Your Story Matters

An email from my editor showed up in my inbox last week.

Subject line: "Title Talk."

The marketing team had concerns about the title of my coming out later in life memoir. They were worried that a book called Graveyard of Safe Choices could potentially sound "like a real bummer." And my book is anything but. It's a hopeful story about finding the courage to leave the graveyard of safe choices, not wallow in it.

I loved my title! I had gone through many other working titles and thought I had finally landed on a winner. After all, it was the title that landed me a book deal.

But the more I sat with the feedback on my title, I realized that the marketing team was right.

Book buyers are heavily influenced by titles and cover art. So it was really important to get my title right and not settle for something that was potentially "a bummer." And the cover designer was waiting on the right-fit title so she could...

My client, Chris Chandler, is about to become a published author!

Her memoir Stay Sweet: Tales of Quirky Southern Love, will be published on May 12th, 2023 by Red Thread Publishing.

I asked Chris to share her words of wisdom for memoir writers at the beginning of their journey now that she's on the other side.

Here's the first part of her advice that I shared last week.

Want the cliff notes version?

Just do it.

You don't have to know everything to get started.

Here are two more pieces of advice from Chris:

#1: My writing community has been invaluable to me, so I would definitely encourage people to develop a writing community in whatever way they can. Through the years I've taken a lot of writing classes and and I do that both for learning, but it's also community building for me.

Community. If you've been following me for a while, you know this is a biggie for me. It's one of the pillars of WRITE YOURSELF OUT, my 12-month mentorship for LGBTQ+ writers.

Because...

I've been conducting "Author Chats" with former clients and other writers I'm connected to where we talk about their writing and publication journeys—and where I ask them to pass on their wisdom on to writers who are just getting started.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Chris Chandler, a soon-to-be published memoir author. In the summer of 2021, Chris came to me with a loose collection of family stories that she wasn't sure what to do with.

Over several months, Chris and I identified an overarching theme for her stories, revised the ones she'd already written, added some new ones, and decided on a structure for her book.

Her memoir Stay Sweet: Tales of Quirky Southern Love will be published on May 12th, 2023 by Red Thread Publishing.

Stay Sweet reminds us that unconditional love still exists in the world and that families can provide safe landing places for children at any age. Plus you'll get to meet the unforgettable May, the...

A couple of weeks ago I began requesting blurbs for Graveyard of Safe Choices, my memoir about coming out later in life—which meant emailing authors I didn't know at all or I knew only a little to ask if they would spend THEIR precious time reading MY book and then endorsing it.

I heard back right away from one author who said yes (thank goodness!).

The other three, including one who is kind of a big wig in queer literary circles: radio silence.

Maybe they were just busy.

Maybe they missed the email in their overcrowded inboxes.

Maybe they thought, "Who the hell is this person who has the nerve to ask me to read her book and endorse it?"

Okay, I only thought that about the kind of big wig person—the other two authors actually know who I am.

All week long, the task of following up hung over my head. Plus, I was supposed to send out even more blurb requests.

The absolute last thing I wanted to do.

As I avoided these acts of...

Years ago, an old friend of mine said to me in her inimitable Southern drawl: "I needed to be hit over the head with a 2x4 to get the message." 

As a native New Yorker and someone who barely knew what a 2x4 was, those weren't words I would have used, but I knew what she meant.

I've been known to ignore signs from the universe for umm ... decades?!

Signs that I was gay (really, oh so gay).

That I was a writer. 

That I could use my natural gifts as an editor to work with other writers.

I spent much of my early and middle adulthood ignoring the signs from the universe calling me to something bigger, deeper, and more true to myself.

Instead, I typically chose the safer, easier-in-the-moment path.

In my 50s, I finally listened to the signs from the universe, which led me to the very different life I am leading today—as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a first-time dog parent (!), the wife of Wendy, and a book coach dedicated to helping queer folx raise their voices,...

I had two polar opposite experiences last week that convinced me that queer people need safe spaces to raise their voices and write their stories more than ever.

First, I read in the newspaper that the Pope declared that being gay isn’t a crime—sure, it’s a “sin,” but not a crime. So comforting.

I haven’t had time to unpack all the feelings that exploded through my body when I read that headline, but here are a few:

• I spent 50+ years of my life with the privilege of not worrying whether people thought my identity was sinful, let alone a crime.
• My heart aches for my queer siblings who haven’t experienced that privilege—whose lives have been traumatized in the name of the church.
• I fear for queer people who live in countries where their very identity is considered a crime—and I fear for the path our country is on where sodomy laws are being reconsidered and where people can’t say "gay” in public schools.

I am more...

Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of seeing—and hearing!—Adele in concert during her Las Vegas residency.

I had some issues with Las Vegas itself, but that's a story for another day.

The show was intimate, authentic, and spectacular all at once.

Just over a year earlier, Adele had done the unspeakable: she postponed her residency less than 24 hours before the first show.

Calling it the worst moment in her career by far, she agonized over the decision but ultimately made the call because "There was just no soul in it," she said. "The stage setup wasn't right. It was very disconnected from me and my band, and it lacked intimacy."

It takes a great deal of integrity to make that kind of gutsy decision as an artist. As a creative. As a human.

Author and speaker Glennon Doyle made a similarly gutsy decision in 2016, on the eve of the publication of Love Warrior, her memoir about the redemption of her marriage to her husband Craig.

She...

Everyone has a closet.

In her memoir The Family Outing, author Jessi Hempel writes: "The more I live in the world, the more I come to understand that everyone has a closet."

I agree.

Maybe your closet is:

• Your faith—or lack thereof.
• An eating disorder or a drinking problem.
• The desire to leave your "good enough" marriage.
• Your grief over a loss the world doesn't acknowledge.
• An estrangement with a family member.

Memoir writers bravely open the door to their closets—for their own sake and for the sake of their readers.

Claiming your identity as a writer—someone who has something to say to the world—is brave and it's scary.

I know what that feels like.

When I first came out in 2016, I couldn't say I was gay or lesbian or queer—let alone that I was a queer writer. I didn't really know what label to attach to the life-changing awakening I'd experienced at midlife.

Shortly after my husband and I decided to divorce, I...

Writers, have you ever had an identity crisis?

I had a long professional identity crisis in my thirties and forties. After practicing law for a brief period, then caring for young children, the wandering and searching for the "thing I was meant to do" ensued.

For years, I felt frozen—and shame—every time someone asked me "What do you do?"

You know that question everyone inevitably asks when they first meet you.

I stammered and made apologies when I didn't have a simple—or satisfactory-to-me—answer, and pretty much wanted to dig a hole and bury myself in it in those moments.

During those years of wandering, I often forgot my gifts and what I loved to do.

I forgot that I had been a teenager who published my first article when I was a high school senior, a personal essay in my local newspaper about a study abroad experience in England. 

My father, back in New York with the rest of my family, had mailed me a copy of the newspaper clipping with this note:

...

My yoga studio has a Century Club—you earn a prize once you reach 100 classes a year. One year, pre-pandemic, I practiced over 200 times! That meant showing up on my mat 5 x a week on average.

This fall, I barely showed up at all.

In October I practiced yoga ONCE.

Life got in the way.

I was:

• Knee deep in revising GRAVEYARD OF SAFE CHOICES, my coming-out-later-in-life memoir.
• Preoccupied with my elderly mother’s health crisis.
• Traveling.
• Drinking too much bourbon, which impacted my sleep.

I’d sign up for classes and cancel at the last minute.

It got to the point that I was embarrassed to go to the studio because I hadn’t been there for so long.

I stopped thinking of myself as a yogi. I stopped even signing up for classes because what a joke! I knew I would cancel.

One day I said to myself, you are getting on your mat no matter what. You don’t have to practice 5-6x a week. You just have to practice today.

I showed up to class. It was hard, but I felt...