Hey Reader,

A friend out here in Sag Harbor had me and a few other women over for cocktails this summer by her beautiful garden and pool.

She made a little speech to introduce each of us (love this) and said about me, “I’ve been friends for years with Laura’s husband, Steve, through art” — she’s a gallery owner, he’s an obsessive collector art enthusiast — “and then really got to know Laura when I read her book, Tough Titties. It shared so openly and I related to so much of it, I knew I wanted to be friends with this person.”

Yay for Tough Titties. Making me friends all over the map. Some of them with pools. (Also, in this case, a partner who’s a cardiac surgeon — a perk I hope never comes in handy.)

The woman sitting next to me, an interior designer, later asked, “If one was not a writer at all, in any way, but had a real story to tell and wanted to write a memoir, how would they start?”

I had so much to say about the “not a writer” part, and I knew my friend Suzanne Kingsbury, who’d come with me, would have had even more — but Steven was expecting us back for dinner and had started texting his favorite “hurry the f up” emoji.

…So I skipped over the TED talk about how we’re all writers and told her the first things I’d do:

1. Start writing down everything I might want to tell, without worrying about order or trying to make it good, and
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2. Join Terri Trespicio’s New Rules Studio and start coming to sessions as frequently as possible.

In fact, I’m going to reach out to her now and suggest she sign up for the free week that starts next Monday, July 27th, and includes a special session that Wednesday exclusively for my Shrimpers.

And you should come, too. Because you’re a writer, know it or not. And you probably have things you want to write, and could use a setting and structure that draws them out of you, even on days when you think you’ve got nothing. Or think you aren’t a writer.

​Sign up here to test out Studio during free week (and write with me).​

xoLaura

PS - At the risk of sounding conceited, another thing I’d recommend to someone who wants to write a memoir or personal essays is: READ TOUGH TITTIES!​

Countless people have told me it inspired them to write their own stories, or to write with more story. And BTW, I wrote a lot of the book in Gateless salons.

Read more about the Gateless method when you sign up here.

PPS - Suzanne documented our tardiness:

PPPS - A recent record of texted snails. You might call it a “snail trail” but let’s not (do not look up on Urban Dictionary).

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