Quick post about what I'm writing and reading

Priestdaddy; and two essays

I'm still making revisions to my book-length memoir draft based on the feedback of six early readers. I came to a pivotal scene in which the twelve-year-old girl protagonist is sexually harassed (verbally) by a twenty-year-old male neighbor who was egged on by his nineteen-year-old sister. While revising it, I wondered if it will make an impact on the reader proportionate to the impact it makes on the protagonist. Of course, the protagonist is a representation of myself, and I've tried to show my experience and my reactions to it in ways that are both true-to-life and artful.

But if readers read the scene and say, "This harassment isn't such a big deal. He didn't touch her. Why am I supposed to see this as such an explosive growth moment?" then I've failed.

I handwrote in my journal a lot of analysis, like meta-memoir. Writing about writing. Like I'm doing right now. I was going to use it as a blog post, again like I'm doing right now. But instead I chose to rewrite the whole scene based on what I learned from the meta-writing.

At the same time I'd read a particularly colorful memoir, Priestdaddy. I read it twice in a row because I wanted Patricia Lockwood's creative use of language to influence me. When I rewrote my harasser scenes, I ended up with a compact (and in my opinon, more colorful—thanks, Ms. Lockwood) 750-word essay in present tense. I've submitted it to two online publications.

Then I started writing something I thought would be fun for me, something about the pop and rock songs I loved as a kid. Those keep sneaking into my memoir and I keep pulling them out. Well, except for one that gets to stay in. I wrote a paragraph or two about three (so far) songs that I remember hearing for the first time, as a teen. These are the really special ones that blew my mind and changed my whole conception of my own music fandom. I'd like to write about two more songs, if it's not forced. The title would be "Five Songs" and each section will have its own title.

Why is five better than three? I hope it would let the reader enjoy nostalgia about either 70s music or about their own music memories; learn something about the 70s as a time period if they weren't there; and enjoy a bit of character development of this kid who loves these songs—which ideally will be the type of writing where the specific and the personal are the most universal.

Wish me luck :-)

Fastest post I ever wrote. Personal record!