Narrative non-fiction

What is it?

Oh, Water Child* is my first full length non-fiction manuscript. At completion, it will be about 70-80,000 words.

What is it about?

Oh, Water Child is, firstly, a memoir. It is a true story told using the help of narrative devices well-known to fiction writers. It takes place over five years, and is written in the third person.

In a larger sense, this memoir is about the hurt and healing that happened when I made a difficult, irreversible decision to make my insides match my outsides.

I fell madly in love with somebody else when I was in the middle of a serious, long-term relationship. I told no one and stayed in that relationship for two more years. I was ashamed, heartsick, and obsessed. I avoided, I lashed out, and I lied, desperate for this forbidden love to go away and simultaneously petrified that it would.

I became very sick. I began to suffer from chronic anxiety, could no longer eat or sleep, and lost an extreme amount of weight very quickly.

I eventually came to realize that it was because I had stopped telling the truth - to myself, to anyone. I had trapped myself, and I was dying.

So I left the country. Under the persuasive guise of a masters degree and a secret that nobody knew I was keeping, I moved to England, alone.

Over the course of a year and a half, I learned many painful and beautiful lessons about unrequited love, relational intimacy, and what happens when you finally, after several years, start telling the truth to yourself. And then, what happens when you start telling that truth to other people, too.

This book is a story of the tough inventory I had to do to ensure I was living for myself, as myself. Ultimately, it is an anthem for the young women who are wondering if that inventory is worth it.

It is. You are.

Who is it for?

Oh, Water Child is for readers who have some intimate knowledge of the existential suffering that happens when your insides do not match your outsides. For those who know what happens when you shove sacred inner truths out of sight out of the need to preserve the person you used to be, wished you were, or hoped you’d remain.

I think it will especially resonate with those who naturally manage other people’s emotions and experiences as a thoughtful, strategic way to be loved just a little bit more. With those who carefully curate the kind of person they wish they were, which can be quite distant from their actual wants, needs, and desires. With those who crave authenticity but are too afraid to say what, or who, they really want.

In being too afraid to say what we want or who we are, we get lost. We get sick. Then, one must choose between two terrors:

1. To tell the truth, and lose the life you have, or

2. To lie, and die living.

The choice is yours. That choice was mine.

What are your next steps?

For a long time, I believed my only place in the world of professional writing was one as an editor. However, this perspective changed dramatically when I was selected as one of 15 non-fiction writers invited to join the HarperCollins UK Author Academy. The Author Academy supports writers from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds and helps them become commercially successful in the publishing industry. I attended class with my cohort every week and participated in other masterclasses about the role of agents and editors, marketing and publicity, production, international sales, author branding, and more. I graduated the academy in November of 2022.

My mission is to write professionally, both in the United Kingdom and the United States. Currently, I am seeking an agent who sees the vision of my work and supports me in becoming a commercially successful writer in either place.

The Oh, Water Child manuscript is not yet complete. I aim to have it finished by September of 2022, and have dedicated time each week to work on this goal whilst also working a full-time position as a qualitative researcher. I am also blogging on The Olly Project and submitting short pieces to various writing competitions in the meantime.

*Title subject to change.