Part of All The Books I’m Writing — Amy Oscar’s open workshop of memoirs-in-progress.

The Scenes

Crown of Bees

Opening: Sorting the Stones

PART ONE

1. Keys

2. Orange Soda (revise - with new scene)

3. Kriegel’s

4. My Grandmother Invented Mainstreaming

5. Don’t Put That Sh**t On Me (formerly, “Blue Skirt Set”)

6. Enable

7. Lake

8. Salamander

9. Writing Workshop Fragment (NEW)

10. Yes, Your Mother is Crazy (NEW)

11. Sword in the Stone

12. The College Tour

13. Hell Week (march 2007)

14. Kali

15. Ice

16. Starfish

17. Clotheslines

18. I am Not Ugly NEW

19. Soup

20. Bubbler

21. Lucky

22. Graduating

23. Salt Water

24. Turkey Sandwich

25. Corn Flakes

26. Jones Beach

27. Acropolis NEW

28. Brick NEW

29. Superman NEW

30. Slippery Slope

31. Small Coke

32. Juice Fast NEw

33. A Pretty Rough Day

34. Change Keeps Changing Things

35. Swimming Lesson NEW

36. Dixie Cup NEW

37. Sting NEW

38. Spotty NEW

39. Fire Island

40. A Little Slack

41. Bear

42. Target NEW

43. Canoe Test NEW

44. Canoe

45. Linen Napkin

PART TWO - Bardo

1. “There’s so much”

2. Go Fish

3. Yard Sale

4. Turpentine and Gin NEW

5. Have I done enough? (Revised)

6. Terrible Things

7. Unmoored

8. Brownies

9. Hog

10. Judge

11. Synecdoche NEW

12. Tea

13. Paperwork

14. Applesauce (October 2)

15. Darling

16. Robin’s Egg Blue (Revised)

17. Little Pieces

18. Three Deer Hearts

19. Shingles

20. Picture Window

PART THREE - Labyrinth

1. Spine

2. Dad, The Buddha

Scenes Collected from other projects: to be placed as we go

• Read to me from your book, Mom asks

Reflections on Writing
This was my first attempt to serialize a book on Substack and it was strange and fun and beautiful and full of challenges. Watching these scenes, which have lived in my notebooks for years, come together into arcs; seeing the themes emerge was, for a pattern reader like me, fascinating. Deciding which scene goes where, which story gets cut, which is too personal to share.

These reflections, about writing and memory, about what else I was doing at the same time that I was putting this project together for you, are often written in a different voice. A messier, looser voice which, I am discovering, may be my truer voice. We’ll see.

You’ll find these, along with my other notes about writing itself, over here.
You’ll find other reflections and Weird Thoughts essays here.

• Mycelial Memory - how one memory leads to another, rebuilding a landscape

• Briefcase Full of Miracles - a trip to the Botanical Gardens and a story about the time I left my briefcase by a pay phone in New Jersey

• Cartwheels - I don’t have to do cartwheels to protect the people I love from this story

• Taking Copious Notes Along the Way - secretly writing a memoir while being a daughter, a sister, a wife and mother, a PTO chair, a gardener and a pretty good home cook

About this book

The End of Men was written during the year that my parents, both in their late seventies, were falling apart. They were divorced, the house was sold, and the two of them moved into separate care. My father has cerebral palsy, and he had become more than my mother could manage. She was busting out: a last, late burst of creative fire, her psychiatrist beside her, and she was gaining ground.

I was in the middle of my own life. Something was ending. Something was beginning. I didn’t have words for it then. I’m not sure I do now — I’m writing toward discovery, out in the open, where you can watch it happen. Scenes deepen. Scenes get cut. Scenes move to a part of the story I didn’t know they belonged to. That’s the strange magic of working this way.

Read them in order, or by instinct. Your choice.

The End of Men: Scenes from a memoir I will probably not finish — part of All The Books I’m Writing, Amy Oscar’s open workshop of memoirs-in-progress.