By Suzette Mullen
Seven years after my divorce, I was part of a beautiful tableau: my wife and I, my ex-husband and his wife, and my two sons and their partners together for cocktails on the beach. This moment represented the post-divorce life I’d desired, and which had, in my view, been long—too long—in the making.
I wrote a “tiny love story” about it—a 100-word essay I planned to submit to the New York Times . Damn, I was proud of this piece. I shared it with my sons and some colleagues, who raved about it.
I adore writing micromemoir. The beauty of distilling an entire story into a paragraph. The challenge of finding a narrative arc. The skill in deciding which details are necessary and which aren’t—because in a micromemoir, every word is precious. And with a tiny love story, the thrill of saying you were published in the New York Times . I knew what that felt like—I’d had one published in 2021. I’d also supported other writers as they crafted their tiny love stories. I was a pro at this short form!
My cocktails-on-the-beach tiny love story had a made-to-order narrative arc:
The beginning: “After my divorce, I longed for a modern family. Golden hour cocktails in Montauk with my sons, my ex-husband, our mutual friends, our new girlfriends. The divorce had been amicable.”
The middle: “Others weren’t ready. It would be years before I’d meet my ex’s new partner. My fantasy of spending holidays together was just that. Cocktails on the beach were divided up much like the wedding china had been years earlier.”
The ending: “This summer, a semi-circle of beach chairs. Rosé and sparkling water. Hummus and veggies. New friends, my ex and I, our wives, our sons, their partners. At last, everyone was ready.”
I was about to hit “submit” on the Times website when I realized I needed to include a photo. The only image I had of the day was one my older son had taken.
“Check with Dad,” he said, wanting to ensure my ex would be okay with it being published. So I reached out to my ex and shared the tiny love story as well.
A few hours later, I received an email. My ex wasn’t the least bit happy—and it wasn’t about the photo. His experience of what had transpired in the years since our divorce was radically different from mine.
I was rattled by—and disappointed with—his response but soon realized that my micromemoir was fundamentally flawed. I’d made an assumption that I understood how my ex was feeling. I’d unwittingly written a narrative about someone else’s journey instead of my own.
In my work as a book coach, I teach memoir writers that you can’t know what’s going on inside someone else’s head unless they tell you directly. And even then, it’s best practice to report what someone said instead of presenting their state of mind as fact. People often say one thing when they are thinking something very different.
This is Point of View 101. In fiction you have the option to include multiple POV characters and/or to have an omniscient narrator, someone who would be able to tell you what each of those cocktails-on-the-beach people was actually experiencing. But tiny love stories and longer form memoirs aren’t fiction. The only point of view you can present is your own. Somehow, I had forgotten that principle in my zeal to add another credential to my resume.
Could I have tweaked this micromemoir and made it work? Sure.
The opening about my longing for a modern family was fine. This was my point of view, although one could argue that “The divorce had been amicable” needed to clarify that this was my belief—although I’m nearly certain my ex would agree. A limitation of the micromemoir form is that it’s hard to express nuance.
The middle was more problematic: “Others didn’t appear to be ready” would have been more accurate than “others weren’t ready” since that would be from my point of view. And that oh-so-clever line about comparing cocktails with our wedding china? My ex called it out as BS.
The ending was also problematic. Now I was saying, everyone was ready. How could I know? And ready for what? My vision of a modern family spending holidays together? My ex made it clear that he was not ready for that.
His response forced me to assess my “why” for writing this piece the way I wrote it. That moment on the beach was a meaningful marker in my post-divorce journey but was I presenting a fairytale rather than reality? Was I using the power of the pen to manipulate others? What was this piece really about?
The day after I received my ex’s email, I called to apologize. He was gracious, as he usually is. We talked about that moment on the beach—what it meant to me and what it meant to him.
And, I did not submit the tiny love story to the Times . It was premature. I hadn’t yet done the hard work of digging deeply to find my story inside that lovely tableau.
I’ll do better next time.
___ Suzette Mullen (she/her) is a memoir and nonfiction book coach, retreat leader, and the author of the memoir The Only Way Through Is Out, forthcoming February 13, 2024, from the University of Wisconsin Press. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, today.com , among other outlets. As a book coach, Suzette focuses on amplifying the voices of LGBTQ+ writers as she guides them to find their deeper stories and define their big ideas. Learn more about Suzette, her services, and her memoir at her Your Story Finder website .
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