What inspires you to write?

I write to understand and to remember.  Thoughts pass quickly.  At least, for me.  Even if I try to “ponder.”  It is not until I begin to explore an idea on the page, wrestling with it, re-writing it, re-thinking it, that I begin to reach any real clarity. When I was a Court Attorney in New York Supreme Court, a summer intern asked me when legal writing becomes easier.  I answered, “Never.”

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I have always been a writer.  I have not always been published.  My earliest memories are of a thick black book with blank pages in which my mother wrote things I said and the doggerel which she called my poetry.  I was fascinated by rhyming and compiled my own rhyming dictionary when I was about 10 years old.  Of course, I mostly write in prose and none of the poetry I wrote as an adult rhymed.

Why did you choose to write in your field or genre?

I realized that, although it did not seem that way as I experienced it, I lived through a unique and interesting era, and I did not want it to be forgotten.  As my grandchildren became teenagers, I realized what a different world I had lived in when I was their age. I wanted to re-create my world for them – a world without computers, without cell phones, without the internet – a world in which the printed word was the only source of information for anything you could not ask your parents.

What is the biggest thing that people think they know about your subject/genre?

People think that there have always been “teenagers,” identifiable and discussed and pampered as a group.  But before the 1950’s, young people were just “kids” who needed to grow up and to listen to their elders who knew better.  People think that the Holocaust has always been the subject of innumerable books and movies and television programs.  It is hard to realize that throughout the 1950’s, there was a “conspiracy of silence” regarding the genocide of the Jews during World War II which did not have a name and was never discussed. 

What are some day jobs you have held, and how have they influenced your writing?

I started an elementary school and became a lawyer.  Being a teacher made me realize the huge gap between the present and the past to want to help next generations understand the past.  Being a lawyer, taught me how to think and to write.  My favorite duty as a lawyer was legal writing, motions, appellate briefs, judicial decisions.  Although some of my colleagues argued that the discipline was limiting, I felt it was instructive – learning to marshal data to move inexorably towards your goal.

What role does research play in your writing?

Although my book is a novel and not a memoir, it was inspired by memory, and I was writing about a life I had lived, although I did not have as much fun.  There was, however, so much I had forgotten, and I researched contemporaneous slang, movies, music, books.  It was during my readings on the period of the 1950’s that I unexpectedly discovered I was a member of a group I had never heard of, the “second generation,” and that my parents had not been as idiosyncratic as I believed.

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

This is a difficult question for me to answer because being a writer has not been the guiding principle of my life.  I had a family to raise and financial obligations, as well as overriding spiritual and political concerns.  I guess I would say that it is not a good idea to think of whatever it is you do besides writing as a day job.  It is better to choose activities that support you other than merely financially.

Can you share a little bit about your latest book?     

The first half of the 20^th century was tortured:  two World Wars and the Great Depression.  For the generation that lived through it, my parents’ generation, the 1950’s were an oasis of safety.  They reveled in the stability and promise which contrasted so sharply to the previous half century of chaos and despair. To the generation born during World War II, teenagers during the 1950’s, my generation, the safety and sanity were oppressive.  At least to some of us.   The birth of rock and roll offered the first intimation of an escape from the past which would explode in the 1960’s – the possibility of a life of passion and joy.  What I would be was not clear.  But there was, at least, a breath of hope.

What is your next project?

I left the emotional and political turmoil of the 1960’s, and my husband, and raised my children in a spiritual community. I would like to write about that.  A novel, not a memoir.  Perhaps the 1970’s were not so different for me as the 1950’s had been for my parents, except, as someone has said, the music was better and we had more sex.      

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