so what's the book about?
an attempt at summarizing the memoir i didn't mean to write.
there’s one question i dread the most these days. it usually comes up when people find out i’m a writer, and especially when they find out i went to switzerland to attend a two-week writing intensive with the purpose of getting feedback on a book i wrote.
(was writing. am writing.)
it’s a natural question to ask, so it shouldn’t surprise me when it comes up. but it does, and every time i stand there, scrambling to find the vague answer i’ve rehearsed multiple times over the past couple years and still manage to forget when i need them.
so what’s it about?
what’s my book about?
sometimes “it’s a memoir” is enough for their curiosity, and they don’t press any further. more than once i’ve gotten the “but you’re too young to write a memoir” line, followed by a wink and a grandfatherly chuckle.
and then there are the people who want to know more.
a memoir about what?
and this is where i fumble.
something i learned during my time as a writing major is that every writer should be able to give a one-sentence pitch of their book. a single sentence that captures the essence of the story and captivates your potential reader. think those descriptions in the scholastic book fair catalogues.
anyway, the one-sentence summary. i came up with one for my book a little while ago, and it’s this:
“my memoir is the story of how God used something small and unexpected to heal my heart from shame in a big way.”
i can never remember all those words in quite the right order, hence the stuttering and pausing and probably blushing that occurs, but i usually manage to get enough of them out that the asker considers their question answered and we can both move on with their lives.
but that’s not much of an answer, is it?
i mean, if i’m being honest, i wouldn’t be that interested in reading my book from that description. lots of people have been healed from shame. what makes my story different? what sets it apart from others?
what will make the people who don’t already know me and love me (and read literally anything i write because they know me and love me) want to read it?
what will help my book to reach my one? (see below to find out who “the one” is.)
my one
my good friend hannah, a writer like me, recently encouraged me to think about “my one.” it’s a concept she picked up from someone else, and the core idea is this:
so i guess for those things to happen, i need to share a few more details with you. i need to be brave, and being brave often means being vulnerable, and being brave definitely means being vulnerable when you have a story like mine.
for starters, my memoir is about healing from sexual shame. it was a shame that took root around four or five years old, when i would read books or watch movies that made me feel a certain way and not understand what those feelings were, or why i could recreate them with my body but wasn’t supposed to.
that shame was only heightened by purity culture, a well-intended but deeply damaging movement in the evangelical Christian world i grew up in. on top of the other harmful messages that put the crushing responsibility of sexual integrity on girls, i was also taught — both directly and indirectly — that sexual sin was a male problem.
purity culture taught me that i was alone.
most people, when they find out i’m in recovery from sexual brokenness and shame, assume that i was addicted to p*rnography. (for the record, i will sometimes use an astrix with words like this because internet and email censors can’t always discern context.)
it’s a fair assumption, but it’s wrong — assuming their idea of p*rn is like everyone else’s. my version of p*rn was a specific type of imagery i’d been exposed to since i was a kid, one that a majority of people wouldn’t even consider sexual.
this is part of what made the shame run so deep: i didn’t know a single other person who struggled with the particular thing i struggled with. it heightened my sense of being alone, of being different, a recurring theme in my life that’s woven into the book.
that’s the thing: my memoir is about so much more than sexual shame. because i can’t write about that part of my life without writing about the mental health battles that also started in childhood.
and i can’t write about my mental health battles without writing about the God who pulled me through them, the same God who brought healing to my shame in the most unexpected way.
and i can’t write about that healing without writing about the movie — the small thing — that started it.
because at twenty-six years old, after years holding this heavy secret close to my heart well into adulthood, i sat down in a dark theater to watch a favorite film from childhood.
and less than fifteen minutes into this movie more familiar to me than anything else in the world, everything changed.
that’s what my memoir is about.
and if that interests you at all, my potential reader, i’d love for you to join me on this journey.