Photo credit: Terence Starkey, Unsplash.com
Fun To Be Around is written by me, Stephanie Weaver, MPH an author and TED talk coach. No aspect of this post is created using any type of AI. I post for the delight of writing and connecting, hoping to add a bright spot to your week regardless of what’s happening in the world. No paywalls, ever. Support my work as a disabled writer with a $5 monthly subscription, or a one-time donation via Venmo.
I love hearing from you, whether that's by email or in the comments where you're reading this.
THINKING ABOUT:
Did I want to write a memoir about my 16 years of family estrangement? I did not. Nor did I want to write about my childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my father.
My experience with writing books is summed up by this quote from Samuel Butler:
Do not hunt for subjects, let them choose you, not you them. Only do that which insists on being done and runs right up against you, hitting you in the eye until you do it.
Each of the five books I’ve written has shown up and demanded I write it, whether I have the skills to do so or not. I could say no, but Butler’s “hitting in the eye” takes the form of dreams, lack of sleep, and obsessive thoughts until I surrender to yes. Do books or big ideas demand a human interface like Elizabeth Gilbert posited in Big Magic? If one person says no do they find another vessel? I have no idea.
My first book showed up as a complete outline at 11:30 pm after years of wondering how we could improve museum experiences for their visitors. I’d been a technical writer in museum education departments for more than twenty years but hadn’t considered writing a book. One day my friend Joe Fitzpatrick stopped his little red Toyota pickup in the middle of the street to chat. He asked, “When are you going to write your book?” Joe’s assumption that I had a book in me took root. Soon after our talk the book outline for Creating Great Visitor Experiences showed up.
That’s not to say books don’t require a ton of work and crafting and editing and input and selling and marketing. They do. All of that. For almost no money in return.
My second book Golden Angels: A Pet Loss Memoir was written from the deep grief of losing our first beloved dog and then seven family members in 18 months. It’s not the book I would write about the subject today, but I’m proud to know it helped other people grieving their pets. Now our beloved Daisy—the puppy in the book—is 13. I know the grief is coming, but right now I’m in still in the middle with her.
My third book The Migraine Relief Plan arrived when I was diagnosed with migraine disease and vertigo at age 53. The neurologist sent me home with a three-page photocopy suggesting food might play a role in my symptoms. The ensuing work required the skills of a medical researcher to unravel, a former museum educator to craft the curriculum, and a newly minted food blogger to develop the recipes. Luckily, I was all three.
The fourth, a full-color migraine cookbook, took everything I had to create 100 recipes from a VERY limited palette of ingredients (no salt, no acid, no sugar, no gluten) that tasted amazing, and to survive a brutal editing process that left me in tears multiple times.
And now my fifth book has sold. Soon I’ll have a cover and a subtitle and a pre-order link and be able to talk about it with you at length. Here’s a preview:
Early 2018: I had unpacked my mother’s recipe box from my suitcase after flying home from her deathbed. I was in the in-between space of knowing she was going to die and knowing she hadn’t—Schroedinger’s Grief Space. While I waited for The Call from my sister I paged through the recipe cards. I could see my mother’s entire life in that box, and mine, and began writing about the recipes to try to make sense of our challenging relationship.
Fifteen thousand words later I had written myself into the middle of a swampy bowl of oatmeal mush, panicked, and found a local memoir class. It took 90 drafts, 12 major restructurings, 179 no’s from agents, and then a final aha moment that wrestled the book into the form it sold.
Maybe we’re always in the messy middle, but we think life should be something else?
WATCHING:
Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me. Selena Gomez would undoubtedly have preferred not to make a documentary about her mental health problems, instead staying safely behind her public persona of beauty magnate and music stardom. Instead, she pulls back the curtain on depression, the incredible pressure of fame, and what keeps her going. Brave and beautiful. (2022, AppleTV+)
READING: Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery by Mallary Tenore Tarpley
Journalist Tarpley turns her lens on her own experience with anorexia nervosa, exploring "the middle place" between illness and full recovery in Slip. The book is deeply researched, following her experience of developing anorexia following her mother's death from cancer and her desire to find some kind of control. It's not only thoughtful, it's full of wise insights that apply to many human conditions. Highly recommended.
You'll find all of my book recommendations at my Bookshop. If you buy from this link the author makes more, an indie bookstore gets the sale, and I make a small commission. Win/Win/Win!
Here’s the Amazon link if you prefer.