The Soul and Science of Great Writing with Mara Eller

How to Turn an Ordinary Life into an Unforgettable Memoir with Acquisitions Editor Ariel Curry (Ep. 11)

• Mara Eller • Season 1 • Episode 11

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Most people think great memoirs begin with a great story: something dramatic or unusual that happens to the author.

In reality, the difference between a mediocre memoir and an unforgettable one has almost nothing to do with what happened.

In this episode, I’m joined by acquisitions editor Ariel Curry to break down what actually makes a memoir work and how even the most ordinary life can become extraordinary on the page.

Using What We Carry as a case study, we explore:

  • The mistakes that make even dramatic stories fall flat
  • How to turn small, everyday moments into compelling scenes
  • The incremental journey of internal transformation—and how to actually show it on the page
  • Why voice, detail, and agency matter more than plot
  • How to navigate writing a memoir about your relationship with another person

Plus, I share my reflections on the most powerful parts of What We Carry: the author’s honest portrayal of her postpartum experience and the book’s invitation to examine the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

If you’ve ever felt like your story is too small, too ordinary, or too “boring” to make for a great memoir, this episode will change the way you see your writing—and your life.


Ariel Curry is a senior editor for nonfiction at Sourcebooks. She lives in Chattanooga, TN, with her husband and three beautiful children. You can find her at hungryauthors.com or on Substack.


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Welcome to the Soul and Science of Great Writing, where the mastery of craft meets the mystery of creation. I'm your host, Mara, er, freelance editor, book coach, and writing teacher with over 16 years of experience. I'm obsessed with the transformative power of words and with understanding what makes writing truly exceptional. Not just to help my clients, but to grow my own craft too. So what makes writing truly great? Is it the spark of inspiration, the unique voice, the intangible soul that breathes life into words? Or is it the careful structure, repeatable strategies, and attention to detail that turn an idea into something readers can't put down? In truth, it's both. The soul and science of great writing brings creativity and craft together, exploring the soul and the science with equal parts, awe and analysis. Today we're wrapping up our series on memoir by exploring the common question, what if I feel called to write a memoir but feel like my life is not that interesting? In other words, how can we make an ordinary life feel extraordinary on the page? I am joined by my friend acquisitions editor, Ariel Curry, to break down what actually makes a memoir work and how even the most ordinary life can become unforgettable using the fantastic memoir, what we carry as a case study. Let's dive in.

Mara

hi Ariel. Welcome back to the Soul and Science of Great Writing.

Ariel

I'm so excited to be back.

Mara

we've had you on before it was episode four. So listeners, if you haven't heard that one yet, be sure to go back and listen. We talked about what a memoir is and the most important things to look for when you're writing, the architecture of a great memoir, which is such a cool term that Ariel uses, talking about the structure that goes into a book. today we're gonna focus on what makes an ordinary life extraordinary on the page, and we're gonna look at what we carry by Maya Shaba Lang as an example. But before we dive into that, You're an acquisitions editor at Source Books for Nonfiction. I was wondering if you could just tell us what does an acquisitions editor actually. Do Some listeners might not know really what that is at all. And then I'm curious, like what do you actually spend most of your time doing?

Ariel

Hmm. Great question. so an acquisitions editor's primary responsibility is acquiring book proposals. So the analogy I always use is that we are investors in ideas. So, you know, if you've seen Shark Tank or you know, anything about like. How businesses get, you know, venture capital and stuff. Like, they, they make pitches to possible investors who then decide if they're going, if the idea is good enough, and they've got, you know, a realistic enough shot at making that business successful, and then hopefully the investor's gonna get a return on their investment, right? It's the same idea with book proposals. So, authors and literary agents who represent authors send me book proposals. And a book proposal is, you know, a essentially a business document laying out the idea for the book, uh, giving a sense of what's gonna be in it, what the chapters are gonna look like. Um, most nonfiction proposals are acquired on spec, meaning just from a book proposal. I don't have the full manuscript. most fiction, however, is acquired with the full manuscript already written. so that's one little difference between nonfiction and fiction.

Mara

even, so memoir we know is a. In a way in between fiction and nonfiction, is memoir typically, acquired on spec still? or do they want a full manuscript? Usually

Ariel

I receive both, to be honest. and I think it just depends on the author. Like some authors are really motivated and they feel like they have to get the story out first before they kind of know what they wanna do with it. So I do receive full manuscripts fairly often for memoir. and I also receive, proposals where the memoir is just, you know, essentially an idea still. And there's just a couple chapters for me to look at. And there's enough, you know, indicators even in a proposal to tell us if we wanna acquire a memoir. so my, that's my primary responsibility is just kind of making an assessment of, is this a strong enough idea? that if we pour, advance money and royalties and manufacturing funds and you know, all of our staff's time into making this book and selling it, are we gonna get a big enough return on that investment that it's financially worth it? with that. Then, you know, after I acquire a book, I'm still the point person for that book. So there's still a lot that I do after the book has been acquired, I'm still kind of the project manager on it, and I still read all the manuscripts and give authors feedback. So it is, it's a lot. there's there's a lot of things I spend my time on during the day. if you asked my daughter, she would say, I have meetings. That's my job, is having meetings.

Mara

Yes.

Ariel

And she's, she's not wrong.

Mara

Nice

Ariel

'cause I do spend a lot of time in meetings. but I also spend a lot of time just reading proposals and reading manuscripts.

Mara

So you still get to give feedback to authors developmental feedback? Primarily. I would think, and if you aren't familiar with that term listeners, developmental means that you are looking at content and ideas and of big picture concerns rather than line editing or copy editing, which would be like periods and sentence structure.

Ariel

Yeah, I'm definitely much more focused at that high level, especially because my time is very limited so I need to like, I need to be able to read and keep on moving through the manuscript and just make comments about like, oh, you know, that's not working. This isn't working.

Mara

Add something here.

Ariel

Yes. Yeah. I just need to be able to give quick feedback as I'm going through.

Mara

And then I'm guessing you have other editors who, come in and do some of those finer edits.

Ariel

So yeah, we hire freelancers for, line editing and copy editing. Yeah.

Mara

well thanks for sharing that with us. I know publishing can be a bit of a mystery at times, and if you're listening and you would like to know more about that, I highly recommend Ariel's podcast that she did with her friend and co-author, Liz Morrow. I believe that's on hiatus at the moment, but it's Hungry Authors. Check it out. Basically listen to every single episode. They're all,

Ariel

We are on Substack every week,

Mara

right, right, right. You're doing the Lives on Substack, so you can check out some Hungry Authors podcasts and then follow them on Substack. Okay, so last time we talked, we established that memoir isn't about what happened, it's about what that meant and how you, as the author and the hero of the story, we're change by those events about how transformation is the backbone of a strong memoir. But I think that writers can still get stuck, and I see this in my work when they are not really sure how to show that transformation on the page in a way that is compelling. So we can say, I was changed in this way, but there was a string of events that led to that. But yet since it, since it's so internal, we talked last time again about there's an external transformation of something that. Someone else could observe changes. You went from married to single or vice versa, for example. But What's more important ultimately is that internal transformation, which then is hard to show through things actually happening. Like I often ask writers, well, you know what's happening on the screen? Like if this were a movie, we need to be able to see something happening. So what do we put on the screen when our story isn't dramatic or exciting in some obvious way how do we go about making the details of that transformation? Interesting to the, to a reader when we don't have dramatic, exciting external events to hang it on. That's kind of the big question that I want us to explore today. And of course we have this example memoir, what we carry, that I've invited readers to follow along with us, And today we are gonna give some spoilers. We're not gonna hold back that way. So if you haven't read it yet and you really want to go read it and then come back, I wanted to start by dispelling the myth. that Having a crazy or unusual story, like something really dramatic in your life guarantees a compelling memoir. It probably doesn't hurt, but have you ever seen a memoir about a really dramatic, exciting story that was actually boring to read or sort of just flat on the page?

Ariel

Yes. Um, I mean, people submit proposals for memoirs to me all the time. very rarely do I spend a lot of time on them because it's very clear. Usually, you know, what some of the challenges are. I, and I'm not gonna give specific examples, of memoirs that aren't working, but I will just tell you what I typically see. some of the problems that I typically see are, they are. Just focused on the facts. Like it's just kind of a narrative of like, this happened and then this happened, and then this happened. And that underlying meaning making isn't there at all. There's just too much detail, too much, play by play. I always think of, 13, going on 30 where she's like, she doesn't need a play by play. Uh, that's kind of how I feel sometimes when I'm reading those memoirs. Like, okay, why does this matter? And, and that's a, if I find myself constantly asking, why does this matter? Why does this matter? Then you know that you're not, conveying the details Well. And it doesn't really matter if those are really crazy exciting, And, and when we say exciting story, I think you mean like an externally unique story? Like something truly crazy happened? Something that never happens to most people. and it doesn't really matter what the, what the external details of your story are. If you cannot convey those details, you know, with some underlying meaning to them, it doesn't matter. and the other problem that I see is that sometimes authors are so concerned and so focused on making meaning that they do kind of the opposite problem. They like front load all of the meaning, and they're like, I went through this horrible, crazy thing and it. You know, changed my life and this is what I learned. And they do that right up front for the reader instead of creating a journey for the reader to go on with them and kind of having, a big reveal of this internal awareness at the end. Now, you know, obviously there's like smaller awarenesses that need to happen on your path to the big awareness or the big insight that you learn, but I find sometimes that people front load the big insight and then it's like, well thanks, you just told me the end of the story. Now I don't need to read it.

Mara

Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's really interesting because also you have to, I would say, hint at that transformation at the beginning, which is something we discussed with what we carry, that she has this prologue where she shares the story of. well, The story of the story, there's a lot about stories. That's a big theme in this memoir. The story that her mother tells her when her daughter is something like nine days old. when Maya's, Maya's the author, when her daughter is nine days old and her mother comes to visit her and is not giving her the kind of support and reassurance that she wants, she tells her this myth about you know, an Indian myth with the woman in the river who's holding the sun and is either gonna drown or let the child drown, is what Maya thinks the decision is. We don't learn until almost the end of the book that the way she was interpreting that story isn't quite right. But she uses that story in the very first page, two, two pages, the prologue to introduce the question. And I've talked about. A guiding question here before, or Lisa Cooper Ellison talks about it as the essential question there has to be a question at the beginning that is tied to that larger transformation and that deeper insight. So it's this art of Giving the reader a hint so that their brain starts pondering it and looking for possible answers as they're reading. But then, as you said, they're invited on a journey to discover that answer rather than being told the answer right at the beginning.

Ariel

Yes, exactly. Yeah. And, and I think that prologue is a great example, because she doesn't give us the answer. Like she kind of leaves it open-ended. Like you don't know what the mom is gonna choose. And you're right, yeah. she thinks about it in a certain way, and then part of that, you know, that ultimate insight is. looking back at that story and going, oh, I misunderstood the entire situation here. but yeah, that's really skillfully done in this book.

Mara

I feel like she was really lucky that she had that story. cause it was able to provide such a perfect guiding metaphor, which is another great way to do it. You don't necessarily have to have that, But the metaphor of drowning and swimming and carrying your child and you know, of course the title of the book, what We Carry.

Ariel

Yeah.

Mara

and she ends up sort of parenting her mother, which then ends up reparenting herself in a way. And but yeah, I love how she like she uses at, at the beginning and the middle and the end. But I was thinking about this as I reread it as an editor and thinking, would I have recommended telling the same story twice? she, she basically gives us the same scene twice in the prologue and then sort of two thirds of the way through part one. So the book is in three parts. She does it with enough difference in some of the details that it didn't feel too repetitive to me, but I was just curious, like, would you have recommended that? Or why do you think that works?

Ariel

I, I think it's a really effective tool if there is, you know, obviously new light being shed on it the second time around, I actually think that can be really cool for the reader. So I don't mind. You know, very deliberate repetition in that way. As long as there is that like new, you're doing it for a purpose and the reader knows that.

Mara

Definitely. didn't seem accidental, it didn't seem like whoops, You know?

Ariel

Right. Even if the reader doesn't like fully understand yet, if you can convey to the reader like, I'm doing this on purpose, there is something I want you to find here. That in itself is enough of a hook for the reader to go like, okay, I'm sticking with you and I want to know more. so yeah, I think it works totally

Mara

because we of course have so much more context the second time around for who these characters are, what their relationship has been, and especially Maya's own experience with motherhood up until that point. Experience with her mother as a daughter and experience as a mother to her own daughter, and then. It's interesting from a craft perspective, most of the dialogue is identical, which I think is one of the ways that she portrays, this not an accident, like I'm intentionally telling you this story again for a reason. And then she does add some additional dialogue to it that wasn't in it the first time. And gives us a little bit more, like you said, like shedding new light on something that we had already glimpsed before.

Ariel

Yeah, exactly.

Mara

And I think it maybe works too because it is so central to the theme of the book. Like you wouldn't wanna do that with something that wasn't really, really important and really rich that had the complexity to carry a lot of nuance. And provide a lot of interest and opportunity for reflection for the reader.

Ariel

Yeah. Yeah. I think like a parable is a really smart choice for if you're gonna use some kind of metaphor as a hook, because there usually are multiple ways to read parables, and so there's so much, um, material that a parable gives you if you're using that as a metaphor for your life. And not that anyone has to do that by any means. I think that's just one technique that in this book works really well.

Mara

But yeah. If you, if you thought of one, if you were working on a memoir and you thought of one and it was really resonant, that could be a great way to frame your story or to reveal that deeper transformation.

Ariel

Yeah,

Mara

in a, In a subtle but nuanced and powerful

Ariel

Yep.

Mara

So I picked this book to study during our memoir series because Ariel recommended this to me when I asked Ariel to recommend some memoirs that did not have those crazy external circumstances, like even Grayson that we talked about last time, where she swims with a baby blue whale. apart from that circumstance, it's a quiet memoir, but that is a pretty crazy hook Like, you don't really need to know much else about the book to be like, that's so cool. I wanna read about that. Whereas it's about my mother and She got dementia and I also had a baby and it was hard. Or something like, I'm not like. I have to go by that book. But I think at least having read it, I would argue that this book definitely proves that you don't need to have a particularly unique life circumstance in order to produce a compelling memoir. So what would you say is the key to making an ordinary life feel extraordinary on the page? and, and I would love to talk about any specific craft choices that she makes. We've already said you have to have that deeper meaning That you are trying to reveal, but How do you do that? How do you make that ordinary life feel? High stakes on the page.

Ariel

Yeah. Okay. So I have some great examples, from this book and a couple others, and I'm going to steal from my writing partner Liz for a minute here, because she always shares the example of in Glennon Doyle's book, I think it's Love warrior. this is the story of, I believe her husband had had an affair or something and they were like, this was a story of her choosing, ultimately choosing to stay with him. Sorry for the spoiler. They choose to stay together at the time, cause this is before she met Abby Womack. but there's a scene in Love Warrior where she is eating a hamburger that he prepared for her, and that's it. That the entire scene is just her eating a hamburger that he prepared for her and she imbues it with so much meaning of like. This is him, you know, this one small act. She was starving. She wasn't having a good day. And he noticed and he did something caring for her. And that made a huge difference. And that was, you know, that kind of prompted this whole internal dialogue for her of like, he pairs, he notices, he wants to take care of me, he provides for me in these ways. And she's grateful. And kind of the, you know, little transformation of that scene is her gratitude and love for this man. Even though he had betrayed her in this really fundamental way, she is still able to find things to appreciate. And that is like obviously a big part of her ultimate transformation to decide to stay with him. So whether or not you agree with that, whether or not that's a choice you would make. You know, that is an a really great example of how she does that in one scene. I think, in what we carry, Maya does this very well too. In chapter 23, she's brushing her daughter Zoe's hair, and she talks about how, you know, Zoe does not like it when she brushes her

Mara

This must be part two, Right?

Ariel

I believe so. Yeah. Zoe doesn't like it when Maya's brushing her hair, but Maya realizes I'm brushing your hair because I really wish that my mom had brushed my hair and protected me from being bullied and made fun of for not being put together. And Maya is so concerned about taking care of Zoe in this way to protect Zoe and to love her in a way that Maya feels she didn't get loved. But she's realizing as she's brushing her hair. That, her motivation for doing this isn't entirely unselfish. It's not just for Zoe's protection, it's also to make herself feel better, to make herself feel like a good mom, because her mom didn't do that, and she saw that as, you know, to her detriment growing up. So that is another great example of like a very small moment. The only thing that happens in this chapter is she's brushing her daughter's hair, but she's able to say, to like, to pull meaning out of it and give us that internal dialogue that shows this little tra. And again, it's, it's not the entire transformation of the book, it's just a little awareness of like, oh, maybe my motivations aren't always, you know, purely unselfish. maybe I can relate and empathize with my mom who did things for me that I did not want her to, and neglected me in the ways that I Neglected her in ways that she wanted to be taken care So, you know, her, that little awareness of like empathy for her mom and awareness of like, oh, I need to be more understanding of what my daughter actually wants from me and the care that I should provide to her. That is a little awareness on her way to the big transformation. So hopefully that helps a little bit. I think it's taking ordinary moments. moments. And, and pulling out that meaning giving us the internal dialogue. and the other thing that I'll mention that I don't have an example for in this book, per se, is voice. 'cause I think voice is a big part of how you can make your ordinary life extraordinary too. The example that I love for this is Harrison Scott Keys memoir, um,

Mara

to Stay

Ariel

my gosh, Yes,

Mara

One of my favorites.

Ariel

Yes. And it's because he, that's a story of he found out his wife was having affair and the story of, for them to kind of fight for their marriage, and he makes it funny. And you would not think that a story about, you know, for many people, the most devastating moment of their lives would be funny, But yet he's able to do that because that's his voice. So, yeah, I think those are great examples.

Mara

okay, So one of the things I heard in what you said is detail that using specific details. It's gonna be really important. And of course that's something I'm always recommending in any kind of writing. It's always going to be better when you have those really specific vivid details. you know, I'm, I'm imagining the hamburger eating scene probably had some specific detail about the hamburger and the hair brushing or even just thinking of it as you're, she, it's very zoomed in. It's not just like, I care for my daughter in ways that I wanted to be cared for, but maybe she doesn't like them. It's hair brushing as this one specific example of the larger concept. And then the, in internality is another thing that I heard you mentioning sharing the thought process. And one thing that can be challenging. To do, but is really important is breaking it down into those little steps that we can say, I used to think X and I think Y, but often it's really, there's a lot of steps along the way to Y and trying to get as granular as possible really. I'm sure maybe you could go too far with that, but I think it would be hard, honestly, in a, in a memoir if it's related to your bigger transformation. that's one of the things that your reader can really benefit from is seeing, you know, we're not aware of ourselves doing that, which is why it's a challenge. Most of the time we're not aware of it, but when you can give us a window into those little mental shifts that together add up to something bigger, that's at least something that I definitely find interesting.

Ariel

I totally agree. I think that's, key to it. And I, I think it's hard for memoirists to know what are the right details or like there's, there's lots of moments when we have internal dialogues that might be relevant, but I think you have to, that's why you have to be so clear on what your ultimate transformation is first, so that you can then say, okay, this is a moment where I made some progress towards that ultimate transformation. Um, and it's hard. I think, memoir takes a long time. Like you, you have to be pretty ruthless and do a lot of digging through the material of your own life to find those moments when you made some progress towards that ultimate insight,

Mara

because you might have, so I'm imagining Maya might have started with. At Some point I realized that the way I was caring for my daughter was actually the way I wanted to be cared for. and Not necessarily the way she wanted to be cared for But then she had to stop and think, okay, how did I learn that?

Ariel

Yep.

Mara

And she, might have started out not having any answers to that question. And then maybe she dug and dug and found many answers to that question. And then she had to pick one because we don't need to learn, we don't need to see the same insight identically more than

Ariel

Right?

Mara

So even if you had like, I don't know, maybe she was, there's one with brushing your hair and then there was one with helping her pick out clothes, At some point she had to make the decision. I don't need that same example twice. 'cause illustrating the exact same concept and pick one that's gonna be more powerful.

Ariel

Yep. Definitely. Having a moment that, is almost like another, it's another little catalyst. Like I know last time we talked about kind of, there's a catalyst to the whole book, right? There's something that prompts the author to go on this ultimate internal journey. But there are smaller little catalysts of these smaller awarenesses too, throughout the book. So for her, you know, brushing her daughter's hair, that was an external catalyst to this little awareness or little transformation.

Mara

So another tricky issue in memoir is when the story you're telling. is basically your relationship with another person. And I find that to be pretty common with the students in my program and writers I work with that often, if it's not some big, crazy external event, it's gonna be focused on our relationship with another person. We're very relational people. But it gets tricky because a memoir is by definition about the author and about your own experience and your transformation. And it can be tempting to wanna make it about the other person. Like, I wanna write a memoir about my dad. Well, it can be about your relationship with your dad, but otherwise that's not really a memoir. Or like, there's some gray areas there. So What would you say, like, where's the line? Like another one I read recently is Mother Mary comes to me by Aati Roe. Author of God of Small Things, which is how she got very famous as an author. She recently came out with a memoir about her relationship with her mother. But, it's tricky. Like there's a lot of material about her mother that doesn't really include her. And then there's a lot about her that doesn't really include her mother. So Where is that line, do you think?

Ariel

Yeah, it is very tricky. Um, I have not read, mother Mary comes to me, but I, I just finished Strangers by Bell Burden, which is about her husband's affair, and then ultimately leaving, leaving their family with basically no explanation. after like 20 something years of marriage. and. there is a lot, obviously a lot of detail. It's, it's. About her marriage and, and the dissolution of it. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of detail and she does keep him anonymous, like she changes his name, but yeah, it's, I I mean, like legally a lot of authors worry about like, what can I say? I don't wanna get sued. And the response to that is like, well, you can get sued for anything. The chances of them winning will be lower if you do some things to protect yourself. Like you're really just writing from your perspective, Maybe you choose not to include some of those like background details unless they are truly necessary to the story. But if, as long as you are writing from your perspective, and it's, this is what happened to me. I'm writing my account of my life and what this, what I say this person did to me, or what I say, my interaction was with this person that is protected. Nobody can argue with your account of what happened to you. I think, the tricky thing like the, the possibility for, you know, lawsuits and libel accusations and things like that come when you say something that maybe isn't true or goes beyond just your experience of a person and it could damage their reputation. So that's, this is getting

Mara

Kind of word to the wise.

Ariel

Yeah. Just, I, I don't know if that's the direction you wanted to go with this question, but, That's what I find is most often behind this kind of question is like a worry that if I share these, you know, unflattering details about someone, am I gonna be in trouble in some way? Could I get sued, et cetera.

Mara

so there's the legal concern, but what comes up more often with my students and clients is just the interpersonal concern of what is this person gonna think? What are these people? how are they gonna feel about it? And I always go back to Marian Roach Smith's answer. And I think a lot of coaches say the same thing, but it's like, first of all, that's a future problem. Write it, tell your truth. Then you can, you know, edit things. And also she says, your job is to tell your story. From your perspective, like I'm being aware that you don't know everything about, you know, you don't know their side of the story fully, but you do know your story. You do know your side. And to write that as honestly as you can, it's their problem to figure out how they wanna feel about it. that's easier said than done, of course. But I definitely always recommend just, just put it on the page, get your story out, and then worry about those things later. But I think more what I was hoping to talk about is if we're writing a memoir about our relationship with another person, how do we keep ourselves centered as the hero rather than letting the other person kind of steal the spotlight? Especially, it's easy to do because Often I find a lot of memoir writers are, you know, I don't wanna be, you know, like this sort

Ariel

Mm-hmm.

Mara

Sense of, I don't wanna, I'm not the hero, you know?

Ariel

Yeah. So the answer to that is, the hero of the story is whoever has the most agency and whoever's actions are driving those awarenesses, whoever's actions are, you know, leading you to this transformation. what I would say is if you are concerned that somebody else is maybe being centered or taking up too much space on the page, look at like, first of all, are you in the scenes? You should be in the scenes. If you're not in the scenes, then that's a, that's a problem. but you should also be the one kind of having agency and making decisions, even if something is happening to you that you feel is outside of your control. Or there's, like I have a, I have an author who, is writing about a past abusive relationship. And so things were done to her, things were said to her. There are many times when she didn't feel she had agency. However, after those things happened, she did make choices and she did, you know, she was able to kind of say like, this is, or even say like, this is the decision that I made in my mind because of this. But she's still, it's, it's all about her still. and it's being brought, brought back to this is how it impacted me. This is what I decided to do next. This is how I felt about it. So, continuing to bring the reader's attention back to you, as the hero of the story, as the person who has to do the changing. so if somebody else is doing more changing than you, then that's a red flag.

Mara

Yeah. I love that You said agency. That's something I talked about with Lisa Cooper Ellison too, in terms of how to tell our hard story in a way that is transformative. And one of the things that's been standing out as something that's been repeated in so many of these conversations is that the same things that make writing a memoir personally transformative, also make the story powerful on the page for the reader, which is very cool to me. But to expand on that or to get into a little more detail of how Maya does that on the page, a couple things come to mind. One is an example on page 34 in this edition. It's chapter 12 of part one. and she starts at, after my mom leaves Seattle, I dig up an old photograph of her. My first thought is that she is beautiful. She describes the photo and then she goes into, my mom was born in Bombay in 1945, so she could have just skipped the paragraph with the photo, but it's important because that's how she is in this chapter, or, I mean, that's one of the ways that she's in this chapter. On the next page, she says, we are a study. In contrast, her hair is like this. My hair is like that. So she keeps herself even, as you might argue, the main point the main content of this chapter is describing her mother's life and her mother's looks and her upbringing. But she keeps herself in the story, first of all, by using that Divis of the photograph to introduce like a device to bring in that backstory. So it's not just like, no, let me tell you the backstory, and she makes it a contrast. Go ahead.

Ariel

Yes. I mean, this is a great example for sure. And even in that first paragraph, she ends that you know, she's describing the picture of her mom and she ends the paragraph saying her smile is contained to her mouth. Her eyes are aloof. They know better than to give anything away. That is Maya's interpretation of this picture. And it's like very clear. That's not, you know, I could look at that picture and think, oh, this is such a lovely picture of her mom. Her mom's eyes are smiling. It's so, you know, she looks so joyful or whatever. Maya is putting, you know, her own experience of her mom projecting her own, thoughts and feelings about her mom onto this picture that she finds. And that's very clear too, to the reader that like, this is Maya's interpretation. We are seeing this picture through Maya's eyes. Even though, like you said, on the surface, this is a picture of her mom. And that's all it is. It's actually not, it's also Maya's interpretation of this picture of her

Mara

Yes. And yeah, it's her opinion. So having an opinion about everything is actually really good. I feel like sometimes we're like, oh, I need to, I need to be objective. Well, actually no, for the most part, like, be subjective. That's, I think, part of how your voice comes in and that's how you stay centered. I mean, first of all, it's impossible to be objective anyway, but we don't really want that. We don't wanna read a memoir for reporting. We wanna read a memoir to get to know you and your opinions and your ultimate transformation.

Ariel

Yeah, and going back to what we were saying before is like, you know, when you're, when you're trying to find these moments that had meaning. It can be, it can be hard. 'cause we're not always super reflectful reflectful reflective, in these moments. but a really great exercise that this reminds me of is in, Allie Fallon's book, the Power of Writing It Down. She talks about the sterling exercise. and it's wonderful. Everyone should practice it. Definitely Memoirists should practice this journal exercise, and I'm gonna forget some of the steps. There's like five steps or something. But essentially it's, you know, draft number one is just the facts of like, what happened. Then you add more to what happened. You add like what that prompted in you, your feelings about what happened. Then you add, you know, more of your explanation of what happened and why it happened. So you go through, it's essentially like you write the same scene multiple times. Adding in different, you know, perspectives and like you said, opinions to get in the habit of like taking these ordinary moments and starting to, you know, apply your own insights and meaning and opinions to them, that's a really great exercise to do just about. anything that happens in your life, you could choose, brushing my teeth this morning, what happened then what do I think about it? What does that tell me? What do I learn about myself? How do I, you know, whatever

Mara

Yeah. You know, because even just, well, what kind of toothbrush do you, use? so we, that gets into the details, but then also, yeah, like. does it feel like it takes too long? And then even the word choice is something I talk about. You know, you could describe the exact same image or picture, like in this case, but one person might use the word aloof and another person, you know, might use a different word. And so You can think of it as valenced word choice, that there are adjectives and verbs that contain sort of an opinion. So we're not talking about saying, my opinion of this photo is but, but subtly showing that through things like word choice and which details you choose to highlight. another thing that I think she does that relates to what you're saying about agency is she does a really great job of having herself clearly wanting something within each scene, which again, is not always, I wanted this or I want this, although she actually says that quite often. I want, like even in the prologue, she says, I want my mom to be this way, but she's not.

Ariel

Right.

Mara

an example I noticed was, chapter 31 in part one, it's page 73 in this book. she wants permission from her therapist to stop going to therapy. Like, basically she starts it out saying, I wanna stop going, but the therapist wants her to recognize her mother's negative impact on her life. So you have conflict right there. Conflict doesn't mean, you know, people are battling it out, but this, it means a conflict of desires. They can't both get what they want in this situation. And so I think she does a really great job with that because that produces tension even when it's just a conversation with the.

Ariel

Yes. I think that's a great point. Liz and I always talk about how in prescriptive nonfiction, you know, your reader wants something and that wanting is the entire key to the book's transformation. And yeah, there has to be that element here too, of the author wanting something. how they do that, you know? Can be conveyed in so many ways, but you're right. Yeah, that's a really, that's a really great point.

Mara

So if someone feels like their story is too boring or they're worried about that yet, they feel also called to write it in some way, or they, they have that, rollercoaster mix of feelings, this is gonna be amazing, I need to write it. And then, oh my gosh, this is gonna be so boring. Where should they start do you think? As far as taking their quote unquote boring life and making it, trying to make it interesting on the page?

Ariel

journaling for sure. and again, doing exercises like Ally Fallon's, you know, multi-step process. You could read the Power of Writing it Down. You could read the Write Your Story by Ally Fallon as well. Those are both really great guides, I think. ally is so good at giving the reader like really practical exercises. I also think the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron is a great resource for Memoirists because it helps you, all of these examples help you get in touch with that more reflective part of you. That meaning making part of you that is absolutely vital for memoirs. And then the other thing is, you know, just practice writing a lot. Like you just need to do a lot of writing. I don't think anyone has done a study on like hours needed or what have you, but. Uh, People always throw out, you know, 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, but you just, you need a lot of time. You need a lot of writing experience. You have to put in the hours. Like there's really not a shortcut to that, and you have to be getting feedback. So whether that looks like a writing group or hiring a coach or working with an editor or what, whatever the case may be, you have to be putting in the hours. You have to be getting feedback. This is, this is true of anything we want to be expert at in our lives. It is very true of writing. So, and, and reading memoirs, you know, reading these examples, dissecting these examples. This is why I love the series that you've been doing because you're diving into and doing this close reading of what we carry. And that skill, that that ability to analyze a text is also critical to being able to write something like that too, because you'll be able to apply the same insights to your own writing. Oh, here's an area where I need to go deeper. you start to develop an internal sense of like, I need to move past this, or I need to keep going or I need to dig in here. all of that is, you know, internal,

Mara

your own internal transformation.

Ariel

Yes. Your own, your writerly transformation. That just takes, takes a long time to develop.

Mara

Yeah, and I love that you brought up feedback 'cause that's of course something that I emphasize a lot in my program and just in general you never know how it's landing. I shared in my workshop recently, if you're writing without getting any feedback, If you need to just get something out for your personal catharsis and just get it on the page, great. But once you start really thinking about the craft and improving things, if you don't have feedback, it's like playing the violin or cello without being able to hear, like without, you know, with noise canceling headphones. You just don't know if you're hitting. The right notes if you're outta tune or what. So, I love that you brought that up. Well I wish we could talk more. There's so much more that we could discuss about this amazing book, but we've gotta wrap it up. So thank you so much for coming on. last quick question. It sounds like you would recommend strangers?

Ariel

Yes. I think strangers is another great example of like, an ordinary life, in some ways extraordinary. Like she is, she comes from immense privilege and money, and she's very honest about that. and also it's not, I think hopefully, and thankfully it's not every day that, uh, someone's spouse has a, an affair and just. Leaves their family. but there's also like, that is a common story, right? Like, that's not unheard of. So in that way it is unfortunately kind of ordinary. but she does a fantastic job of telling you about that experience and making it a New York Times bestseller because it's just so engrossing.

Mara

Well, it's definitely on my list, so I'll, I'll bump it up towards the top. Thank you again so much for coming on and, I will put in the show notes, but I know Substack is the best place to find you.

Ariel

Yeah. Thank you for having me

Mara

talk again soon.

Ariel

Okay, thank

Mara

Take care.

Ariel

Bye

Mara

bye. Ariel is one of those people I could just talk with for hours, days about this stuff. But of course, time is limited. Time is finite. So I'm gonna share a couple of my thoughts about things that we did not have a chance to discuss with Ariel in case they bring up anything for you. And one of those is something that I love about this book so much. Again, what we carry is her raw honesty and the way she described her postpartum depression and her journey through motherhood. I found that really powerful as someone who also struggled with some postpartum depression. Not quite to the degree that she did. I think I had a little more support. But one of the things I loved about the way she did it is I think she found a really good balance between giving us enough detail to let us know how bad she felt without overdoing it, without it feeling like she's sort of wallowing in those feelings on the page. and again, she also finds ways to make that very internal experience external, that there's still something happening on the screen. If you were to make this into a movie, chapter 14, in part one is one place where she does that. There's the inciting incident in that chapter where she takes her daughter on a walk. With a dog. Her husband is about to go on a trip and she's like, I need to be able to go on a walk. I need to feel like I can do this. And of course, it starts raining and her daughter hates being in the stroller, so she's screaming the whole time. It starts raining, it's just a disaster. And then they finally get home and they're both miserable at this point. The husband is still with her, and they find out that the baby has fallen asleep through all of this, which is just the opposite of what they would expect. Her husband bursts into laughter and she bursts into tears, which is just a cool way that she uses that same word bursts. And another thing to look for when you're reading this book is her fantastic use of verbs, such great verbs, which are the backbone of strong writing at the sentence level. And then that's when she falls into depression when she's like, I can't do this. Like even though the baby was okay. She realizes like she can't do this. And then chapter 18 is this powerful depiction of depression. Very short, but I think very skillfully, powerfully done. And I think it's getting a little better, but we just haven't, as a society made room for motherhood to be so challenging for the beginning, especially of motherhood to be so challenging. we now have this word, mares essence, which refers to the process of becoming a mother and how radically that alters who we are as women. So if you've gone through that, I think this is a really powerful book to speak to that experience and help you feel less alone. But then she comes out of it and. She finds that once she's, she uses medication to help her climb out of the well of depression, the deep well, she finds that her daughter is actually a very positive force in her life, helping her to make choices, to protect herself, to choose herself, as she ultimately says towards the end of the book, because she wants her daughter to be able to choose herself. And that's another thing that I felt was such a powerful theme or insight that comes up in this book. And then I love her reflections on the power of story towards the end of the book, especially in part three. If you've been following along at all, you know that I think stories are incredibly powerful and she clearly it does as well. She says a story can be a survival mechanism. She quotes Joan Didion saying, we tell stories in order to live, and she's reflecting on how her mother has told her these fictions, these lies essentially. Lies of omission, sometimes outright lies about how she survived as a mother and Maya discovers as her mother's defenses come down as a result of her dementia, that she actually did not do it on her own. That She actually had her son live with his grandparents in India for several years in order to enable Maya's mother to make it through medical school and residency. And she's understandably angry that her mother kept that from her because she would've been a little kinder to herself had she known. But she does also come to a place of empathy, of understanding. My mother needed this story in order to feel okay about herself as a mother. the story that she sent her son away for several years was too painful for her to really live with herself, you might say. And it brought up the question for me of what stories do we tell ourselves in order to survive, in order to live? What stories might our mothers, our parents be telling themselves in order to live? There's of course natural anger and a sort of a negative way to view that of, you know, she lied or that's not the truth, or that's not the accurate story. But I think Maya does such a beautiful job of helping us see that There can be truth, even within factually inaccurate stories when we look close enough, for example. being a good mother was so important to Maya's mom that she could not allow herself to tell the story that made it seem like she abandoned her son, even though she did choose herself in that situation, she did get help. She didn't feel like she had permission to let that be her story because mothering was so important to her. So I think she shows that if we look close enough, we can find love, even within things that hurt us, not to excuse those choices, but to understand them and to allow ourselves to move on, and then also to hopefully help us. Look at the ways in which we are doing the same things, where we are telling ourselves stories that may or may not be factually accurate. And that's one of the things that is so essential to what we do in Unearthing Beauty, my memoir writing program. Maya writes the story we tell ourselves always wins no matter the evidence before our eyes. That is the power of stories, but also their danger. I believe it is so important to examine the stories that we are telling ourselves, the stories that we are living within that become our reality, because only when we become aware of those do we gain the power to rewrite them. Maya also writes on page 2 34, chapter five of part three. Life, might be a series of competing narratives of casting out and attempting to reel in the right words. This is who I am, this is what I do. As we reach for new words, we try to find ourselves in them. Freedom on some level is the right to tell one's story. We tell stories to assert ourselves as a constantly morphing declaration of self. We tell stories as Joan Didion put it in order to live. And I'll end with this quote from the book club guy at the back of this edition, which I mentioned in a previous episode, but it's just so powerful. It bears repeating. She writes the most necessary stories, I think, are the ones we think we can't tell. So if you. Have a story that keeps coming up, that keeps pushing itself to the front of your mind that on some level you feel called to write, but on another level you feel like you can't write it or that you can't share it. Let this be your invitation to lean in closer to examine the story about why you can't write it, and to claim the courage to tell that story anyway. You don't have to know where or if or how you're going to share it. Not yet. You just have to choose yourself, and in that choosing, let go of the rest. of. Trusting that good always comes of claiming our stories and articulating our truth, even if only for ourselves.

That's it for today's episode. If you read what we carry and have been following along with this discussion, I would especially love to hear from you. you can send me a text at the link in the show notes or reach out on social media Or sending me an email if you're on my email list. If you're not on my email list, you should be. I'll make sure there's a link in the show notes for you. And if you're listening to this on the day, it releases April 1st or the day after April 2nd. You might still have a chance to join me for unearthing beauty to do the kind of transformative memoir writing that we've been discussing in this series. It's a five month program designed to invite Exactly. This kind of personal transformation. And to give you everything you need in order to write a compelling life-changing memoir. Doors close April 2nd. So if you have missed that window this time, You can still sign up for the wait list at the link in the show notes. If you've been enjoying the podcast, you can show your support by leaving a review by sharing it with a friend. I will be back next Wednesday to take you deeper into the transformative power of writing. Until then, remember, words are more than ink on a page. They are a path to wholeness.