Dishing the dirt, according to Cathy Alter

 Cathy Alter Offical Collection

Writing a memoir can be challenging, especially when it comes to determining how much dirty details you should give. Cathy Alter had to deal with this challenge when she was writing her memoir, Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex and Starting Over. In her book, she dishes on some very private and very steamy stuff, related to having sex in her cubicle, to dealing with intense relationship issues with her current boyfriend.

Relationships play a huge role in all of our lives and sometimes writing about them can either help sort the issues out, or make things a whole lot worse. Cathy said that when she first started writing her book she didn’t consider that too many people would actually be reading her work besides her friends and family. “I never really imagined that someone like my dentist would walk into a bookstore and buy my book!”

After Up for Renewal came out in print, Cathy was terrified as to what her husband Karl would think about her story and his very large role in the book. “I was SO nervous he’d be angry with me,” Cathy recalls. “Karl waited until the day before my book came out to actually sit down and read it. And I thought, oh no. How will I be able to celebrate the book's release with my husband being so mad at me?”

However, Karl seemed to surprise Cathy with his reaction. Even though she had a lot of juicy tid-bits on their relationship (and not to mention sex life), Karl still found the book to be a great read. “He just stood up and hugged me and told me how proud he was.” Cathy says. “I think he was expecting a lot worse – like all kinds of scenes where I'm swinging from the chandelier with strange men. So he was pretty relieved.”

While Karl enjoyed the book; a few other people in Cathy’s family were a little disheveled with the material she used to write it. Her brother told Cathy that her mother stopped reading the book at page 75, while her father praised it, but would rather not have anyone else read it. “My father read the book and phoned and said, ‘It is very well written but I'm going to tell my friends not to read it.’” Cathy’s mother-in-law is currently not speaking to her because of the content she wrote on her in the book. “She is an extremely private person,” Cathy says. “I can understand why she's upset with me.” Cathy believes that although some scenes upset her mother-in-law, these were very important scenes for the book. “But I think that the sections that involve her are some of the funniest, most loving moments in the book. I hope that someday she'll come around.”
 

Cathy advised that she didn’t let the fear of others reactions stand in her way of writing a truthful memoir. “I certainly wasn't influenced by her (Karl’s mother) – or my parents – to withhold any information or soft peddle around some darker subjects.” Cathy says that when it comes to writing about other people, “you have to consider your intentions in revealing certain details.” An author doesn’t have to have bad intentions when writing about people; she should just show the character to the fullest.

Cathy said she would “absolutely” write her book all over again with the revealing details even though she knows the consequences. She knows that in order to make her book truthful, she couldn’t sugar coat her story “There was never a question that I would be writing truthfully and candidly and frankly about my relationships,” she says. “I think when you sign on to write a memoir, you have to be ready to turn on the bright lights, put yourself under a very power microscope, and be ready to examine every aspect of your life.”

 She is currently working on an article about her first orgasm for Self magazine and realizes it is a risqué subject, but she will not let that stop her. “I probably won't let my husband read the piece,” she says. “But those worries are not going to stop me from writing about it!”

About Cathy:

Cathy’s articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Washingtonian, Self, Fitness, and McSweeney’s. Her first book, Virgin Territory: Stories from the Road to Womanhood, was released in 2004. She currently resides in Washington, with her husband Karl but is a West Hartford native. To read the first chapter to Up for Renewal, and see what women’s magazines taught Cathy about her life experiences, please go to Cathy’s official website. To find out what Cathy is up to, follow her on Twitter and become a Fan of Cathy Alter on Facebook.

Paperback copies of Up For Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over will be available at your local bookstores on Tuesday, July 28. You can also pre-order the book at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or Borders.