When I look back at my life, it’s broken into several distinct chapters. Childhood with my parents, running wild and free in the forests of Indiana. Elementary school after moving to Salt Lake City where I competed in scholastic chess tournaments and became one of the top 50 girls under 13 in the US. Junior High and High School. College. And then: integrating into the elite chess world and becoming one of the top 100 women in the US.
The year I spent in the depths of the chess world was probably the most formative of my life. I was exposed to new people and ways of life that I had never encountered before. This was the real start of my adulthood—when I began traveling by myself, when I lived with a boyfriend for the first time, when I moved to California.
So I wanted to tell the story. It was a beautiful story. Exciting and exhilarating. But there were bad times too. Sad. Scary. It was high, and low, and everything in-between. Mostly high, and ending high. I’m happy with how things turned out. But I never want to forget what I went through and the feelings I had, and I wanted to share those with the world so we could all re-live it together.
I began writing my memoir in 2019. I have always kept a journal, and I had hundreds of pages from this period of time that I copied and pasted into a Word document. Then, I added narrative in-between the entries to piece them together. I sent my “manuscript” to close friends to get their feedback. It was middling (and they were being nice).
I decided to hire a developmental editor to give me the critical feedback I needed. So I went to Reedsy and put out the request. I got a handful of interested editors, but went with the one who seemed to offer the best package for the price (around $5,000). He would write a feedback overview letter, plus provide detailed comments throughout my manuscript. And then, after I revised my first version, he would do the same thing again on the second version. I wouldn’t just be paying for feedback, it would be like a personalized masterclass in writing. He would also draft a query letter I could use to seek an agent.
About a month later, I received his critique. He had written a fifty-page letter providing overall feedback on the narrative, character development, dialogue and action, format, and writing style. His feedback was very friendly and professional, but to be blunt, my first version was a piece of shit. Connecting journal entries was not going to work to tell a compelling story with a sound narrative. I decided to rewrite the entire thing from scratch.
I continued to work on my book on the side of my full-time job, but had very limited time…until my first maternity leave at the beginning of 2023. I found that having a newborn was actually quite peaceful. He would sleep three times during the day for one to two hours each time, and breastfeed eight times a day for about an hour. So, I had between 11 and 14 hours per day to work on my book. I sewed some velcro to my breastfeeding pillow and secured the other side of the velcro to my wireless keyboard so that I could type while breastfeeding, or I would use transcription. I would work on my book in the middle of the night while my son nursed, then go back to sleep. During the day, I would work on my book while he slept and nursed, and play with him during play time. It was such a lovely four months.
What happens when you forget that transcription is on and your baby wakes up
Three months into my maternity leave, I finished the second version of my manuscript and got an A- from my developmental editor. It was significantly better. I had removed all the copied and pasted journal entries and worked the stories into the narrative, and given the manuscript an entirely new structure. There were still things to tighten up and refine, but he said I should be able to get an agent in the state it was in.
So I began querying. Lo and behold, the twelfth person I queried was interested. I immediately signed the contract, thrilled that I had landed the mythical writer’s agent, and informed the other agents that I was withdrawing my query.
The first thing my agent told me to do was write a book proposal. She told me to purchase a book of hers that explained how to write a solid proposal. It was only $5, so I agreed. The book proposal needed an overview, market analysis, promotion plan, competitive analysis, author bio, and synopsis with sample content. So I wrote one and sent it to her. And waited. After a week or so, she gave me some feedback, which I incorporated and sent back a new proposal. And I waited. Another week, and more feedback. This occurred several times until we got the proposal into a state she was fine with, except for the synopsis. “It won’t work as-is,” she wrote me.
Well, what the hell do I do with that? I thought. I asked some clarifying questions about what it needed. She decided to link me to some random lady who would help me. To this day, I still don’t really know who this lady is or what she does. I only know her name and that she did literary stuff with my agent, and they went to a book festival together. This woman read my manuscript, then scheduled a call with me and grilled me for three hours about my feelings during the time I wrote about.
“So, would you say this is accurate: you felt insecure?”
“Uh, no, not really…I felt pretty confident, actually…”
It seemed to go in circles. I wondered if and how we would ever finalize this proposal, and if my agent would ever pitch my book to publishers.
Because I wanted to go the traditional publishing route. Not just for the great marketing you supposedly get, but to learn firsthand the intricacies of a whole world I had never been exposed to.
I went months going back and forth with the random lady, providing feedback on the new synopsis drafts she sent me. And then at one point, I finally looped my agent back in since we still weren’t getting anywhere. My agent finally decided to read my book, and then she gave me some suggestions for how to improve the manuscript. It was her idea to draw parallels between my opening moves and my life at the time: the Queen’s Gambit pawn sacrifice, and the sacrifice I ultimately made. She recommended I read Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh for some inspiration, where the author uses sea shells as analogies for life.
So, while waiting to hear back from the random lady, I re-read and revised my manuscript again, addressing the second round of feedback from my developmental editor as well as adding some literary devices such as my chess opening moves as an extended metaphor. Again, I did this on the side of my full-time job (by now I had been back to work for five months). I didn’t have much time, especially now with a baby, so things went slowly. I wasn’t hearing back from the random lady nor my agent, but it was fine since I had a lot of revision work to do.
Fast forward to July 2025 when I started my second maternity leave. A month in, I finally had a more polished version that I was pretty happy with. I had not heard from my agent in several months, and the random lady had all but disappeared. I sent my agent the updated manuscript and asked if I should revisit the proposal. I had not received a new version with my feedback, so I asked if she could send me the latest version on their end in case they had made some changes to it. My agent simply told me to incorporate the new content. So I opened the draft I had last provided feedback on a year before, revised it, and sent it to her. And just never heard back.
I waited a few months, then sent my agent a formal breakup email to confirm the end of my representation. She confirmed and apologized for “not getting traction.” Well, if you don’t pitch my book at all, of course there will be no traction. People in publishing, am I missing something here??
So that was the end of that. I queried a bunch more agents but received no response. When talking about my experience with friends in the publishing world, they all agreed that good literary agents are few and far between. The publishing world is antiquated, and the role of the agent is becoming increasingly unnecessary.
I decided to take matters into my own hands and self-publish. By now, OpenAI had released ChatGPT, and it was a game-changer. I shared my manuscript with ChatGPT and asked it to create a marketing and launch plan for me. I did an extraordinary amount of research on the tasks it provided, and put together a detailed checklist that I continue to add to. I share that checklist publicly here: Self-Publishing Checklist.
After polishing my manuscript yet again, I decided to hire a proofreader for the final edits and a designer for the cover files. Then, I was ready to rock and roll.
My memoir, Adventures of a Chess Girl: Into the Depths of the Chess World and Back Again, will finally come out on December 26. The five years I’ve worked on it have been magical: the story of writing this book is the story of becoming a mother and exploring what makes me happiest.
And now, another significant chapter of my life is coming to a close. Stay tuned for what’s next! ;)