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In this episode, Suzy sits down with fellow book coach and author, Suzette Mullen to talk about Memoirs. Through the discussion of Suzette’s Memoir, The Only Way Through Is Out, they discuss planning, structuring, and writing your memoir and the ways it is similar and different from fiction. Suzette shares her personal journey and how a major plot twist in her life changed everything.
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Podcast Episode Transcript (unedited)
Suzy Vadori: [00:00:00] Welcome to Show. Don’t Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction nonfiction that are gonna wow your readers broken down step by step. We’re gonna explore writing techniques. I’m gonna show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers’ careers that you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
And I’m also gonna coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you’re just starting out, you’re drafting your first book, you’re editing, or you’re currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your 10th book, this show’s gonna help you unlock the writing skills that you didn’t even know you needed, but you definitely do.
I’m so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers, so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams, [00:01:00] and you’re gonna also have some fun doing it. Let’s dive in. It was a real treat to have Suzette Mullins here on the podcast today.
After lots of scheduling challenges, we finally got it done. Not only is Suzette a fellow author accelerator, certified book coach who’s worked with tons of memoirs to get their stories out there. But she is also somebody that I would consider a huge inspiration and a friend. And every time that we find ourselves in the same place at the same time, whether it be to a retreat or at a conference, we usually find somewhere fun to walk on the beach and just talk and talk about all the things that we wanna tackle next.
Because she and I are like-minded that way. She’s always reinventing herself and finding ways to live authentically. Her memoir, the Only Way Through Is Out is available now. And it is such an inspiration. She says that she wrote it for every human who is longing to live out loud. And [00:02:00] that is exactly what Suzette does, including lgbtq plus folks who are crushed by oppressive religious institutions, women at midlife who have deferred their own dreams, empty nesters, who have stayed in unhappy marriages, quote unquote, for the kids.
And for every person who longs to live more authentically but is afraid of the cost. Suzette has an amazing background. She was a Harvard trained lawyer who stayed at home to raise her family and realized later in life that she needed to live more authentically and boards her own path. It’s all in the memoir.
Won’t spoil it for you today. But in this episode today, we talk a lot about that authenticity, what it takes, how long it took her to write this memoir, what she thought it was gonna be, and what it ended up being, and how this journey has absolutely transformed her life, all while talking about it in the context of what is hot in memoir today and what are publishers looking for.
I can’t wait for you to [00:03:00] hear this discussion with Suzette, so listen out. Welcome, Suzette. I, we’ve been talking about doing this episode for a long time. I’m so glad that we’re finally doing it.
Suzette Mullen: So am I. It has been a while, but we’re both pretty busy.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, busy and all of the things, ’cause you’ve got a book that you’re promoting, another book that you’re writing, and you are business to take care of all of those things.
So let’s dive in here. ’cause today we’re gonna talk about all things memoir. I think I wanna get started. Let’s tell our listeners how you came to be a writer. ’cause that’s something that people come to in so many different ways and I just love how you came to be a writer.
Suzette Mullen: Yeah. So I’m not one of those people that when I was four years old, said, I am gonna be a writer.
Although. I’ve always loved writing. It’s always been something that has come fairly easily to me, intuitively to me and I, I [00:04:00] use my writing and editing skills in earlier careers as a lawyer and later as a community volunteer and social justice advocate. And at the same time in my forties, primarily. I really did long to lean into, I.
The writer persona and identity, and I tried to write a book a number of times and I went to workshops and conferences and all the things, and I just couldn’t seem to get over the hump. I’d start, but I never really got the momentum going. And then when my nest was empty, I have two young adult sons and when my younger son was going off to college.
It was a real inflection point for me as I think it is for many people. What’s next for me? What’s this next chapter gonna look like? And I sat down one day. And was really trying to be quiet and just listen to what was inside me about what I [00:05:00] wanted to do professionally. And I had this inner voice, which I think we all have, and the inner voice spoke to me very specifically in this moment and said, you are a writer.
Stopped fighting it. And I realized that all of the things that I really loved to do and that I was good at. All centered around writing and editing. And that was the moment I said, okay, I’m gonna put a stake in the ground. I’m gonna be a writer and take that seriously. And that, that all happened in 2013, so about 12 years ago now.
Yeah,
Suzy Vadori: that was the same year that I started writing and I really think, uh, yeah, a little bit before that. But 2013 was when I started, like I had started in 2011 when my youngest was born. But 2013 was when, yeah. I just love what you just said. I, I might steal this. Suzette like steal it. Writers, you’re a writer.
Stop fighting it. Who needs to hear that out there today [00:06:00] listening to the podcast? I bet a lot of you need to hear that you’re a writer. Stop fighting it. If you are amazing, if you are listening to this podcast, if you are trying to write, if you are on this path, you’re a writer, stop fighting it. I just love that.
Exactly. Exactly. So what did you decide? Okay, so you were like, so Suzette, just for those of you who know, I said this in the intro, but also Suzette is a Harvard trained lawyer, become a writer, and I just love that we can come to writing from so many different places. So wherever you’re coming from, whatever career you’re in now, you’re welcome in writing and you’re gonna bring really cool skills.
What did you decide to write a memoir? How did that happen? Is
Suzette Mullen: that always the plaid? I was always in the nonfiction space. I maybe someday I will try to write fiction. You never know, but it hasn’t, that was never what I was gravitating toward. I was always in the nonfiction space when I [00:07:00] was trying to write a book earlier in my forties, it was more.
I would say more in the prescriptive nonfiction space. I was very interested in like self-help or spiritual, yeah. Business book. Yeah. More like self-help and more about spirituality and more topic based than story-based. Oh my gosh. I actually wanna talk to you about that.
Suzy Vadori: Another. Okay. Love to see Suz.
That’s amazing. I would love to see what you were gonna write about spirituality. We’re not gonna talk about that on this, but yeah. Alright. That sounds really, well I still,
Suzette Mullen: I still probably have some boxes of notes from all the early, all the books that never got written. We all have them. Sounds like an exciting day to go through.
Yes. Especially ’cause I may be moving so I, maybe I’ll have to go through those, but. Yeah, so I had an idea for a memoir. I think with memoir, and this is probably true of a lot of fiction writers also, there’s some question, or some event or [00:08:00] some issue that you feel that you need to get a better handle on.
You need to understand it. You need to explore it. And writing is a great way to do that initially for yourself. And then when you, you have some sense of what is this thing about, you can then write it for others for publication. And so I, I had something I wanted to explore. This is way back in 2013 when I was first like, I’m gonna write a memoir.
And the question was, my father had passed away two years earlier. And he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, early onset Parkinson’s when he was 52. He had lived for 21 years later, and he was such a positive and joyful person, and I really had struggled with joy in my adult life despite having out outwardly having a [00:09:00] very beautiful life.
I, the initial idea was I wanted to dig into his story and my story to see. What I could learn about joy and peace from someone whose life took a very not great turn at age of 52 being diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and yet he was still living joyfully. So I wanted to learn what was his secret and what could I learn about joy.
That’s where the memoir started. Way back. That’s like way back before you even know, back in 2013, I was gonna say.
Suzy Vadori: This is all news to me. Yeah. I know this story and I’m excited. I’m excited. Yeah. And I love, love, love that. What you remember about your dad is his joy for life. Like what a legacy. What a legacy.
Suzette Mullen: Yeah. And so I worked on that idea for quite a while, and then it started morphing into something else, and then it morphed into something else. It just continued to morph. Until eventually I was writing a very [00:10:00] different story, a very different set of events that I was, I was, the plot, let’s say, was very different from what I thought the plot would be, but it interestingly, I’ve had a lot of plot twists in my life, and that’s the thing with memoir, you have to say, what do you do with those plot twists?
But I interestingly. The kernel of the issue that I really wanted to explore about Joy really shows up in the book that I eventually published. The memoir, the Only Way Through is Out and it, yeah, that’s a long answer to your question about why Memoir. No, it’s a terrific
Suzy Vadori: answer. Why memoir? This is the thing is people, I love that you say that it morphed and it changed and.
I would imagine a lot of listeners listening to this, just starting out on their path, if they’re thinking they wanna write a memoir about your life and you think isn’t what happened to you? What happened to you? And ’cause we think of memoir as like this cradle to grave events that happened [00:11:00] that isn’t it, right?
It’s about this kernel of one particular moment or one particular part of your journey that you wanna highlight, and until you’ve figured out. Yes, I wanna write about my life and at the time you were gonna write about your life interwoven or dispersed with your dads. It sounds, and I didn’t even know that before.
That’s such a cool story. But you have to, it takes a moment to be able to take a step back from your own life and say, what do I really, what do I really want to share? Where’s this voice coming from that says, I need to write this memoir? What is happening here? What is this?
Suzette Mullen: Yeah, and I, I know you and I are both author accelerator trained book coaches, so we have some of the same language that we talk about.
And one of the things that I do as a book coach is ’cause I’m also a book coach, one of the things I do is helping memoir writers get very clear on what is the point of their story, what is it that they really want to say. [00:12:00] Because frankly, very few people are interested in reading the I was born on this date, and then wherever the story’s gonna end, maybe your children or your parents or your close friends, but nobody else is really interested in that.
They are interested in an emotional journey that you have gone on, that while the facts of the journey, the plot might be very different from your reader, from the person who’s reading the book, the Universal. Truth, the emotional journey. People are gonna connect with that. And it’s hard work. I don’t wanna discourage anyone from writing a memoir because what, and I wanna say it is not easy.
And the people that succeed at writing and then getting their book out in the world are the people who have a very clear sense of. Why they wanna do this and why it’s important and what they wanna [00:13:00] share. And it can take a while to, to get there. Most of the writers who come to me, I don’t know if this is true for you, Susie, but most of the writers who come to me.
Wanting to write a memoir. They do have a sense of the overall direction or the overall slice that they want to write about. They’re not typically coming to me saying, I wanna write the story of my life, but the way I like to describe it is. They have an idea of the target, the very big target. If you were doing archery, they have an idea, like, I wanna write about, I wanna write about my divorce, or I wanna write about raising a child with special needs.
They have an idea of the topic, so the target, but then what is the. Story really about what is the point, what is the deeper message? And that is where you do the deeper work and you do the first draft and you do the revision and you aim for that bullseye and you [00:14:00] get closer and closer the more and more you write.
Suzy Vadori: So can you share with us, I’m gonna put you on the spot now ’cause we, we’ve been dancing around this and how you came to it. What did you land on? What is for, for the point of my
Suzette Mullen: book? Yeah. Yeah. So the point of, and I can even tell you the point of my next book, ’cause I, because I’m working on my next book.
Excellent. Brilliant. Yes, yes. So the point of my first book is that authenticity is worth the cost. That is, that’s my bumper sticker. That, so the journey I talk about in my memoir, the only. Way through his out is having a midlife revelation about my sexuality. And I was married. I’ve been married for a long time.
I had a, I was married to a lovely person. I had a very lovely life. I had a fully established life. This was, I was in my mid fifties. I came to understand my sexuality differently and that set in [00:15:00] motion, the journey that I talk about in the book and what is true. And then even if this is true, even if stepping into my sexual identity as a member of the LGBTQ plus community, if that is authentic living, is it worth doing?
Is it worth all the things I’m going to have to give up? Is it worth the cost? And there’s ultimately, at least for me, it was worth a cost and that’s why I made the leap. And so that would be my bumper sticker. The sort of, if I’m allowed to have two, my ancillary bumper sticker for my memoir is it’s never too late, so it’s never too late for a new beginning.
Because it is a midlife story, and there is that sense at midlife that maybe you’ve made your bed and you have to lie in it or whatever it is, whether it’s a career, a marriage, a relationship. Anything. So that’s the [00:16:00] message. And I’m working through my first draft of my next book, which is currently called After the Leap.
And so let me see if I can remember what my point is. ’cause I did, I do know it. I didn’t wanna put you on the spot, I’m sure. No, no. I do know. I do remember the bumper sticker for the next book. The message is that authenticity is a lifelong journey. There was this sense of, I made this big leap eight plus years ago now, and there’s been some more leaps that have happened since then, and that relate to the authenticity journey, and I think that.
What I’ve learned and what I wanna share in this is that it’s not a one and done thing. It’s not that if you make a leap, whatever the leap is, if everything doesn’t turn out perfectly or exactly how you thought it would, it doesn’t mean that you made mistake. It [00:17:00] means that you’re just, you’re living and you’re gonna be given more and more opportunities to choose authenticity.
So that’s the bumper sticker for the next book.
Suzy Vadori: I love that Suzette, and honestly, I’m just thinking, oh my gosh, this is gonna be a three hour podcast because I could listen to you, but in a good way because I could listen to you talk about this all day long. ’cause even though we work together and see each other as frequently as we are able to, given that we live in different countries, I don’t know this stuff.
And so it’s fascinating to me. Two things out of what you just said. The first one being that when you started this journey to write a memoir. This all kind of came out right? Like part of your new understanding at 55 only happened because you were writing this book. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that?
Suzette Mullen: Yeah, for sure. I mentioned earlier the initial idea, which was exploring the idea of joy and relation to my father’s life. That [00:18:00] changed over time. And then I was really working hardcore on a memoir that I called, what do You Do? It was about. That question that everybody asks you when you meet them for the first time.
I, what do you do? And I really struggled with that question for a good amount of my adult life. ’cause I was a lawyer, but then I left to raise my family and. I struggled with that. I struggled with my identity saying I was a stay at home mom. Not that there’s anything wrong with that at all, but that was, it was my own, it was my own struggle.
And yeah, so I, I wanted, again, like starting from where we started this conversation about why memoir, I wanted to explore that question, like why was that? Such a difficult question for me to answer. What do you do and how? Why had I made some of the choices that [00:19:00] I had made? I knew what those choices were, but I didn’t know the deeper why.
So I was working on that memoir. I had a book coach. That was my first experience of working with a book coach and in. The writing of the first draft of that memoir, I ended up writing a scene that really didn’t have anything directly to do with the question I was exploring, but it did have to do with a very, a very close friend of mine who was involved in all aspects of my life.
And I wrote this scene and it was a very vulnerable moment between this friend and myself and. I knew in that moment that I had written something that felt really scary and dangerous. It also felt like it was real and really authentic, and I almost didn’t share the passage with my book coach because I was like, ah, that, that [00:20:00] sort of, it felt so vulnerable and to let another person see this deep, very deeply vulnerable moment.
But I also had a sense of, okay, you’re writing memoir. If you’re not willing to go there, if you’re not willing to go to the real stuff, why are you even bothering and you’re just showing it to this one person, all of that. So I, you could say, oh, this doesn’t exist. Like it doesn’t belong. So instead she wrote back and a said that it was, she thought it was the, some of the best writing I had done so far, and she, she flagged a specific moment in the scene I had written.
And she commented that sounds exactly like someone falling in love and that comment, that moment. Was like this pivotal moment in my life, let alone my writing, where I had really struggled with this relationship with [00:21:00] this friend who was a woman. We had been friends for 15, 16 years at that point, and I didn’t know, I couldn’t really name my feelings for her, but I knew they were, they’re very intense, and when I saw that comment, it was like.
Are we allowed to curse on this? You can bleep me out. It was an we’ll you out. Oh, it was an oh, blank moment. Let’s just say that. When? When I saw her comment because I was like, yes. Oh my God, yes. That is what this I was, and then in love, love I was like, I was in love with her and then I’m still in love with her.
And then what am I going to do? I, am I gonna just. Put this genie back in the bottle and go on with my life. And I don’t wanna give too much of it, of the book away, but that is the moment that sets in motion the whole story. Yeah. We talk about the inciting incident, right? Which is the [00:22:00] event that sets the story in motion and that really.
Was that for me? And so I went on to live that story. What do I do with this thing I now know? And then I ultimately wrote about it. I wrote. The only way through is out. The memoir. The first book people have asked me, what’d you do with the first, the book that I was writing,
Suzy Vadori: I’m like
Suzette Mullen: still stuck on the spirituality stuff.
Oh yeah. Write, I want all these books. I got four. I’ve got at least four. All these books, if not more. But yeah, so that, what do you do? Book I for as I was living the. This the revelation that I had about this friendship. I just was like, I’m going to go back to that book. I’m gonna, so I just kept writing that book.
I finished the first draft. I, I had this great ending, but in my actual life I was. Struggling and [00:23:00] grappling with this much bigger issue, grappling with, is this authenticity worth the cost? Exactly. First, first grappling with what was really true, all of these things of was is this just all in my head or is this actually, is this actually my truth?
And then once I did come to terms with that, yeah, what do I do? And is authenticity worth the cost? So bits and pieces of. What I wrote in the first book or the, yeah, what do you do? Book? Maybe that’s the third book. The What do You Do book. Made their way into the memoir that was published. Some of the backstory that was relevant to the new story I was telling, but the manuscript as a whole isn’t a nice file on my computer, and maybe I’ll pull little bits and pieces out of it for another.
So
Suzy Vadori: these are big questions, but I love how you’re peppering through. If you guys listen to what Suzette is saying when she’s talking about how she pieced together her memoir, she’s talking about things that we often talk about in fiction as well. Which is [00:24:00] the inciting incident and the container and all these things.
Because even though it’s your story, you have to think about how it’s going to affect the reader and how you’re going to lay it out in a way that will draw them through the whole thing. But the second thing that I noticed is that when you were talking earlier, that was the first thing. The second thing was the end, right?
Because you’re writing another memoir. So how do you write two memoirs of your life because your life changes and morphs? This comes up all the time when I work with memoir writers, which is. Oh my gosh. I thought I was writing this, but now my life is going on and how do I, do I do. I put that in there too, like how do I stop?
Like where is the end? Oh my
Suzette Mullen: gosh. That is so, okay. Do you wanna talk about that for a second? Oh yeah, absolutely. Because I’m grappling, I have grappled with that in the second, the book I’m working on now. So with the only way through is out, the universe gave me a perfect storybook ending to my story. It was a really, it was a moment that was a real [00:25:00] bookend.
My, my challenge was where do I start the story? Where what’s on page one? And believe me, I had many different possibilities and finally landed on. A nice bookend to what was at the end. So I did know the ending for the only Way Through is out now. The book I’m working on now. After the leap, when I first had the idea and I started sketching it out, I thought I knew where that book was going to end also.
And in the early stages of working on the book, really just getting the foundational elements down, my personal life took, I had a plot twist. Again, I’m not gonna give too much of that away. But had a significant plot twist. So I had that exact question and I remember I was working with a book coach that’s in our community and I said to her, I don’t know what to do with this.
Do I [00:26:00] just end the story? Like earlier when, before this plot twist happened, or do I have a little epilogue that I just mentioned? The plot twist. I, because I thought I knew the book that I was writing, and then the more I sat with it, the more I sat with it, I realized no, the plot twist. Is actually the story.
Totally. And that’s the thing, right?
Suzy Vadori: Yes. Sometimes it’s, sometimes that’s the answer, but sometimes the answer is spend it before the plot twist. Depends on what it start a third book,
Suzette Mullen: right? Start a third book. But the plot twist ended up being the story. And what happened in the plot twist, really, when I sat with it and worked through it and therapy and writing and all the things, I realized that.
The reason the plot twist happened is really the issue that I want to be exploring in. Yeah. This [00:27:00] book. So the book is totally different. And um, might I just
Suzy Vadori: say that work that you did to incorporate the plot twist, being authentic is worth it, Suzette, and it’s all that, that’s who you are as a core. And so you had no choice.
And sometimes
Suzette Mullen: that’s ex exactly. It. It would not have worked any other way, but. Boy, I fought it. I really, I thought I knew brands are weird. I like my, my personality type. We like neat and orderly, and you know what? Life is not neat and orderly. Life is messy. Writing is messy. I wanna read about
Suzy Vadori: Neat and orderly.
I know. I don’t wanna read that.
Suzette Mullen: I know all. So
Suzy Vadori: what was the, how’s it been? So the book has been out for more than a year, a year and a half. About a year and a half. Year and a half. How has that possible.
Suzette Mullen: How’s it been? It’s been a wild, wonderful ride. It has, the book has all of the fears that I had, terrible, the nightmare [00:28:00] reviews, the terrible reviews, or that nobody’s gonna show up to my book events, or no one’s gonna read my book.
Really none of those came true, which was pretty wonderful. I worked my bleep off to market it. I had a lot of support with my, I published through the University of Wisconsin Press and they had a publicity manager who was I. A terrific partner. I also did hire a publicist because my thought was, this is my shot.
Hey, go big. I often say that I was gonna go, I was like, gonna go big. And I knew that I would kick myself if I didn’t do everything I could do and to, to publicize the book. It really has been wonderful. I loved actually meeting with readers at book events. I did a series of them when the book first came out, and then I’ve done lots of podcasts like this and frankly, I need to get back on the wagon.
I think there’s that. You have that initial, like you’re just. [00:29:00] Doing it all the time, and then you like, take a breath. And then I’ve had some plot twists in my life, which have distracted me a bit, but I am, I’m very proud of the book. And I’ll, I, there’s one thing I do wanna say that I think will be useful.
Another thing, hopefully there’s been other things that have been useful, but Yeah. One thing that I would like to say is that I thought my book was ready. Before it was ready and I, which is very common, and I had worked really hard on it. It wasn’t like I was trying to query a first draft. It was, it had gone through several revisions and I queried the book and I didn’t get anywhere.
I had no, no interest whatsoever. It was very discouraging and I stepped back. I went back to one of our colleagues who, Julie Arts, who had worked with me on. Various other stages of the book and we. Took a hard look at the manuscript [00:30:00] again, and I made the hard decision to basically tear my book apart, which I had not been prepared to do
Suzy Vadori: and many people aren’t willing to do and it depends.
But again, it’s who you are at the course. Is that the authenticity is worth it? It’s worth it.
Suzette Mullen: Yeah. I just initially I was like, I don’t know if I have the stomach to do this. I thought I was done. But when I stepped back I was like, you know what? This, the thing with the book, once it’s. Out there published, it’s out there, right?
It is. It is out there. It’s a, and I wanted the best book that I was capable of writing to be out there. Yeah. So I did another significant round of revision and that is when I got some interest and eventually got the book too. Tables turned. Yeah. Okay.
Suzy Vadori: So you still coach other writers. What kind of work do you do with memoir writers still as a book coach?
Suzette Mullen: Yeah, so I’ve done it from soup to nuts over the [00:31:00] years, but what I love to do the most, and I’m now really focusing my book coaching business on, is the early stages of the process when the writer comes to me with an idea, but they have no idea. So really at the beginning, they have no idea actually how to take their idea and get.
Get going on the first draft. So we do a very, I call it a clarity intensive. It’s based on some of the author accelerator blueprint materials that really help you dig into the foundational questions you need to be able to answer. Why do you wanna write book? The planning stages, right? The planning. Yes.
Thank you. That’s a very concise, the planning stages. I’m not known for being concise, so thank you, Susie. Yes, the planning stages. That is my specialty. I love to help a writer plan their book. And then they either go off and work on their first draft on their own, or they can get support from somebody [00:32:00] else.
So that is, yes, thank you. I’m gonna use that line. I’m gonna seal that. That book help people plan their book.
Suzy Vadori: Yes. Yeah. I help people plan their book. I talk about plan your book, write your book, edit your book. Sell your book. Like it just like plain. Okay. So I like that. Suzette for those listening. Maybe they’re already writing their memoir probably.
Or maybe they’re thinking, maybe I’ll write a memoir at some point. How extraordinary does your life need to be allowed, quote unquote, to write a memoir? Do you have to be supersonic? It’s your opinion.
Suzette Mullen: That’s a great question. So this is gonna sound like a cliche, but I, cliches are cliches for a reason. I do believe that everyone has a story.
Now that doesn’t mean that everyone needs to write that story. You have to have a drive and a passion. A. To do the deep work, to get clear on what that deeper story is, what the message is. But you [00:33:00] absolutely do not need to be a celebrity. You absolutely don’t have to do some extreme having climbed Mount kil majaro in Sub-Zero temperatures, you just.
There are ma many memoirs, and I would put mine in this category that we would call quiet stories or quiet memoirs. They’re about ordinary people who on the surface are living ordinary lives, but there’s some, something has happened in their life that. Has changed them. I don’t
Suzy Vadori: think of you as quiet, but yes, I see what you’re saying.
You feel like you’re an ordinary person, you’re not a celebrity, you are in your own Right. But because of the book, and so yeah, that quiet memoir. How today’s memoir, so Suzette, I love that you’ve been through the rigor role. You did the querying and didn’t get responses. You figured this out, figured out what readers are looking for, what publishers are looking for, what you had to do.
[00:34:00] Two things. The first being, I like to tell writers that. Just because you’re writing a memoir doesn’t give people an all access pass into every aspect of your life. That’s a choice. And I think, you know, what you were saying before is if I’m not willing to go those vulnerable places, yes. If you’re writing about that thing, then yeah, you gotta let your walls down for that one particular thing.
But doesn’t mean that you have to also write about you’re estranged family or that. Thing that you did in grade, in grade school that is still on your permanent record. You don’t have to disclose everything, but you have to be a little bit vulnerable in the place that you decide to write. But how today’s memoirs differ from like biographies, ’cause we’re talking about what’s not a cradle to grave.
What does memoir mean in today’s market? I feel like you can comment on that.
Suzette Mullen: Yeah. Question. Are you okay? Are you okay if I comment on the first thing that you said? Yeah, for sure. All of it. Okay. I absolutely agree with what you said about writing memo class. Does does not [00:35:00] mean that you have to get naked lit, literally, or even figuratively.
And yes, you get to choose what aspects of your life, what details of your life that you want to reveal and what things you wanna keep private. Absolutely. But what you can’t be stingy about, and this is what I meant earlier when I was talking about going there and getting real and getting very vulnerable, is that it’s that emotional truth.
It’s that it’s less about the details of the thing that happened. It’s more about how it made you feel and how, and that is where you can’t hold back. That’s what the reader is coming to the page to, to see how that character felt and how that. Impacted their journey. So first, first part of your question.
Yeah, totally sec. Second part. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. I
Suzy Vadori: was just gonna say in the second part case you lost your train of thought was about how do today’s memoirs, like what’s expected versus a biography of O [00:36:00] Yeah, I was born on blah, blah, blah. Sure. Yeah. None of you can kind of dance around it, but
Suzette Mullen: none of those are getting published unless you’re Prince Harry or Barbara Streisand, or.
You are a celebrity and they’re still calling those memoirs, but they, many of them do read more like biographies. But if you’re, if you don’t happen to be in that ultra celebrity category, what publishers and editors are looking for is a very clear. Narrative arc. A very, very much like with fiction, right?
So a very clear story that is a journey of some sort. And they also are looking to put your memoir slotted into some kind of a box because they have to know how they’re gonna sell this book. So that’s why we get into what we call comparable titles. And what are the other books out there that your book would be?
In conversation with, [00:37:00] and whether it’s a grief memoir or it’s a memoir about divorce or a memoir about coming out, they’re looking to have a clear category they can slot your book into. And then, yeah, it’s almost the readership, right? What is the readership gonna
Suzy Vadori: be? People who are looking for this topic.
Yeah,
Suzette Mullen: exactly. Exactly. Uh, a clear narrative arc with transformation and ideally some fresh. Angle on the subject matter that Yeah. Or some fresh way of looking at the subject matter that hasn’t been looked at before. Yeah. So it’s that, that trifecta and that do, getting to that point, when you’re writing your own story of what is this thing?
Is it a, you know, is it a grief memoir? Is it a, is what is this thing? And then getting clear on that narrative arc and the, your particular angle. It can take time and sometimes you don’t [00:38:00] discover it until you have actually written the thing and revise the thing. Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: I just love what I learned today about your journey.
I knew a lot of it, but not all the way back to how, how it started, so I just love that. Okay. I’ve got some quick fire questions for you, so these are Woohoo. These are short form answers. Okay. What’s something you wish you’d known when you wrote your memoir, when you started out that now that you wish you’d known at the beginning that would be helpful to our readers?
Suzette Mullen: I think what I wish I had known is that really the biggest, the most important thing was being willing to be patient and to persist.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, persist. Yeah. Then it might patience and persistence. I like to say that writing a book takes a lot longer than we think, and I don’t know that we should tell people at the beginning where they may never do it.
Oh, everybody’s journey is different, but that sort of go away for a weekend and write a book in the woods is not really how great [00:39:00] books are born. How long did it take you to write this book? From the the time, not this book. Yeah, but I wanna know from the time, my gosh, is it 2013 to, is it 10 years? I would say
Suzette Mullen: I would, the time you had the idea.
I would say, I would put it, 2015 was when I really started working on, yeah, what do you do? The book that became that. That led me to this story, and the book was published in 2024, so nine years between, yeah, really starting to write the thing that turned into something else, and then before the book was out, and then the book being out in the world.
Suzy Vadori: I love that, and I can guarantee you that Suzette is not going to take nine years for book two. She learned a lot about it the way
Suzette Mullen: No, no way.
Suzy Vadori: No way. All right. No way. What was your first big break for the book? What was the moment? Yeah, what was the moment that you [00:40:00] knew this is, it’s gonna really happen?
Suzette Mullen: I’d say the day that I got the positive response to my query from the University of Wisconsin press. Up until that point, I, I remember that day. Yeah. I had just received. Either silence or form rejections. And I queried the that publisher at 11 o’clock in the morning and an hour or two later, I had a response from them and I just couldn’t believe it.
So that was an amazing day, and it was just the beginning of the journey with that publisher, but it did ultimately lead to a contract and a book out in the world.
Suzy Vadori: I love that. I love that. Okay. What’s your best advice for writers who are just starting out wanting to write a memoir or any book?
Suzette Mullen: I will go back to the succinct answer that you have, that you helped me with, is to do some planning.
Planning doesn’t mean that you, that everything is set in stone. It doesn’t [00:41:00] mean that you’re squashing your creativity. It just means that you’re putting some guardrails on your projects, especially with memoir. You have your whole life that you can pull from. Spend some time upfront planning and then go, right.
Awesome. Suzette,
Suzy Vadori: where can listeners find your book? Where can they find your information on your book coaching? And we’ll drop the links, but if you could let us know. Sure
Suzette Mullen: my book, the Only Way Through Is Out, is available anywhere you can find books. If it’s not at your local independent bookstore, you can certainly ask them to order it.
I love supporting independent bookstores if possible, and my website is your story finder.com. By the time this airs, I may have a different URL, so I’m sure that we’ll update it. Well let us know and we’ll update it. Um, I’m in the process of doing some rebranding to focus more on my, my speaking and my work as an author, but [00:42:00] we’ll make sure the current link is in the show notes.
Suzy Vadori: Awesome. Thank you so much for being here today. I guarantee that you’ve helped a lot of people that are in the throes of their memoir writing and inspired them to keep going. Thank you, Suzy. I love chatting with you.
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