You go girl!

This is amazing and I'm highly interested in reading The Year of Yes memoir. She must have a very personable demeanor, because it seems to me that dates don't happen this easily--at least not for the majority of people. Either men are too shy or uncertain, or a woman doesn't give the "green light" signals. Or am I becoming a 31-yr-old ignorant of the dating scene since I've "attached" for over 2 years now?

This tidbit from the article amused me most: "The ensuing 150 dates included a homeless man, several non-English speakers, 10 taxi drivers, two lesbians and a mime." This woman has extreme fortitude, an admirable trait. Yet, I wonder...did she think about writing a memoir about this during this life experiment--or only after the fact. Experiential non-fiction?

I wonder if her books discusses each one of the 150 dates, and what they did, who paid, and all those other little tidbits that make a good first-date story interesting.

I wonder what the MFA non-fiction professors would say about this? I suppose if Headley was a writer before this experience, this is a totally reasonable outcome. After all, writers are constantly looking for good writing material and real-life personal experience is the main avenue for gathering ideas.

What can I do that would be intersting and worthy of a memoir?

While reading Lillian Hellman's memoir last spring and studying this NF sub-genre, I couldn't quite make up my mind on one of the core issues of the memoir . . . what makes you, the author, think your life is so interesting that people would want to read a book about it? If it's something that isn't entirely flattering, than I suppose there are redemptive, humanitarian motives..."Look, readers, you can learn from my mistakes!" Or it's because the writer has an issue that he/she never quite recovered from. Or there's a fair degree of self-importance involved - "Read about me, my life, because it's so interesting!" (Essential, a memoir is like reality-TV.)

That said, I'm almost half-way through Frank McCourt's Teacher Man and am enjoying it. He includes quite a few self-depreciating moments, and his age and removal from those experiences makes it easier to share with readers, I suppose.

One literary issue that irks me is this issue of a former boss of mine. She claimed to write a book about her experience as a police officer and the sexual harrassment she endured. (She even told a local reporter this and it was published as "fact", along with some other exaggerations and/or non-truths.) However, when some of the employees and I researched further we discovered she didn't write the book at all. Another woman did, and it was a fiction book only based on the boss' real-life experience. (I heard part of the sexual harassment settlement with the police dept. was that she would not profit from the experience through writing about it.) When confronted, the boss insisted she wrote it. Then she changed her story and said she co-wrote it. Then she said she was the "ghost writer". But this didn't really make sense either, because the woman who is credited as the author apparently uses that name as a pseudonymn, and she writes books of poetry (with cheesey titles) and this was her 5th published book (??). So, the debate was whether or not it was ethical to claim she wrote (because she didn't), or to claim she was the ghost writer because the whole idea behind being a ghost writer is that you don't take credit for it.

Bottom line: this woman is not my boss anymore.

As a writer, I was so disgusted by her deceitful attitude. I literally had a gasping fit of shock when I actually found a copy of the book--clearly proving she was NOT the author. I read the first chapter out of curiosity, but the writing was terrible!!! I couldn't force myself to read such crappy work! After studying the publisher name and all, it is my opinion that it was a vanity publisher anyway, or a self-publishing effort. I can't believe my boss could not see the embarassment she was potentially causing herself. She asked me, "What's wrong with telling clients I wrote the book?" (because she would put it in the marketing materials, even when the operations manager took out the untruthful information). My response (more or less in these words): "Because if they research the title, they will find that you, in fact, are not the author. This will make you seem like you are just trying to make yourself look better with false boasting."