About This Newsletter

'Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?'

Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.

― Nora Ephron

I hate vague. I hate when someone says they’re having a hard time, or a bad week, then glides over it. Wait, I think. Go back. Tell me about the bad day. That’s why I’m here. To forget my life, my troubles, and lose myself in yours.

Of course, I know why some writers don’t share the personal stuff. You can’t write about life without writing about people (yourself included) and most people, even if they say they don’t mind, hate being written about. That’s the price you pay for the status of writer. Other people have commutes, bosses, coworkers. We have guilt, shame and pissed off relatives.

But I am a writer. This is my life. The good, the bad, the ugly. So I guess this is my weekly column on living. The ups and the downs of being... a woman. A mother, a wife, a writer, a thirty-something who is trying not to hate her hair, her face, her weight. Trying not to smoke and drink so much. Not to be in a bad mood, yell at her husband, ruin her children. My agenda: hold nothing back.

Whether you've been following my journey for years or just finding out, I hope these weekly newsletters are a source of comfort and entertainment. I hope this running narrative of my life, peppered with psychological and scientific insights, is useful or at least, if nothing else, interesting. I hope you enjoy all of it.

Some Quotes I Write By:

"All good writers speak in honest voices and tell the truth."

— Eudora Welty

"There’s only one rule of show business, or writing. And that’s don’t be boring." 

—Joyce Carol Oates

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

— Maya Angelou

“Using any device that might possibly work, the writer has to snare the reader’s attention and keep it.”

—Shirley Jackson

As a paid subscriber, you have unlimited access to all the archives as well as the weekly newsletter that hits your inbox every Monday.

POPULAR STORIES YOU NOW HAVE ACCESS TO:

I JUST READ YOUR EMAIL: That time my mother's friend read this newsletter about my fight with my mother and sent me a rather scathing, rather revealing email of her own.

"When you get a message like this, when someone showers you with their interpretation of your actions, it doesn’t just make you feel bad, it makes you question yourself."

I'M NOT SCARED OF YOU: Ever want to know what it's really like being a writer? Here it is. How I got my book deal. What it takes to 'make it.' What it means to call yourself a writer.

"The thing no writer will say is their agent probably hasn't called in six months. That they speak to their agent twice, maybe once, a year. That in reality, they're terrified of their agent."

WHY WOMEN READ: One of the bigger fights I've had with my husband...and what I learned from it.

Cognitive psychologists have found that women are more empathetic than men, and possess a greater emotional range—traits that make fiction more appealing to them. In a way, reading is a metaphor for how women deal with pain.

THE SECRET TO MANIFESTATION: HOW TO STOP WANTING SOMETHING YOU WANT: There’s a common theory in sales that if you want a deal to close, go on vacation. Even my husband, all logic and science, adheres to this phenomena. This rule. This weird, unexplainable fact. Deals close when you leave the office. Your soulmate arrives when you swear off men, ditch the heels and go out with your girlfriends in sweatpants. Your kid takes his first steps when you turn your back. You get pregnant when you stop trying.

According to the Law of Attraction, when we want something, we put that vibration out. Once that want is embedded in us, we embed it in the universe and consciously and unconsciously work to make it happen. This is known as manifestation. That part is easy. The next step is where we mess it up.

About The Author

Lauren Martin is the author of The Book of Moods and the founder of Words of Women.