Zibby chats with co-authors Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling about THE MEMO, a smart, addictive, bittersweet, and ultimately triumphant debut novel about a woman who is approaching her 36th birthday, feeling like she missed life’s crucial “memo” as her friends succeed while she struggles—until she’s given the "memo” and can go back in time… Lauren and Rachel, who co-wrote the novel during the pandemic, drew from their experiences as underemployed freelancers, questioning the small choices that led them there. They discuss ambition, regrets, societal pressures, unseen struggles, and the subjective nature of success. They also share invaluable insights on their collaborative writing process.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, I have a dual podcast today.

Very, very exciting. Two guests, Rachel Dodes and also Lauren Meckling, who is a repeat guest on Talking About The Memo, which is so great because I actually use this expression all the time, and I hope that other people do and totally get the reference. Talk about what your book is about, please, and welcome.

Lauren: Thank you. Thanks for having us. 

Zibby: Of course. 

Lauren: Thanks, Zibby. So our book is, on the surface, it's a comedy. It's about a woman who is approaching her 36th birthday whose sense that she didn't get the memo is becoming, you know, increasingly, uh, pressing. All of her friends, people she came up with as she was A younger woman are killing it in the world and she just keeps looking around herself and wondering how on earth did she get where she has become.

But the book is also a like a time travel Fantasy where in fact by page 30 or so she is given the memo that she wondered if anyone else got and she's able to go back in time and relive her past mistakes,. 

Zibby: Which is so cool. 

Rachel: Yeah. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. 

Rachel: And we we wrote this during the height of the pandemic. So we were both stuck at home, underemployed freelancers with like really good degrees.

And we were wondering how we didn't get the memo. What could we have done differently? How did we wind up in this situation? And we began to think about all these little seemingly unimportant decisions that led us. to this moment. And we wanted to just talk about ambition and stifle ambition, what it means to live a good life and why people feel like they have to constantly be optimizing.

Zibby: So what were some of those moments for both of you where you feel like looking back, if you had made a different decision, your life would have gone in a different way? 

Rachel: Oh, God, there are so many. Lauren and I have been talking about this a lot. I was thinking for one of the recent ones I thought about was how I would have not been so critical of a friend's partner who was, she was dating this like horrible loser and really critical.

And she wound up figuring it out for herself and breaking up with him about a year later. But by then our relationship had gotten so strained because I was so harshly critical. So I would have told myself the memo would have told me just to chill out and to like, let things play out. 

Zibby: It's never a good idea.

You always think it might be a good idea, but it's never a good idea to get involved in someone else's relationship. We should just put that out there, right? 

Lauren: Yes. Yes. We can give people that memo now. Um, and for me, I mean, there I mean, the fun and paralyzing thing about this concept is that the memo can be these, like, huge, deep lessons that we maybe didn't fail to receive.

They could also be these tiny little tweaks to, you know, Thursday night, um, in 1993, you should have not stayed home and you should have gone to that house party because, you know, You would have met so and so who would have opened up such and such a door. So as I think about it, I mean, it spans from like people who I love who passed away.

Obviously I wish my mama would have told me to spend more time with them. And then more superficial things like the fact that I lived in the same city as Drake when I was 15 years old and on Degrassi, I could have become his buddy. And then, you know, and Rachel and I, I do feel like it's quite, it's not a coincidence.

We're both in the world of porn. of journalism, which has become increasingly difficult. And I think there's sort of, we took pleasure and like sad joy and laughing about the fact that, oh, had we gotten the memo, would we have become, you know, would we have been like startup founders or? You know, we graduated in college in the 90s when journalism was still a very sexy and promising avenue.

Rachel: Viable career, yeah. 

Zibby: I was there. I remember.

Oh, that was like the, the ultimate, it was like a job in a magazine that was like the thing 

Lauren: I didn't even know. Right. Well, we all, we all watched those movies. I mean every single rom-com from the late nineties 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Lauren: Was all about idolizing that world. 

Rachel: It's in the city. It was sexy. Job you could possibly have.

Zibby: Yeah. What do you think the equivalent is today? I know we're a little off topic here, but That's okay. Like what's, what's, what do you think today has the glamor that magazines had back then, if anything? 

Rachel: I think tech startups. Maybe not anymore, but they did maybe ten years ago. 

Zibby: Anyway. Okay. Well, let's talk about your characters for a minute too, now that I've, you know, derailed us.

So, the character of Hal, by the way, is the funniest boyfriend character I've read in a long time. I'm like, where did they come up with this guy? He's like Have you dated him? I have not dated him. I have not. I have other We won't even go there. But no. I have, I have not. Have you? Have you? 

Lauren: No. 

Rachel: Maybe. Maybe?

Zibby: A little?

Lauren: Sort of. 

Zibby: So, their chemistry is obviously, like, off the charts, which you capture very well, but you know, is he? a good guy underneath it all? Like, is his, you know, I just keep picturing him like in the wild of Costa Rica. I don't even know if you said Costa Rica, but that's where I'm imagining him. You did, right?

Costa Rica. 

Lauren: When they met, he was living in a tree house in Costa Rica. 

Zibby: Like, that's so perfect. You know, just like, I, I'm choosing sort of not to live in like the confines of U. S. society, you know, the whole balance and I'll do kind of what I want and, you know, it's all good. I don't know. I just love that. I just love him.

Where did he come from?

Rachel: I think we just didn't want him to be, he's not evil. He's not a bad guy. We wanted to create, uh, a character that was like, he's a good person. He's just kind of self absorbed and living his own life and adhering to his own rules. But he's not for her, you know, and if she got the memo, she would have known not for her.

Lauren: But yeah, I think we've all dated men who are incredibly appealing and incredibly actual duds who we, he just, they don't present as such. So I think we kind of put together every single Personality trait that would be incredibly exciting. I mean, this guy, he's stunning. He's tall. He has this great little man bun, but it's not too, it's not creepy and long.

It's just a little bun. He is interested in philosophy. He lives in a tree house in Costa Rica and he's getting his PhD and he reads philosophy. And I think everyone I know has had somebody like that, a guy like that who presents himself and Spends a little bit of time in her timeline. 

Zibby: Well, I mean, her mom knew, right?

I feel like moms always see this. They are the first people who should not be commenting on relationships, I'll say. 

Rachel: Yes, and that's part of the reason why she stayed with him for so long. To kind of prove her mom wrong when she knows she's right. 

Zibby: So, tell me about developing this new relationship. App, right?

I love like the boxing gloves and like the whole thing. If it were an app, talk, talk about how you came up with it and the specifics behind it and all of the fun stuff. 

Lauren: I will say the most fun thing for me, because right, this an app, the Memo app, it gives you your little directives of how you should live your life or how you should have lived your life.

But what was fun was us coming up with the idea you. That what it's powered by is not rocket fuel or electricity. It's actually powered by one's jealousy and regret. So if, if somebody is holding a phone, looking at their directives of what they should have done, and then they just feel shitty enough, pardon me, lousy enough about the, the roads they have walked down, then They're able to be propelled into this alternate sphere, and I will let Rachel go on because Rachel is the tech meister of this book.

Rachel: Well, I just feel like there was a time when everybody was like, there's an app for that. There's an app for that. So like, why shouldn't there be an app? For this, you know, like why wouldn't these physicists come up with a very simple way to get your memo right now and be transported through time if and as Lauren was saying, it's it is propelled by jealousy and regret because those emotions really do take us back in our minds.

To the past, you know, instead of looking forward, you're just sort of like mired in the past. So what if there was something that could actually physically take you to that moment. 

Zibby: Would be so neat? 

Well, actually, what? I don't know. I don't know. 

Lauren: Maybe, maybe I would. I would. I will say if someone gave me the opportunity to go back to all my past moments, I definitely would jump on that bus.

Zibby: I guess it depends on which one. And then, like, what are the new problems that might come of that? Right? Which is the whole, you know, part of the point. Like, it's not just one thing. It's like the ripple of all the things. 

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that's another thing. Cause Rachel and I are in our forties and You know, we, as people in their 20s and 30s, I feel like the narratives that women write tend to be about figuring out your way to get to your lodestar, your like golden, you know, the moment that you want to arrive at.

And we wrote this at a, at a place where we were more looking backwards and it just opened up more paths and this sense of all of the what ifs because there are millions of what ifs that are entwined and what really did happen. 

Zibby: Mm hmm. Awesome. Well, I just love. All the friendships here and the different roles that your friends play over time and like Gita and then Sophie, who's like the young one at work.

And who's the influencer again, Alexis or something that Courtney, no, what is her name? What's the name of the influencer? The artist. Yeah. Who are her boss wants to meet because she like has so many followers. Yes. Yes. What does she make? She makes vulva sculptures. Oh, yeah. Sculptures. That's right.

Sculptures. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I love how our friends are also a crucial part of this narrative of what happens and how your experiences are sort of interlinked as you go along and how theirs are as well. Talk about that for a little bit and how you sculpted those characters and if you had people in mind, or You know, the role of the work friend and the long term friend and, you know, the one you've drifted apart from but comes back for the reunion and all that stuff.

Rachel: Yeah, I think that's part of the story to just sort of how friends come in and out of your life in different times. And sometimes if you're spending all your time climbing the corporate ladder or focusing on work, you could drop a friend who could potentially be the one thing you need later on. In life.

So we wanted Gita the best. We spent a lot of time thinking about her because she's the best friend. She's the ride or die. And she's kind of the cautionary tale of the person who gets like so caught up in work that she can't. Like retain authentic relationships later on in life. And she's, you know, she's killing it.

She's successful. She seems happy, but there's like an undercurrent underneath of stress and regret, and I don't want to reveal too much about what happens to her because, you know, you have to read the book, but. 

Zibby: And speaking of the book, as well. I mean, I know, of course, that is what we're talking about, but the writing of the book itself, let me say.

How did the two of you go about writing this together? What was the process like? And how did you find it relative to how you thought? And if you could go back and start at the beginning, would the app tell you to go back to doing this project? 

Lauren: Yes, yes, yes. I'm going to start with it. I feel like this is a, that's a question that there's multiple layers to because when you write a book with somebody, it's not just about a book with somebody.

It's about. It's probably the most intimate relationship you can embark on with a human being. So in terms of writing it, Rachel and I, we kind of connected, we, or we had been colleagues together in the nine, like late, early aughts at the Wall Street Journal. We really were fond of each other. And then we kind of like drifted off.

And then we came back together. We real, we were both on Twitter and Cracked each other up a lot. And then Rachel reached out to me and said, do you want to work on something together? And I, at the time I was promoting my last novel, which was like a very exciting and solitary premise. And I said, I would love that because she's so good.

And we, in terms of writing the novel, it, it was logistically, it was a, um, I mean, it actually just made total sense. We, we, we came up with an outline and we just each took turns every day going in a Google doc and playing around something, but then something else happened. And I'll let Rachel explain what happened.

Yeah, 

Rachel: sometimes we wrote asynchronously. Sometimes sometimes we were in the document at the same time, writing notes to each other. But what we realized as we were doing this was that, you know, 95 percent of the work was not synchronized. Yeah. About the writing, it was about all of the other conversations we were having constantly texting about this weird thing that happened or, you know, this strange neighbor or like lunch cancellation etiquette and, you know, driving around and, and talking about everything and sharing podcasts and, you know, it all just wound up making its way into the book in some form or another.

Zibby: Hmm. 

Rachel: Well, that's convenient. You can't waste any words. Somehow, you know, we'd be like, Oh, that thing is so funny. Let's, let's put that in, you know? And, uh, right. I think just talking about regular stuff in our lives had this magical effect on making the characters richer and making the story more believable.

Zibby: So what is the takeaway to readers from the app and the book itself? Should we be living life more intentionally along the way? Like, what can we do, because we can't go back as much as we might want to. Should we bother looking back? How do we take the message and live better as a result? 

Lauren: Well, I don't think we're trying to give people a takeaway message.

I think we're playing around with an idea, which is what if you could go back and your life could have been a fairy tale that you had failed to set up and set in motion, and what if you could have experienced it as such, so. I don't know. I think people should read the book. I mean, as the book proceeds, there's like two dual plot lines.

It's kind of like sliding doors. It's our main character living her regular life as a wonderful loser and living her life as a burdened winner and don't, I mean, our main character makes the decision at the end of the book. Where she wants to go and where she wants to land, but I do feel like the takeaway is like less about where you should land, but more just realizing that there are so many infinite tendrils of where your life could go based on any decision, and maybe it's best not to get bogged down by thinking about your regret about the thing that you didn't do in 1996, etc.

Rachel: Yeah, and I think it's also about what. society dictates is success and what is a winner and what is a loser and how that can be an enemy to progress. 

Zibby: Mm hmm. 

Interesting. I mean, do you feel like you're losers? You said you were, you were joking about it at the beginning, like, like, you know, during COVID, like, where did we miss the memo ourselves?

But like, I don't see you guys as losers. Losers? Like you're, you know what I mean? Do you actually think on even any sort of objective scale about yourselves that way? 

Lauren: No, I think we've had so many, no, I don't, I don't think we are on any objective scale, uh, scale losers. I think everyone wonders, what would have happened if I had tried to like work with Elon Musk?

Like would I have been You know, chief of staff, what would have happened if we had gone to Hollywood? Would we be writing Tom Cruise movies, et cetera? So we were more grappled. We weren't grappling, I don't think, so much with our sense of being losers, but what could have been? And I think everyone has that question.

I think everyone has that friend who somehow is like, The head of Victoria's Secret, or I don't know, like, runs a summer camp that's incredible. And we, we can just look at everyone who we've grown up with and thinking, well, that seems nice. Like, why am I still doing what I'm still doing? And I think, you know, to not give anything away, but I think the message of the book is to To not get totally, um, bogged down by the, you know, the, the, the idea of, well, what could I have been besides myself?

Rachel: Right. And nobody is perfect, obviously. And when you look deeper into someone else's life, like they're struggling to, even if it appears on the surface that they're doing everything right. And that they have the memo, they are screwing up all the time as well. Do you two have another book planned together?

Not, I mean, we've talked about it, but we're not working on anything presently, but we might. 

Zibby: You never know, okay? Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? 

Lauren: Yeah, here's the memo. Go for it, Rachel. 

Rachel: I think the, this was my first, novel and I was really daunted about writing it. Um, Lauren and I were going to write it as a script and then she was like, let's do it as a novel because then it could be all different things.

And she was right. And I was like, well, I've never written a novel before. And she's like, don't worry, I'll help you. So I think that With enough work and dedication and perseverance, just keep going. You, if you have an idea, don't give up. That, that would be my advice to writers. 

Zibby: Amazing. That's great advice.

Well, congratulations. Lauren, are you still into clogs, or do you still do all that? Didn't you used to have clog life? 

Lauren: Of course. I still do all that. 

Zibby: Amazing. I think of you. I have a pair of clogs that I got after our interview last time, and every time I see them in my closet, I actually think of you, so you're, you're on my mind far more than you probably think that you are, just so you know.

Rachel: It's a clog world. We're just living. 

Zibby: A clog world. 

Lauren: Yeah, the clogs aren't going anywhere. Um, sorry. 

Zibby: Love it. Um, okay. Well, thank you all for coming on. Congratulations. 

Lauren: Thanks, Zibby. Bye. 

Rachel: Thank you so much, Zibby. This was great. 

Zibby: Okay. Bye bye. Bye.