Elizabeth Benedict's Blog - Posts Tagged "invisible-kingdom"
"A NYC Cancer Memoir- A fine antidote to anodyne cancer accounts"
I've written a lot of novels and personal essays on everything from my hair to Monica Lewinsky to a famous murder in my family, but REWRITING ILLNESS: A VIEW OF MY OWN is my first book-length memoir. The content is courtesy of a little cancer that came my way in 2017.
The pub date is May 2023. 2023 minus 2017 means I'm still alive. And I'm not sick. Maybe call this a cancer memoir with a happy ending. (Those were the only ones I wanted to read when I was sick.)
I'd swap having had cancer for getting a book out of it, if I had that choice to make. Key words: "having had cancer." It has not recurred since my last treatments in early 2018, and the doctors say the likelihood of recurrence at this point is in "low single digits."
Does the world need another cancer memoir? I know you are asking yourself this right now. And if you're not, let me ask it for you. I struggled with this question for all the years I was writing the book, and trying to make it something other than "another cancer memoir."
When a literary critic friend read an early draft and said, "I think only your friends will be interested in this version," I took note. I rewrote it 127 times or maybe it only felt like 127. Maybe it was only 15 or 29. But when another writer friend said: "I am writing a book now with no chapters longer than 900 words," I listened up all over again. I rewrote my memoir for the 15th or 28th or 123rd time. And something happened when I did that: the short chapters -- some a paragraph of two -- changed EVERYTHING.
I was suddenly writing chapter titles like: "Not Everything Scares the Shit Out of Me," and "Maybe it was the Krazy Glue," "What Brings You Here Today?" and "Where is My Husband?" In reducing the story to bite size bits, I found my voice, or a voice in which to tell the story that had not exactly fallen into my lap but burrowed its way into my armpit in the form of a swollen lymph node that turned into three swollen lymph nodes and was eventually diagnosed as lymphoma.
I found the lump in my arm on June 9th. I went to the doctor on June 10th -- and with my health insurance, my New York moxie, an office of women doctors, and access to NYC hospitals, it took 4 months to get diagnosed. Women doctors told me my problem was my anxiety. Doctors went on vacation for the summer after doing a biopsy and telling me someone from the office would call me.... My sister taught me Buddhist chanting. I drank gallons of wheat grass juice hoping to shrink the lumps.
I had a long, long time to think about what it meant to (maybe) be sick, what it meant to have doctors who told me to stop worrying, whether Susan Sontag's ILLNESS AS METAPHOR, about cancer and its metaphors, was still relevant, what it meant to have health insurance and live in the medical capital of the world and take such a long time to figure out that the huge lump in my arm was ... cancer.
I took a lot of notes. I cried. I raged. I tried NOT to tell my husband how terrified I was every time I opened my mouth. Finally, I found a doctor known as legendary in the field who treated my unusual case. I ended up in the hospital where Nora Ephron had been treated for leukemia and had died, and I was happy to be there, because I knew it meant I was getting the best care available. I was happy even though I knew not everyone makes it out of that place alive.
I'm alive. I wrote a cancer memoir that some of my favorite writers say is "impossible to be put down" and "superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining," and "Witty, vivid and harrowing ... as though Nora Ephron had written a book called 'I Feel Bad About My Tumor.'"
And I was lucky enough to find a fantastic publisher, Mandel Vilar, co-publishing with Dryad Press. You can pre-order it at Bookstop.Org (to go indie) or at that other place. You can go to my website, and you can ask me for a review copy, if you're a reviewer. ElizabethBenedict.com
Thanks for reading so far. I am in your debt.
~~Liz Benedict
The pub date is May 2023. 2023 minus 2017 means I'm still alive. And I'm not sick. Maybe call this a cancer memoir with a happy ending. (Those were the only ones I wanted to read when I was sick.)
I'd swap having had cancer for getting a book out of it, if I had that choice to make. Key words: "having had cancer." It has not recurred since my last treatments in early 2018, and the doctors say the likelihood of recurrence at this point is in "low single digits."
Does the world need another cancer memoir? I know you are asking yourself this right now. And if you're not, let me ask it for you. I struggled with this question for all the years I was writing the book, and trying to make it something other than "another cancer memoir."
When a literary critic friend read an early draft and said, "I think only your friends will be interested in this version," I took note. I rewrote it 127 times or maybe it only felt like 127. Maybe it was only 15 or 29. But when another writer friend said: "I am writing a book now with no chapters longer than 900 words," I listened up all over again. I rewrote my memoir for the 15th or 28th or 123rd time. And something happened when I did that: the short chapters -- some a paragraph of two -- changed EVERYTHING.
I was suddenly writing chapter titles like: "Not Everything Scares the Shit Out of Me," and "Maybe it was the Krazy Glue," "What Brings You Here Today?" and "Where is My Husband?" In reducing the story to bite size bits, I found my voice, or a voice in which to tell the story that had not exactly fallen into my lap but burrowed its way into my armpit in the form of a swollen lymph node that turned into three swollen lymph nodes and was eventually diagnosed as lymphoma.
I found the lump in my arm on June 9th. I went to the doctor on June 10th -- and with my health insurance, my New York moxie, an office of women doctors, and access to NYC hospitals, it took 4 months to get diagnosed. Women doctors told me my problem was my anxiety. Doctors went on vacation for the summer after doing a biopsy and telling me someone from the office would call me.... My sister taught me Buddhist chanting. I drank gallons of wheat grass juice hoping to shrink the lumps.
I had a long, long time to think about what it meant to (maybe) be sick, what it meant to have doctors who told me to stop worrying, whether Susan Sontag's ILLNESS AS METAPHOR, about cancer and its metaphors, was still relevant, what it meant to have health insurance and live in the medical capital of the world and take such a long time to figure out that the huge lump in my arm was ... cancer.
I took a lot of notes. I cried. I raged. I tried NOT to tell my husband how terrified I was every time I opened my mouth. Finally, I found a doctor known as legendary in the field who treated my unusual case. I ended up in the hospital where Nora Ephron had been treated for leukemia and had died, and I was happy to be there, because I knew it meant I was getting the best care available. I was happy even though I knew not everyone makes it out of that place alive.
I'm alive. I wrote a cancer memoir that some of my favorite writers say is "impossible to be put down" and "superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining," and "Witty, vivid and harrowing ... as though Nora Ephron had written a book called 'I Feel Bad About My Tumor.'"
And I was lucky enough to find a fantastic publisher, Mandel Vilar, co-publishing with Dryad Press. You can pre-order it at Bookstop.Org (to go indie) or at that other place. You can go to my website, and you can ask me for a review copy, if you're a reviewer. ElizabethBenedict.com
Thanks for reading so far. I am in your debt.
~~Liz Benedict
Rewriting Illness: What People are Saying
I'm overjoyed by the responses from writers, therapists and other storytellers to my memoir, pub date May 23.
"In Rewriting Illness, Elizabeth Benedict isn't just rewriting the narrative she's given when she's diagnosed with cancer--she's gifting us her company, which I couldn't get enough of. With grace, wit, and refreshing candor, she turned her encounter with cancer into an intimate drama, a dark comedy, and a meditation on marriage, motherhood, friendship, secrets, fragility, and love, and in doing so, she asks us to pay attention to everything in our lives that really matters. When I finished the book, I felt like I had made a new friend, and all I wanted was to keep our conversation going. This is more than a memoir; it's an experience."
*** Lori Gottlieb, NYT bestselling author: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone & co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast
“Elizabeth Benedict’s book is brave, heartening and beautiful. We avert our eyes from the deep terror that she must face; she faces it and faces it down. This book is a lesson in how to live. Brava.”
*** Roxana Robinson, Sparta, Dawson’s Fall, Georgia O’Keefe: A Life.
“Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner. I read Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness in a single sitting and finished it infinitely more knowledgeable about what it means to be diagnosed with cancer. Here is someone who’s figured out not only how to think about the unthinkable but how to turn her into an honest, gripping, and genuinely humorous story. It’s the kind of inspiring book you want to share with all the important people in your life.”
*** Sigrid Nunez, author of What Are You Going Through and The Friend.
“Witty, vivid, harrowing, as though Nora Ephron had written a book called ‘I Feel Bad About My Tumor.’ Especially good on the abrupt, stopped-time feeling when the flow of life—city life, complicated life, sentient life—collides with illness.”
*** Thomas Beller, Author of J.D. Salinger, The Escape Artist and Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball
“Rewriting Illness is a superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining memoir about what happens when a lifelong fear of illness collides at last with illness itself. Elizabeth Benedict … writes with an honesty and a sly sense of humor about herself that make this book hard to put down.”
*** Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life
"I devoured Elizabeth Benedict's beautiful book in one sitting. I’m moved and astonished by how she made her cancer story universal, even for someone who is not yet, knock wood, a member of that club…
*** Betsy West, Documentary director (RBG, JULIA, Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down)
"In Rewriting Illness, Elizabeth Benedict isn't just rewriting the narrative she's given when she's diagnosed with cancer--she's gifting us her company, which I couldn't get enough of. With grace, wit, and refreshing candor, she turned her encounter with cancer into an intimate drama, a dark comedy, and a meditation on marriage, motherhood, friendship, secrets, fragility, and love, and in doing so, she asks us to pay attention to everything in our lives that really matters. When I finished the book, I felt like I had made a new friend, and all I wanted was to keep our conversation going. This is more than a memoir; it's an experience."
*** Lori Gottlieb, NYT bestselling author: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone & co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast
“Elizabeth Benedict’s book is brave, heartening and beautiful. We avert our eyes from the deep terror that she must face; she faces it and faces it down. This book is a lesson in how to live. Brava.”
*** Roxana Robinson, Sparta, Dawson’s Fall, Georgia O’Keefe: A Life.
“Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner. I read Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness in a single sitting and finished it infinitely more knowledgeable about what it means to be diagnosed with cancer. Here is someone who’s figured out not only how to think about the unthinkable but how to turn her into an honest, gripping, and genuinely humorous story. It’s the kind of inspiring book you want to share with all the important people in your life.”
*** Sigrid Nunez, author of What Are You Going Through and The Friend.
“Witty, vivid, harrowing, as though Nora Ephron had written a book called ‘I Feel Bad About My Tumor.’ Especially good on the abrupt, stopped-time feeling when the flow of life—city life, complicated life, sentient life—collides with illness.”
*** Thomas Beller, Author of J.D. Salinger, The Escape Artist and Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball
“Rewriting Illness is a superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining memoir about what happens when a lifelong fear of illness collides at last with illness itself. Elizabeth Benedict … writes with an honesty and a sly sense of humor about herself that make this book hard to put down.”
*** Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life
"I devoured Elizabeth Benedict's beautiful book in one sitting. I’m moved and astonished by how she made her cancer story universal, even for someone who is not yet, knock wood, a member of that club…
*** Betsy West, Documentary director (RBG, JULIA, Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down)
HOPEFUL ... BEST ... SURVIVORS
This letter just arrived from a reader of REWRITING ILLNESS:
"This is the best and most hopeful book for anxious cancer survivors--which is pretty much everyone I know! I will be recommending to the gang in my Wednesday night [support] group."
Want an audiobook? Listen to me read the story -- 6 hours and 12 minutes -- on Audible. Or read it on your screen or in your lap.
Coming soon to a book group near you.
https://www.elizabethbenedict.com
"This is the best and most hopeful book for anxious cancer survivors--which is pretty much everyone I know! I will be recommending to the gang in my Wednesday night [support] group."
Want an audiobook? Listen to me read the story -- 6 hours and 12 minutes -- on Audible. Or read it on your screen or in your lap.
Coming soon to a book group near you.
https://www.elizabethbenedict.com
