Hi storytellers,

I can’t believe it’s the last episode of the season. This flew by.

Episode 10: Stories are Actually Everywhere

It's graduation day! In our season finale, I'm sharing real-world examples of how storytelling tools show up everywhere: in courtrooms, research labs, film sets, and more. It turns out being a better storyteller makes you better at a lot of things. And we say goodbye until next time. KIT!

I loved doing this episode because… well, because it was one last episode that me and Laura got to do together. And because it’s one last time I get to be in your ears… this season.

And… WE DID IT! We made it through all ten episodes together! You now have MANY of the tools you need to tell better stories, and I can’t wait to hear what you do with them.

This isn’t goodbye. I’ve got some very exciting things planned here on Substack (maybe some exclusive audio?), I’m teaching workshops and giving keynotes, I’m available for story audits, and I’m pretty sure there’s a Season 2 in our future.

If you want to keep exploring storytelling with me, make sure you’re subscribed here on Substack! It’s where I put all my course announcements, exclusive offers, and embarrassing secrets.

Subscribe now

But for now, thank you for trusting me with your time. And more soon!

Listen to the episode

Read the transcript

Want to start from the beginning? Go here!

One last prompt:

Pay attention when someone else tells a story this week. At a party, on a date, whenever. See if you can spot the elements we talked about: context, stakes, change, theme. And notice how that changes how you see the story, the teller, yourself!

Resources & Links:

• Get your gold star! Share a storytelling question.

• Bring me to your group or org!

• Subscribe to get the free workbook.

XO,

Micaela

p.s. Reviews really help new listeners find the podcast—if you’re enjoying The Story Letter, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts!

It’s called “New Frames for Old Stories.” We’re talking about emotional timestamping and storytelling (see podcast episode 3!). Find out more, register here and come hang out with me.

Hi friends,

New podcast episode!

Episode 9: Safe Conditions for Daring Decisions

Learn my strategy for taking bigger risks by creating the right safety nets. In this episode, I’m sharing how a recent discovery gave me a new lens for understanding all of my stories. Plus how I got over my fear and released my audio memoir.

I loved doing this episode because once again my wonderful producer Laura Boach made it possible to do something that felt a little scary. Laura was my safe condition for a daring decision.

Though I would like to say, the scary thing wasn’t necessarily disclosure. Being neurodivergent is not something I’ve kept a secret and now I’m “coming out.” Most people in my life, my students, family, friends, already know about my lovely brain. It’s on my website, for pete’s sake.

But if you are late-diagnosed anything, you know that it’s a big deal when you find out. This episode is about that.

The other plot twist here is a little meta.

I actually recorded this episode last year, on release day for my Audible Original, in December 2024. I was partly excited but mostly I was ready to bury that project (the Audible, I mean) in the backyard of the internet.

I was terrified. I thought it was going to be so embarrassing.

Instead, things went a very different way. The Audible became kind of a word-of-mouth hit and I heard from so many people who saw themselves in the story.

And… now it is going to be a regular book! My debut memoir is coming from HarperOne in 2027; it starts with the story in “You Will Not Recognize Your Life” and goes much, much deeper. (With even more jokes. And possibly footnotes, but I have to ask my editor about that.)

Finally: I loved doing this episode because you know what, if you can compare your own emotional life to the Ocean’s Eleven heist, do it.

Let’s go!

Listen here

Read the transcript

Ready for Episode 10? It’s here!

Want to start from the beginning? Go here!

This week’s prompt:

What are your safe conditions for daring decisions? What do you need to feel secure enough to share a story, to be honest, to take a risk?

Resources & Links:

• Get your gold star! Share your biggest storytelling challenge

• Need story help? Work with me!

• Get the free workbook for newsletter subscribers.

• Listen to my Audible Original, You Will Not Recognize Your Life

XO,

Micaela

p.s. Reviews really help new listeners find the podcast—if you’re enjoying The Story Letter, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts!

Episode 8: Twenty-Five Years Later: The Art of Endings

What do you do when your story isn’t over yet? Or when the perfect ending shows up 25 years later? Today we’re tackling the art of endings. I’m sharing a story about a confrontation that gave me closure after decades—in the middle of the Park Slope Food Co-op, obviously.

I loved doing this episode because the only things I really miss about New York City, now that I live in Portland, ME, are my niece, my nephew and the Park Slope Food Co-op.

The Park Slope Food Co-op is a polarizing institution, or it was when I lived in NYC. They write New Yorker articles about this place.

If you don’t know, it’s a members-only grocery store and all the members have to work shifts. There is plenty that’s ridiculous about that place, the rules can be very intense and the personalities are something else, and I was almost NEVER all the way caught up on my work shifts.

But I really love when a bunch of people, who don’t necessarily know each other all that well, work together toward something that feels high stakes but isn’t.

It’s why I did theater in high school.

My favorite thing about the Park Slope Food Co-op is that anyone can pick up one of the intercom phones in the aisles and make an announcement, like if you’re looking for a particular cheese that’s not in stock or you find someone’s wallet.

I once made an announcement asking for suggestions for a vegetarian shank bone on my Seder Plate. I got in a WHOLE exchange, again all over the intercom, with several fellow members. Two of whom seemed to be former romantic partners, and it clearly hadn’t ended well.

Let’s do it!

Listen to the episode!

Read the transcript

Ready for Episode 9? It’s here!

Want to start from the beginning? Go here!

This week’s prompt:

Try writing five different possible last lines for a story you’re working on. Try one next time you tell your story. How does that land?

Resources & Links:

• If you’re enjoying The Story Letter, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts!

• Bring me to your organization, course or group.

• Get the free workbook exclusively for newsletter subscribers.

XO,

Micaela

My online, 6-week storytelling course, Your Story Out Loud, starts March 17th. It’s a small group with personalized feedback, and we’ll work on shaping your stories for memoir, performance, or essays. Just a few spots left. Join us!

Ok, so let’s keep that party going:

Episode 7: Structure is Your Type A Friend

People get worried that too much structure will make their stories boring. But let me show you how the right framework can actually help you get weird! I’ll prove it with a story about how structure gave me the confidence to try something I never thought I’d do. Hint: this story has a tear-away skirt in it.

I loved doing this episode because I really do believe in story structure, and any chance I have to talk about it is a good day.

In June 2025, I told a version of this story on the Moth MainStage here in Portland, Maine. The host of the MainStage was my old friend and brilliant storyteller Peter Aguero, who was, in fact, the friend that originally invited me to do burlesque. Such a wonderful coincidence! And when we went to do sound check at the State Theater, Peter called me to the stage with my burlesque name, which he still remembered 13 years later:

“PROFESSOR TA-TA HONEYTUSH.”

Let’s go!!

Listen to Ep 7 here

Read the transcript

Ready for Episode 8? It’s here!

Want to start from the beginning? Go here!

This week’s prompt:

Find a framework that will make you feel secure. It could be the Story Spine, or an outline, or whatever template works for you. Then figure out how to innovate inside of that template.

Resources & Links:

• Get the Story Spine template in the Story Letter Companion Workbook (free when you subscribe)

• Jo Boobs’ Book: The Burlesque Handbook (fun fact, my brilliant editor at HarperOne, Rakesh Satyal, also edited this book!)

• Get The Story Audit (a brand new offer from me!)

• Get the free workbook for newsletter subscribers.

XO,

Micaela

Want more storytelling practice? My online, 6-week course, Your Story Out Loud, starts March 17th. It’s a small group with personalized feedback, and we’ll work on shaping your stories for memoir, performance, or essays. Just a few spots left. Join us!

Episode 6: Get to the Heart of Your Story

Finding the deeper themes in your stories can solve both the “too much” and “not enough” problems. So let’s talk theme! To illustrate how to use “theme” as an editing tool, I’ll share a story about time travel, coincidences, and the transformative joy of performing medium-quality comedy shows after 10pm, in basements.

Ok I loved doing this episode because TIME TRAVEL! As a truly exclusive behind-the-scenes peek (no one has seen these except the 23 people who attended this show, and Producer Laura Boach!), I want to share with YOU a couple of the props from the solo comedy show that I talk about in this episode. The show was called “Causality: A Single Ladies’ Guide to Time Travel on a Budget,” and these props were created by my extremely funny friend Chris Isaacson.

Listen to Episode 6

Read the transcript

Ready for Episode 7? It’s here!

Want to start from the beginning? Go here!

This week’s prompts:

• Choose one or two of your stories. Ask yourself: what is this story really about for me? Are there other things that happened at this same time that might relate? if you’re stuck, try telling it out loud to someone (see Episode 5)!

• If you could meet 18-year-old you, what would they tell you? What would you tell them?

Resources & Links:

• Need story help? Work with me!

• Get the free workbook for newsletter subscribers.

XO,

Micaela

p.s. Reviews really help new listeners find the podcast—if you’re enjoying The Story Letter, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts!

Episode 5: Go Ahead. Share Before You’re Ready.

You might think you need to perfect your story before sharing it with anyone. Respectfully, you would be wrong. Today we’re exploring the power of “social drafting.” And I’m taking you behind the scenes of my memoir-writing process with a story that didn’t make the final cut of my 2024 Audible Original.

I loved making this episode because social drafting (the idea of sharing a story out loud IN ORDER to edit it, not AFTER you edit it) is one of my very favorite storytelling “hacks.” And people do it naturally, so really I’m just pointing out that you are already a storytelling genius.

Another reason I loved making this episode: I talk about the nineties to a worrying degree. I can’t stop telling anyone born after 1982: in college, we had PINE email, just white text on black screens. I didn’t have a cell phone until I was 22. I miss my big black zippered portfolio of CD’s. No one wants to hear about it this much, so having a structured way to talk about college is best for everyone involved.

As luck would have it, I am IN ACTUAL FACT writing this post while listening to the almost-unlistenable 1998 classic “Hooch” by Everything. I wish I was kidding.

Let’s do it!

Listen to Episode 5

Read the transcript

Ready for Episode 6? It’s here!

Want to start from the beginning? Go here!

This week’s prompt:

Try a story idea out loud. Tell it to anyone—a friend, a partner, someone on a date. Just make sure they know you’re trying out a story. Notice what you learn.

Resources & Links:

• Need story help? Work with me!

• Get the free workbook just for newsletter subscribers.

• Listen to my Audible Original, You Will Not Recognize Your Life

XO,

Micaela

P.S. Reviews really help new listeners find the podcast. If you're enjoying The Story Letter, I'd be so grateful if you'd leave a quick rating or review on Apple Podcasts!

Ready to dive deeper? I’m teaching an online, 6-week storytelling & memoir intensive with Writing Workshops starting March 17th. It’s a small class with lots of feedback and sharing as you shape stories for memoir, performance, or essays. Registration is open!

Hi friends! New podcast episode:

Episode 4: Bad Tango, Good Story

Let’s get tactical! This week I’m breaking down the three key elements that turn a story idea into a capital-S Story: context, stakes, and change. Plus you’ll hear these tools in action as I workshop a brand new story live, sharing my thought process and decisions along the way.

I loved doing this episode because it’s a little bit scary, as someone who tells stories for my job, to tell you a story that I hadn’t practiced or really figured out. But scary can be fun. Also, when I teach teachers how to teach storytelling, we talk a lot about “walking the walk.” Basically, if you’re going to ask your students to do something vulnerable, you should be ready to do it yourself, too. So that’s what I’m doing. Deep breath. Here we go!

Listen to the episode

Read this episode's transcript

Ready for Episode 5? It’s here!

Want to start from the beginning? Go here!

This week’s prompt:

Take a story idea of your own and ask yourself those three questions: What’s the context we need? What’s at stake for you? And how did this experience change things for you, a little or a lot?

Resources & Links:

• Alejandro Puerta on TripAdvisor (he’s the best - check out the reviews)

• Need story help? Work with me!

• Get the free workbook just for newsletter subscribers.

• Listen to my Audible Original, You Will Not Recognize Your Life

Reviews for The Story Letter

Wonderful to be featured in the podcast newsletter, Podcast Delivery, this week! Check it out here.

I’m also thrilled that the amazing Lauren Passell of Podcast the Newsletter featured The Story Letter in “Podcasts I’m Texting My Friends” this week. Read her lovely review here and tell your friends!

Starting next week, every week of release I’ll be featuring a listener review in this section… if you write one on Apple Podcasts, that could be you!

XO,

Micaela

p.s. Here’s your vintage car ad for the week:

Episode 3: New Versions of Old Stories

What happens when we revisit old stories with fresh eyes? Today we're thinking about how time and perspective can change our narratives completely. And I'll take you on a field trip to my middle school years (and my literal middle school) that changed how I see my past.

I loved doing this episode because of my producer, Laura Boach. She is incredible, period, you can hear it with your own ears. But also, this was a vulnerable story, and having Laura on Zoom with me during recording just made me feel very safe.

It reminded me that listening is a full-on gift, and that stories don’t really exist without listeners. Not to get too “if a tree falls in the forest” about it. That space between teller and listener is a tiny little bit sacred, whether you’re in person in a theater of 2500, or on Zoom with a blanket over your head and one listener in your headphones.

Anyway. Let’s do it! And HI LAURA I LOVE YOU!

Listen now

Read the episode transcript

Ready for Episode 4? It’s here!

Want to start from the beginning? Go here!

This week’s prompts:

• What’s a place that holds a lot of memories that you might want to return to?

• What are the stories you always tell? What stories might you want to revisit to see what is still true and what might actually just be an old version?

Resources & Links:

• Need story help? Work with me!

• Get the free workbook for newsletter subscribers.

XO,

Micaela

P.S. Reviews really help new listeners find the podcast. If you’re enjoying The Story Letter, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts!

This week's Story Letter podcast episode is here:

Episode 2: Which Story Should You Tell?

Feeling blocked about which story to tell? I’ve got you. Learn why the “most dramatic” story isn’t always the best one to tell, and discover how to pick the stories that matter to YOU. Plus, I’ll share how one of my very first storytelling performances taught me a lesson about being “myself.”

I loved doing this episode because I just love remembering my student Laszlo. Also, my tallest soapbox is that you don’t have to be tragic or sensational to have a story worth telling, and that’s what we’re exploring here.

I ran into Laszlo at a student’s Bat Mitzvah 5 years after we said goodbye. He was SO tall, and we talked about video games. He was studiously casual with me, which I appreciated. It was pretty much everything I ever wanted in a reunion with a former student.

Listen to Episode 2

Read the transcript

This week’s prompt:

Start with things that matter to YOU, not just with things you think people would find interesting. Then think about who you might tell your story to, where you’ll be, and what you’d like to do with your story.

Resources & Links:

• WATCH “MOVING” – My Moth story about Laszlo and The Wolf (you can watch me discover that I love storytelling IN REAL TIME, before your very eyes)

• Need story help? Work with me!

• Subscribe for the free workbook.

XO,

Micaela

P.S. Ready for the next episode? It’s here!

Want to start from the beginning? Go here!

Take a class with me! My online, 6-week course with Writing Workshops, called Your Story Out Loud, starts March 17th. It’s a small group with lots of feedback and support, and we’ll work on shaping short, personal stories for memoir, performance, or essays. There are still spots left. Find out more here.

It’s the very first episode of The Story Letter Podcast!

Episode 1: Why Tell Stories At All?

Are middle schoolers as scary as they seem? This episode is our jumping-off point for a season all about personal stories: what they can do, why they matter, and how to tell them. I’ll break down some unexpected ways that stories can transform both the teller and the listener, and I’ll share a moment I had with a fifth grader that showed me just how powerful a personal story can be.

I loved doing this episode because recording this was when I realized: WAIT, I can tell stories about storytelling! You might not know this, but there is almost NOWHERE that stories about storytelling are appropriate. They are just too meta. They make your older brother call you “anecdotal” and not in the complimentary way.

But here? Here we are all welcome. The long-winded storytellers, the bullet point listers, the tellers-about-telling. This is the start of a wonderful trip together and I brought edamame.

Listen to Episode 1

Read the transcript

Ready for Episode Two? It’s here!

This week’s prompt:

How do you want to use storytelling? Are you thinking of a specific situation where you want to tell a story? Do you want to learn a new skill? Or do you want to figure out an experience that’s been confusing you?

Resources & Links:

• Need story help? Work with me!

• Subscribe to The Story Letter for the free workbook for newsletter subscribers.

XO,

Micaela

Want to dive deeper? Your Story Out Loud is my online, 6-week course with Writing Workshops. It starts March 17th: a small group with lots of feedback and support, and we’ll work on shaping short, personal stories for memoir, performance, or essays. There are still spots left. Find out more here!

In case you haven’t heard, I have a podcast that goes with this Substack! The Story Letter Podcast is all about telling better stories.

And I made a companion workbook for The Story Letter Podcast JUST for newsletter subscribers, so you can follow along with the prompts and lessons using your own stories.

It’s (imaginatively) called The Story Letter Companion, and here’s how you get your paws on it!

If you already subscribe to The Story Letter on Substack and you can’t find your workbook, just request it here and I will send it to you right away.

If you don’t subscribe to The Story Letter on Substack yet, simply sign up for free and you’ll get the link to the workbook in your welcome email!

I hope you like the workbook. It’s got frameworks, exercises and prompts for all ten episodes of Season One, and I’m unreasonably proud of the formatting.

(As many of you know, I was a third grade teacher for all of my twenties. Believe it or not I found making worksheets one of the most enjoyable parts of the job, along with laminating things and decorating my classroom door. But I can’t come decorate your door, so this will have to do.)

Ready to get started?

• Listen to the podcast

• Subscribe to get the workbook

• Work with me

Ok bye, I love you!
Micaela

p.s. I just wanted to show you the original car ad that I used for my workbook graphic so you could compare them side by side and admire the font matching I did, etc. This is what happens when you live in Maine and you’re snowed in. GRAPHIC DESIGN GENIUS!

Happy New Year! Guess what. My podcast, The Story Letter, is officially live!

The first two episodes will drop on January 14th, but the trailer is already in my podcast feed. With cover art and everything. Which is a feat of technological skill, if you know me at all.

Listen to the trailer

The Story Letter is a podcast about telling better stories.

This first season, in ten bite-sized episodes, I’ll walk you through the whole arc of crafting a personal story to share. And of course, I’ll be sharing plenty of my own stories along the way. (Also bite-sized.)

It’s like a workshop with me, but with bloopers.

Episodes will drop weekly starting January 14th. I’ll be sharing them in emails to this very newsletter that include just-for-you stories and more. But I recommend that you subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode.

Oh! And I also have a gift for you: just for Story Letter Substack subscribers, I’ve created The Story Letter Companion Workbook so you can really dive into your own story work with me.

Subscribe here to get access!

Subscribe now

I hope you like the workbook. As many of you know, I was a third grade teacher for all of my twenties. Believe it or not, I found making worksheets one of the most enjoyable parts of the job - along with laminating things and decorating my classroom door. But I can’t come decorate your door, so this will have to do.

Okay, see you in a couple weeks! I can’t wait to do this with you!!

Micaela

P.S. Want to go deeper? I’m also teaching more classes this year! First up: I’m teaching From Voice to Page online with the Maine Writers & Publishers starting January 29th. It’s a 5-week writing craft class where we’ll use oral storytelling strategies to find your unique writing voice. It’s the perfect companion to the podcast and there are still a few spots left! Learn more and register here.

We don’t stay still, and neither do our Substacks.

When I started The Story Letter, I thought I needed to JUST give advice and guidance about storytelling. And for a while I truly enjoyed feeling like “an expert.”

But then, after several posts, I got super writer’s block. (I mean, you didn’t hear from me for months!) I love teaching and coaching when I’m literally with people, but when it came to “declaring” something on the internet, I wondered: Who am I to be giving advice when I’m figuring things out myself? Why do I feel like I have to KNOW things to be worth reading, when I really just want to explore along with you?

I started to feel like THIS guy sometimes:

Love Ben Stein, obviously, but I want to share way more of myself than that.

So. Some changes are afoot!

The vibe here is now pretty simple. I’m obsessed with stories, and I want to share that obsession with you.

I will write about the stories I love - romance novels, and USA channel procedurals from the 2000’s, and the Knives Out franchise - through the lens of a true story nerd. What are our favorite stories doing to make us love them so much?

I’ll write about the stories I’m living, like personal experiences or teaching moments.

And I’ll share my process with the memoir I’m currently drafting: what I’m discovering, what’s surprising me, what’s hard.

So if you love thinking about how stories work and why we tell them, you’re in the right place.

I hope you’ll stick around. I think the biggest change here is that I’m going to let myself be as weird, as vulnerable, as enthusiastic as I am in real life.

Ok bye! I love you.

Subscribe now

Anyway, there’s a teen drama that’s currently releasing a similar high pitched tone for women ages 28-50. A LOT of us, inexplicably, are being mind-controlled by The Summer I Turned Pretty.

If you haven’t heard of it: it’s an adaptation of Jenny Han’s YA trilogy from the 2010’s about a love triangle between a girl named Belly and two brothers. It’s set at a dreamy beach house in a kind of Cape Cod-adjacent beach town.

It’s soapy and fun and romantic. The acting and writing is excellent. I’m sure teenagers are enjoying it. But there’s something in the water at Cousins Beach that’s making it especially perfect for us women of a certain age.

I think it has to do with memory, community and nostalgia. And it’s helping me in my own memoir writing in unexpected ways.

We’re All Lit Majors Now

I’m not the only one treating this show with seriousness. My social media is all TSITP: fan edits of the leads, yes, LOVE those, and interviews with the actors, great.

But also, and (to me) more importantly: I get people doing deep dive analysis into the episodes, looking for easter eggs, arguing for one framing or another of the way these characters’ lives are going/should go. I was telling a friend about this part of the social media universe and he said immediately: “Oh! It’s like a book club of the world.”

It totally is. I follow creators who might as well be my Lit 201 TA’s: @meghan, @parmtalksplots, @bookswiftie. They have brilliant takes on the acting and production and writing choices, the relationship dynamics, the ways grief can manifest for young people. They do close readings of scenes, episodes, arcs. There’s a feeling that everyone gets to be story nerds together. I miss school! So I love it.

Then of course, besides the analysis: we are all INVESTED in the fates of the characters. I am, of course, Team Connie Baby.

I think part of the passion & community is because this show can’t be binged. It’s releasing weekly, like television USED to do. I saw someone talking about how there’s so much TV available now, it’s rare that everyone is watching the same thing at the same time. So we’re waiting together, wondering together, sighing together over the episode we all just saw and predicting things for the next one.

It feels like the 90’s. In particular with a teen drama. I still remember senior year of high school, watching Melrose Place with a bunch of girls, and everyone screaming when Dr. Kimberly Shaw was back from the dead.

And I just saw a video of a sorority house watching TSITP, screaming together at the screen when Conrad wiped peach juice off Belly’s face (it’s way sexier than it sounds, trust me). It looked just like 1994.

We Don’t Remember Being Interesting

Nostalgia and memory is a huge piece of The Summer I Turned Pretty. In the story itself, it’s about how Belly remembers things, and how she remembers them WRONG; she’s an unreliable narrator of her own memories.

This show is adapted from a first-person, multi-POV book, and each episode is voiceover-narrated by a character. It’s usually Belly, but sometimes it’s one of the boys she’s involved with. Which means that we’re seeing what they remember, NOT what “actually happened.”

Some people feel like Belly as a character is kinda meh. But of course she is! She’s not remembering how lovable and interesting SHE was, she’s remembering everyone else. We don’t remember who we were to other people. We are often invisible in our own memories.

I’m thinking about that a lot, as I’m writing my own young self in my memoir. How do I make sure I’m seeing myself clearly, and not just the world I watched and lived in?

Leo DiCaprio, But He Books His Own Flights

So that’s memory in the story itself. But this show is also hitting powerful notes of nostalgia for us millenial and Gen X women:

• A lot of people have pointed out that Conrad Fisher is a full Titanic-era-Leo-diCaprio throwback. The floppy hair, the eyes. He was immediately like a boy I used to love, even though I’d never seen him before. But even as he’s a teen heartthrob, he’s also the competent, attentive fantasy that women my age tend to long for: he notices when she’s hungry! He books his own plane tickets! He’s in therapy! He can rewire a light! He’ll go to Michael’s with you!

• The love triangle structure. We grew up watching a girl deciding between two loves: Dawson’s Creek. Felicity. 90210. It’s time-worn and perfect and makes us feel 15 again. (Tons to say about that programming we got, but that’s for another post maybe.)

• The dreaminess of a teenage world that is just so much less complicated than world disaster, pandemics, kids, layoffs, aging parents. A teen drama in particular reminds us of when things were THAT SERIOUS, when an almost-kiss with a boy in the summer was the best or worst thing that could ever happen.

The world of this show is sunlit and nostalgic. Design-wise it feels like the 90’s/2000’s, even if everyone can text. Maybe it’s because the 90’s are back, but the costumes and haircuts feel like our own. It feels like someone’s memory even as it’s ostensibly set in current day.

I last experienced something like this when I was a nanny on Fire Island in my twenties. I’d never spent a childhood at a beach, but that summer felt like someone’smemory, even if it wasn’t mine: I bumped down golden-lit roads with the girls on step-through, rusty bicycles. The little one caught a butterfly and I overheard her whisper to it: “You’re my best friend.” Our phones stayed home. It felt like the 70’s.

There’s definitely a German word for this.

The Force Field Between Car Seats

Finally: I’ve been watching this show and consuming all the fan edits and analysis while rereading my own journals for my memoir. I have 217 journals, dated from 1989 to 2025. It’s a LOT.

And it’s been powerful to reread my younger self while I’m deep in this teenage drama. There are scenes in TSITP that I can viscerally FEEL.

Like in Season Two, watching Belly climb into Conrad’s car, so excited, I was thrown completely back to that moment of my own. The excitement of climbing into the passenger seat of a boy’s car. It feels so grown up and romantic! That moment when you’re buckling your seatbelt and you can feel the force field between the two of you. This is real and almost painful in its pleasure. My first one of these was John Sellick’s baby blue pickup truck with leftist bumper stickers, when I was 15, and I will never forget it.

It reminds me how much those moments mattered, how the smallest gestures could sustain me for weeks.

I’m finding all these entries in my journals about moments like that. The drama of it all! Everything felt so enormous. I wrote a lot of poetry about the boys of my youth. Like—a lot.

It’s helping me write about my younger self with more detail, specificity, AND tenderness.

Finale Predictions

If you DO watch The Summer I Turned Pretty and you’re waiting for tomorrow’s finale: here are my predictions.

• Her bob will have turned out great.

• Benito will be at her birthday dinner but they’ll already have broken up, and he’ll be wistful but drama-free about it. Later he’ll win some photography award with a picture he took of her.

• She’ll wish on her candles, the same wish she’s had every year since she was 10, and just like that, Conrad will knock on the door. He’s brought her… hydrangeas, maybe? It’s what Susannah would have wanted.

• Then it’s a 30 minute montage of them making unbroken, wistful eye contact at various famous Paris landmarks.

• Meanwhile: Jeremiah becomes a renowned chocolatier.

• Denise & Stephen make the cover of Forbes with their video game. Taylor runs their PR.

• Skye and Cam Cameron fall in love and sail around the world on a whaling ship.

• 15 years later, back at Cousins: Dr. Conrad Fisher is playing with his and Belly’s kids on the beach, while Belly watches them out the window fondly, wearing a Susannah-style sundress. The sound of a car pulling up: Steven, Taylor and their 3 kids are piling out of an SUV. Belly yells happily: “They’re here!”

• A never-before-released Taylor Swift song plays (she gave it to the show for free because she LOVES them). Fade to black.

Ok, bye! I love you.

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I’m an award-winning storyteller and educator, and I offer coaching, workshops & keynotes about storytelling and voice. Want to work with me? Find out how at micaelablei.com!

Just a quick note with a couple of updates! From my life, my writing, and my teaching.

First: small personal news. I moved to a new apartment this summer, still in Portland. It’s closer to friends and also has a little DECK. I know this sounds small, but as a lifelong New Yorker with no outdoor space ever, sitting outside with tea in the morning makes me feel like a zillionaire. And I’ve set up my space to write, which is good, because…

Next, a big one. You might have seen this on social media, but if not: I’m publishing my memoir with Harper One!

My Audible Original mini-memoir had an unexpectedly wonderful response from listeners (well, unexpected for me, thank you impostor syndrome), which ultimately connected me with an incredible literary agent. (Love letter about her forthcoming.) I proposed a significant expansion of the Audible story, and everything moved VERY fast from there. Now I have a full-length memoir coming out in 2026: “The Secret Life of Your Third Grade Teacher.” WHAT!

In later Story Letters we’ll talk about how I’m working on it. And worrying about NOT working on it. And working through my blocks with friendship and chocolate, and getting up the nerve to tell ex-boyfriends I’m writing about them.

Third. Something else I’m excited about: I’m starting to offer new, public workshops. For the last few years I’ve been coaching and partnering with orgs and schools, but now I’m doing more teaching that’s open to everyone. Starting with a workshop next week:

“Storytelling Through Transition” for the HerStories Project on Wednesday, September 17th at 1 PM EST. It’s a 60-minute workshop all about finding and shaping the stories of our life changes, whether for memoir, personal processing, or just better dinner party stories.

If you’re a midlife woman in a season of transition, it might be perfect timing. Details are here. It’s $25 for the workshop (including recording) or $39/month for full HerStories membership, with access to all their workshops.

More to come! And if you’re on my list, you’ll be the first to know when more workshops launch. Because I’d love to hear your stories.

Ok bye, I love you. Thanks for being here.

Micaela

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I’m an award-winning storyteller and educator, and I offer coaching, workshops & keynotes about storytelling and voice. Want to work with me? Find out how at micaelablei.com!

I got this very lucky work-study job in college.

In the nineties, which was basically before the internet, you didn’t get your work-study job off a website. If you were on financial aid, you went to the office at the beginning of the semester and paged through a physical binder of available jobs.

So my junior year, I got to the binder early and landed an incredible opportunity: assistant to the archivist of American literature at my college’s rare book library.

I loved the job, and I loved my boss. I did her correspondence, and got her coffee, and talked about books. And to say that I romanticized the rare book library— and the job of the archivist-- is such an understatement.

I’m a child of time travel mysteries and fantasy novels. Libraries play a huge role in the fiction of my youth. So a rare book library with very heavy security? That’s the dream.

While I was working there, the entire library was undertaking a massive project: changing over their storage system from black paper acid-free boxes to new gray acid-free boxes for storing old papers. I have no idea what was better about the gray ones, but every day, we were throwing out all these perfectly good black boxes.

So I decided to take home some of them — basically, I wanted to archive myself. For a couple of weeks, every time I left work, I took a couple home with me. I put my journals and graded papers in them. It made me feel very important.

(When I think about this now, it feels like the setup for one of those YA mysteries, or maybe a heist movie — walking out of the library every day with seemingly empty archive boxes. This was actually just a couple of years before the security at the library got really tight because someone stole a signature, I think it was George Washington’s. But when I was there, I had the run of the place, and I felt like the big sister in Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.)

Fast forward 26 years, to this week.

I’ve been thinking about archives a lot this week. Because I’ve got another very lucky job: I’ve been teaching storytelling for the Society of American Archivists. This is thrilling, since clearly they’re my favorite librarians (don't tell the other librarians).

In February I’ll host a storytelling show with archivist storytellers, where they’ll share about their personal connections to their archives. So I've been going through the story submissions for the show, reading all these little story snippets from archivists across the country, and I've found myself reflecting on two things:

First, my romantic ideas of the library when I was 20 were absolutely right, this job is exactly as exciting as I remember. Hidden collections! Finding long-lost relatives! Etc.

And second, archivists all seem to share one trait: deep care and reverence for even the smallest pieces of others' lives.

Someone wrote about going through her grandmother's office after her death, making sure everything had its place. Another archivist found a letter from 1948 written by a woman who was a spy in World War II, expressing the same frustrations about a bad day at work that she herself was currently feeling.

The stories are full of the letters, photographs, receipts and everyday ephemera in their care – things that maybe weren't meant for history, but that history has found.

And these archivists create a whole metaphor on their own— for the ways that our own small stories can stand in for our big histories.

Which is why I’m telling you about libraries, and librarians. Their reverent attention to the minutiae of strangers' lives — and remembering my own archiving— makes me wonder: why wait for an archivist to treat your life with such care? Why not do it yourself?

And how could archiving help you tell your stories?

So here's a little assignment for the new year, if you want it.

As you move through this year, try looking at the fingerprints of your life with an archivist's eye. Your receipts, your text messages, your shopping lists, your rough drafts. I'm not saying archive your whole life – I'm not trying to create a generation of hoarders here. Part of archiving is curation, after all. (She says with 5 giant boxes of journals and birthday cards in her attic.)

But what do they point to about your life right now? What story could they be standing in for? What would someone make of them, if they found them years in the future?

And in terms of stories: what small moments feel like ephemera right now, but might someday help tell the story of who you are?

Whether you've got fancy acid-free boxes or voice memos or just a running note in the Notes app on your phone, keep a little evidence, even if it doesn’t feel momentous right now.

For one thing, you’ll have something to look back on in case you ever do want to remember the details of this moment. But also, the act of “keeping” can tell your brain: let’s remember this. This might be important.

Because I think your stories deserve the same kind of careful attention I once gave to my college journals. Let's do a little romanticizing of our own lives!

And I'd love to hear what bits of your daily life you'd preserve in those black archival boxes.

Respectfully and enthusiastically yours,
Micaela

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I’m an award-winning storyteller and educator, and I offer coaching, workshops & keynotes about storytelling and voice. Want to work with me? Find out how at micaelablei.com!

It's launch day! After sharing with you last week about the experience of recording this memoir (and everyone’s favorite sound engineer Mike), I can finally tell you that You Will Not Recognize Your Life is now available exclusively on Audible.

This book is for you if:

• You've ever felt like everyone else got the instruction manual for being a "real adult" except you

• You love (and hate) the makeover montage in every early-2000’s romantic comedy

• You lived through the era of The Rules, The Game, and other problematic dating advice

• You appreciate stories that balance honesty with humor

(BTW, it’s rated R for language, smoking, sexual content, and some questionable decisions.)

This project represents exactly what I love about storytelling - the chance to experiment with a new form, to get a little messy, to stretch myself and get vulnerable while still cracking jokes. I'm excited and a little nervous to share this whole… sparkly situation with you.

You can listen here. And if you enjoy it, I'd be so grateful if you'd leave a review - it really helps other listeners find the book!

By the way, if you’d like the transcript instead for accessibility reasons, please hit reply and let me know! I’ll get you set up.

And finally — since this is just in audio, there’s no acknowledgments page! So I want to thank some amazing friends and colleagues who made this whole thing happen, by listening to early drafts, doing expert and empathetic story editing, or kindly and firmly talking me through self-doubt:

My whole family; the team at Audible— especially (endlessly patient) Rachel Smalter Hall and Rachel Hamburg; Nora Saks; Samuel James; Sarah Wyman; EB Landesberg; Vanessa Zoltan; Laura Boach; Clark Tate; David Malbin; David Crabb; Jess Lacher; Amy Shearn; Hilary North-Elisante; Laura Joyce Davis; Megan Tan; Gina Voskov; Catherine McCarthy; and my whole wonderful “social drafting” team, a group of brilliant colleagues, friends and former students who let me tell them stories while I wrote!

THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

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I’m an award-winning storyteller and educator, and I offer coaching, workshops & keynotes about storytelling and voice. Want to work with me? Find out how at micaelablei.com!

You Will Not Recognize Your Life is a sharply funny, deeply relatable memoir that follows one earnest overachiever's quest to become flawlessly lovable - and her discovery that sometimes the best things in life aren't on a vision board. To celebrate next week’s launch, this week’s Story Letter is a little behind-the-scenes about the making of this project.

Pre-order now for December 12th!

Here at the Story Letter I talk a lot about the telling part of storytelling— crafting a story, engaging an audience, finding your voice. But this week I want to remind you— and myself— that great storytelling requires great listening. Being present to someone’s story makes that story better— and sometimes makes it possible.

I do a lot of listening as a story coach, as you can imagine. And I love it. But I've also been thinking about being listened to. Especially this week, as I’ve been getting ready for the release of my Audible Original memoir next Thursday. (By getting ready, of course, I mean I’m buying snacks to stress-eat on launch day and writing weird little affirmations for myself on Post-it’s all around my house.)

You Will Not Recognize Your Life is a unique form of audio story: it’s mostly scripted, but it’s still “storytelling.” So it’s not quite an audiobook, it’s not recorded live, it’s not even a chatty podcast. And that made it pretty challenging to record.

Usually when I perform stories, I'm sharing them with a live audience—in theaters, classrooms, people’s backyards, Zoom meetings. And when you’re live, you get immediate feedback. You can feel when something lands or when it needs adjusting. That feedback loop between teller and listener becomes part of how the story takes shape.

But recording this memoir was different.

Instead of recording in the studio, Audible helped me set up a home recording kit. They sent me what looked like a nuclear football—a giant black plastic suitcase locked with zip ties and full of very nice recording equipment.

The engineers took a virtual tour of my house on Zoom, to help me find the perfect spot for a makeshift studio.

And then I found myself alone, in a room draped with extra curtains and comforters, speaking into a microphone with just two people in my headphones: my producer Rachel, and Mike, the sound engineer.

Mike was quiet. He introduced himself at the start and then mostly stayed silent, speaking only when necessary. And this made me nervous. Here I was, sharing deeply personal stories—some of them pretty intimate—with a stranger I'd never even seen. He was just a presence in my headphones, listening.

Rachel made sure to be as vocally supportive as she could be without wrecking a take, but I had no way of knowing if Mike was smiling at my jokes or checking his email.

Then something shifted. A few chapters in, on a break from recording a particularly vulnerable section about a women's empowerment class, Mike's voice came through softly: "Um, I know I'm not the demographic for this book, but I just want to say, I'm really enjoying it?"

Later, during a chapter about eighth grade, I had a crisis of confidence. I stopped recording and wondered out loud if I needed to preface the chapter with some kind of disclaimer—you know, acknowledge that everyone has a hard time in middle school, that I wasn't special. Or cut the chapter altogether?

And Mike spoke up again: "Um, I don't want to butt in here, but I do think this chapter is really important? Because it really helps us understand where all of those insecurities come from?"

MIKE! He’d been listening! Really listening. Not just to the technical aspects of the recording, but to the story itself. And his listening got me through that moment. He was right. And his careful attention helped me through my self-doubt. What a wonderful, lucky thing, to have an audience listening like that.

By the end of those two weeks of recording, saying our goodbyes felt like the end of summer camp (to me, at least!). Mike was still quietly enthusiastic. He was very kind to me about my narration (he’s heard a lot of authors narrate their own books). And he suggested he’d be talking to his girlfriend about some of the things he’d learned in our sessions.

(If you want to know what kind of insider knowledge Mike gained— well, pre-order the Audible Original here.)

I guess what I’m saying is: even though I've never seen his face, Mike was an essential part of bringing this memoir to life. And not just because he ran the recording equipment.

So here's to Mike, and to all the careful listeners out there, who help stories find their way into the world. It’s you that makes storytelling possible.

Respectfully and enthusiastically yours,

Micaela

P.S. How about you? What are your experiences with meaningful listeners in your life? Have you ever had someone's careful attention help you through a moment of doubt or vulnerability? What kind of listener are you?

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I’m an award-winning storyteller and educator, and I offer coaching, workshops & keynotes about storytelling and voice. Want to work with me? Find out how at micaelablei.com!

Because here's the thing: stories aren't just descriptions of what happened – they're actions that create change in the world.

Speech act theory suggests that anything we say operates on three different levels simultaneously:

1. The literal level - just the actual words you're saying, and what you’re describing or declaring. We rarely think about this level in isolation because we're so used to our words being for a purpose. The only example I have, of speech just existing on this level, is from when I taught preschool: during a class discussion about, say whales, kids would raise their hands and, with absolutely no context or subtext, declare things like "I have a suitcase" or "My mom says fuck." So pure.

2. The intentional level - what you intend to do with your words. We can have both conscious and unconscious intentions. Am I trying to apologize? Explain? Entertain? Impress? What effect do I want to have on the world? Think about telling a story at a dinner party - maybe you're sharing your spilling-wine-on-the-bride story because you want to make people laugh, or because you want sympathy, or because you're trying to show that you can laugh at yourself. The intention shapes how you tell it.

3. The effect level - what actually happens when you speak. This is separate from intention because you can't guarantee your intended effect. That wine-spilling story you told to be funny? Maybe it actually makes someone feel less alone about their own social fail. Or maybe you're trying to apologize with a story about why you were late, but your explanation comes across as an excuse. Sometimes our intentions don't match the effect, and sometimes there are effects beyond what we imagined.

There are certain rare speech acts where society has agreed that the words themselves have the power to change reality - like when an ordained person says "I now pronounce you married," or when a judge says "I’m dismissing this case." These aren't just descriptions or intentions; they're actions that legally change the world. But I'd argue that all our stories have their own kind of transformative power, even if it's not legally binding.

Let me give you an example that shows how all three levels can work together - and sometimes surprise us. In 2016, I taught a workshop for abortion providers who were preparing for a national conference. They wanted to craft compelling first-person narratives about their work – stories they could use in talks or pull out during happy hours with doctors who might not share their views. They wanted to change hearts and minds.

On the literal level, they were sharing their experiences of providing healthcare. On the intentional level, they wanted to craft persuasive stories that would help other doctors understand the importance of their work. And we covered all the basics: structure, tone, choosing powerful details, reading your audience.

But something unexpected happened at the effect level, that third level. At the end of the workshop, someone raised their hand and thanked everyone — they explained that hearing everyone’s stories had made them feel less alone in their work. Even as these storytellers practiced for future conversations, their stories were already creating belonging, reinvigorating purpose, building community right there in the room.

Do we need to be aware of all three levels all the time? I don’t think so. Success isn't always about matching our intentions to our effects. Sometimes there are effects separate from our intentions. But understanding these levels can help us be more intentional about our storytelling - and more appreciative of the unexpected magic that can happen when we share our stories.

We're saying what happened, yes, and we're trying to do something, yes – but we're also creating something in the room, in our post, in our email. We are affecting the world with the words that we say.

And I think that's pretty lovely.

Respectfully and enthusiastically yours, Micaela

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I’m an award-winning storyteller and educator, and I offer coaching, workshops & keynotes about storytelling and voice. Want to work with me? Find out how at micaelablei.com!

And here’s a corollary: how you want to consume storytelling in your life is as individual as your style, and it changes with time and circumstance. 

Here’s an example from my life, right now. This has been a hard and painful week in the U.S., and I’ve needed to balance processing the results of the election with friends & family, with some good escape/dissociation. So I’ve been rereading some of my favorite books. They’re romances, and I know how they end. But— actually? I knew how they would end the first time around, too. Romances always end in a “happily ever after.” No exceptions.

We often say a story was “surprising” or “unpredictable,” and we mean it as a compliment. And a lot of people dismiss romance novels as too “predictable” or formulaic. But I propose to you that during stressful times, there’s serious power in both formula and predictability.

In the summer of 2020, I had left New York City after living there for twenty years (!), and I was staying on an air mattress in a friend’s barn in upstate New York. There were some old paperbacks in this barn and I picked one up— a dog-eared romance with a dark-haired, bare-chested duke (apparently) on the cover. There wasn’t much else to do, so I gave this book a try. It was funny and sweet. It felt like watching a very good romantic comedy. 

But what surprised me more than that: reading it did wonders for my nervous system. 

In those strange, pre-vaccine months of the pandemic, I didn’t need true stories or jump scares. I just needed to know that for this couple, at least, it was all going to turn out okay. 

After I finished that one, I looked up some other books. I found a couple book critics I liked, and read what they suggested. And before I knew it, I’d developed a pretty serious romance habit.

It’s now four-plus years and literally hundreds of books later. And I’m responsible for introducing many of my friends to the genre. I’ve read widely enough that I’m a little like a Buzzfeed quiz you can take: tell me if you want contemporary or historical, straight or queer characters, low-angst or high drama, if you want any vampires — and I’ll recommend you your first romance.

I’m also still a story nerd (and kind of a story snob!), even about romance. There are great questions to explore about story structure, representation, and the complicated politics of the romance genre. And there are frameworks and shapes to these stories that get repeated over and over, and brilliant writers who innovate like hell inside them, without breaking the very strong contract they have with their readers: that their main characters will arrive at happiness by the last page. 

Listen: I understand why I found these books, and why I stuck with them, in the last few years. I didn’t know my own future! My own “book” had just completely switched up the plot on me, and I didn’t have any kind of blueprint for where I was, who I was, or what I was going to do next. While reading romance, I could feel like I knew what was coming, at least for those few hundred pages. And these books gave me time to store up the energy to make big moves, to face big unknowns, and meet my own life with calm. 

They still do.

Sometimes we need our stories to surprise us. But when things are stressful, a lot of us just want to rewatch our favorite show. Or reread our favorite book. Or retell a story, for the 40th time, or hear our friend retell their story for the 40th time. Or... watch a procedural drama, where we know it will all be resolved by the top of the hour; or a mystery, where the killer will be caught; or a sitcom, where life will reset by the closing credits.

Formulaic stories and repeated watchings aren’t just comforting. In the face of uncertain futures, I think predictable story shapes can be a solid way to escape, to rest, and to shore up our resources. So we can face and fight whatever’s ahead.

What are you reading or watching or listening to right now? What stories feel like rest?

Respectfully and enthusiastically yours,

Micaela

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I’m an award-winning storyteller and educator, and I offer coaching, workshops & keynotes about storytelling and voice. Want to work with me? Find out how at micaelablei.com!