Chapters Complete: 5

I have five chapters mostly complete, there are always revisions, in my memoir about sex, sexuality, birth control and being a woman.  There is a lot of excitement over the chapters overall, and not all from me!  So, there is hope for an audience.

I often tell my students that they need to be very much aware of the audience they are writing for, and if they cannot be aware of the specific audience, normally that is me or another instructor, they need to be aware of writing for a general audience outside of the "self." Which is why in moments like these, I find myself deeply missing my Mom, and her feedback.  For those of you who did not know her, she was a professional fiction writer, and a supporter of my nonfiction creative writing and theatre. I'm certain that she would have great advice for me, including how to go about finding a literary agent. There are many stories I have to tell, after all, and I do not wish to stop here. Although I have enjoyed my academic writing as well, I feel more comfortable with this present work, and I also feel like I can reach a wider audience through the type of writing I'm doing presently.

I am particularly lucky on this project because I have a couple of dear friends who have agreed to be readers, and also editors of sorts. They are catching all my eccentricities, so to speak, those hard to see grammar mistakes, and bizarre spellings that I occasionally developed out of thin air. They also are catching my acrobatic, dyslexic, interventions throughout the writings. I've got some of the greatest friends ever, and for that I am grateful.

I feel the need to start marketing the text, and also market myself as well.  However, I'm not entirely sure how to do this. It's something that I will have to start thinking on. Along these lines, I wanted to start talking about some of the larger topics on Twitter, Google+ and on here, the blog, but the last time I talked about sexuality on these platforms, especially Twitter, I got a lot of people in the sex industry following me. Too funny, I can only imagine what any of them thought after reading my first book. It's not that I have a problem with porn, if you're into that kind of thing, it's just not the focus of this book.

It was nuts with the sex industry followers while I was writing about the Magdalene Laundries; people following me becuase I wrote on prostitution. Oh my goodness, I cannot tell you how many people wanted to help me out with finding a good prostitute. Oh those crazy search engines.

I thought tomorrow I would start writing more specifically about some of the themes in my book, without hopefully giving away too much, and also offering some excerpts here and there. I hope you will stay tuned.  R