Marion Roach Smith: Follow Your Curiosity (Part 2)

In this episode, we talk with author and memoir coach Marion Roach Smith about knowing your genre, being hospitable to yourself and your work, and actually doing the work instead of just talking about it. Also, the importance of required reading! Whatever your medium, Marion’s thoughts on the creative process and what it takes to sustain a creative life will no doubt help you with your own practice.

Transcript

Tricia

Hey there. I’m Tricia Rose Burt, and I want to ask you a question. What creative work are you called to do but are too afraid to try? Are you in IT but dream of doing stand up? A PR exec who longs to write a screenplay. Did you change your priorities and now you want to leave your fully funded PhD/MD program and go to New Mexico and paint? Or maybe you’re like I was in my early career, trapped in a lucrative, but soul crushing corporate job when what I really wanted to do was tell stories on stage. In this podcast, we’ll hear from artists who took unexpected leaps and found the courage to answer their creative call so we can inspire you to answer yours. This is no time to be timid.

Tricia

Welcome to the show. Now, throughout my artist career, and I’ve been doing this now for more than 30 years, I’ve been encouraged and led by teachers, directors, coaches and mentors. Our guest today, Marion Roach Smith, is one of those people who’s helped me on my creative journey. Marion is an author, memoir, coach and a teacher of memoir writing. She teaches hundreds of aspiring authors every aspect, including book structure, The art of the personal essay, How to Write Opinion Pieces, and how to Write book length memoir. But most importantly, she teaches the value of leading a creative life. When I asked Marion what she thought was the most important trait in sustaining a creative life, she said, Curiosity. Now, I know that’s what Steve Young said in our last episode, but you know what? They were both so passionate about curiosity, and Marion makes such a great case for it, we thought it was worth repeating. I’m so glad you’re joining us.

Tricia

Hey, Marion, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Marion

I am honored to be here. I just think you’re a great storyteller, and I’m delighted to be able to talk with you.

Tricia

I am a huge fan of your book, The Memoir Project, it’s normally next to my bed. And you have this wonderful exchange in your introduction about being at a cocktail party. I want you to say that for our listeners, because often, you know, one of the things that holds us back from jumping into this, our art, whatever medium we want to, is that exactly the exchange that you can have at a cocktail party. So recount it, please.

Marion

It’s just happened so many times there. There I’ll be standing there in my pearls and, you know, pencil skirt and someone will say, What do you do for a living? And I say, Oh, I’m a writer. And the person will say, Oh, when I retire, I’m going to be a writer. And I used to be so polite. I would literally think, Oh, you know what’s wrong with me that I’ve spent my whole life doing this when somebody can just pick it up when they’re 70 years old. Now, I’m not polite at all. Now right above those pearls, there’s a sneer. And I say, Oh, really? What do you do for a living? And invariably the person says, I’m a brain surgeon. And I say, you know, I’m going to be a brain surgeon when I retire. And then I smile and walk away. Because the thing is, they’re giving us no respect. And art really deserves a lot more respect than to think that, you know, one of these days I’ll get around to it. So that’s my little vignette about that.

Tricia

Oh, it’s so true, because it’s always like, Oh, but what’s your real job? Right. It’s like, no, I’m a storyteller, you know? No, I’m an artist. No, I’m a…Oh, but, you know. But what do you do?

Marion

I have relatives that still ask me if I’m ever going to get a real job. And I’ve been at this for a long time and published four books. And it doesn’t matter to a lot of people. There are some standard issue things you’re supposed to do, and this isn’t one of them for some people, but thank goodness it is for others.

Tricia

Yeah, absolutely. I had a creative coach who’s wonderful, Mark McGuinness. He was in a season one episode four, and he was talking about being like the family’s cautionary tale.

Marion

I want to be somebody’s family cautionary tale. This is my new aspiration, actually. Good, good. Something to look forward to.

Tricia

I love that whole idea, the cautionary tale. Don’t do that. Whatever you do. Good Lord.

Marion

I’m writing it down.

Tricia

You have extensive, you know, track record of teaching. You have online classes. You do all these things to help aspiring authors. And you were saying that in your classes you have these aspiring authors who’ve been told that what they do isn’t important and, you know, I think that that is again, I just want to beat that drum that anybody who’s got a creative urge, whether it’s writing or painting or singing, it is so important for just so many reasons.

Marion

I think it is. I mean, sharing our humanity it really beats the living daylights out of not sharing our humanity. I mean, we’re in some pretty serious trouble right now in this country and in this world by othering everybody. And when we come together and talk about our experiences, we find how many shared experiences we have. That we inherit recipes from our relatives, that we recite poems that we learn, that we have rituals of any sort is shared by every human being. And I think that when we share our stories, our recipes, our knitting patterns, our gardening tips, whatever it is, we are holding hands across culture or maybe even just within culture. But I don’t understand it. I believe that making art is of inestimable value and that if we don’t, if I don’t, and I’m always either gardening, cooking, knitting, writing, editing, it’s a creative life. And I look at it that way and I know how privileged I am to lead it. But I worked hard to get here. I just also always say that this was not funded by anybody. I worked hand over hand to get here and I really believe in it and I really encourage anybody to have it in any way. Some people can only have it 45 minutes a day. Boy, do I get that. That’s my clients. They’ve got kids, they’ve got spouses, they’ve got aging parents, they’ve got dogs, they got whatever, careers, houses, maybe 45 minutes a day. Please take that 45 minutes a day and express yourself. It is life itself.

Tricia

Yeah, it absolutely is. I always say, as you know, as a storyteller, once you’ve heard somebody’s story, you cannot demonize them. You may not like them, but you can’t demonize them once you understand, you know, where they’re coming from. And it just makes it makes such a big difference. And so here’s a question for you. One of the things that you suggest when people start out, you have a list of required reading. Why do you suggest required reading?

Marion

Well, I use that in the book as a as sort of a…it’s like a two sided coin. I want to make sure that people understand that you really have to read to be able to write. And I think that people forget that all the time. I have people ask me all the time, like, what should I be reading? And I say, Well, read book reviews, even though you’re not going to read the book because it’s going to teach you that books are about something and it has nothing to do with the plot. In other words, well, the plot illustrates it, but they’re going to it’s going to teach you. I read theater reviews, I read movie reviews, I read book reviews. And that reading is required. It’s a required part of the artist’s life. We share, again, we share our experience. And I just read three novels by contemporary black male writers and learned more in those books about a life that I have no access to unless I read these books, because they were very specific: two, by Colson Whitehead about Harlem and one by James McBride, about a Jewish and black community years ago in Pennsylvania, to which I have no access. And all three books informed me enormously about this America. And I think that required of every writer is reading. So that’s why I use that phrase. I also have a list of books on my website that I give to people that I, I learned to write from. They’re not books on how to write, they’re books that like Truman Capote did great characterization and Gay Talese knows how to look at people and writers from all different generations. So reading is required, and that’s why I use that phrase.

Tricia

I know Seth Godin talks a lot about learning your genre, really just immersing yourself in the medium and the work that you’ve chosen to do and learn about it. Just to learn as much as you can. I can often just hop in without doing sort of the legwork before I hop in to kind of see where I am, you know, and that idea of required reading and just kind of, again, learning about the genres, getting a firm foundation, seeing how other people do it is really critical.

Marion

I think so. Also, you know, if a door opens for you as a writer, you’ve got to walk through it. So I was just writing this to a writer yesterday after critiquing her work, and I said to her, you know, the novel Lessons in Chemistry, love it or hate it, whatever. It’s got humor about the oppression of being a woman. And the Barbie movie has humor and direct messaging about the pressure of being a woman. The door has opened. We’re saying we can be funny about this now. Oh, okay. And my client is writing funny about the oppression of women. And I said, The door’s open. You got to walk through it now because we — and so reading allows you to understand what we’re talking about.

Tricia

Yeah, It’s like, what’s the conversation? And can I be part of this conversation and how can I be relevant as part of that conversation? Absolutely. You have a great reference again around why we have to be taught to write. Like there’s no reason why we should know how to do this. Let’s talk about why we have to be taught, because I do think people often think I should just know how. I should just know how to do it, or I should just know how to paint. I should just know how to sing. I should just know how to…so talk about the value of being taught.

Marion

I think before you learn to be a jazz musician, you learn the scales. Before you go off, before Jackson Pollock did those astonishing paintings, he learned the basics of color and balance and expression. And so it’s best to be learned, to taught, to write. That doesn’t mean you have to emulate a lot of old white guys. It means that you’ve got to understand that there are genres and there are some things that we’re talking about now. There are some things we talked about then. There are some things that we want yet to explore. To be living in the world of writing is really what I’m talking about. And to understand that there is fiction, nonfiction, memoir has some rules, and I do use the word rules because it’s very different from autobiography, and you need to understand those differences.

Tricia

Well, explain that difference for us. Explain the difference between autobiography and memoir.

Marion

Sure. Autobiography is one big book that usually begins with your great great grandfather and ends with what you had for lunch today when I when I’m being funny about it. But what I’m saying is, it’s your whole life story. Memoir is best written from one of your areas of expertise at a time, and you probably have 12 or 15 of them. This is the way I teach memoir, and they are defined by what you know after what you’ve been through. So memoir takes on one topic, and that way you can have a writing life. You can write blog posts, essays, op eds, long form essays and books. You can write nine or ten book length memoir if you write from one area of expertise at a time. So one of my areas of expertise was caregiving. I care gave to my mother, who for 15 years had Alzheimer’s. And when I write from my area of expertise of caregiving, I’m always writing that caregiving requires boundaries. Another area of expertise is that I live with 12 dogs in my life and they’ve taught me that dogs do things for people that people cannot do for themselves. And I’ve written extensively — essays and parts of books about — from that area of expertise. So memoir takes on one aspect of your life and autobiography takes on your entire life. And nobody who isn’t famous should be writing autobiography. It’s just true. Autobiography is best left to the people whose lives we know, where they ended up. The Elvis Presleys, the Sonia Sotomayors, the people who we say, Wow. How did she get there? That’s autobiography, but memoir, we can look at anything.

Tricia

I want you to talk a little bit about caregiving for your mama and that whole experience in the book that you wrote Another Name for Madness. Can you just give us that origin story a little bit and tell us about that experience for you?

Marion

Sure. When I was 21, I had the great good fortune to get a summer job at the New York Times. There used to be entry level jobs in every magazine, newspaper, radio station, television station in New York, and thousands of us, 21 year olds flooded the city. It was so fun. And I was kept on after the summer. Very fortunate. My dad died right away after I got to the New York Times. He was a lot older than my mother. And at 49 years old, my mother experienced symptoms that look like senility. No one had ever heard of Alzheimer’s disease. I had never heard of it. But I was lucky enough to be in New York City. Took her to NYU, where she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. And I was like, What’s that? I’d never heard of it. And the doctor said, There are four and a half million people in the country that have it, and it’s going to be the greatest health care crisis in the history of the world. And I thought, oh, somebody should write about this. So I went to the New York Times magazine, said to the editor, Somebody should write about this. He said, Yeah, you. You should write this piece. And at 26, by the time I was, it took all this took a while, I was 26, I published a piece in the New York Times magazine that really exploded my life. I ended up on the Today Show the next day. It went on to be one of the most reprinted pieces in the history of the magazine at the time. I had no no idea this could happen to a young writer. I got five book offers by the end of the week, an agent. It was life changing, but what I was able to do was be part of a conversation about long term care in this country. I testified before Congress four times and really was able to help, I think, to the best of my ability as a writer to get us to start talking about something that no one was comfortable talking about. Had she been 90 years old, no one would have cared. But what I gave you the list of her symptoms and then said, My mom is 51 years old. People want what? And cared. So I learned that my origin story is to learn that if you want to get people to care, break their hearts.

Tricia

How did you maintain your writing life when you were caring for your mother?

Marion

Not easily. So I was caring for my mother, working full time. I wrote that magazine piece from about midnight to three in the morning. It took me six, seven months to write it. That’s the reality of writing. You cannot hold your family hostage. You cannot say, I’m going to become a writer and you’re all going to have to fend for yourselves. I teach this to people every day. If you’ve only got half an hour, then go for 500 words a day or 250 words a day. In other words, right from the beginning I had to develop a writing practice, although I’m quite sure I didn’t use that phrase at the time. I fit it in to my life and that was what I learned was that sometimes if you want something, if you want it badly, if you want to be an artist, you are going to have to find a way not to alienate everybody because you can’t do this in solitude completely. You have to have friends, you have to go to dinners. You have to hear what’s going on in the world, but you’re going to have to fit it in. And it really was a night job. And that has remained with me as one of the great lessons is that I have to be respectful of everyone I work with. And I’ve worked with thousands of people — I’ve got over 70 books on my shelf of people who have published working with me –, is to teach them how to fit it into the lives they already have. And not to say, That’s it. Everybody’s got to, you know, get extra jobs so I can do this. It’s not a privilege. You have to earn the right to write. I really believe that.

Tricia

Well, and it’s also, you know, if you wait, I’ll start writing when I have three months in a cabin in the woods. We talked about this with my friend Rachel Perry in season one. We had an art instructor who said, There’s never enough money, there’s never enough time, there’s never any space. Get over it. Absolutely. You just start making work.

Marion

I’ve talked so many people out of painting their office. I just have to build… No, you don’t. If you have a corner. I mean, I lived in a the smallest apartment in New York City when I was first a writer. And what I did was I stopped having people over. It became a writing studio and I stopped entertaining. I stopped having people over because I didn’t want to have to move the papers off my desk. So I said, This space is sacred. And now I’m lucky enough to have this magnificent office that I work in. It’s taken me a long time to get here, but if you can just designate a corner of your dining room table, something where you go and your bills are not there, your taxes are not there, but your brain says, Oh, it must be time to write. Here I am at the desk. And you’ve got, the phrase I use is you’ve got to be hospitable. Be hospitable to this, please.

Tricia

I’m so glad you said that, because that was one of the things I wanted you to talk about. Talk about being hospitable. Talk about that, please.

Marion

So be hospitable means what do you need to get to work? First of all, you need a clear shot to that desk if you only have 45 minutes a day. If you’ve made the deal with your partner, with your kids, with your dog, with your whatever that you get 45 minutes a day or an hour and a half a day, or God bless you, 3 hours a day, you need to put a sign on the back of the chair that says on deadline, I’ll be with you in 3 hours or whatever, whatever it takes. But then do not go to that desk and go on email and go and start calling your friends and reading them what you’ve written. It’s precious. So be hospitable means keep the books near you that you need. I need Emily Dickinson near me every single day. I need the dictionary, a copy of the complete Works of Shakespeare, the Bible. It’s just really solid reference books. And then I need the phone unplugged, and I need this clear shot. I do the taxes at a different desk. I literally do the bills elsewhere. Nothing but writing happens here. Writing, podcasting, being creative happens here at this desk. So be hospitable, be kind to yourself. It’s hard. It’s particularly hard for women, by the way. You know, who gets to who has to take the dog to the vet, who goes to all the basketball games, who, whatever, whatever. Mostly it’s women. And you’ve got to be hospitable so you can get those 45 minutes a day. And you know what? A lot can get done in 45 minutes a day. If you say I will write 500 words a day, that’s what the great Graham Greene did. And, you know, he had a pretty good career.

Tricia

But I think you’re right. It’s just the determination. It’s the intent. It’s that I’m going to do this and putting boundaries around it. But I love this idea of doing it within the life that you have. It’s within the life that you have.

Marion

It’s true. I remember shampooing the head of my infant daughter while I was writing a book that I’d spent two years behind the scenes, the world of forensic science. I had just been to blood spatter analysis school, where I learned about the elliptical trigonometry of blood. I’m shampooing my little baby’s head, and suddenly the lead to the chapter called Blood came into my head. And I said to myself, You’re going to hell. You are not supposed to be thinking about blood spatter when you’re shampooing your two year old. But it didn’t matter, Tricia. I just kept repeating the lead to myself till I had finished and then went in, so grateful, wrote it down. And I love that lead. But of course it came to me when I was doing something else. That’s the way the creative life works. When I’m chopping vegetables, when I’m driving a car is when I always get invaded by these phrases. That’s why being hospitable means having a notebook on you everywhere. I’ve got one tied to the stick shift of my car in my purse, one in the bathroom, one next to the bed. And there I’m always scribbling stuff. So I just finished shampooing her hair and then went and wrote that lead down and boy, do I, am I grateful.

Tricia

I love the juxtapositions of those two things.

Marion

Yeah.

Tricia

I was reading The Memoir Project and you have a phrase in there that has stayed with me for ages because I was — I say this a million times — I was raised never to draw attention to myself. Yes. And, you know, I’d be on these stages telling these personal stories, thinking I’m going to go to hell. I am a bad person for drawing attention to myself. And then you wrote in the book that it’s really not not about you, it’s about this universal message. And you’re the illustration and you’re sort of nudged off stage. And I love that idea of being nudged off stage because so many of us are raised, you know, No, don’t draw draw attention, no, you’re not about to you’re not allowed to talk about that, you’re not allowed to draw attention to yourself. You’re not allowed. And when you go, wait, this has nothing to do with me. I’m just telling the story. I’m telling this larger story, this universal theme, which I know. I teach people this all the time, but when I do my own storytelling workshops, but when it was me, somehow it wasn’t.

Marion

No, you’re the exception. Absolutely.

Tricia

I am the exception. Thank you. But I was like, Oh, that’s right. I am being nudged off the stage. This is not about me. And it was so liberating. It was so liberating. It was really freeing to hear that.

Marion

It is freeing and it’s meant to be freeing. I came up with a little algorithm that I teach to everybody. It’s about X as illustrated by Y to be told in a Z. It’s about something universal to be told in a deeply personal tale. And the Z is always the form, blog post, essay, op ed, long form essay or book, whatever you choose that it’s going to be about, going to be how it’s going be told, what the form is. But this does nudge you off center stage. Have you ever noticed when somebody says, So what are you writing about? And if you pitch them the plot, their eyes start to glaze over. Well, it’s about when I was eight and they’re already bored. They’re looking for the bar. They are out of there. They’ll go for any canapé they can stuff in their mouth to just get out of this conversation. But if you say it’s about how mercy is the first step to justice, as illustrated by me forgiving my abuser to be told in a book, they go, What? Yeah, they get the universal first. So my phrase that I always use is write to your pitch. Get yourself a pitch based on the x, y, z formula. It’s about X as illustrated by Y to be told in a Z and then write that book. It really is about mercy, as illustrated by my experience. Then you’ve got the chance. We all make the mistake of saying, Well, when I was — nope, the listener is already out of the conversation. They want the universal. Why? Because we all want to live better. I want to know about mercy. I want to know about forgiveness. I don’t understand forgiveness. I will read anything about forgiveness. I still haven’t read the perfect piece about forgiveness. So I’m in. I’m in. If you’re going to say it’s about how forgiveness is not a given as illustrated by. Oh, yeah, it’s about that? I’m there. So that’s why I teach it that way. I think it is what we’re really hunkering down to hear.

Tricia

We all want to be transformed somehow.

Marion

Yes.

Tricia

You know, we’re looking for transformation, I think. I mean, at least I am. I’m looking to engage with something that’s going to move me in a direction I haven’t gone before or turn me into a kinder person or a smarter person or a more empathetic person, whatever. However, I want to be transformed. I think that’s what we’re going for.

Marion

All memoir is about transcendence. Something has to shift, or else why in the world would I be reading it? And that’s why autobiography has an appeal. Because you know where the person got to, right? Oh, she’s Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic female, you know, Supreme Court justice. I want to know how she got there. But for memoir, what you’re saying is let’s talk about the particulate matter of mercy. How about it? Right? What an invitation. What a great invitation and what a worthwhile thing to read.

Tricia

And when you talk about memoir, though, you’re not talking just about a book as well. You’re talking that it can come in different forms, correct?

Marion

Yes, Every form. It can come in every single form. And I love that. I love the fact that it can be a blog post, an essay, an op ed, a long form essay or a book. It can be a song, it can be a painting, it can be a piece of knitting. It can be — a recipe has lots of memoir. I’ve got tons of memoir in the in the margins of my husband’s mother’s recipe files. Some of them are heartbreaking, literally heartbreaking, because I know who she made them for — her daughter who died. So then she transposed them for her daughter’s daughter. Wow. This recipe file is astonishing. It also includes the recipe for spam chop suey, which no one should make. So it’s a hilarious thing to read. It’s a heartbreaking thing to read. There’s memoir everywhere. But I do believe in the many forms of memoir and that no one should think it’s just a book length piece. And if you are committed to the book, you can write five or six or ten. You know, I always talk about Caroline Knapp, the great Caroline Knapp, who wrote Drinking a Love Story, as well as a bunch of other books.

Tricia

Yeah.

Marion

While reading through her work taught me this idea that you write from one area of your expertise at a time, and that makes it great. That’s a writing life.

Tricia

We’ll get back to the second half of our conversation in a moment. But right now, I want to tell you about our sponsor Interabang Books, a Dallas-based independent bookstore with a terrific online collection. At Interabang, they’re dedicated staff of book enthusiasts will guide you on your search for knowledge and the excitement of discovery. Shop their curated collection online at interabangbooks.com. That’s interabangbooks.com.

Tricia

I like how you continually reference the writing life, the artist’s life, the creative life, because it is not a compartmentalized thing. Now, I’m a writer over here and I’m a this over here. It’s this holistic way of navigating. And I think that’s a big shift. It was a big shift for me to — it wasn’t an either or.

Marion

Yes. You have to learn that you probably won’t turn everything into an essay that will get published. You have to learn that everything is material, but that some stuff is just informing you. When you start to notice things around the dinner table, it’s probably not best to say to your family, That’s a great conflict. I think I’ll turn that…. Because everybody just gets completely freaked out. So it’s learning that it’s all for you to observe. It’s all for you to take delight in or break your heart over. And only some of it’s going to make it to the page. But that the stimulus is always education. And in every moment, in every small transaction, something shifts. Right? Yeah. You know, there are just these moments where you are changed by something and you say, Well, that’s good for me. And now I know I’ll use that someday. But I know that a lot of writers feel the burden of saying everything is copy. Yes, everything is as the great Nora Ephron said, everything is copy. But it doesn’t mean you have to write everything. Some things you just have to live like that moment with your child. Just live it and try not to be taking notes right in the middle of it while you’re at her piano recital, you know?

Tricia

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is interesting, though, a theme that has run sort of constantly, almost with every single guest on this season has been noticing, has been being observant, about looking at your surroundings and putting it into your work. But like you said, not having to write about everything, but just it’s just all informing. It’s just all informing.

Marion

Gestures are very important, whether when people lean in, when they’re speaking, if they lean out, how people exhibit fear, all of these things are there for you to observe and you’ll use them someday. But pay attention. Pay attention.

Tricia

Okay. So you also give this advice, which is you write facts in your notebook, you write facts when the notebook is upright and vertical and you write emotions, you turn it and you write against the lines and you’re writing down thoughts and feelings and what’s happening. Talk a little bit about that, because I think that’s a wonderful tool.

Marion

Yeah. Notebooks are fabulous. And I’ve, when I was a young writer at The New York Times and I was tearing down the street to go follow to cover my first police shooting in the summer of 1977. And I’m in a dress and heels, of course, and running to Grand Central Station where one policeman has just been shot. And when I ran into the crime scene, I realized, Marion, all you have on you is a notebook and a pen. I think you better be careful here, because they hadn’t caught the perpetrator yet. So, like, the notebook is not going to defend you against, you know, the horror of life. And I just remember that moment. But what I have found is that it is such a remarkable thing to have in your hand when you’re witnessing something, anything, to be able to capture the the gesture, to be able to capture the the facts, the who, what, when, where and why. To be able to get down the fact. But then when you see something that’s more landscape, that’s more backdrop, that’s more emotional content. I turn the notebook sideways and I, that cues my subconscious that I’m looking for that more opaque and that more decorative and that more emotional content. And I just get it instantly. I’ll see it. I’ll feel it that there’s a discomfort in the person that I’m I’m interviewing. And the way he exhibits that discomfort is by worrying his ear lobe or so that I make sure I get that stuff, but I want to make sure I get his quotes right. I don’t use a tape recorder. I never have. It’s a holdover from the times that I was trained. But I get stuff right. But I use the notebook in two ways, both vertically and horizontally. Horizontally, like a landscape is the best way I can describe it. And it works. My subconscious responds to that.

Tricia

I just love that idea of taking something so every day and using it in a different way. It’s smart, it’s a cue for you, but it’s also, all of us can take something that we’re using one particular way and say, Well, what if I use it this way? And how can that serve me better if I just use this a different way?

Marion

Yeah, and notebooks are cheap, you know, they’re great, but you don’t want fancy notebooks. I people give me notebooks all the time. You know, they’ll send them to me and they’re leather and they’re embossed and they have my name on it. But I want the the reporter’s notebook that fits right in your hand. Or the little cheap ones from the grocery store that have the spiral on the top. Yeah. Because they fit in my back pocket. They fit in my jeans, they fit in my purse, and they’re also not obtrusive. I can take it out at the opera, at the movies, under the table at dinner, you know, like scribble something down.

Tricia

Yeah. If somebody gives me, like, a leather bound, you know, journal, I’m like, I can’t. Whatever I have to write has to be perfect if I put it in there. It just, there’s too much pressure. Anything leather puts too much pressure.

Marion

Right. Or the hand-made paper notebook from Japan, like, Oh, no, don’t give me that. Don’t give me that. I’ll never write in it.

Tricia

There are a lot of people who talk about writing, but just don’t do it.

Marion

Yeah.

Tricia

So you and I have a shared love of Streven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, which talks all about resistance, which is just a wonderful, wonderful book. But give me some thoughts and your experience, if you work with writers or aspiring writers all the time, why does that happen?

Marion

So people talk about writing as though, I mean, this in some ways it touches back to that brain surgeon that we opened with. They talk about it, you know, like, well, it’s easy. I’ll just, you know, I can do it. And what I learned at The New York Times was there’s a phrase called talking journalists, people who actually just talk about the stories they’re going to write but never write them. And it’s a tedious and horrible conversation to have to listen to. And I certainly have lots of friends that talk about it all the time. And I say, go do it. For God sake, go do it. If that’s what’s going to make you happy for, go do it. But it’s easier to talk about it. My mother used to say to us — she was trained as a journalist — and she said to the most damning thing I’ve ever heard, my sister and me. Well, who can write books when they have kids? And she never did. And she lived a very sad life because of it. And my sister and I were like, Well, I’ll show you. And we’ve both, between the two of us, published, I don’t know, eight books or something, but in some way, really, what she said to us was just the ultimate challenge to me. To have a child, I wrote three books while raising a child. It’s not impossible. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. So talking journalist is not a good phrase. You don’t want to be called that. You want to write. It doesn’t matter if you ever publish to to the rest of us. It may matter tremendously to you and okay, then that’s a whole other conversation. But write, write. See what you think. You know, most of us talk like this. Oh, I went to this restaurant last night. It was so fabulous. It was like, Oh, my God. It was like, Oh, my God. What did you learn? But if you sit down and try to write about what the food experience meant to you, or what a near occasion of faith was, or what happened when your friend killed herself to you and your world, you will process it. You will walk through a portal of understanding. You will have an experience in annotation where everything you’ve ever thought, felt, heard, eaten, processed will be available to you. There is no feeling like it. There is no feeling like it. And there’s no better process for moving forward than to sit down and say, This is what I think about faith. This is what I think about death. And I think it gets back to that whole thing we talked about shared humanity. You’re sharing with yourself. But try annotating what you’ve got on you. You’ll be amazed by what you’ve got on you. It’s an extraordinary experience.

Tricia

Did I read this or did you say this to me that you don’t know what you think unless you write it down?

Marion

Yeah. I don’t know what I think unless I write it down, I have no idea. But like I said, the way we talk is just so inarticulate for the most part. And we learn, right? We learn. I mean, I can tell you the greatest example I have of that is coming home one day from, with my child, my baby in the car when years ago and my husband was standing in the driveway in his shirtsleeves. Now, that’s not good. Somebody’s dead. I know that instantly. And then the babysitter came out of the house and without making eye contact, took the child out of the back of the car. Now, I know someone dead, it’s just a matter of who it is. And I will not get out of the car and my husband opens his arms and just says, Come here. And this story goes on. It took him, he took 10 minutes, 10 whole minutes to tell me that my friend Susanna was dead. And he started by saying, We lost Susanna. And I said, What? But she was just here. She was here for Easter. I just saw her. What do you mean? She died. And instead of letting me get it all in one clot, he had to let it out in these small sentences because she had thrown herself out of her 16th floor window of her apartment in New York. And this story will explain to you why I would be with this man for the rest of my life, because he had left his office in his shirtsleeves to make sure that he was the only one that told me. And that is how we communicate what love is. I understood when I wrote that down and I’ll never publish it. But what I when I wrote it down, I understood why and how we love each other. It’s not about the big stuff. It’s not about the trip to Paris. It’s about the shirt sleeves.

Tricia

Yeah, that’s really lovely. That’s really lovely. So I know that you are working on songwriting now.

Marion

Yes.

Tricia

Which is so fantastic. And I know that you just today have dropped a song called The Clearing with a musician called Rusty Gear. Please talk a little bit about the songwriting. What I find interesting is, we just had a guest on the show, Steve Young, who was a comedy writer for Letterman for 25 years, and he’s also writing music now. Like, I think it’s an interesting companion or a transition or, I don’t know, compliment to a person who’s so comfortable with words anyway. But talk to me about your songwriting.

Marion

Well, when I was 14 or 15, I wanted to write music in the worst way, and that’s pretty much what I did. Really sappy, terrible, horrible, very much not Carole King and Joni Mitchell, but really awful. But I still pursued it and I loved it. And I loved the combination of music and words. And this then jump, you know, a million years into the future. And this man I know who sings under the name Rusty Geer, called me up and said, Hey, would you like to write me some lyrics? And I said, What am I the only writer you’ve ever met? What? What makes you think I could do that? And he said, I know you can. And I thought, Whoa, Marion. Wow, that’s so kind of him. I said, Thank you. I’ll think about it. And I sent him some words that for a phrase that were used in my family, which is say it with words. And, you know, because we don’t say it with words, we mostly say it with flowers and cards and gestures. And it’s a little love song that I sent him. And he loved it. And he recorded it as a duet with another what’s called Americana recording artist. It’s not really country Western, it’s really Americana. And then we wrote a climate change song together all about water, which was really fun because we really feel very strongly about the water crisis in this country and the one that, then he said to me, okay, make me cry. Oh, now you’re in my territory because I love to make people cry. And so I thought about what it’s like to unpack your family home, the home you grew up in, what it’s like to pack it up and move away. And I love that subject. A client of mine years ago had shared a book with me that she had written, and it still remains one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Samantha Clark is her name, and she wrote a book called The Clearing, and she was tasked with on, you know, packing up her parent’s home in in Edinburgh, Scotland. And it’s what popped into my head immediately was this is as poignant, and, you know, going into the pantry and looking at that, those pencil marks on the door, that record the height and name and age of all the people we became, became the lyric that I wrote to him. And he loved it and I’m so happy. So he just dropped the song to drop this week. The video just dropped. His name is Rusty Geer, and it’s memoir.

Clip

Excerpt from “The Clearing”

Marion

There are all this stuff that I’ve written for him, his memoir. It’s still in my genre, but it’s a, it’s a it’s a really very challenging way to express yourself because I like poetry it’s precise. There’s no blah blah in songwriting, you know, or there shouldn’t be, I guess, the way I think of it. But this creative life allows for you to go in any direction is what I think I’m I’m really quite sure of. And and so my advice to people is always, go. Try it, right? You might love it.

Tricia

Well, what I love is what you’ve just said. If we have a creative life, it’s not like we’re just slotted into one thing. I can only be a this. It’s like, Yeah, you can be that. You can be this too. And you can try this on and you can, you know, you can have some flexibility and some fluidity. It’s not rigid.

Marion

It’s not. And I remember being given the advice when I was in my twenties and, you know, to publish a book in my twenties, every review started with while still in her twenties, I was like, What? And everybody then decided that I needed advice and the advice I was given was, Now stay in your lane. Now that you’re a nonfiction writer, I was like, What? I have a lane? Screw that. No, no lane. Uh uh. No, I’m going to be creative. I’m going to be creative. And I may make up songs for the dog and I may make limericks and I may get up at somebody’s birthday and give them a little speech. It’s creative. It’s, I give everybody permission. Please try it. It’s good. No lanes. No lanes.

Tricia

So if you had to sum up in one word, what is the trait that helps you sustain your creative life? What would it be?

Marion

Curiosity. Absolutely everything. How does that work? How does it work? How does love work? Has faith work? How does gardening work? What’s the tomato horn worm? How the hell does that work? You know, what’s the transaction that just happened here? I always ask, what just happened here? Why do I feel different? Why do I feel changed having talked to you right now? Why? I’m learning things talking to you. What just happened? So it’s curious. It’s curiosity always. It’s the great, you’ve got to have it. You cannot just come in here and dogmatically tell me what you know. You have to precede that with some curiosity around your topic. What is faith? What is love? What is hate? And then write.

Tricia

Okay. Now one last question for you. What’s scaring you right now that you’re working on?

Marion

Always what scares me is telling the truth in a way where I’m going to have to give up something that I genuinely thought I knew. And so I find those to be remarkable intellectual challenges. I was quite sure I felt this way when it turns out I actually don’t. That that’s inherited, that that’s an inheritance. So losing an inheritance, I think is very, very difficult. I think it’s the hardest thing to do is to give up, we all know it’s hard to change family political system, like if you’re you want to be a Democrat and you grew up with Republican or you grew up in an Orthodox family and you want to be reformed or whatever. So I think it’s nudging yourself out of that inherited spot and into something that you truly believe on your own. It’s a lonely place. It’s a great place, but you’re giving up an inheritance and I think that’s complicated. I also think it’s the best place to write from. And I really hugely believe in being counter phobic. If you if you can identify what you’re afraid of, go write about that.

Tricia

You are one of the bravest people I know. So you’re a perfect guest for no time to be timid. I’m just so delighted that you’re on the show. Thank you so much.

Marion

Thank you for asking. You’re one of my favorite storytellers. It’s a joy every time I get to talk with you. And thank you for bringing this show. This is a wonderful thing to do and you’re very, very good at it. Thank you.

Tricia

Thank you so much. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. We’ll talk again soon.

Marion

Okay.

Tricia

I have learned so much from Marion over the years. She’s smart as a whip and she’s so passionate about supporting artists and helping them live a creative life. And I loved how occasionally we could hear some of her beloved dogs barking in the background. Like all of my guest, Marion got me thinking, Here’s some questions for us. First, how well do you know your genre? Are you immersing yourself in your medium? Second, how are you being hospitable to yourself and your work? And third, are you just talking about the creative work you want to do, or are you actually doing it? To learn more about Marion and her work, go to her website marionroach.com. It’s an incredible resource. So much good information. You can read her blog, sign up for her classes and her newsletter and listen to her podcast, Q w e r t y, which is by, for and about writers who want to live a writing life. Oh, and no matter what your medium is, buy her book, The Memoir Project, it’s a creative gem and follow her on Instagram @mroachsmith. And if you’re curious about leading a more creative life, join me at my No Time to Be Timid retreat this November 10-12 at the beautiful Cranberry Meadow Farm Inn in Peterborough, New Hampshire. It’s an intimate gathering of eight women in various stages of their creative journeys who are eager to integrate more creativity into their lives. There are only a few spots left, like maybe one or two, so if you’re interested, go to triciaroseburt.com and click on the Work with Me button. We’ll schedule a conversation to see if it’s the right fit for you. And if you want more retreat details in the meantime, click on No Time Be Timid in the menu bar. And don’t forget to follow me on all social media @TriciaRoseBurt. Join us for the final episode of this season — can you believe it — Episode ten when our guest will be Trisha Mitchell Coburn, writer, artist, interior designer and storyteller. We’re going to talk about how her Moth story, Miss Macy, is being made into a feature film produced by Steven Spielberg and starring the Emmy Award winning actress Jean Smart. It’s just crazy fabulous. And then she also tells us how to revamp your bra if you’ve had a mastectomy. We cover the whole art spectrum. She’s an incredible creative inspiration and the perfect way to end this season. No Time to Be Timid is written and produced by me, Tricia Rose Burt. Our episodes are produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Echo Finch, and our theme music is Twists and Turns by the Paul Dunlea Group. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show, spread the word, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. No Time to Be Timid is a presentation of I Will Be Good Productions.