More to the Story Podcast with Janna Maron

Today on More to the Story Podcast: Writing, Energy, and the Creative Life with Susie Pratt On essay collections, self-doubt, literary community, and following the energy of your work Today I’m joined by my client Susannah (Susie) Pratt , author of More or Less: Essays from a Year of No Buying , a prize-winning essay collection that explores what it means to raise a family inside consumer culture...

Today on More to the Story Podcast, I’m talking with my client, Margaret Whitford, whose forthcoming memoir The History We Carry (She Writes Press, June 2026) explores the impact of generational trauma, a mother–daughter relationship shaped by wartime history, and how personal narrative becomes a place of refuge. Margaret and I began working together several years ago on the early draft of her boo...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: Returning Home, Rewriting Life — A Conversation with Chick Morgan Today I’m talking with my client Eileen “Chick” Morgan, a writer, singer-songwriter, podcaster, cabaret performer, and arts entrepreneur whose creative life is as rich and layered as her memoir, Everything’s a Two-Step But a Waltz: The Reluctant Texan Comes Home . Chick spent decades building a gl...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: Following the Thread — Intuition, Ancestry & Storytelling with Joella Aragón How a multigenerational story finds its form through lineage, spirituality, and lived experience Today I’m joined by my client Joella Aragón , a writer whose multigenerational, genre-bending book has been evolving for years — from memoir to fiction to speculative nonfiction and back aga...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: Talking Writing, Meditation, and the Long Journey of Memoir with Lori Wald This week I’m joined by my former client Lori Wald , mindfulness meditation teacher, personal essayist, and author of the Substack newsletter Tuesdays with Lori . Lori and I worked together back in 2020 on a full draft of her memoir, and in this conversation she shares where the project h...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: A Conversation with Lasell Bartlett — Horses, Healing, and Becoming the Designated Calm Person Today I’m talking with my client Lasell Jaretzki Bartlett , author of Getting Along with Rusty: Horses Healing and Therapeutic Riding, Mostly a Memoir and three accompanying workbooks: Becoming the Designated Calm Person , and Sensing Our Groundedness . Lasell integrat...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: Should You Even Be Writing a Book? How to Find Your Deep Why and Finally Make Progress Happy New Year and welcome to the first episode of 2026! In this solo episode, I’m talking about the real reason so many women struggle to make progress on their books—even when they deeply want to write them, invest in support, and start the year with the best intentions. Thi...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: A Conversation with Carrie Lea — Author of Granny Panty Chronicles Today I’m joined by my client Carrie Lea , author of the memoir Granny Panty Chronicles, a candid, funny, big-hearted story about dating and singleness and unexpectedly falling in love with a man who would become her husband — and whose two teenage sons would make her a proud “bonus mom.” In this...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: Everything Makes Perfect Sense with author Brinn Langdale I’m joined today by my client Brinn Langdale , whose powerful memoir Everything Makes Perfect Sense chronicles her journey through childhood trauma, self-discovery, and forgiveness. Brinn is a licensed psychotherapist who began her healing path at age 22, ultimately transforming her lived experience into...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: A Client Interview with Barbara Caver, author of the debut memoir A Little Piece of Cuba Barbara Caver joins me to talk about her debut memoir A Little Piece of Cuba: A Journey to Become Cubana Americana , which lands December 2 (She Writes Press / distributed by Simon & Schuster). We talk about the long, winding path from screenwriting and documentary work to c...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: An interview with author Molly Mogren Katt Molly holds a special place in the More to the Story universe—she was my very first coaching client when I launched my business in 2020! Molly finished her manuscript, Mom Geans , with me, and in this conversation she shares the ups and downs of her journey toward publishing. Her memoir explores the decision to have kid...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: A debrief + book outline session with anti-hustle coach Tracy Stanger I’m back after a summer pause to revamp how I’m integrating Substack with my work—and I’m kicking things off with a special conversation with my friend Tracy Stanger. We met on Instagram, grabbed coffee, and realized we share the same philosophy: do the work in a way that fits you . That turne...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: Why I Don’t Do Outlines for Memoirs (Part 2 of the Genre Conversation) This is a continuation of the genre conversation from the last episode , and I dive straight into something I get asked about all the time : book outlines. Specifically, why I do create outlines for prescriptive nonfiction (what I call memoir-ish), and why I don’t use outlines for memoir or p...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: Why I’m rethinking how I use the word “nonfiction” to describe the kind of books I work on. I’ve been rethinking how I describe the work I do with writers, and one thing has become clear: the word nonfiction doesn’t really serve us. It defines writing by what it isn’t, rather than what it is. In this episode, I talk about why that matters, how it affects the way...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: A Reintroduction After a Summer Break After a summer hiatus, I’m back with a fresh season of More to the Story. In this episode, I share what’s been happening behind the scenes—how I’ve been reflecting, pivoting, and rebuilding my business in a way that’s sustainable with my health and energizing for the women writers I serve. I also talk about Substack becoming...

There is a lot going on behind the scenes for me right now, including do I keep using the term “nonfiction” to talk about the work I do with women writing books?? What do you think? Leave me a comment with your thoughts! In today’s episode: - special birthday message to my husband, Jeremy, who’s birthday is June 2, the day this episode goes live 💜 - going through it: income loss, job loss, illnes...

Today on More to the Story Podcast: Why I don’t teach structure for books. Well, technically I do, but not in the way that others teach it. Another conversation I had with a woman at AWP during one of the mini book coaching sessions I held was all about her book, which she thinks is going to be kind of a big family saga spanning her grandmother’s life, her mother’s life, and her own life. She’s so...

Today on More to the Story: a simple (but not easy) way to affect change or the outcome you’re hoping to achieve. In today’s episode: - inspiration from a recent book that I read, Be Ready When the Luck Happens , by Ina Garten - how I feel about celebrity memoirs, even though I have read a few (listen to find out which ones!) - a popular TV show from the 1990s that I wasn’t allowed to watch when I...

When you’re close to being done with a manuscript project, what do you do? Do you finish the manuscript, and then start submitting? If it’s an essay collection, do you submit individual essays first, wait for them to get published, and then submit the manuscript? These questions and more in today’s episode about playing small, by which I mean limiting yourself by not taking advantage of all the op...

Staying organized is kind of a boring topic, but a practical and essential part of writing—especially if you‘re working on a book project. I’m talking about organization of writing material with all these different Word docs or Google docs or storing files on Dropbox. This came up in a conversation I had with a woman at AWP who booked one of my 15-minute book-coaching sessions. She’s working on an...

When I talk with women about their book projects, one of the most common things I hear them say over and over is: I feel like my book is missing something, but I don't know what it is. And I don't know how to figure IT out. In the episode: - the typical way these conversations go - what happens when I have these conversations & how I respond - why self-awareness & simply paying attention are essen...

This week I want to tell you a story about an experience I had a the beach and relate it to something I’ve been learning about and focusing on in my life and observing how it manifests in our writing, creative, and publishing lives. In this episode: - my husband Jeremy and I have been vacationing in Baja California, Mexico and we recently decided to see how it would be to drive there from our home...

I’m revisiting the topic of what a book coach does, and t’s on my mind because of the two conferences I went to last month in March (Alt Summit & AWP). At both conferences I held 15-minute mini book coaching session and had so many great conversations with women who are working on books. There were also a lot of people, more so at AWP, talking about what they do professionally and how they help wr...

Whew, we made it to April. March was an incredibly busy month for me. I was out of town March 14-17 for a conference called Alt Summit, and then again March 22-30 for another conference called AWP. Even before leaving for both those trips I was asking myself the question: was that the best decision? To commit to going to two conferences back-to-back? Last year when AWP was in Kansas City, I was on...

At one of the two conferences I attended last month, one of the questions I got was: what is a book coach? Which is the perfect question for a podcast episode. In this episode: - a newly published book by one of my clients! - the meetup I hosted on authors & publishing at the Alt Summit conference last month - realizing that I haven’t talked about what a book coach is on this podcast - certificati...