Gratefulness saved my life

At a glance

Logline

A daily gratitude journal, kept by hand for four years, becomes the real-time record of a marriage that begins, breaks, mends and ends, and of a man learning to stay grateful through all of it.

Category

Memoir / inspirational nonfiction

Length

About 120,000 words; 585 dated entries in eight parts (Day 253 to Day 948). A shorter edit is available on request.

Form

Every entry keeps the same shape: day number, place, one line about the day, three numbered gratitudes, and a reflection, often written weeks later on rereading. The book opens with the author’s own instructions for the practice.

Status

Complete manuscript. Query letter, one- and two-page synopses, sample pages and a proposal are ready.

Authorship

Written by hand, in real time, from 2015 to 2018, and transcribed by the author. Not reconstructed afterward, and the entries were not written by AI. Names and identifying details have been changed for privacy.

Author

Publishing as Anonymous. The author’s identity will be shared in confidence with prospective representation and publishers.

Comparable titles

For readers of:

• The Book of Delights and The Book of (More) Delights, Ross Gay
• The Gratitude Diaries, Janice Kaplan
• 365 Thank Yous, John Kralik

Unlike those books, Gratefulness Saved My Life was written in real time, not reconstructed afterward. The reader learns what happened the way the writer did: one morning at a time.

The arc

Zagreb in the spring of 2015, newly in love and already “on off pages of life.” A summer of wandering: Prague, a castle wedding in Scotland, a riverbank in New England where his father’s ashes lie. A separation in Sausalito, a reunion, and a wedding in Mexico. The morning after the wedding party, news about Maren’s brother, who dies soon after. Grief becomes drift. A year later he is alone in Barcelona with a borrowed dog, still writing three things down. The book closes in 2018: divorce papers signed in a New England hill town, then a first trip “down under.”