Goodreads asked Marsha Jacobson:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Marsha Jacobson I actually didn't want to write a memoir. I wanted to write a collection of personal essays, and I'd completed several. When I learned that the author Joyce Johnson was leading a small workshopping group, I submitted one of my essays and was thrilled when she accepted me into the group. It was Joyce who insisted that my essays "wanted to be" a memoir. I resisted for a long time but ultimately tried connecting them into a long narrative. The result was The Wrong Calamity: A Memoir. Joyce was right all along.

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