TOO MANY WRITERS BELIEVE that you must have it all figured out before you write memoir. Not so. But don’t believe me. Listen to Jess Gutierrez, a former journalist who has earned several awards for her work and who is the current author of A Product of Genetics and Day Drinking, A Never Coming of Age Story, just published by Tiny Reparations House, a division of Penguin Random House. Listen in and read along as we discuss how to write memoir when you don’t have it all figured out. 
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Marion: Welcome, Jess. How are you?
Jess: I am doing well. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Marion: You’re welcome. And you’re welcome because I’ve been laughing now for several weeks. Even your pitch email to me was deeply funny. The book is hilarious, delightful, and deeply needed in this crazy world. And to get others to laugh along as well, we need to start with your title, A Product of Genetics and Day Drinking, A Never Coming of Age Story. So just chicken and egg this for us, which came first, the story idea or the title?
Jess: Okay, I’m going to be honest. Titles are the bane of my existence.
Marion: Me too.
Jess: They’re so hard. I would rather write 75,000 words than three, just a tiny title. But for whatever reason, and my agent hates coming up with titles with me. They are wonderful at it, but they’re always like, what do you think, Jess? And I just throw out something just terrible. And they’re like, “Oh God, I’m going to have to take this one on too.” And this one came to me first.
It just came to me. And I thought, what even is that? I don’t even know what that is. And I was like, oh my gosh, I think that might be my life story. So this, and the first time in my entire life, it was the title first. And the title really led me to the story.
Marion: That’s great. Titles are ridiculously hard. My sister is a writer, and I always defer to her. I say, “Okay, put a title on this,” because I can’t do it. It’s just not the way you think. And in your pitch email to me, you wrote that you and your generation that quote, “we’re doing our best. We are in a stage of fighting to stay relevant while also sort of just not caring. It’s an odd season of life.” And I was hooked. You’re a millennial. And so having read the book, let’s talk about the odd necessity of recognizing oneself in order to write memoir.
You kind of have to do it. It’s the place to write from. I refer to it with my memoir students as where I’m calling from. And that odd season of life that you’re in is very clearly where you’re calling from.
So talk to me about identifying oneself in the world in order to write from there. Do you sit down and make a list of all the things you are? I mean, there’s no memoir without self-definition, but how do you define yourself? How did you do that exactly?
Jess: I mean, I think it has taken me, you know, I’m 42. I think it’s taken me 42 years to start figuring out who I am. And it’s kind of exciting to be in a place where I kind of get it. But yeah, I definitely had to dig in and think who I am, where I am, how did I get here? And it slowly became a story. And that was the fun part of it.
I had to figure out where I stand in my life and how I got here from the experiences that brought me here. And so that’s kind of how it came to be. And I think that it has been such a humbling, interesting experience because it really helped me get to know myself, to be honest.
Marion: Sure. Memoir writing is the single greatest portal to self-discovery, right? And were you shocked, surprised, delighted? Ultimately, did you hide under the couch in the awarenesses that you came to in defining yourself?
Jess: I mean, maybe all of it. It made me…
Marion: “Writing from under the couch.” There’s your next title.
Jess: I love it. I will write that. It’s stolen. Consider it stolen. But you know, it’s funny because I think that realizing all of this, I mean, so much of this book is embarrassing and a lot and it’s overmuch, you know, it’s excessive.
But I think that something that made me so happy about the discovery is I’m not embarrassed. I’m not too much. I am who I am, and it’s messy and I’m messy. And I really believe that I’m not alone and that it’s pretty universal to think the way I do kind of, especially at my age, at this place in my life, having grown up as an 80s baby, 90s kid. I don’t think that my story and the way I feel and the way that I interact with life and the dumpster fire that I perpetually am, I don’t think it’s that unusual.
Marion: I don’t think so either, but I think having the courage to write from there is interesting. And so many people listening in are wondering how to do it.
And so, as I said before, you’re a millennial, meaning you’re born between the early 80s and the late 90s. And while you have all the outwardly visible trappings of success, your wife is a fire captain, you have three kids and a mortgage, you report that you and your co-millennials are a very imperfect generation, wondering as a group if everyone is as messed up as you think you are.
Specifically, you report that your generation is made up of people who are wondering if everything will ever click. That’s a great thing to know. And it makes you the absolute expert on one of the trickiest aspects of memoir writing, because I work with memoir writers all day. And if I had to identify the single question I get most after the question of what to do with my sister’s version of our lives, it is, “Do I have to wait until I have it all figured out to write?” So I bet you have an answer for that.
Jess: I absolutely do. I think it’s more fun if you don’t have it all figured out. You know, I think that’s kind of the charm of this book is I’m a perfect non-expert on everything.
I am very ready and happy to admit that I am just baking it, just trying to figure it out. And a non-expert, I mean, I am not an authority on anything. And I think that that’s probably a comfort to people.
I’ve heard from so many people through this writing process and publishing, no one would want to hear my story. Why would I write anything? I’m not an expert on anything.
But, you know, you still have your experiences, your lived experiences, and you’re still heading in a direction. And I think that it has been really comforting to see those imperfections that I don’t know. And I’m not going to tell you I know when I don’t. I’m not going to make something up. And it makes me feel very humbled, but also very proud that I can just lay it out now. So.
Marion: Well, it begs the question of how you pitch a book. So you’re right. There’s this, and right from the start, by the way, the introduction is a total thing of beauty in which you basically say you have no idea what you’re doing, and there are many people like you. And that’s why you’re writing this book. So, but it got me wondering about how you pitch a book with that kind of honesty and humor about, “I’m not so sure.” So how did you pitch this book?
Jess: How I pitched this book was, I mean, I’m honestly, the beginning of my everything is I was writing other books. I was writing picture books. I was writing romances.
I was trying to sell them. My agent and I were trying. We’d been on Sub 17 million times with other projects. And my agent finally said to me, “Jess, it’s time to cut the crap and write the book you’re supposed to write. You are writing well. You are writing well. You were doing a good job, but it’s not the thing you’re supposed to be doing. And I think you know what that means.”
And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I do.”
And so I went to my mom that night and I said, “Mom, my agent, Claire Draper, I said, my agent is telling me to write the book.” And my mom was like, “Are you talking about the book, your childhood, your life?” And I said, “Yeah, but I don’t know if that’s okay.” And she was like, “Jess, I think we’ve all been waiting for you to write that book.”
Marion: Oh, I love your agent. And I love your mother.
Jess: Yeah, they both kind of slapped me around sometimes and put me where I’m supposed to be. The stuff I was writing was okay. It was fine, but it wasn’t great. And it didn’t feel great. And I wasn’t staying up into the wee hours of the night. I was trying to write to market. I wanted to write the thing that I thought would sell. And I kept writing and writing. And then they would go to acquisitions and almost get bought.
And it was heartbreaking every time. And my agent essentially said, cut the crap, like write the thing. You can write these forever and ever and ever, or you can write the thing you’re supposed to write, which is so inspiring.
Marion: It’s so inspiring. It means what she was saying was to inhabit your voice. And your voice is perhaps the toughest topic when it comes to teaching writing. People want to know how to get one. How do you enhance it? How do you elevate it?
You just told us that you had been writing everything but your voice. You’ve been writing to the market. You have a strong, full voice. It’s full of muscular language that reflects an absolutely great eye.
So, when you were given this assignment by your mother and your agent, what a one-two punch that is, what did you think? Did you think they’re right? Did you think, oh, a little day drinking will help this? Did you think I can’t? Did you think I was born to do this? Talk to me about that stepping into the voice.
Jess: I think the moment I had permission to just be a little crazy and get a little unhinged and just tell the truth. And I think it was probably one of the most freeing, exciting moments.
I didn’t ever really think my mom would be bothered about me writing it. But I was probably like a lot of other writers who think, who cares about my life story? I’m one in a bazillion people. It’s so easy to think, “Who would care about this?” And maybe that’s part of the reason I didn’t write it before.
But the thing is, we all have a story to tell. And I was kind of free to tell my story. And with complete wild abandon, once I had that, it poured out of me. I mean, I hemorrhaged words. And I ended each writing session proud. And that wasn’t something I had done before. That wasn’t something. And it was the thing that I would wake up in the middle of the night and have more words. And I’d be writing in the shower. I mean, I had paper in the shower. That’s how I knew that I was doing something right.
Marion: Paper in the shower. I love it. Which is better than drinking in the shower, which I had a friend tell me recently, he was drinking in the shower. I was like, “I think we have to have a little talk.”
Jess: They have special holders for wine glasses for the shower now.
Marion: I know. Yeah. Well, you write with the kind of honesty that only humor can percolate. And you percolate up about the fear of your first year as a respiratory therapist, about your first strip club, visit about life in rural Arkansas, which you characterize as “the land of guns and civil war re-enactors,” and much, much more. And it begs the question of what humor can do.
So, these same topics in the hands of another writer could be confessional, even though they could be full of candor, but they could be revelatory and honest, but humor allows for something more. What do you think that is?
Jess: Well, it’s really funny that you ask that because I’ve had some people say, well, you know, “some of this is trauma.” And of course it is, you know, they’re childhood stories and some of them are probably not the most, you know, well-rounded, healthy stories. But I’m a funny person. And that is how I’ve always dealt with life.
Happy, sad, glad, all of the emotions turn into something funny for me. And that’s how I developed this. I actually feel it’s funny because I sometimes think that being funny – and this is just for me, not for any of the greats who write with humor.
For me, it was sort of an easy way out to be funny. I didn’t go very deep. Funny felt really safe for me. You know, there are so many memoirs out there that really get into life and mine are funny, easy to read stories. And I thought that maybe that kind of lightness could be useful for some people for it to just be a little bit more surface than some memoirs are sometimes.
Marion: Yeah. I don’t think they lack depth. I mean, let’s talk about Jack Dawson, the fictional protagonist of the film “Titanic.” Jack and Rose make a tidy little essay called “My Heart Barely Went On,” which just the title made me laugh, in which you explore how a piece of art can be a cornerstone on which to build ourselves. And I agree, people fall into paintings, they’re changed by plays, movies, poems, books, songs, and more.
And it’s a great place to write from. And Jack Dawson is as well known to us as movie characters can be. So, talk to me, I mean, I did find great depth in that piece and in all the pieces. So, there’s a saying that you write what it’s about, and then you write what it’s really about. And here we have a strong examination of Jack, the character, and yet the piece is really about that idea of a piece of art being a cornerstone. So did you just have a fly at Jack and see what came out? Or did you think, “You know, that movie really changed me and him in particular, and I’m going to write about that.” So, were you writing what it was about or what it was really about first and foremost?
Jess: I mean, I think I was writing obviously, you know, like you said, what it was really about. Because for me, 16, 17 year old girl, that movie was everything. It played to my heart.
It made me feel all of the big feelings.
And I think all of these stories, every story, every essay I wrote for this book, were the stories in my life that made me have those huge feelings. And that movie, however silly it seems, that was a big deal to me. You know, it was formative. It changed me. And I think, again, I think it’s a shared experience. I think a lot of 42-year-old women would guiltily admit that they lost their minds over that movie and that it was a big part of growing up for them.
Marion: Absolutely. And I think you made us all, this woman who’s not 42, reflect again on those pieces of art that were cornerstones for me. So that’s the beauty of sharing our humanity. You shared your humanity there.
And all of us kind of flashed to the piece of art in our generation or in our lifestyle or in our lifetimes that created that kind of cornerstone. And I thought it was very well chosen. We all know who he is. And we all know those totemic moments in the Titanic that we remember. So, I thought it was well chosen.
And I thought it was well chosen too that you went for an essay format because they allow for a specific sort of inquiry. And this is a book of essays and books of essays, specifically a book-length memoir written in essay form, still requires that there’s an argument and a build toward that argument.
You can’t, as an unknown writer, we don’t get away with publishing collections of disparate essays. We have to have some kind of context under that cover.
So, first talk to me about the decision to write this in essay form. Is that your most comfortable form? Is that why you did that? Or is it because of how you could take things on individually? Just why essays?
Jess: I think the essay thing, it was not intentional to start with.
But again, once I was released to really write this, once my agent and my mom kind of turned me on this path, there were so many ideas. So, kind of one of the funny things is I am a mom to three young kids. So, there’s no writing time during the day. I work full time. And so, my writing time is at 2 a.m. I open a notes app on my phone and that’s where I write. And when I started this idea, when I started writing this book, I had 22 notes apps with 22 different little stories, you know, all different stories. And I think that’s sort of how it became an essay.
And that’s how I really realized how much I love writing essays because it’s this little snippet, this little snapshot with a, you know, beginning, middle, and end. And it felt like such a natural way for me to write this collection.
And they can be read out of order. And I thought that that was nice because I sort of was just thinking about someone like me up at 2 a.m. with their one hour of free time in a day being able to read 2,000 word chunks and that be it and then have had a whole story.
To me, that’s a really useful thing for someone that’s busy or has trouble with, you know, 75,000 words or, you know, so.
Marion: Absolutely.
I mean, nobody can get out of bed and say, oh, today I’m going to write a book. You have to write as you can. And everybody I know is busy.
I wrote one book pretty much sitting at the bus stop waiting for my child to come home from school. That was all the time I had. And you make a very good point about using what you’ve got on you. That notes app, great. That’s wonderful. And I think you are very a talented essayist.
In a piece published last year on the online magazine Pride, you reflect on 20 years of Pride celebrations. And now, a mother in your forties, you write, quote, “the first parade I went to decades ago was a handful of attendees, a coalition of dreamers of what could be, who were braver than they were proud. Back then, no same-sex couples in America had been allowed to legally marry. It was seldom I saw queer people kiss or hold hands in public.
There was hope, but also so much fear. Fortunately, I’m not the only one who has changed. The world has too, not enough, but a bit. And though we still have a way to go, knowing that my kids get to celebrate Pride with unfettered joy instead of foreboding panic is a win. That is everything.”
And you go on to write that these days with kids, a wife at your age, quote, “pride these days is a different kind of good.” And I’m so deeply glad to read that because right now the world has changed again or changed back, depending on your definition.
So the question for an essayist, of course, as a chronicler of pride as you are, what do you feel your responsibility is right now as we face America as it is, where many of us would describe it as rolling back much of that good you define?
What’s your role in the face of that?
Jess: Thank you for reading that. I haven’t, that meant a lot to me that you picked that piece out. So thank you so much.
I think that my role just starting on the smallest scale is being a good person, continuing to be a decent person and raising the kids that I have to be good humans as well.
I teach full-time and encouraging the same thing with my students, just go out there and be kind and understand that the whole theme of me, I think, is that people are messy, but for the most part we are trying and be the good.
There still is, I think that there’s been a lot of time here lately where it’s hard to have hope because things have been a little bit bleak, but to look to the good and know that good things, wonderful things, are still happening and that it is going to take all of us continuing forward, and it’s gonna be one day at a time and make small moves that make big moves.
I think it’s really important.
Marion: Yeah, it is, it is. And writing into the face of who we are and what we have achieved, I think is very deeply important. And I’m so looking forward to what else you come up with in the face of this changing world.
I wonder about your day-to-day, this sparked something in me, thinking of you at two in the morning with your Notes app. And so, when you’re not actively typing on that Notes app, are you, obviously subconscious is always working on stuff, but like I spend a lot of my time, in fact, I walk the dog every day, my neighbors are so used to seeing me talking to myself and I’m always chanting, “What is this about? What is this about?” Trying to get to what the piece is really about.
So, talk to me a little bit about when you’re not actually typing on that app, are you churning, are you thinking, are you planning?
You know, what’s going on in your head in terms of finding the deeper meaning in the quotidian?
Jess: I think that it’s funny because as a creative, as a writer, it’s always there. You know, it’s never, you’re never done thinking about it. It’s always turning, it’s always rolling over.
So, when I’m not typing at 2 a.m., like I said, I have scrap paper, I have notebooks, I’ve written on diapers, you’ve not used ones, because when it feels good and when it feels right and when it’s the right words that finally happen, they just, they need to come out, you know?
But I think that I’m always thinking about the process. I have a tendency when I write an essay, it’s funny because I went from writing novels to writing essays, when I wanna be done, I just, I wanna be the end. And my editor at Tiny Rep, Emi Ikkanda, was like, “So we can’t just end it like there has to be an ending.”
I would very much have this part, this part in my brain that would shut off and be like, so we’re done with this story, which does not work.
So, there are so many times that I had to lengthen the story. So now that I’ve written a couple of these collections, I now write my essay and let myself think about it and make sure that there’s an actual conclusion instead of just me diving off a cliff and being finished.
Marion: Yeah, there’s nothing like feeling that the writer just ran out of the room to really startle the reader. It sounds like you’ve got a really good editor who’s willing to go the distance with you and community. You mentioned your mother, your agent and your editor. So, speak to me a little bit about support in terms of who you read to, send to, have look at your stuff.
Jess: So my wife is a wonderful, great supporter. And I always think if I can make her laugh, because she’s the one that has to put up with me and my stupid jokes and my mom humor.
And I think I’m pretty hilarious, but if I can make her laugh with what I’ve written, that feels like kind of a home run because she’s with me all the time.
My mom, she’s of course biased and she thinks everything that comes out of me is genius. But my wife, and my wife of course loves me, absolutely. But she will tell me that “that is only funny to you.” So it’s been really good.
But I don’t send my work to anyone. I’ve never done beta readers. I’ve never done any of that. I’m pretty solitary in my process. If I have one that I’m really excited about, I will send it to my wife or my mom.
But I am fairly impressionable. So sometimes it’s hard for me to have other people weigh in because I will change what they recommend. And sometimes that’s not always for the best. Sometimes you need to trust your process and me trusting my process is sometimes sending it to my agent, who’s a professional. Because I don’t have a lot of writer friends. I don’t hang out in writer circles. So I don’t have people that know a whole lot about this kind of work.
So, usually it goes straight to my agent when it’s done and my agent will let me know.
Marion: Well, that’s wonderful that you have that. And it’s great to know that you’re not sharing with people who don’t have the goods to give you the kind of feedback you need. We do need the right kind of feedback. I get very nervous when people tell me they have 18 beta readers, even when they justify it by saying, “Oh no, those are the people that are gonna buy my book.”
And I say, well, “I hope they’re all really qualified because the problem is you can get a piece really torn apart and that doesn’t serve anybody.
So, as we wrap this up, I’ve read that your next book is called Adulthood for Amateurs and it’ll hit the shelves next year. Tell me about it.
Jess: Oh, I’m really excited. So the first book, A Product of Genetics and Day Drinking was about growing up. And adulthood for amateurs is I’ve arrived at adulthood and I still don’t really know what I’m doing, unfortunately.
So, it’s another non-expert book, but I think that it has a lot more of my grown stories instead of my childhood. And I think that adulthood for amateurs is going to be really relatable because it’s a lot about having kids and having a job and what it looks like to be 40 but not feel 40, what it looks like to be middle-aged and not have any idea how you got here and know that you’re not like your mom when she was 40, but of course you are.
It’s a weird spot in life and it’s been one of the most interesting seasons that I’ve experienced. And again, I think it’s funny.
I think that one of the funniest things is that I’ve learned through all of this is that a story, I could go to the store with four people and we would all come out with the same facts but tell the story so differently.
And I think storytellers are so fascinating because what my brother and I would tell about an experience when we were younger would be the same foundation but we would tell it so differently. And I can’t get over how cool that is. And anyone that can tell stories well has my heart because I just think it’s the coolest thing getting to share that.
Marion: It is. And we’re so deeply grateful that you shared yours and that you’re gonna share more.
Thank you so much, Jess. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. I have really been laughing for three weeks and I’m genuinely excited to have all the people listening go get the book and laugh along. Thank you so much.
Jess: And I love this podcast so much. So, I am honored to have been a guest.
Marion: Well, it’s great to have you. You’ve earned the spot. You’ve told the truth and you’ve done it well. So, thanks a million.
The author is Jess Gutierrez, author of A Product of Genetics and Day Drinking, A Never Coming of Age Story, just published by Tiny Reparations House, a division of Penguin Random House. Get it wherever books are sold. I’m Marian Roach-Smith. 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 in 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. And 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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