A Word on Words; 2404; Joyce Maynard

sadly in a word on words the program delving into the world of books and their other this week joyce maynard talks about her book where logo your host for word on words mr john singing falling chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university in because on dancing the once again welcome to word on words our guest is joyce maynard she's a writer of note she's a storyteller an exceptional storyteller and she's here to talk about her new book welcome to world it's great that you talk about where love goes i think the title is very appropriate i don't know where in the hell loan was going to go with a player and the one ball over the law now act as for many other acts like yes

that's right you know she's an interesting woman i say a woman alone so alone but another story of begins and underworld some ambitions are also allowed ends but it's it's fair to say that despite the fact that she does know men there is i am and there is mickey and there is tim and there's three men in her life not simultaneously we should say not by any means that she'd won all in when she is women one woman has a one man woman i guess that's true except that she's also a mother which is a another part of her story that she's always torn between and i think so many women are on between the part of her that it wants to give out to her children and be everything they

need and the part that longs to be given to and be taking care of herself and it's hard enough you know to balance those two parts when you're with the parent of your children i think even married couples have a hard enough time finding space for their relationship with each other that in the context of raising children but she's a woman who's raising children and try to have a relationship with somebody who's not the father of the children and that's infinitely more complicated you know i have when i read books in of the office as a duo and we i wonder where characters come from other than usually marijuana to cactus so jump off the page it is anomalous and reagan and benefits it's exciting to read of this is both exciting and fun but in this book

every <unk> made me think about you the author of the long and an end and made me wonder where these people came from me ursula is about as disturbed or trial as i've never heard and i've never known anybody as foul up that assertion clearly i've read the newspapers and seen news stories and we've seen profiles of children well with emotional trump is a little girl much damaged by divorce she was abandoned by her mother ursula is the child of both claire's mother tim and she was left by her mother and now she's afraid her father will abandon her for claire bowes often resumes if you didn't hear from her for all he's and she had color once on a sunday and so

our full on go out on sunday thinking next sunday and mama's gonna called mom never call it arrogant a lot of children who have one element or another reversal a story i i mean she's she's a troubled child for sure by it and i think her her troubles are probably more severe than in the us a lot of many children who've who've experienced the breakup of the family including clare square also has a couple of children and they have their story to tell but is she is i hope she's she's not totally unsympathetic character initiate she weeks terrible damage on iran and everybody around her she's she's a wildcard she's she's out too to be heard and she makes a powerful and very destructive statement that a solution oriented and she goes destroyed she really hurts the militia guys that you know i think part of what the story's about is that you know they're that they don't necessarily have to be villains that and even the ex husband even the old boyfriend you know who who even longer using only a bit

vague they all have their their own hearts and their own history that brought them to this place i have a hyphenated term for this book it's gut wrenching i ate began identifying with claire i guess as well as a good old boy a really well well well in lopez's youth with clarinetist with clara not remarried i mean i you know a couple of the guys there was her husband and apple's sales of all learned i mean all the business of being shuns with the kids soon and rubbing your nose in it and frohlich it into like it's an accusing her over his nose and voted to millions of foreigners it's a pretty classic divorce situation however you know whoever is the non custodial parent becomes the romantics or throw it figure in who comes in on the weekends and takes the kids have never

really i can sympathize with you do you know he doesn't live with his children in a day to day way i mean i'm saying it you know he didn't do it he drove me crazy sometimes this character but i i think you know where my character of clara comes to by the end of the book is some degree of sympathy and forgiveness everybody's everybody's john dillon tournament and you know there's a moment of a new tragedy on a snowmobile accident he comes in and acts like that acts like a father and the and compassionate what what that's just a glimpse of you know part of the story is that divorce makes reasonable people do crazy things well we're talking about we talk about a couple of the voters here who are talking

about claire and so one sided government to him and jill kelley another scientist melanie the fall a babysitter and then somehow the kids don't belong to that clay air winds up with him and the kids take their eyes that it is that typical of of divorce that the children seaney yeah you know why the court are still doing most of the city the mother's nineteen ninety that you don't know that the night raids more typical an appraisal her out there nothing you don't write you don't know and you're not going to work i think so you know part of what inspired me to write this book with a feeling that there that there were a lot of divorced people both men and women out there whose story had not been told and on and on and i felt like i'd been in the

trenches i know a lot of it i know about terrible blind dates you know at thirty nine years old from them you feel like that is you get him the bowling ball above them you know and you know the deep deep the experience the only divorced people no but boy they know it of seeing this person on your doorstep on a friday night and take the children away and you were once wildly in love with them and another time you were in so much rage and so much hurt and eight and now hewitt you made children together you share this year you were young together you share this link that you'll never share with anybody else and yet it's reduced to these the now you know on the wintertime even a pig a map and dad use the you know the time the dentist appointment india have the check in the chickpeas never look

never loved the players by that added sojourner in the naval inadequate and that you and i have all the best intentions or so it's it's it's fair to say that is it is reasonably took him to suggest that the kids first ball miss the non custodial parent and secondly resent the other part of the continent and allow so either as a lover so relentlessly it is a good sex a good sex and funny funny about writing when you have and you put in their mouths a minute but it but it is what it is the kremlin said got rigid aspect of this woman's life that was a challenge to learn in the three hundred odd pages of this book and in a

professional life is it is cast in jeopardy now she's tickets or how she gets i was worried about you know what i was tied in knots over over to pregnancy well one of the situations that i thought was very interesting to explore and i'm happy to report that you know this one was a you know a product of my imagination but the league and the origins of that come from the fact that i know i am myself the mother of a teenage daughter and we're both are very separate stages of lack of life i'm exploring relationships with the opposite sex and in the case of these two characters are fictional characters both mother and daughter ayer are involved in sexual relationships and and both within and in cells with an unwanted pregnancy this is your ford will cry and i think the delay an eye out my third novel at the liam the interesting you write so well then you break

the narrative it break the sequence of a narrative so that i'm reading at one moment about sally impeach bybee which and then again i'm reading about him and again i'm reading about making my love of reform and then again i'm reading about virtual and once i knew she was pregnant you drove me crazy i want to know what the outcome of the pregnancy was going to be end you tell me about him and you tell me about ursula you tell me about the our waiting i'm telling you i'm just absolutely couldn't figure out where this story was billy goats and when you told me will tell you it's you make me so so happy he was to win oh whoa

well she's she now partly i barely kept that in suspense because she she has herself like a lot of teenage girls about you in that situation in denial and she doesn't want a look at a vicious waiting she's just having to take the test his shoes sharing and that i wasn't sure what was going to happen myself you know i always when i'm writing a novel and i never know where it's going to go i never know how it's going to end i don't plan it out there at some point i think if you create believable characters they take on a life of their own and determine so i was right along you know with you as you're reading i was waiting to secede what way to try these characters a lot of their absolute la france i tell you it's it's always for me you know the most exciting experience writing on the work of fiction because i'm i'm finding out as i'm writing i am and i think it's one reason why i write at least my first draft very fast because i wanna know how the

juneau are slowing what would turn out to be low which she turned out to be so i did it sure i knew it i knew that she was going to be a very destructive force i didn't know what form that would take that you could tell at the beginning of the book she has a very tender very loving relationship with her father gets would you mind reading a few verses of this is this is sally and this sort of this and give our viewers a sense a little sullivan no i in the chair is somewhat she feels weird says those and a priest three grocery store this is from sally spring of you first heard that turns out to be shocking up with melanie that her brother gets arrested now there's this horrible news about her mother marrying the dork boyfriend which means the kid from hell will move in with them as if living with their fighting dog was bad enough now she's got to share her house with a creepy at

world sneaks into her room and tries out her clothes and talks to herself all the time not to mention the father who acts like a dog himself the way he follows her mom around all the time when he looks at her sometimes he practically do rules a girl named body used to be in sally's gym class told her one time last year but the special chinese team can drink makes you get a period absolutely no matter what a ha ha ha i decided i just just wanted us to get a sense of what this woman has done to this family and so you know i think so it isn't working is a gripping story you know your mind and as you read it just misunderstood people in the you mentioned that he her brother was in was arrested and he was arrested almost on a lark a prank he was feeling real trauma

there's a scene in the air in which pete you think those time be really hates more than one match in having mother's boyfriend take you to your baseball triumphs and then and then really put himself on in ways that embarrass you not me but then there is there is a win over there which you say pete as a loving and loyal sons who really is worried about it and he wishes and every young person over from as a string he just wishes he could win the lottery if he could give her the dough and solve all her problems were not a work anymore she could to go travel or do whatever she wanted to do and you know the jets well how much of its all of iraq on the

eye's unfair to ask you that and certainly a good deal of i don't mind you ask you know is i i i like to think that it's a complement that you mean doesn't feel that way that the characters are real enough in and i'm pretty open about the fact that i own i have myself you know been married and divorced you know wind and airbnb in a single person after divorce and have children whose ages this character is in me that i am probably as close to this character as in character and created i found a lot of the feelings and perceptions that i've had about divorce and about the death of a narrative really is a death i could increase head anyway so it was a very good feeling to be able to do that to say i'm an and not all angry feelings you know i visit a passage here the end of the book where claire goes back to her old house it's actually it's a description of the last time she and her now former husband nick

lowe and to me it's and it's a it's a loving seeing the hear these two people who i am oh cool will not be in each other's future on that day they share more than anybody else in the years since you know this common grief of the dissolution of the water out all the water heaters are really he responded and when they're together i felt they were grieving together they are the reason for a moment there was that there was that there was an incentive financing but you're awful tough on us think of the whole cast an alienated and i would say i knew where the story was going i knew you're having layoffs i'd be happy to tell and i knew she was i knew she was an affair with him for you know i could be wrong about both us but i knew she was she and mickey

were going off into the sunset together in boston that so that lays out that of course our city are sighted and for making you give it to a ride on the chops i'll read one little make these character alley water manny why are you know an inch his ex girlfriend bleep i mean not as though the border different character familiar three main men in this book are from every person of course and i think each of them exemplify elements of what women long four and irrigated nikki he is the passionate lover the lover of women the lover of her the man who will you know notice when she's changed her perfume and and i recognize you know just that there are particular curve of her calf muscle as she denies the light hit so i'm on the other hand

he's not in for the long haul he's not the guy who carries out the trash in his most certainly not the one who gets up in the nineteenth century and that's part of what i think women want the other part is the domestic dream the two and you know that the guy that you go to the news and you wake up and have a coffee together and and of course that we want and at a real dad you know geysers i love defrosting the freeze not only that you say some bad about malo girl boss are you going to confront the owners a red and you not to do it again ever done and you know the unfair way that well rex because it felt in women's favor it's completely good guy won a little bit of a rogue a little ingenuity use your words but of course you know you can't eat you can't pack your bags with him which are closing cost so what she's looking for you know i said is a very a hard

thing to find she wants a stable relationship that has an excitement and you know i'm part of the technique of writing that emerges in the book is your use of a telex how far some flashbacks our dreams or visions talk a bit about the songwriter how useful in the visible title page to move the reader from one mood to another what i try to get inside a character's head and one thing that happens inside the character's head on other fantasies so at you know at different points in the book it might be the twelve year old boy dreaming of having a grand slam home run in his little league game in his mother and father you know who'd been estranged for years coming together throwing their arms around each other and getting back together or in the case of ursula you know the sad telegram from new zealand that know the mother's

boyfriend is just shaved off his beer just discover that he doesn't have a chin underneath the mother's moving back home and they're gonna move to orlando in the case of clarity it's you know it's a fantasy of all you know a romantic night with a man outside of all of the daily realities of her life or at a you know a passionate erotic encounter in the supermarket which is and the direction that women spend as well again that's right to blame and you'd be surprised how many women you know that's how they get through they're shopping on a ha ha ha ha ha sell it it was it's a lot of fun for me to to put on the page into words all the things that i believe we all have a secret little subtext going on all the time you know we sort of look like wear regular people and in our head we are thinking something you know what i'm crazy and i put the latin crazy things on the page but part of what this program's about how orville wright

and some right in sports daily regimen song wait until the muses on the shoulder of song writing when the muse goes away just as well i mean different ways for different kinds of writing full time writer for over twenty years now so i'm pretty disciplined then i get up every morning and go to my desk that i don't get up and write novels every day i mean i've been a journalist i was a newspaper reporter in the magazine writer for ever on but when i want to write a work of fiction a very different approach and it's not something that i can start at seven am and in a non profit at four comfortably and so i really i wait to write a work of fiction until i have a stretch of time when i can dive in and i know i would have to come out until it's done on every one of the three

novels that i've written today have been written that way in the case of this one my kids and we're going to be away for a vacation with their father and i i have created my own little writers colony i packed up my computer and my boom box a lot of sad songs about love and put them in a kind of ten miles down the road to a kind of a genteel motel on a new hampshire and courage didn't not until the book was done and i have to say it was really glorious experience you know judy collins on this program not too long ago and there is a cassette that came out musical perceptive came out with purple heart of your story the of the fascination with music some of the country music i think reflects a romantic dreams and touches us laugh and expresses our longings well what you've done here

is given us a cassette cds lack of sleep is to go with the book and were logos toppled about the first really not like the dog i don't know this is my own project separate from my publishers so unlike their duty cons it's not packaged with the book that after i wrote the book i i wanted and i use music as a way of invoking certain feelings in me getting me in a mood to write so i thought it would be great to give readers the opportunity to hear some of the music that that i heard and get them in a similar sort of frame of mind it's not a center for reading the book i think he can enjoy it without that and the first suggested to my publisher that they might want to put a cd write in the book in and they were interested but not ready to do that so i and my own i've produced this cd soundtrack i call it which is nineteen songs spike unlike judy collins i'm not singing my own songs and the world is all better for it those three it's sad nineteen great artists who all gave me the

rights to their songs for the cd on the ground un condition that it be not for profit so i am set of the eight hundred member back in new hampshire were living under one eight hundred five oh one nine nine one nine weekdays because it's answered by our senior citizens sheltered workshop and they were just there on weekdays eastern time back town you can order it for six ninety eight can't beat that price five nine the tapes or get the eight hundred member from the book jacket it wikipedia not by the book thats okay too they just great silence well i recommend the book i haven't heard the cdo yes but i recommend the book the poses essence punt reaching it it's heartwarming it's funny and i love you joyce maynard author of where love goes as ben our guest on a word on where those two then john c involved

chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university's program was produced in the studios of wbez in nashville