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Interview
with Jeanne Ray
BUT,
as you’ll find out, when you read her insightfully compelling answers
to my questions, everything about this particular nurse/novelist whose
best-selling book was optioned (three times!) for a movie, who has a
best-selling novelist for a daughter, is
unusually, engagingly, fascinatingly unique.
Which sort of makes you wonder if wonderful things happen to those who
‘deserve’ them. Or if they too,
have to work as hard to achieve success, as the rest of us mere mortal
freelancing freelancers have to. "I love
speaking to groups of any age about the fact that it’s just not over until
it’s over! We are largely sensory
driven until we choose to ignore those senses.
I choose to enjoy mine for as long as I am able, and encourage others to
do the same." Was your debut novel, Julie
and Romeo, the book you’ve wanted to write for years, or all your life –
that book that we all supposedly have inside us? I had never once considered writing a novel when I began JULIE AND ROMEO. The idea started five years ago as a literary protestation to what I perceived the media's idea of being sixty was like. I had just passed my 60th birthday and was happier, healthier and surer of myself than I’d ever been. I had a good job, my family was doing well and I had a great and loving relationship with my husband. One day, standing in line at the grocery, I began reading magazine covers about beauty at 20, 30, 40, and sex at 30, 40 and 50. I suddenly stopped to consider my plight and the plight of others over 60. Suddenly I was moved to write a story about two attractive people over 60 who fall passionately in love. I had no idea that I could do that, mind you, I was just highly motivated. Shakespeare’s drama served as
your inspiration because... Shakespeare’s drama
served not as my inspiration, but as my vehicle. A couple of days after my grocery store episode and about a
week following my birthday, my husband and I rented the video of ROMEO AND
JULIET with Claire Danes and Leo DeCaprio.
I found myself wondering how different the story might have been had it
been grandparents from these two opposing families falling in love.
It was a harmonic sequence of events. What was the process of writing
the book like for you, and how long did it take?
Did you revise it many times? I was working full time
as a nurse, but the need to tell my story took over. I began waking in the night and I would get up and go to the
word processor. I was driven.
The whole process took about nine months.
I did minor revisions as I progressed.
The major changes – mostly technical – were done at Ann’s
suggestion after she read my first few chapters. That great books will always
find their way to publication is a truism I believe in.
Having said that, which did you find more difficult, writing the novel,
finding a publisher, or publicizing and promoting the book? None of the above.
The hardest thing in the whole process was gathering my courage to show
the first 150 pages of the story to my daughter Ann.
I knew she’d be honest, and I was terrified she’d tell me not to give
up my day job. Did you submit your manuscript
to many publishers before it was accepted by Crown? JULIE AND ROMEO was sent
to 16 publishing houses by my agent. It
was bid upon by, I think, five. Harmony,
which is under the umbrella of Crown, made the highest bid and I selected them
both for the money and for my editor, Shaye Areheart, who is just a darling. Were you given much writing,
publishing, promotion, and/or publicity-related advice or help from your
daughter? Ann was/is my mentor.
She believed I had talent, she believed I had a good idea, and she
believed Shakespeare’s plot was an appropriate one.
She also did a lot of editing and gave me technical advice.
As I progress down this path Ann has walked before me, I seek her
guidance on everything from what to pack for book tours, to what book festivals
are of benefit, to how many words I need for a 40 minute talk.
And SOME of her advice, I take! You’ve
mentioned Ann’s major technical changes, editing,
and technical advice. Would
what you learned from her benefit published and unpublished writers reading this
interview? I don’t remember specifics, because Ann really liked all
the characters and she liked the plot line.
She offered a lot of advice on chapter length, and writing the beginnings
and ends of chapters. She has a way
of rearranging sentences in a paragraph so that it goes from okay to sparkling.
That surprised me so much – same words, different position!
It is a trick I’ve learned to apply to myself at this point! The other thing she taught me was to cut out unnecessary
words, to “keep things clean.” You
were quoted as having said “You get more respect as a writer, but people tend
to reach out to you as a nurse.” Which
profession, then, do you find more fulfilling? Both of my professions are enormously fulfilling.
Writing reaches a greater number of
people, but I still go back to work one day a week as a nurse.
I like the one on one of nursing, the commitment to the individual. I also like the celebrity of writing, the fact that I have
the opportunity to perform before an audience. Your book was referred to as an
“endearing comedy about the angst-filled love lives of the senior set.” Would you describe your novel in those terms? I would say that “The path of true love never runs
smooth,” to quote my other mentor. I
would also say that life itself in an endearing comedy. Julie and Romeo was published to critical raves, praise, and acclaim. Can how validating and satisfying that was be put into words? The fact that JULIE AND
ROMEO got good reviews was just the wonderful goo on the pudding.
I’d have been happy if folks just read it and enjoyed it.
The fact that the critics liked it was such a marvelous surprise. Did you anticipate attention
being focused on your age, second careers versus retirement issues, and the fact
that people over sixty “still” search for and desire passion-filled sex
lives? And your being heralded as a
role modeling advocate for “senior citizen’s” rights? I did not anticipate my
becoming some sort of poster child for senior citizen sex lives, but it’s been
one of the more rewarding parts of this whole ride. It satisfies my “care giver” needs on a very deep level.
I love speaking to groups of any age about the fact that it’s just not
over until it’s over! We are largely sensory driven until we choose to ignore those
senses. I choose to enjoy mine for
as long as I’m able, and encourage others to do the same. In
that regard, in one scene in your second book, Step-Ball-Change, the
daughter who was planning her wedding asked her parents what they were doing
upstairs in their bedroom at the hour of
day she visited.
While hers is a ‘normal’ enough question, I found it interesting that
it never seemed to have occurred to her that they may have been making love.
Was that your way of saying that kids, of any age, either don’t know or
don’t want to believe or acknowledge that their parents have, or still have
sex lives?
What people do in the bedroom is completely up to them as
far as I’m concerned. I do,
however, believe that many children, even adult children, deny their parents'
need for privacy. It seems to
embarrass or disquiet them. Are we
forever on duty? I don’t think
so. From
the responses and reactions of people you’ve heard from,
do you know whether people of all ages read and enjoyed your novel? Although older folks (40 and over) are by far my largest
audience for JULIE AND ROMEO, I am always amazed at how young some of the people
are who come to readings and comment, or stay after I give a talk and share how
much they loved the book, and how it seems to have helped their dread of aging.
I mean, some who are REALLY young – a few teens even. You
said, about your second novel, “One of the things [you] were trying to show is
that it is possible to have a long, respectable, happy marriage.”
What message, if any, did you want people to “get” from reading Julie
and Romeo? And from reactions
and responses to your book, as well as sales figures, do you feel they did get
it? I wanted people to feel, after reading JULIE AND ROMEO,
that vital human involvement is possible at any age.
I believe readers got that message. The
conversations between Caroline and her husband, in your second novel, rang so
true and sounded so intimately comfortable.
As did the couple’s compatibility, familiarity, and sense of humor.
Dialogue is supposed to be one of the most difficult aspects of writing
to master, yet you seem to excel at it. Does
this skill come to you naturally?
Yes, dialogue comes naturally to me. I talk. I
listen. I write it down. If it’s true that Barbra
Streisand is adapting Julie and Romeo into a film, please tell us what
it’s like for a writer to have that happen to her very first book. It is true that Barbra Streisand has optioned JULIE AND
ROMEO for a movie. Three times.
There is no one I’d rather see play Julie, and no one whose work I’ve
admired more over the years. It was
a supreme complement. I hope the
movie comes to pass. And, if and when the time comes,
do you plan to write the screenplay for the film? I bought the software
for my computer and tried to write the screenplay for JULIE AND ROMEO and just
failed miserably. I read several
movie scripts to try and get the feel for it, but could not do it well. Given that going from
Shakespeare to tap dancing shows your versatility as a writer, and far ranging
intellectual and artistic interests; where do you take your readers in your next
book? And when is it coming out? I am certainly no expert
on Shakespeare, and I am only a tap dancer wannabe. In my third book, EAT CAKE, my protagonist does something I
often do: she bakes cakes.
EAT CAKE will be out in June of 2003. Does writing second and third
novels get easier or harder? Technically, it gets
easier. Creatively, it gets harder.
I do not have the imagination to continue to call up dreams.
Instead I turn to life experience. Fortunately,
I have a lifetime of unused stories. As we corresponded back and
forth, Jeanne, you wrote that your
next book will be your last. My
question, therefore, is why? Why
write only three books? Is there
nothing about writing that you liked well enough to keep at it? I have said that EAT
CAKE would be my last book. Three
is a lot for someone who didn’t start to write until after the age of sixty.
I am, however, reconsidering. My final question is:
Based on your three-novel experience, is there any advice that you can
offer “older” aspiring writers? My advice to all writers, old and young, is to read as much
as you can, write as much as you can. Keep
your standards high and your expectations of success low.
Write for the joy of it, not because you’re driven to sell what you
write. *Note: Jeanne Ray’s daughter is Ann Pachett, the award-winning, best-selling novelist who wrote Bel Canto. CLICK HERE TO ORDER JULIE AND ROMEO. RoseEtta Stone is
the owner of My Favorite Book Shop (http://www.MyFavoriteBookShop.com),
which specializes in children's books; books of yesteryear, today, and tomorrow;
books for reluctant readers; and banned, censored, challenged and burned books. |
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There’s nothing
unusual about being a nurse whose first novel became an instant best-seller that
America’s most award-winning singer/actress/producer/director (who spells her
first name with only two “A”s) optioned to make into a movie.
