Hi, please forgive the motherhood and apple pie questions that follows.I am a complete literary novice but have a passion to write a Biography on an artist I have admired for many years. I have the idea and believe I have an interesting if not unique angle/story to tell but I just don't know where to start in terms of the process. I clearly need the trust and backing of the person in question (with whom I have never met) and I need to feel confident in articulating my idea to the artist, his agent and or potential collaborators without compromising the idea itself. Can anybody give me some sound advice on where to start and what to avoid please?..thank you so much in adavance :)
Are you asking how to sell your idea to the agent or whoever without revealing what it is? Sounds impossible to me. No person in the public eye is going to allow a biographer to publish his own spin on things without reading the work first. You'd need a contract, and that would be very binding indeed in terms of what you could or could not write.
You say you have an unusual spin to put on this person's life; is it one liable to lay you open to accusations of libel if the artist doesn't agree with it? You're treading on delicate ground here.
You could write an article and see if that is accepted by a relevant magazine; you could write a sample and send it to the agent; or you could get on and do as much research as is humanly possible to back up your work, and see if your angle still holds true.
Unauthorised biography is a tricky area; any biography is governed by certain essential rules, but the go-it-alone approach could land you in serious hot water if you can't verify everything you state as a fact.
If I were a celeb and I was approached by an unknown person with no writing experience wanting to knock out his version of my life story, I'd not only refuse, I'd consult my lawyers for a banning order.
Sorry to be negative, but these are litigious times we live in.
Lorraine
Two editing details about my first comment here:
1) I left out the "b)" before "Elvis" and the "c)" before "Indigo";
2) I didn't make clear that I believe that my story was binned long before it might have reached Indigo Girls.
Could you write as much as possible of your biography (with its special angle) WITHOUT collaboration and send that to the agent, see if they're / the artist is interested in collaborating based on that?