My Dad works at a crappy job, drinks too much, and his only friend is his brother. I always thought he led an unfulfilled life. But I had an epiphany:

“I think this is a pattern that holds for many women—professional productivity comes after and often gets a boost from the experience of mothering our growing children.” -Megan Marshall (Pulitzer Prize winning biographer)

“When I teach memoir, one of my ten commandments for students is: Write from a place of love. Meaning, you need to love all your characters equally, even the monsters. Meaning, your motivation for telling your story must be love, rather than revenge or loathing or desire. Work written from any place other than love reads as superficial and enervated.” -Joanna Rakoff

If you’d like to be friends my availability is Monday-Friday, 9am-2pm.

Basic rules of good behavior for the memoirist (from Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction): -Say difficult things. Including difficult facts. -Be harder on yourself than you are on others. Inevitably you will not portray others just as they would like to be portrayed. But you can at least remember that the game is rigged: only you are playing voluntarily. -Try to accept the fact that you are, in company with everyone else, in part a comic figure. -Stick to the facts.

"The good and honest memoir is neither revenge nor self-justification, neither self-celebration nor self-abnegation. It is a record of learning." -Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction

"Much overstuffed prose reflects a desire to bully, to impress, or to hide." -Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction

NANNY WANTED: We are seeking a nanny who loves to hang out with kids and speaks to them like they’re people. About Us: We are a frantic couple with two children—sometimes adorable, sometimes not—aged 3 and 4, located in coastal North Carolina. Our family values are as follows: 1. We return the grocery carts 2. We look people in the eyes 3. We tell the truth 4. We cheer each other on 5. We do hard things Both of us work from home so at least one of us will be around if you need a bathroom break or have a question or if we hear a kid crying for more than sixty seconds. Because we are so high-strung it would be nice if you balanced that with a more calm, less-reactive demeanor, but if you’re high energy that’s fine, too, as long as you’re not annoying. Job Responsibilities: 1. Keep the kids busy, entertained, or focused. Our daughter will be mostly content as long as you let her cover you in stuffed animals and blankets and read her books. It is our son who needs a more hands-on approach, and that means games, imaginative play, and physical work. You can let him make some decisions but not all. He needs rules, parameters of play, and instruction. 2. Keep the kids—namely George—away from our office doors. We have often had wonderfully well-meaning nannies who sit in the living room and gently coax my son with light, unspecific suggestions to “come play.” That doesn’t work. The reason he is banging on our doors is because he’s bored—see Job Responsibility #1. 3. Acknowledge—and don’t dismiss—the kids’ statements. If George says he doesn’t like something, don’t respond with, “Sure you do.” Even if it is something you have all decided to do, like playing in the driveway with sidewalk chalk, you can still say something like, “You don’t like this? Okay, I get that, but we already decided we were going to do this, so let’s play here for five minutes and then we can do something else.” Requirements: - No baby talk. Only human talk. - Be on time. We are expecting you. We are waiting for you. We have a countdown until you arrive. Five minutes late is not on time. - Do not complain about being tired or overworked. - I’m fairly easy to talk to but please don’t tell me about your social life if it involves you getting drunk. One time I asked a nanny if she got a new phone and she told me that yes, she did, because over the weekend she dropped it in the bar’s toilet. Another time I asked how she got that bruise on her knee. I regretted it as soon as I asked. - I don’t know what the deal is with this generation but ghosting us is not cool. I have been left hanging after I’ve sent texts like, Are you available next Saturday? …. Are you still available to babysit? …. Did you get a chance to look at your schedule yet? Once, we had a nanny who was with our family for over two years (she had an entire page of pictures in my daughter’s baby book) and on the last time I saw her she told me, unprompted, that if anything were to happen to me and my husband, she would want to take our kids as her own. She left our house and never responded to my texts after that. I should admit here that my husband tells me that I ghost nannies all the time—because I don’t ask them to come back—but I have never ignored a question in a text. Perhaps my approach is still cowardly. Perhaps I should send a text that it’s not a good fit. Perhaps I should list the reasons why, like, for example, my son just doesn’t respond well to you—which is usually the case. Compensation: We typically pay $20 an hour but if you’re good, and you keep the kids engaged and occupied and you get their snacks and lunches ready and clean up before you leave, we’re happy to pay $25 an hour. References: I don’t need any. I know that if I call the people on your list they will tell me you’re great, and I have yet to figure out the right questions to ask to find out what I need to know. Anticipated Start Date: How about this Saturday 8:30am-12:30pm??

If I can’t think of an example to include with my idea then I can’t write the idea. Without the example the idea is unconvincing at best, and potentially boring, generic, or manipulative at worst. For example, when recalling a relationship that lasted eight years, I remembered that when he got drunk he was mean to me, but it was so long ago that I can’t remember anything he actually did or said. If I decided to keep that in without an example (“He was a mean drunk”) I'd lose the reader's trust because I have stated my opinion without anything to back it up.

When you think you’ve written a stellar final draft and then you send it to your editor.

Still pissed that High Fidelity got canceled after one season.

Shame always finds me in the shower.

When you write something and think it's awesome and then read it a few hours later and the whole thing sucks.

I've been talking for months about how to write about other people but struggled to articulate the "why." Why should you only write action and dialogue? Why should you showcase the other person's best qualities even when they caused you harm? Then I stumbled upon this Google doc of 39 submission tips by Daniel Jones, the editor of the New York Times column, Modern Love: “In the prosecutorial essay we are trying to blame someone for acting badly or hurting us or ruining our relationship, and this can make readers feel like they’re serving on a jury for a trial that has no defense attorney. The more the prosecutor hammers away without rebuttal, the more the jury, aware of the unfairness of the proceeding, starts to think, 'Not guilty.' As the writer, you are in a position of great power—you control the megaphone—and the reader knows this. You can make people look good or bad. And if the reader senses you’re abusing this power, they’ll think the person who looks worst is you. This is why, as a preemptive measure, the writer should be hardest on himself. Self-deprecation can be among the personal essayist’s most useful tools. Counter-intuitively, you can look good by looking bad.”

"As long as it's happened, people are allowed to say it's happened." -Daniel Jones

Before Jewel got famous she was the opening act for Bob Dylan. Night after night she would kick out anyone in the audience who was talking during her set. She didn't like people talking while she sang. Bob Dylan never watched the opening act of his shows but found out what she was doing and asked to speak with her. He loved it. Her music didn't intrigue him but she did, so he started watching her act. Bob Dylan ended up mentoring Jewel and told her this: "You don't have a choice to be who you are. It may not work, but are you or aren't you this." h/t The Great Creators with Guy Raz

Something that keeps me up at night is wondering what the other parents are packing for their kids' lunches.

Every time my 3yo can’t handle his emotions I’m reminded that I can’t handle mine.

Something surprising I’ve learned from writing under a pseudonym for 4 years: How much I push anger and blame onto others instead of just speaking to them directly about it.

When women write memoir they tend to collaborate and get permission from people from their past. When men write memoir, they tend to not give a fuck. h/t The Art Of Memoir by Marry Karr

I figured writing a memoir meant people from my past were going to disagree with how I remembered things. I did not anticipate that they would agree with every word I've written and then say how dare you publish that.