The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #49: Sarah LaBrie
"Writing this book I learned there were names for what was going on in my mother’s brain and for how that changed us both. I hope people in similar situations read it and realize they aren't alone."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 49th installment, featuring Sarah LaBrie, author of No One Gets to Fall Apart: a Memoir. -Sari Botton
Sarah LaBrie is a TV writer, memoirist and librettist. She was most recently a producer on the HBO and Starz television show, Minx. She has also written on Blindspotting (Starz), Made for Love (HBO MAX), and Love, Victor (Hulu/Disney). Her libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall with music written by Pulitzer-prize winning composer Ellen Reid. Her work also appears in Guernica, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has held residencies at Yaddo, Ucross and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University where she was a Writers in the Schools Fellow. Her memoir, No One Gets to Fall Apart was published by HarperCollins in October 2024. It has been named an Oprah Daily Best Book of Fall, an Esquire Best Memoir of the Year and was featured in the New York Times as one of twenty-one new books to read in October.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
My first job out of college was as an assistant at an entertainment agency. I knew I was not long for that world so I signed up for a couple of extension classes at UCLA. One of my teachers, Lou Mathews, encouraged me to apply to MFA programs. It took two tries, but I eventually got into NYU on a fellowship. After graduation, I moved back to Los Angeles, got a day job, and tried to write a novel and did a lot of work as a librettist. I’ve been writing for TV since 2019.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
No One Gets to Fall Apart. October 2024.
What number book is this for you?
No One Gets to Fall Apart is my first book.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
It’s part memoir, part oral history of three generations of Black women in Texas, part researched history of schizophrenia and its relationship to race and creativity, part literary analysis of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
No One Gets to Fall Apart opens with my mother, a nurse, in the midst of a psychotic break, parked on the Houston freeway, screaming. At the time, we lived in different states and weren’t speaking. I wrote this book to figure out how we got to that point. It’s about ambition and heritable mental illness and how it manifests across generations.
When I wrote No One Gets to Fall Apart, I was trying to write a different book, a complicated novel about time travel and the multiverse called The Anatomy Book. Then my mom started experiencing delusions and refusing to acknowledge her diagnosis or take medication. A close friend decided she didn’t want me in her life anymore. And progress on The Anatomy Book slowly ground to a halt.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
My mom had what I believe now was undiagnosed BPD. She could make me feel like dirt but when she was kind, it was like the sun shining. She really, really liked the fact that I wanted to be a writer. It was one of the only consistently positive aspects of our relationship.
She was also really big on following through with things. I remember a morning in high school when I didn’t want to wake up for a cross country meet. A different morning when I didn’t want to audition for a play. Each time, she bullied me into the car and forced me to go. I competed in the meet. I got cast in the play. I wasn’t allowed to quit out of fear. Turns out that’s a really important element of becoming a professional writer, and she knew that.
When I wrote No One Gets to Fall Apart, I was trying to write a different book, a complicated novel about time travel and the multiverse called The Anatomy Book. Then my mom started experiencing delusions and refusing to acknowledge her diagnosis or take medication. A close friend decided she didn’t want me in her life anymore. And progress on The Anatomy Book slowly ground to a halt. I felt like if I didn’t keep notes on what was happening to me during this time, I would die. I didn’t write No One Gets to Fall Apart to be a book at first - I wrote it because writing was what I’d always done. Eventually, the fragments cohered.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
Trying to finish my novel (The Anatomy Book) at the same time as I was watching my mom break down while unable to help her in any way was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. No One Gets to Fall Apart emerged from that extreme emotion the way some cosmologists think universes come out of black holes. I don’t think anything could be “hard” compared to that, so I guess the hard part came before I started.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
I sent the final, edited and type-set draft to my aunt, grandmother, cousin and a creative collaborator who all figure prominently into the story. My husband read every draft and helped copy-edit the final version. I did–and do–feel very strongly that this is my story about what happened to me, and other people should feel free to write their own books if they want to. Luckily, I didn’t have to say that. Everything I was asked to change felt fair.
No One Gets to Fall Apart opens with my mother, a nurse, in the midst of a psychotic break, parked on the Houston freeway, screaming. At the time, we lived in different states and weren’t speaking. I wrote this book to figure out how we got to that point. It’s about ambition and heritable mental illness and how it manifests across generations.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, Cat Marnell’s How to Murder Your Life, Natasha Trethewey’s Memorial Drive, Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire and a lot of James Baldwin and Joan Didion.
The first draft of No One Gets to Fall Apart was me trying to find my way out of a depressive tailspin. As I revised, I kept the voice I wrote the early drafts–chaotic and questioning and uncertain–but worked to wrap it around a strong narrative scaffolding. I wanted the book to have a plot and to read quickly. I used the books above as models.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
The novel I was trying to write, The Anatomy Book got me into a bunch of fancy residencies and landed me my first agent. I really thought I was on my way, but I was wrong. If I hadn’t gone through the difficulty of trying to finish that novel, I would never have written and sold No One Gets to Fall Apart, which is, in part, about what it’s like to write your way into a brick wall. I finished both books by telling myself it would all work out even when it was all very clearly not working out, and eventually, it did.
What do you love about writing?
One of the hardest things about being raised by a single mom with an undiagnosed, untreated mental illness is that, as a kid, you don’t know everyone else’s mom isn’t the same way. In some ways, that not-knowing protects you. But, as you get older and slowly realize other kids aren’t bearing the weight of an adult’s unpredictable cruelty, it’s the most isolating feeling in the world. Writing this book, I learned there were names for what was going on in my mother’s brain and for how that changed us both. My hope is that other people in similar situations read it and realize they aren’t alone. The world feels so fractured and scattered right now. It’s nice to believe I can help someone else find solace.
What frustrates you about writing?
Sometimes, in between projects, I’ll find myself afraid to start the next thing because I won’t know how it’ll pan out. I’ll wallow in that fear. The best writing advice I ever got came from a tweet that said, “Wake up. Make coffee. Write.” What’s wild is that, once you stop dithering around and actually follow those instructions, the writing is always there, like it’s been waiting behind a wall waiting for you to return. I love that.
What about writing surprises you?
The way every piece turns out to be part of one ongoing text. The Anatomy Book was about time travel. No One Gets to Fall Apart is about how what happens to our mothers and grandmothers makes us who we are. That is, of course, another form of time travel. The goals I’d set for myself with The Anatomy Book–asking and answering questions about crossing timelines to change the future– fulfilled themselves in the memoir. I didn’t expect that. It wasn’t something I did on purpose. The dominoes just fell that way. It’s mysterious, the way things surface when you make yourself work every day. It’s like making space for dreaming while you’re awake.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine or writing at specific times?
I treat writing like a job, because it is my job. I work from home and I have an office and a desk that I go sit down at after I have coffee and walk the dogs. I usually have multiple projects going on at once. When I’m at my best and most disciplined, I use Cal Newport’s Time Blocking method to keep track of my progress. I write down what I have to do and decide which hours I’ll assign to which task in advance. That’s the ideal version of me. That’s how I wrote the book and that’s how I revised it. Of course, it’s all very easily thrown into disarray (by, say, the unexpected emotional uncertainty that comes with publishing). But I try to be good about it. I’m happy when I’m writing and unhappy when I’m not, so I do everything I can to organize my life around work.
Trying to finish my novel (The Anatomy Book) at the same time as I was watching my mom break down while unable to help her in any way was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. No One Gets to Fall Apart emerged from that extreme emotion the way some cosmologists think universes come out of black holes. I don’t think anything could be “hard” compared to that, so I guess the hard part came before I started.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
Right now I’m working on a libretto. I love doing that because, compared to prose and TV writing, it’s incredibly freeing. You’re really there to service the music. The person you’re trying to please is the composer. Often, too, lines I can’t fit into a script or a book find their way into libretti drafts. It’s exciting to feel like there will always be a place to put those.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I want to write something about the psychology of our relationship to animals and the internet. I don’t think I’ll say more yet, though.
THIS. "In some ways, that not-knowing protects you."