Welcome to After 40! I'm so excited to have you here today. Hara Marano is much more than the editor-at-large for Psychology Today. Learn more about her amazing journey in journalism.
Guest: Hara Estroff Marano, Editor-at-Large, Psychology Today
Host: Dr. Deborah Heiser
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/deborah-heiser-phd
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Episode Introduction
Hara Marano: I'm not trained as a psychologist. I'm a journalist and writer. Now, I've been in the business long enough to have acquired a lot of information, but not in an organized way. So I know tons about some things and a little less about other things. But one of the things is I've gained confidence, confidence about writing, confidence about researching information, confidence about understanding things and how to explain things in something of an interesting way - to write and edit.
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Resources
Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/hara-estroff-marano
A Nation of Wimps: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200411/nation-wimps
Unconventional Wisdom: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/articles/201703/unconventional-wisdom-diagnostic-dilemma
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Hara Marano: Unconventional Wisdom | After 40 Podcast with Dr. Deborah Heiser
Unknown Speaker 0:12
Welcome to After 40 I'm so excited to have you here today. Hara Moreno, I've known you for a while now. You're an amazing individual, and I can't wait to introduce you to everyone who's listening today. So Hara Moran, the editor at large of Psychology Today, she writes the magazine's advice column unconventional wisdom. You have to check it out. How cool is that to have somebody giving the advice column for unconventional wisdom here with us today. She also has a book wimps, and Hara has been with Psychology Today for 33 years. I'm excited to talk with Hara because she's been a field way longer than 33 years. She's been a writer and an editor and has been involved in this industry since she was in her 20s. So Hera, welcome today. I can't wait to have you talk to us about what it's like to be not only an editor, but also someone who gives out advice for Psychology Today. Well, giving out advice is fun, but I didn't always say it. I was asked to be the advice editor after we commissioned a feature article on advice columnist, and some of them agreed to participate. Some of them agreed to participate only if they were the only person. And the editor chief and I had decided that the way we would do the article is that we would give them all the same answer and see how they answered it. And in order to do that, we needed to have some control, some control answer. And so because I was doing a very small advice column online for another organization to write the control column, the one that everyone else's would be compared to, and we discovered that, or it was judged by others that mine, my column covered the most material in the best way. It wasn't my decision at all, so I was asked by the editor in chief to write the advice column, in addition to writing and editing lots of other material in the magazine, the advice is kind of scary because people act on it. So I literally had no had had less confidence than I wanted remember, I'm not trained as a psychologist. I'm a journalist and writer. Now, I've been in the business long enough to have acquired a lot of information, but not in an organized way. So I know tons about some things and little less about other things. But one of the things I do have is I've gained confidence, confidence about writing, confidence about researching information, confidence about understanding things and how to explain things in something of an interesting way, to write, edit, especially confidence, because you're people wrong and if you're a really Good editor,
Unknown Speaker 4:19
but when you're giving advice, you're really influencing people's lives. So it took me a while to gain confidence, and the way I gained confidence was the way most people gain confidence, doing it, researching, but getting feedback from others, and I was very fortunate, of course, to be seen who have told me over the years that I'm the first thing that they read in the magazine or online. I get an extraordinary amount of fan mail from readers, and I get lots of mail commenting not only on what I say, but how I say it, and
Unknown Speaker 5:19
over time, that has influenced me, and what it's done is made me certain that the processes I use are really good. So the processes of research, how I research topics, how I think about them, how I understand letters that people write to me? Remember, I hear only one story. Someone sends me a question. Usually it's a question about relationships, and I'm hearing only one slide of the story, so I have to read a question several times to understand what's not being said and what's what what's happening Behind the Scenes or, you know, off stage. And I've developed ways of doing that, and knowing that I can do it makes it easier for me to do it. And so there comes a point where I just absolutely love doing the column, and same way that I develop confidence doing that. And confidence is really Hallmark. I mean, it's really the most important thing. And confidence distinguish from arrogance, because I don't write on my laurels, and I never take a question for granted that I answer. I'm always thinking through things, and the same thing with the editing and writing, it's always a new world for me. It's always a new beginning. I start at the beginning each time, I just never sit back and kiss off an assignment or a task.
Unknown Speaker 7:31
The world is moving and what I knew yesterday I'm not always sure applies today. I know that I'm different, and every day, I think differently about things, and I assume this true of people, and I know that the world is very dynamic, so I don't ride on the information of today. Even when I'm writing and tackling topics, there's always new research to assimilate new ways to to think about things I've thought about for a long written about for a long time. So that, you know, Kara, there's another thing I think that comes into play here as well. So you know, you're my editor for the most part, at Psychology Today, except when you go on vacation. And then, of course, I'm petrified, and I say that because you have been doing this for so long that you have an expertise across a wide variety of disciplines within psychology, so you have a lot of writers and people who comment something from one specialized vantage point, and you have all of this conventional wisdom that you're Hey, have you looked at from this point of view? You missed something here. You need to expand on this. And that is unbelievably valuable. It's it's not a good feeling when somebody doesn't give you anything that you should be adding to your story or what you're writing, and you have that so when you're bringing in the unconventional wisdom for the for the work that you're doing and advice you're drawing on AIDS of knowledge that you've accumulated from doing what you do, you are a true expert, giving out real as opposed to just looking at the surface stuff that they can find. So, you know, you bring up something that's really interesting. And I think it has to do with not considering myself an expert at psychology, even though I know more than a lot of people who have been in the field maybe 10 years. What I know I know in a very I know from a very non systematic way. So I know something about a lot of different things in psychology, and I probably have a much wider range than a lot of psychologists who are into a specific perspective, and that's why being an outsider, a journalist, coming into it in a serious way, has an advantage, because I haven't been trained not to think about certain other areas and stay within the lines of one discipline. So having ideas from one discipline and questioning how things apply to another. Perspective on psychology becomes an asset, and over time, asking those questions, coming from the different perspectives, has yielded me a lot of information. So again, you get confidence. You build confidence from doing that. And I know that my best writing and thinking comes having acquired information in this sort of very Helter Skelter, undisciplined way so that now it's kind of organized. I mean, I really do know big chunks about a lot of different areas, probably very little still about some areas,
Unknown Speaker 11:52
but interested in all of it. So yes,
Unknown Speaker 11:59
knowing from these kind of, like multiple domains in psychology, gives me the enough insight to ask interesting questions, and I really see myself as someone who asks questions and who writes from the questions, not from the answers. And the other thing I will say about being in this for so long is that you learn how. You learn every imaginable way anything could go wrong. You learn every way that writers make mistakes, and you know how to fix it, because you've been doing it for so long. And there comes a point where I think one of the things that makes me a good editor is that when I read something, I know when it goes off track. I know what is taking it off track, and I know how to get it on track. So yes, for my job, I fix it, but also for the work I do, I share with the writer how to fix it, and in that regard, I see myself as a mentor. I'm mentoring them and giving them information that they can use, not only for the next item they write for me, but their way of thinking for whoever they write for, yeah, you know, you have given out advice and mentored students online, particularly during the pandemic, for, you know, year or two into the pandemic. And it was really funny, because we put a couple of those on Tiktok, and they immediately got hundreds of views which we didn't have a Tiktok account with any hashtags or anything on it, and you were really mentoring people in the art of writing, because it's such now, especially with like chatgpt and those sorts of things that are available when you have To write without it, it's very scary for younger people. And so getting real concrete, you know, tips, one through 10 tips on what people could do. And it is such great mentorship, because that's a lost thing that young people don't have anymore. So I've seen you in action with that, you do have wisdom that you are able to draw on that I've noticed that you have been able to take things that are very scientific as your journalists background, and then translate that into how people can digest it in the in the masses. So for example, if I were to read a journal article and I were to translate that, I may be paraphrasing, but I'm not going to have the ability to translate that in a way that would be understandable to a large group of non psychologists, and that takes time. There are very few people can do that right out of the gate. And 33 years in Psychology Today, and decades before that, as a journalist, it's noticeable you can do that in your sleep. I've seen you with that. And when you have the tips available, these are things that maybe a person thinks about a couple of them, but you're able to articulate all of them. It's really magical to see. I hope that people will check you out outside of Psychology Today to see the other the other side of you as well. Well. Thank you for that I do really like. It's very rewarding to do that person part and giving people and dealing with people and showing them how. I mean, people tend to think, Well, I'm not a writer, and anybody could write. Well, can anybody write? Magically? No, it does take some talent, but people could write. Well, yeah, you know, that is good advice, because it is a scary thing to start to write. I see this with students who are starting to write. And it feels, you know, when you do your first draft, even for a book, or whatever you're doing, the first one is, you know, sort of unconnected associations that get put down on paper. And a person who's young doesn't realize that that's just the first step in writing. And knowing that there is more out there is so helpful that you can that's first step, that's now you have to put the other foot in front of that foot and keep going. And some of that advice that you give about that is so helpful, yeah, if you can think, you can write,
Unknown Speaker 17:18
that's so true. So Hara, what advice do you
Unknown Speaker 17:28
have for individuals who think that they are not able to write and that they would need, say a more modern tool to tweak their writing, like a chatgpt or something. What advice would you give to people to become the best writer that they can be? I have one word, read.
Unknown Speaker 17:53
The way you become a writer, knowing what writing is, what it sounds like. Read, research and read, and we read and you like what you read, you have to stop and say, Why do I like this? What is this doing that makes me like it? And you could especially answer that question after you do considerable amount of reading, and you begin to see the differences between things that you're reading, books and papers or articles or newspaper stories or whatever it is. Now, does it matter what format does? Okay, that's good to know what format whatsoever if it affects you, if you get something out of it, no any format, from a kind of like book to whatever it all has value, because it's all training you on what works. I love it, so that's an easy fix for all of us. I'm gonna make sure that that cereal box is in front of me when I have breakfast in the morning, and I'm gonna read it just like I did when I was a kid. So yeah, the people who seem to be natural writers are invariably the people who read a lot, and when you read, you just absorb and becomes effortless to write, you're just kind of like giving back what you took in absolutely Hara, that's good advice. I always get good advice from you. I am so thankful that you came on today. I'm going to definitely have you back on again, but I will be putting all of your information about how people can find you so they can start reading more, and they can check out your column as well as your book, nation of wimps that you wrote as well, so that will be in the show notes. But how can reach you now? Where can where would you like people to find you right now, the easiest way to find me is at
Unknown Speaker 20:17
doing the search Psychology Today.
Unknown Speaker 20:24
Just Hara Moreno, those two terms will get you tons of articles and my problems that I've done for psychology today. Thank you again, Hara, and I look forward to looking at your unconventional wisdom. column today. Take care, everybody. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.