 1,600 pages in length. Thanks to my OCD, all of the pages are indexed and color-coded.

I eagerly await your response.

Sincerely,

Joni Belafont
Baltimore, Maryland

P.S. You don't want my book? The hell with all of you! (Sorry. I also suffer from anger issues.)