Memoir, misery lit or clickbait?

That time my story was butchered on a podcast

Heather McLeod
5 min readAug 17, 2021

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(Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash.)

I submitted one of my stories to a small podcast this spring, and it was accepted, which meant that a volunteer performer would read my story aloud on an upcoming episode.

How exciting! I was grateful for the head pat. Especially when working on big, long-term projects (my novel), it’s nice to have a little encouragement and validation as a writer along the way.

The episode was released a few months later, and I listened eagerly.

I was so very, very disappointed.

I’m sure the podcast producers and actress did their best: their handling of my story, which is about my husband when he was living with terminal cancer, was respectful.

But the actress really got into the role of a grieving widow, shaky voice and all. It’s melodramatic. And she stumbled over some of the words, so it’s clearly not her story. It all sounds staged and artificial.

Ugh.

I couldn’t listen to the whole thing.

I couldn’t share the link around, as I’d planned, because I honestly didn’t want anyone listening to it.

Lesson #1: tone matters

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Heather McLeod
Heather McLeod

Written by Heather McLeod

Writing about losing my young husband to cancer, grief, widowhood & this new, Plan B life. www.heathermcleod.ca https://www.buymeacoffee.com/heathermcleod

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