High Five With Lauren Mechling
The co-author of The Memo on five of her current obsessions.
Each month, I ask an author I love to share five recommendations they have for other writers, whatever is the wind beneath their wings when they sit down to write. This month I reached out to Lauren Mechling, author of The Memo, and senior editor at the Guardian US. Lauren’s work has also appeared inn the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New Yorker online, and Vogue, where she wrote a regular book column. I was lucky enough to see Lauren and her co-author Rachel Dodes at their book launch in Brooklyn last month and I’ve been keeping myself awake way past my usual bedtime laughing out loud page after page as I read their book. Every character is delicious. Every dilemma the narrator, Jenny Green, deals with feels true to life. This is as close to a beach read as I get - a super smart, funny, endearing book that makes me feel seen and like I haven’t missed the boat on my own life.
So without further ado I’m handing the metaphorical microphone over to Lauren.
Sheep on Instagram
I keep finding myself opening up Instagram and searching the tags #sheep, #sheepsheep, and #sheepsofinstagram. The pictures that pop up—sometimes of solo creatures in soulful closeups, other times of mommies and their lambs—cheer me when I am feeling blue, or tired, or stressed. In an early draft of The Memo, the love interest was a Welsh farmer whom the protagonist watched via a live sheepcam from her perch in Pittsburgh. I guess I’m doing the same thing, though I have cut out the middleman and gone straight to the flock.
Lipton Onion Soup Mix
My latest snack obsession: the dip that housewives served in the 1950s. I make mine with yogurt rather than sour cream so I can tell myself it’s healthy. I know I should pair it with carrot and celery sticks but I’m more of a pretzel girl. But at least there’s yogurt! Why did it take me so long to locate this love? I’ve been blowing through the Lipton boxes so fast I just ordered a six pack.
(Un)cover Girl
Like all intense friendships, my relationships with podcasts go in cycles. I’ll become obsessed with a show and listen to every episode, then start again and re-listen, until my love inevitably fades (it always makes me sad when the last part happens). My current number one pick for middle-of-the-night insomnia sessions is this charmer from two young LA-based culture writers, Ivana Ritter and Beatrice Hazlehurst. Every week they present a deep and hilarious reading of a celebrity profile from the annals of glossy magazine history, weaving in their insider insight on the artifice and also the art of these juicy articles. The episode on the 2006 Vanity Fair piece on Lindsay Lohan was especially yummy.
My Co-Writer
Speaking of Vanity Fair, I am lucky enough to be in professional bed with Rachel Dodes, the mastermind behind a range of outrageously good VF profiles, including a recent one on a creepy biohacker bro who, like, injects his son’s blood, and the jaw-dropping profile of Rebekah Neumann (the Marie Antoinette of WeWork whom Anne Hathaway portrayed in her best performance ever). Rachel and I write together but we also talk to each other on the phone a whole lot. Our conversations might not make sense to the casual eavesdropper—we will burst into hysterics at the most random things (“corridor,” “King Gabriel, “bulk delete,” to name a few). We recently decided to start Funny Girls, a Substack whose purpose is to highlight short-form comedic writing by women. (“A community. A safe space. A man cave, but for women” is how we put it in our first installment.) As Mr. Beast or Jojo Siwa would say: “Like, comment, subscribe!” We have some fun pieces coming.
The New Taylor
I get it. I don’t have the most sophisticated musical taste (I love the Counting Crows). Taylor Swift’s latest album, which has been excoriated by music critics the world over, doesn’t just speak to me, though; The Tortured Poet’s Department is basically all I’ve been listening to ever since it came out. Somehow I went to Edinburgh to see her in concert last week (actually I know how: my nine-year-old put a gun to my head), and I give the show a 10/10 with one exception: She neglected to sing “So Long London.”
BREAKING NEWS: I am pulling back the curtain on the book publishing industry! Join me for Ask An Agent: The Secrets To Selling Your Book on July 31st @ 3:30 - 5:00 pm ET where you’ll get my tips/tricks from selling my own book + ask a book agent anything you want.
Apply for my 6-Month Book Incubator kicking off September 25th! More details here. Application here.
LAST CHANCE: Are you looking for a writing retreat in upstate New York this summer with childcare? I'll be teaching a one week workshop during Omega's Family Week to help you unlock your story while your kid is in camp during the day. Join us July 21-26! MORE DETAILS AND REGISTRATION HERE.
