Yes, all the time. My personality actually leans toward the comic. Yet me trying to write comedy is like Jack Black doing serious movies. Doesn't work so well.
Your
novel portrays a bond between girls that is less than healthy. Why?
It's not that I believe all female friendships are negative, it's that
the unhealthy ones leave more to scour for a novel, and most of us have a few
scars from those early friendships as we tested out our future relationship
strategies upon each other.
You
have an erratic writing process, care to share?
Yes, I write this elaborate outline, sketching out the characters and their
problems, and then proceed to completely depart from it. Somehow I take comfort
in an outline, no matter that I rarely stick to it. I need to pretend I know
where I'm going.
After
"finishing" a version of this novel once titled "Little
Alien"--you then hired an editor, and gutted some 375 pages down to a mere
119, before writing your way back to its current state. Why put yourself
through this torture?
The novel just wasn't working. It was masking its flaws under
fancy plot twists and implausible characters. Because of its partial Las Vegas
setting, I thought I could get away with some big flights of fancy. Ultimately
I came to see that it's a novel about two girls/women and their personal
secrets/power. Coming back to that focus allowed me to access the real story I
wanted to tell.
Let's
just get this out of the way: Your character heals people. So is it magic, or
is it the Memorex (sorry, 80s throwback!):
Sigh. I guess that's a question each reader has to answer for herself. There
are real cases of people healing others, and an entire industry that professes
to be able to do so now--is acupuncture, Reiki, therapeutic touch and more,
magic? On the one hand, I think you can take the healing gift as a metaphor; on
the other, you can choose to see it as real. What's most important is how the
"healing" works in Grace and what it does for her story.
You
were raised in Northern California by hippies. How did that influence your
work? My parents were New Yorkers drawn to the wild, free spirit of
California in the early 70s, raised on a healthy diet of 60s civil rights
activism. Their best friends were astrologers, artists, Reiki
practitioners and massage therapists among other things (Yes, I speak New Age).
I think that my upbringing left me open at the edges. I wasn't raised in
a religion, so there was a lot of seeking and exploration without anyone
telling me if I was doing it right or wrong. While that may also come with its
own set of problems, it left me interested in that edge of life that we can't
fully explain, which turns up in all of my writing: healing powers, prophetic
dreams, the creative spark that exists in artists... And I was an avid reader,
and an only child until I was 14, which may have had more to do with my writing
aesthetic than anything.
What's
the question you least like answering, and why? Easy: "Do your
characters come from people you know?" It's a valid question, but
the artiste in me laughs because I never consciously set out
to model my characters after anyone--they come out of me as themselves, like
children, and any resemblance to living people will be denied.
Give
a writer some advice, will ya?
Say yes to all opportunities, creative and literal, unless they ask you to send
your bank account to a foreigner living abroad.
Is
there a piece of advice you'd wish you'd known sooner?
Not really--writing is one of those crafts where it's better not to know
the work ahead of you before you set out.
Whose
career do you covet?
Joyce Carol Oates, Jodi Picoult... I think of myself as their love child, with
a little Alice Hoffman thrown in.
What is the biggest leap of faith you’ve ever taken and how
did it turn out?
JR: I was going to say quitting my job to work for myself as a freelance writer
over ten years ago, which worked out fabulously, but as I sit here thinking
about it, the greater leap of faith was having my son. I was 33 when I got
pregnant, and my husband and I had been together already for 12 years--that’s a
long time to get extremely settled in a lifestyle. My son’s birth rocked
everything, changed me, and did that strange thing where your heart busts out
of your chest and lives on your forehead forever after, where it is no longer
safe from sappy commercials, stories about kidnappings, or light jazz. Now,
he’s four and a half and I sort of feel like I’m getting used to this
motherhood gig.
Grace can heal others but not herself – something I think a
lot of people can relate to in a metaphorical sense. Why do we have such a hard
time letting go of our own struggles and hurts even as we encourage others to
do so?
JR: Yes, you’ve tapped into one of the major themes of this novel. One of the
things Grace and I share in common is what I’ve come to call “extreme
empathy”--sometimes I identify so strongly with the pain of others that I can’t
figure out where my own begins/ends. I think it’s difficult to let go of
our own struggles because they’re adaptive, they were our coping mechanisms as
children and as adults we still get something out of them. Until we learn new
strategies, we’re screwed.
If you could steal another author’s muse, whose would you
take?
JR: Joyce Carol Oates’! That woman is prolific and takes on all manner of dark,
complex and interesting subjects that appeal to me. When she retires, she can
fed-ex her muse to me.
How much of your personality traits do you put in your
characters when you write? Do you put yourself in them at all?
There is no conscious effort to imbue my characters with me, but like any
child, they carry facets of me, or they hold opinions/feelings of mine, though
I try really hard to make sure they are behaving in ways that are true to THEIR
characters, not mine. Others who know me will always read into my characters
more than is probably ever intended.
You are an original founder of indie-visible. How did the idea
to form a writing collective of indie authors occur and grow to where it is
now?
It was born out of a literary loneliness coupled with dissatisfaction with
mainstream publishing, which seems to be growing ever narrower. Since moving to
a new town nearly seven years ago I lost my huge in-person literary community.
I felt amputated, and I’ve learned that I’m someone who needs to be part of
something creative and collaborative to feel happy. I had met Chelsea Starling
through a student of mine, we quickly became friends, and when I was discussing
these things with her, it became clear we had two similar visions that needed
marrying. Where it is now is a result of the passion of some highly creative,
amazing people. And frankly where i.v. is now is just the beginning of an
exciting new stage yet to come!
You’re very physically active - do you think there is a link
between a fit body and a fit mind?
JR: Well for me there’s a link between MOOD and body. I’m a MUCH nicer person
when I exercise--and I definitely notice my mind gets clearer and burdens
slough away when I go exercise, especially if I’m stressed. What is “fit”
for one person is different for another. I take classes with marathon runners,
and 80 year old women! I began exercising as a harried, exhausted, unfit mother
when my son was 2. I had not slept a full night or exercised much in two years!
I did it to start feeling better mentally. I can’t ever set the goal of “become
fit” or “lose weight” because those goals have implicit self-judgment in them;
instead, when exercise was making my mind and heart feel noticeably better, and
I had fun in these dance classes, iit was the beginning of an addiction.
When someone asks to hear about what you’re writing, what do
you say?
JR: I think I am guilty of the heavy sigh or groan. I only like talking about
my writing when I know I’m not boring someone, which is hard to know.
An early title of this novel was Little Alien, referring
to Grace’s sense of being different and possibly even invoking her shame about
her appearance. What led you to change the title?
I think in earlier drafts, as I was getting to know Grace I was exploring her
through the lens of her alienation, her isolation because I couldn’t yet
understand what being a burn survivor was like (indeed, I called her a burn
“victim” then). But after talking with some burn survivors, and eventually
casting off some superfluous and unnecessary fanciful plot twists, in the last
big revision I came to see that there was far more material to probe in her
coming back to the world, in the dark landscape of her friendship with her wild
friend, and in actively connecting with people; so Little Alien no longer felt
right. This is a book about Grace coming into her right to be alive, her power.
Did anyone in your life in particular inspire your
characterization of Grace’s mother?
I think Grace’s hoarding Ma is a personification of my own cluttered mind! But
really, I’m fascinated by hoarding because a part of me understands it and has
minor tendencies of my own toward holding on for emotional reasons, and not
“seeing” what others would call a disaster around me. And as I’m married to a
psychologist I get to have lots of interesting conversations with a
professional. Most important, for the story I wanted Grace to experience, on
every level possible, an emergence from the small, the cramped, and the
dark--her mother being a hoarder made so much sense for the story as I revised
it.
You’ve written several novels. What moved this one to the top
of your queue for publication?
In many ways this book felt like it was the closest to “done”--which turned out
to be quite a joke played by my ego, as I wound up putting more work into this
novel than any of the other 8 I’ve written. And of those 8 novels, all but two
will likely remain shelved. They are my “miles of canvas” as an artist once
told me about her process to getting a good painting done.
