#52snapshots–Week 13

I think I may be running out of steam on #52snapshots. I need some breathing room to jot down a list of questions I have about my own family history–what do I want to know more about? It could be certain people, places, events, backstory about objects. I could scrounge around in the family photographs and use those as prompts, too.

I did no more work on my mother moving to New Jersey when she married.

This Week

I started writing a piece about my mother and her cigarette smoking. But then it veered into her school years and sounded a lot like a piece that’d been published already. I started writing a piece about Passover seders of the past, but it lacked in so many ways. What I wanted to get at was a feeling I had yesterday morning about Yontiv and how celebrating Passover by myself just didn’t feel like Yontiv at all. Growing up, even our house seemed to know it was Yontiv. This week, I might try the piece again. Maybe it’s just a matter of form. I also started writing about how I got into family history in the first place, about how all roads–my interests in history and language and a bout of bacterial meningitis–led to it.

Other Work in Progress

I wanted to send out one of my snapshots to a lit mag with a themed issue, deadline April 1. I don’t think I’m going to make it. Do I give up my first time back at the gym to work on revising?

This week’s priority is book revisions as soon as I get the feedback from two editors.