Quit Lit
the backstory to the prologue to the introduction to my memoir.
Next Time—what happened last time, before this time, to create Next Time.
Because everybody loves a backstory.
IN THE BEGINNING: what made me start my memoir
The Adjunct Underclass—I don’t remember who suggested this book to me, but I read it with interest, and *devoured* that last chapter, where Childress equates adjuncting to being in a cult, or! (and this is where I perked my ears and the rest of me up) an abusive relationship.
Holy cow! I thought, there was 20 years of my own life there with a gaslighting husband and an exploitative adjuncting job and oh my god they did the same thing to me! and so I posted the book cover on my socials and said OMG WHAT IF I WRITE ABOUT THE PARALLEL ABUSE I WENT THROUGH BY MY JOB AND HUSBAND, INSPIRED BY THIS BOOK? WOULD YOU WANT TO READ IT IF I DID and my most famousest friend (one Emily Flake) said Well, I know Herb Childress…
And that’s how Herb Childress became my writing coach. I sent him a little of my other writing (my Problematic Tropes work, as I recall), and he agreed based on my merits as a writer and his own interest in my story. Before we began, I had a bout of uncertainty—really? This is just…happening? I don’t have money to pay you for this service, I emailed him. Did I ask for money? he replied.
One of the first insights he had on my narrative was also fundamental to what would become the braided structure of the finished product. After one or two of my initial chapters were sent off to Herb, he noted: Hey, isn’t this gaslighting way you were treated in the theatre world pretty much the same type of abuse? Looks like you’ve got a third strand in your braid: adjunct job, husband, theatre career.
Dammit. Yep.
THE MIDDLEMAN: the process of creating my memoir, with Herb Childress looking over my shoulder the whole way
So that was the deal: one chapter per week was to be sent to Herb until I was done. When would I be done? That would be determined when I got there. It actually ended up ending (!) after I thought it already had, because of one major life change—I quit one of my adjuncting positions. And then that became the glorious conclusion. I sandwiched the book with it, actually—I split it in half as a bookending pro- and epilogue.
Finding the Nut
This phrase came about one day in some of the mid-way intensive workshopping when Herb was doing one of the things he did so well: he found a short passage of something that was way more essential than I realized, and that needed much fleshing out. This was such a valuable thing to have: a person that didn’t know me at all, let alone know me during these times in my life, telling me which personal bits were most interesting to him. We ended up nicknaming the process with a metaphor: cracking open the shell to find the meat—finding the Nut, the nutritious center of what I’m trying to relate. It helped me, to this day actually, to see in my own drafts what’s worthwhile keeping in the narrative and what’s superfluous.
Having said that, I’m still surprised by what the Nuts are, let alone the fact that readers are actually interested in hearing about this stuff in detail. I am getting better at finding them myself, though, these days. Thanks to Herb’s diligence.
“I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity.”
~Lotus Weinstock, qtd in Adjunct Underclass, p.162
This vibe is how my memoir begins, and ends.
THIS IS (NOT) THE END: how I ended the project and what happens now
Quitting [SCHOOL NAME REDACTED] ended up being the cap on the whole story, as it happened right at the end of the writing process. Herb’s last email to me was a beautiful 3rd degree after that event and that was the foundation for the framing pro- and epilogue, as I mentioned above. As Herb signed off on his massive task, he left saying that “It's a terrific, complicated, messy story with no artificial resolutions. It's really good” (email from 1/2022).
Herb’s work being finished, now it was up to me to get it in front of more eyes. Here’s what I did (and am doing):
Started to send it out to agents whose wishlists look like they’d appreciate it. I’ve been ghosted mostly, so far.
Josh Dolezal put my prologue on his Substack, very soon after I first joined (Monday at the Meeting).
Got an interview from a local journalist who was interested in doing a feature on me—this fell though, unfortunately, but the process was great regardless.
Put up various snippets within other work on my own Substack, especially now that I see most of my stuff up here is personal essay and memoir.
This is why I’ve begun Saturday Morning Serial: between noticing that agents want to see an online following in order to consider memoir, sometimes even before they read a writing sample, and how often books like this get discovered this way these days, I’m doing this now. I mentioned this as part of my goals in my intro last week, so. Here we are. And here this is.
Check in with me on Notes and Threads, too, for more backstory on the creation of each chapter. I’ll likely have a villain origin story for each entry there, or at least I’ll open my kimono a bit* and let you see what my Objective, Tactics, and Obstacles were in each. Let me know, too, if you’d like me to make a Chat that’s just for this.
*hey, don’t you go getting offended by this: I do burlesque as a hobby.
POST-HASTE: how I’ll be posting each chapterlike object
I’ve got two folders full of files that are this memoir: one is called Chapterlike Objects, which is each chapter separately, having been sent to Herb and revised one at a time; and The Whole Enchilada, which is all the CLOs mushed into one document. Since the Whole Enchilada is juuuuuust a bit more revised than the separate CLOs, I’ll likely separate out those chapters one more time and make a Substack Versions folder for the chapters as I share them with you. I’ll likely make a last adjustment or two before including each in Saturday Morning serial: for example: I use all real names of people and institutions in my most finished draft so far (I figure a potential editor will make whatever name-disguising decisions once it’s accepted). For Substack, though, I’ll likely change the names. I’ll also be including images, which I always do for Substack articles but have not done in any version of my manuscript. Lucky you.
Also! Most of these chapters are like, book chapters? and so they’ll likely be too long to be read in full just in your email. So you’ll want to travel to Substack, I imagine, to enjoy the whole thing.
NEXT TIME: Next Week
Next week, I’ll be posting the Prologue, the first chapter of Next Time. (You’ve already read a version of it, if you follow
, but I’ll be making a tweak or two, as described above, so. Stay tuned).I appreciate the interaction and the active community here—I hope that I’ll get some good conversations here about this project of mine. Thanks in advance. It means a lot.