SUZETTE MULLEN IS THE author of the recent memoir, The Only Way Through Is Out, just out from University of Wisconsin Press. She’s the founder of Your Story Finder where she provides nonfiction book coaching. In 2021, she published a Tiny Love Story in The New York Times that was the seed that became her new book. Listen in and read along as we talk about how to go from a short piece of memoir to a book, knowing when is the time right to write a piece, and so much more.
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Suzette: Thank you, Marion. I’m excited to be here.
Marion: Well, I’m delighted to have you here. And as I said in the opener, this book began as a Tiny Love Story, a Modern Love column in miniature, told in under 100 words. The New York Times runs about four of them per page when they run, and the editors chose yours to make the column’s headline. It read, “Nobody knows I’m a Lesbian.” I have to say, I thought, “Oh, interesting. I wonder what the actual headline of this piece is.” So I looked, of course, and it appears under the headline, “Crafting a New Life.” And I will run a link to the column in my transcript, but I hope that I can ask you to please set it up for the listeners and read this lovely piece to us.
Suzette: Sure. I’d be delighted to.
Newly out and newly single, I attended my first Pride at 56. With trepidation I put on a, “Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian” tank top. “It’s like a giant gay craft fair.” My son said, I laughed. That’s exactly what it felt like, a craft fair where everyone could be themselves and love whom they wanted to love. I spotted two women holding hands. I’d left a 30-year marriage to a lovely man and a life of heterosexual privilege for a moment like that. Four years later, I returned with a wife and a life crafted on my own terms.
Marion: I love this piece. Thank you. So you were an adult woman with degrees from Wellesley and Harvard Law, a long marriage to a man, two adult sons when you truly understood that you were not living authentically and anywhere along the way, you might’ve written about your journey to coming out. I know that you provide mentorship and community for queer memoir and nonfiction writers in a program called “Write Yourself Out” on your online site. And one of the many encouraging and supportive things you discussed there is knowing when the time is right to write your story. So talk to me about that decision when and how you decided to write this for Tiny Love Stories. What I’m really interested in for the listeners is how we know when it’s time.
Suzette: Yeah, that’s such a great question. And I think that often memoir writers start writing almost immediately. They might even still be in the middle of the situation that they’re in because they feel this urgency or this need to just get the words out or get the story down. And that’s fine. I mean, that’s fine if that’s what you need to do. And in fact, a very, very early draft of my memoir that became The Only Way Through Is Out happened fairly early on after the events of the memoir took place. But with memoir, we do need some perspective and the longer we’re away from the events, our perspective changes.
So, this Tiny Love Story was written in 2021, about four years after the events that are in The Only Way Through Is Out. And I had some perspective and I understood the experience that I really wanted to write about and examine and share with the world. And in fact, the final line of the Tiny Love Story, “Four years later, I returned with a wife and a life crafted on my own terms.” Was obviously a present day or maybe it’s not obvious, it was more of a present day moment in that Tiny Love Story. But the rest of the Tiny Love story is part of the story I tell in my memoir.
Marion: Yeah, so perspective, I love that. I love bringing that up and I think getting a look at something from here now is very different than being in the center of it. And sure people do write from the center of it. Sometimes we write from riding the tail of the dragon itself, and it’s always a choice, isn’t it? And you have a section on your website where you talk about how a book coach changed your life. Can you share a little bit about that with us please?
Suzette: Oh yes. So I do talk about this in the memoir, The Only Way Through Is Out. I was working on a different memoir. I was working on a story about my professional journey and how things hadn’t gone quite as I had expected them to. And I hired a book coach to help me with that memoir. And in the course of writing about my professional journey, a different story emerged, a story that felt scary and dangerous, but there was a sense I had that I needed to just go where that writing was going as if it had a life of its own. And I thought, “No one else ever has to see this.” And then I was like, “Well, I’ll let my book coach see it.” Maybe that’ll be it. Because I knew the writing was real and authentic and I knew there was something there. And when I shared that writing with my book coach at the time, she saw something in it that I hadn’t seen myself. And that moment was really what sets my story in motion. The story that I tell in The Only Way Through Is Out.
Marion: Yeah, there’s a lot of trust in that story and that’s I think what I wanted to get at a little bit too is having somebody you trust who’s going to keep your confidentiality, but who’s also invested in your success has inestimable value. And I loved that story in the book and in the website, the idea of that kind of trust. Can you talk to us a little bit more because it seems like you provide that for others now, and I want to give the people who are listening, the writers who are listening a little bit more of a sense of what trust does for a writer.
Suzette: Yeah, that’s such a great question. I really, at the time when I was working with this book coach years and years ago, it was actually pretty early stages working with her and her name is Kimlo. But very quickly we did develop a bond and I knew that even though it felt really scary to share this very vulnerable piece of writing, I was willing to do it. I knew that no matter what Kimlo might have to say, it would be said in a supportive, encouraging way that I wasn’t going to be made fun of or ridiculed or any of those things. It was a very, very vulnerable piece of writing.
And I think that is what having a book coach or a guide by your side allows you to do. That’s one of the differences we talk about in the book coaching world versus editors who are very important also. But the editorial relationship often is more a one-off thing. You send your manuscript and you get a developmental edit with suggestions and ideas about how you might improve the manuscript. But the book coaching relationship, it is actually a relationship. There’s this give and take, there’s this working on a project over time and you really do develop a friendship. You develop a relationship that you’re willing to go places in your writing that you might not have been willing otherwise.
Marion: I think that’s exactly it. I think that’s beautifully put and I appreciate that. I think that people need that encouragement and sometimes just to enter into that relationship, hoping for that kind of trust. I work with writers all day long and I tell them all that the best way to be a writer is to engage fully in the writing life, meaning you need to have the skills to write blog posts, essays, op-eds, long form essays and book length memoir. And an op-Ed for instance, can attract an editor or an agent or you can pre-sell a book with a fabulous personal essay or continue the sales with another essay. So there’s lots of reasons to have a variety of writing lengths in your toolbox, but the question becomes what do you do with them? So in your case, were you testing your material on the public when you wrote this tiny love story checking to see if there was interest or did you always intend to go big after going small? Just give us some sense of what your plan was when you published that.
Suzette: Yes, so I was in the midst of the early stages of working on what I hoped would become a book that would be published someday. And really when I think back on why did I write this tiny love story, I think there were a couple of reasons. One is I was anticipating down the road when I would be querying this book that I wanted to have some publication credentials, and I didn’t really have a whole lot at that point. So there was that very pragmatic decision. I’m in several Facebook groups with memoir writers and I had seen other writers succeeding at this form, and I had worked with this form before just kind of casually. And I was intrigued by the idea of the skill it takes to craft an entire story of beginning and middle and an end in 100 words. So part of it was also just the skill involved in doing it.
I wanted to challenge myself. I have to say I didn’t spend a huge amount of time on this, which is kind of funny because all the things that we spend hours and hours that never go anywhere. I just kind of wrote it and played around with it a certain amount and sent it off. And a few days later I had a response from The New York Times, which was a really exciting moment, and the editor there, she and I went back and forth and tweaked the text just slightly in a couple of places and she helped me make it a better piece. And there we had it.
Marion: I’m so glad about the tweaking and the helping make it a better piece that’s also very encouraging. And writing short, I know you now know is far more difficult than writing long. I mean, you can always, given enough words, eventually get around to telling us what you want us to know. But of course that’s not the point. The point is to show us what we need to know. And this piece is expertly crafted and while perhaps the hardest part is actually running to space, I would say really that the hardest part is that curation, that choosing from one’s life and in this case under 100 words telling a story.
And as I look through these details, the tank top, your son’s quote, the reference to your former husband as a lovely man, the four years later, the reference to your wife, these are plucked perfectly. There’s a process of curation. And I think I’d just like to open that up to you a little bit to ask you to just shed any insight you can. These are writers listening in and they want to know how to curate right. They want to know how not to tell it all. And when you have a hundred words, you have got to tell it right, right?
Suzette: Yeah, it’s a really interesting challenge. So when people read my book, The Only Way Through Is Out, they will see a much more expanded version of this scene, the “nobody knows I’m a lesbian” pride festival scene and they’ll understand how I got there. So that’s a bit of a spoiler alert there. But I think the thing is, and this is true in long form and it’s obviously very true in short form like this micro memoir of a hundred words, is every detail has to matter and every detail and every word has to matter, and every detail should be specific and it should be ideally doing more than one thing. And so I had some good material to work with fortunately. So I had this tank top, which the irony in all of that is very fun. And there was actually a moment, and this does make it into the book, where I’m wearing the tank top and somebody points at me in the Pride Festival and says, “Well, now they’ll know.”
And I say, “Yeah, no, expletive deleted.” The irony apparently escaped them. And then I had this beautiful line from my son. I mean, these were words that came out of his mouth. And to me it really said a lot, that one sentence, “It’s like a giant gay craft fair.” Which is kind of a funny line. And I think frankly, that is part of what got the editor’s attention from The New York Times. But when you unpack that line, there’s so many layers of meaning there. And that allowed me to kind of get the rest of the story that I wanted to share that came from that line, that there was this normalization of what was happening there. There was also the differences of what was happening there inside the lines of this pride festival versus what might be happening outside the lines. So that sentence that my younger son uttered really helped me shape this piece.
Marion: And makes such a good example of what you said about how each word has to do more than one thing. It’s beautiful. The quote is just perfect. And yes, you’re right, it probably contributed to what percolated this piece up amid the thousands of pieces they get every week for that editor. And that’s the point is we have to choose well, and we can’t blah, blah, blah, all over the page. You don’t have the ability to blah at all if it’s a hundred words. So I’ve read both the book, which I adored, and the short piece, the Tiny Love Story, and let’s talk about expanding a short piece into a book. Because initially I happened to know having done it sounds like a piece of cake. It’s like, “Oh, I’ll just fill in the details from here. I’ve already figured this thing out.” Yeah, not a bit. So how did you experience the expansion? What was it really for you to do that?
Suzette: Well, writing a memoir, now that I am on the other side and as we’re recording this, we’re just less than two weeks away from publication, is not for the faint of heart, let me just say. And of course, like any other memoir writer, I lived a story. I lived an experience that I wanted to explore and share with the world, and we’ve got it in miniature now here. So the opening line of this tiny love story, “Newly out and newly single.” Okay, that opening phrase is basically what the bulk of my book is about, how I got to being newly out and newly single at the age of 56. And I will tell you, this book had many, many different beginnings, many different openings. It always had the same ending. I always knew where the book was going to end because I was given this kind of perfect ending, storybook ending from the universe. But where to start the story, how to enter the story, how to tell the story of being newly out and newly single in my mid-fifties, that was a tremendous challenge.
Marion: And it’s done with some beautiful sentences, some great poignancy and some tremendous vulnerability. There’s a moment, and I don’t want to give anything away, because I want everyone to buy the book and read it. But there’s this moment where you realize that if you don’t touch somebody, you think you’re going to die. And it’s the one sentence, see, it still chokes me up. That one sentence that you write, “We don’t have to get beyond that in terms of an interrogation of self.” There is that classic human understanding of what that means. And so talk to me a bit about vulnerability. It’s hard to write, it’s hard to live, but you got it in that one sentence there. That was my best example in the book, I think of utter vulnerability.
Suzette: I think that once I made the decision that I was going to embark on this memoir journey, and frankly I kind of made the really, when I was working on the first memoir that led me to this second memoir that there really wasn’t any point in me writing a memoir if I wasn’t willing to be vulnerable. And I mean, I know as you know, Marion, and you teach writers is vulnerability doesn’t mean that you have to share every single detail of every single situation, but it does mean that you have to reveal the emotional truth. So I was at a stage of my life, I was an empty-nester and I was really looking for what is my next chapter going to look like? And spoiler alert, there were some surprises. And when I decided to claim my call as a writer, I wasn’t going to fool around.
I was sort of done dabbling or wandering and searching. I really felt like I had found the thing I was meant to do in the world and I was ready to just do it. And I knew that writing a memoir meant being willing to be vulnerable. And I think coming back to your earlier question about a book coach or having somebody by your side as you are writing this very, very vulnerable material was absolutely key. I know I would not have been able to do it without having some support of a person that I could trust by my side.
Marion: I tell people all the time, don’t try this alone. I don’t think that it helps the work. And I think that the isolation amid all that vulnerability can also sometimes produce some pretty bad copy. I mean, you need somebody to say, “You don’t have to go that far, but can you go here?”
Suzette: Yes.
Marion: And instead of being graphic to be, as you said, the emotional, give us the emotional content. You refer in the opening author’s note that this is a piece of creative nonfiction. And why did you define it as such? And for those unfamiliar with the term, can you just define it and didn’t just touch on what writing this as an acknowledged piece of creative nonfiction allowed you to do that perhaps you wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise?
Suzette: Yeah. So creative nonfiction in my understanding is using some of the tools of fiction to tell a true story. And in my author’s note, I do describe some of those tools that I did use. So there were cases that the easy things like identifying details and names were changed. That’s very common in memoir. What is also perhaps common but maybe not known by readers that this actually happens is that in order for us to create a narrative, we sometimes have to compress events or even occasionally reorder events so that it makes sense for the narrative flow. So there were a few cases in which I did that, and I think that the reason I wanted to acknowledge that in the author’s note is that memoir is essentially a bond with your reader. You want your reader to know what you are doing so they can trust you as the narrator of the story. So that’s why I chose to describe it as a work of creative nonfiction and list some of the specific fiction tools that I used in the memoir.
Marion: I think that’s so helpful. It’s something that comes up with everybody I work with. And I ask this question every time I interview a memoirist, and you’ve pretty much answered it, but I want to ask it of you just in case you have anything more to contribute to it. What are we asking a memoirist to do when we ask her to go back into a story and have a look at something difficult. Are we asking her to relive it, reanimate it, or merely stand here and coolly have a look at it?
Suzette: I love that question, and I’ve heard you ask other writers about that question, so I have thought about that. I think for me, at least this was my experience, as the writer of this memoir is that my job was to look at the past and try to make connections and try to understand how these different events, some of which were very difficult, were part of a bigger pattern. And then I’m curating my story because I understand what the story is and I’m curating which events I’m going to share, and I’m also curating the way I’m sharing it. I am also obviously a character in my story, so I’m trying to tap into how I felt at the time when I was going through those events. But it’s also that experience of writing what the character was feeling and experiencing is in the context of really understanding with the perspective of what the story’s really about.
Marion: Yeah, that’s a good answer. And I was really fascinated by the way you keep a theme running. You were raised to and define yourself as someone who played it safe and coming out later in life is certainly against that grain, and it makes it kind of a coming out and coming of age story all at the same time. But that playing it safe thing, it was a great choice. So let’s just talk about how you carved that out, popped that up. There are so many themes in all of our lives, but how’d you choose that one? It works perfectly, but it was a choice.
Suzette: Yes, that came up, I would say about midway through my writing process, I did not understand the patterns of my past when I was first starting to write this story, and it was through writing and revision that I started making some connections. I think that’s often what we do as memoir writers. We have this experience and then we’re trying to examine it and unpack it to understand it. And I started seeing this pattern that I had this history of making safe choices, which went back to very, very early childhood imprinting. And once I saw that, it really unlocked a lot for me. It really allowed me to connect the dots and to make the decisions about which events in the past I would share in this story. And that was a big one.
Marion: Oh, that is such a good, informed answer. I say to writers all the time, “Do not write your prologue or your introduction first because then you’ll be forced to write that book. And you’re about to learn so much about yourself, even though you think you know what you’re writing about. You’re about to just be astonished by how much you’re going to learn.” And look at that. You learned that you had this pattern. So when you did your second draft, did you then start again and start embedding that playing it safe a little bit more thematically, a little, playing those notes a little louder. Did you stop where you were and go back and change? Just give us a writing lesson here, and when you make that discovery, what did you do? Did you halt or did you write all the way to the end and then go back and rewrite based on that realization?
Suzette: Yes, so at that point, I was probably in at least my second draft. I’ve kind of lost track of where I was, but I was beyond my first draft and I saw that theme of the safe choices. I also around the same time, saw this theme of the inner voice and how the inner voice really was present and guiding me throughout my life and how sometimes I ignored that voice and sometimes I listened to it. So I would say those two themes, the inner voice and the safe choices, once I saw them, I then was ready for the next draft and the revision, and I started weaving in those themes throughout the book.
I had my, what we call the story present timeline, I had that down pretty early on. I knew generally where the action was going to start in the story and where it was going to end, but it’s all that past stuff that we are as writers, where does it fit in, all the important material that happens before the story starts? We have to make decisions about what we include and where we include it in the draft. And so once I understood that safe choices and the inner voice, I was able to really curate my flashbacks and my vignettes that were all related to things that happened before the action of the actual story started.
Marion: So helpful. And as we wrap this up, I just want to talk briefly about publication. You published with the University of Wisconsin Press, and I’ll run a link in the transcript to their instructions to writers on how to submit to them. But talk to me about the decision to publish with the University press. I think a lot of writers do not realize that that’s an option.
Suzette: Yes. So first I’ll say I am so thrilled to be publishing with the University of Wisconsin Press. I have had an incredible experience. They’ve been incredibly collaborative and supportive, so I want to just shout out to them for sure. Yeah, so I was seeking traditional publication, and I had my reasons. Being a book coach and wanting to have that traditional publication credential if I was able to. And I did do a round of querying of agents with an earlier draft, and I didn’t get very far, and I tore my draft apart again, and I wrote a better book. And so when I was querying, and that’s a really hard word to say, by the way.
Marion: Yes, it is.
Suzette: I need to find a better way to say it. When I was making queries, I included a fairly extensive list of smaller presses, including university presses that allowed you to submit directly. And it was actually a book coaching colleague of mine who had done her PhD at the University of Wisconsin Press, Caroline Malloy, who alerted me to that press and the fact that they had a series that was focused on LGBTQ+ memoir and biography. And so they went on my list. And I love telling this story because after many, many queries that went nowhere or got form rejections, I sent them a query one day and I went to lunch. And when I came back, I had a response from them, and it was a really wonderful moment. It was another one of those celebration moments, like the tiny love story moment when that was accepted, and then that journey began with the University of Wisconsin Press, and I’m thrilled to be publishing with them.
Marion: Well, we’re very grateful to them and to you for coming along today. I think that you made a great choice. It’s a beautiful book, but the writing is what makes it truly beautiful. So thank you, Suzette. I wish you all the happiness with it, and thank you for writing it.
Suzette: Thank you so much, Marion.
Marion: The writer is Suzette Mullen. The book is The Only Way Through Is Out. Just out from the University of Wisconsin Press Get it wherever books are sold. See more on her at yourstoryfinder.com. I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overit studios dot com. Our producer is Jacqueline Mignot. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit marion roach dot com, the home of The Memoir Project where writers get their needs met through online classes on how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to follow QWERTY wherever you get your podcasts and listen to it wherever you go. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.
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