Pearls: A Memoir About Childhood Cancer
Who are you?
Maggie Bushway
What is your project?
Pearls is a memoir written by me, my dad, and my 8-year-old self about the experience of childhood cancer from different perspectives. It explores the process of looking back at the traumatic events in my childhood with a mature perspective, and coming to terms with them making me who I am today.
Can we see some photos?
Where can we find your work?
Here is an excerpt of my book, the chapter “The Day Everything Changed.” I wrote this chapter months ago but I’m most proud of this chapter, so this is the one I decided to show.
Show us your work-in-progress:
Read part of Maggie’s memoir on her website: https://maggiebushway522310875.wordpress.com/
What will you ship at the end of 6 months?
At the end of the 6 months I will ship Part 1 of my book. After remission, Little Maggie stopped writing because the health crises never really stopped. I thought I should wait until my health was in a good place, but that still hasn’t really happened. However, I found a cut-off for what part of my life to stop at. So, part two is about the consequences of surviving cancer, which was most life threatening from ages 10-13.
During Brainstorm Road, I’m just going to fill in and finish part one but with this momentum write part two afterwards. In order to fill in, and make the transition out of Little Maggie writing, I’m going back over some chapters and writing some first person scenes from the perspective of Little Maggie, without using quotes. All that to say, I’ll be posting some of those for feedback!