Autobiography: worth doing?
January 9, 2017 11:03 PM   Subscribe

I am putting the final touches on finishing a phd with a special needs child as a mom. Dad is blantly physically/verbally/parental alienation since birth. One of my committee members lost a child to special needs and also divorced due their child's health issues. Another still lives with a 20 something child who will never be capable of living alone remaining married. Yet this last comittee member still says getting his phd was the scariest moments of his life (prechild).

I feel like this is amazing story to publish. I am a woman in engineering with an all male committee. It goes over so many struggles over 50 years. Postchild, for me, holding child during heart attacks and having to put him down during seizures, a phd defense seems trivial. I feel like this is amazing story to publish. It goes over so many struggles over 50 years of having children including gender inequalities. Convince me publishing this story is a waste of time, or meaningful.
posted by Kalmya to Human Relations (1 answer total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Hey there, sorry, but this is really something that's more for discussion, rather than a concrete problem with solution. Please contact us if you have questions. -- taz

 
It maybe worth separating the question "is this worth writing?" from "is this worth publishing?" The latter, from the point of view of the publishers, seems to be a pretty a complex question about markets and prospective sales that isn't really your problem, yet, as a writer, unless you are writing for purely commercial reasons which clearly isn't the case for this project.

I think your story is definitely worth writing, for two reasons. One is that I think it will be of enormous value to you and your family. Having come so far, and struggled through so much, I think writing the story of how you got there will be a personally fulfilling project and something your family will also appreciate in later years. Secondly, I'd read it and I'm sure many others would want to; it's a compelling story and, well-told, would be interesting to many people. How many, exactly, is the publisher's question that I can't answer. But I still think it is worth writing for its own sake and you can think about agents and publishers once you have the text and can see whether you feel it is of interest to a wider audience.
posted by Aravis76 at 11:13 PM on January 9, 2017


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