The Juggler Interviews, #12: Diana Renn

Diana Renn and I have been in the same fiction writer's group since 2005.  She's a prolific writer and reviser, and will tear a story or novel apart and rebuild it from bottom up and make it seem all so easy.  She's also a mother of a young, son, now 5 years old.  Her debut novel, Tokyo Heist, a YA mystery, will hit the shelves this week.  We saw many drafts of it in our group, and it's a thrill to see it finally published and have a chance to reach a well-deserved broad audience.  For those of you in the Boston area, she'll have her book launch this Saturday, June 16, at 2pm at Newtonville Book.

She took some time to answer questions in the midst of all the book launch preparations:

It feels like you started bringing in pieces of Tokyo Heist to our writers group quite a while ago (perhaps before I was even a member), how long have you been working on it?

I started writing Tokyo Heist (with a different title, and as an adult novel) in the fall of 2004. From first word to publication, the journey has taken almost eight years!

One thing I’ve always admired about you as a writer is your ability to rewrite, and rewrite some more, and fearlessly tackle anything that wasn’t working. Did this talent come in handy in the process of working with your agent to find a publisher, and then working with an editor?

Thanks! This book was revised extensively, including three times starting over almost from scratch. Revision doesn’t scare me; drafting does. When I’m revising, I have something to work with. I love the feeling of making something stronger.

I actually didn’t do too much revising for my agent. I did revise extensively for my editor. When I got my first edit later (several single-spaced pages of notes!), I admit I was daunted, but then I threw myself into the job. I was glad I’d had so much revision experience; I knew I’d get through it and the book would come out better. Also, I’ve worked as an editor and a writer in educational publishing, and I’m sure that experience trained me to be a good reviser, especially with deadlines in mind.

You had your son when you were in the thick of writing the main drafts of Tokyo Heist, and then were busy being the parent of a pre-schooler during the sale and subsequent editing. How did you manage to get it all done? What’s your writing schedule like? Do you have a certain routine?

I pushed to finish my first complete draft in the months before my son was born; I finished with just a couple days to spare. I was terrified that once he was born I would never write a complete novel. (I’d written two other attempts at novels, but with many missing scenes – they didn’t feel “complete” to me). At one point I didn’t even care about selling this book. I just wanted to see the words “the end.”

For the first few months after my son was born, in 2007, I set the novel aside. I worked on short stories and essays. One night, in a sleep-deprived haze, I looked at that “finished” novel manuscript of what would become Tokyo Heist. I realized much of what I’d written – 80% of it – really wasn’t working. I’d reached “the end,” but in the wrong way. I nearly trashed it, but I still loved the premise, and some characters, so I started over.

I was fortunate to have some babysitting help, and a son who loved to nap. I worked those naps. Sometimes he only slept in the car, though, so I’d drive to a remote location and work on the novel in the car, on my laptop. I think that’s how I pushed through the next draft. Feedback from my wonderful writing group also kept me going. Some people like to wait to show a complete draft to beta readers, but honesty, if I’d had no sense of audience, I’m not sure I could have pressed on. I was very isolated in those early months of being a mother, and isolated as a writer; I’d given up my teaching job by then. Writing group feedback was a huge motivator and got me banging out more pages.

By 2009 I felt the novel was ready for querying agents. I did that for the better part of a year, with no luck – lots of partial and full requests, but no takers. I got two fresh sets of eyes on the manuscript and some good advice. I revised YET AGAIN. My tireless writing group read the novel YET AGAIN. I queried YET AGAIN. Now my son was napping less, and my babysitting help was less reliable. He wasn’t adjusting well to an attempt at daycare. I had fewer hours to work with but kept querying, spending any available time researching agents and sending the thing out. Finally I got my agent in April 2010. I revised a little for him and he sold the book to Viking in July 2010.

Revising for the editor, which happened in waves over 2011 (mostly last spring and summer) felt harder, time-wise, than drafting. My son was in preschool, which should have given me more time, but he had some health issues and other things going on, and missed a lot of school. It was scary to have real deadlines hanging over my head and a kid who needed to be out of school, or needed to be ferried to various appointments, or just needed attention. I switched to the night shift a lot as I revised.

I don’t remember sleeping much in 2011.

Two of my biggest deadlines happened to hit on two separate weeks when we’d scheduled family vacations last year. This meant our Cape Cod summer rental turned into an office and my husband took on more of the childcare. This meant our family reunion in Seattle was spent with me working in a hotel room a lot while other people entertained our son. In retrospect, I feel lucky these deadlines hit at vacations because I had family around to help and didn’t have to hire sitters.

How did I manage to get it all done? I don’t really know. I think I just scavenged for time whenever I could, and sacrificed some other time-consuming things, like watching TV. Like sleep.

I no longer have a routine. I feel like any time I set a schedule, the rug gets pulled out from under me. Something will go awry in the house, or a school vacation will hit. (Why are there so many school vacation weeks?) In general, though, I have gone back to that night shift, drafting new material from roughly 9 pm to midnight, and using any daytime hours I have to edit/revise that work, catch up on email, and work on promotional activities, including keeping up with my mystery writers blog. The night shift works for me for drafting; it’s the only uninterrupted time I can absolutely count on these days.

You’ve completely leaped into the world of YA publishing and YA mysteries over the past year or so, with your blog, Sleuths, Spies, and Alibis, and Apocalypsies, plus your own personal blog. Plus rewrites. Plus being a mom. And writing new stuff. How are you juggling all of it?

Honestly, I’m in awe to be included in your “Juggler” interview series because when I read about the other people you’ve featured, they seem to get SO much done, juggling SO much more than I do. But then I have to remind myself not to make comparisons, and to remember that some days and weeks are more productive than others. And even if I took something out of the equation – motherhood, rewrites, my mystery blog, whatever – I’d still be juggling, because I’ve always had too much on my plate. I think that’s just how I am. I take on a lot.

I’ve learned to put different weight on different activities and forgive myself if some things slide. My personal blog gets updated weekly, if I’m lucky, and I’m fine with that. I’m involved in an amazing debut author group, the Apocalypsies, with 160 authors, and I try to support this group and participating as much as I can, while accepting that I simply can’t respond to every email or post, or wish every single person a happy birthday, or some weeks I’m on Twitter and some weeks I’m not. I’m starting to pull back on social media (even though with a book launch I know I shouldn’t) so that I can focus more energy on writing the next book. A few years ago I used to try to work harder to get more things done. Now I’m feeling a shift of energy, like I’d rather get less done, but do less better, and not feel so scattered.

I used to set weekly or daily goals for productivity. Now I don’t. I inevitably fail to make those goals – often due to circumstances beyond my control – and then I just feel bad. I make modest lists of morning and afternoon goals.

I’ve seen the book since its early forms. When you started out, you weren’t really writing a lot of YA material During the editing process, how have you and your editor worked to shape the book to make sure it would be a book that met the expectations of young adult readers?
I made the conscious decision to make the novel a YA novel back in 2006. But I didn’t actually read a lot of YA until a couple of years ago – until after the novel sold. In a way that’s a good thing. People say the book is “original” and “unique” in the YA market, and I think it’s because I had no idea what was out there. My editor and I did do some work to add more exciting scenes that would appeal to YA readers. We changed the title from the original one to have more teen appeal and to allow us to use an edgy cover.

Now I read almost exclusively YA novels – partly because I love the genre, partly because I know many YA authors now, and partly because I love participating in the community of children’s fiction, and keeping up with current and classic YA books helps me to do that.

Now that you’re a mother, did you find that some of your sympathies towards your characters shifted a little? Or was it a good escape from being a mother to inhabit the character of Violet for a while every day?

It was easy tapping into my inner teen and getting into Violet’s head. And refreshing. An escape. My daily life is filled with responsibilities, so it was fun to hang out with Violet in her world -- getting into trouble, sneaking around, outrunning mobsters, etc. However, being a parent does enable me to sympathize with the parent characters. I can’t think about them too much. Sometimes I’d read over a scene where Violet’s grousing about her dad, and I’d think, “Hey, he’s just doing the best he can! Nobody told ever told him how to parent!” But it’s Violet’s book, not her dad’s, and so she gets to grouse.

What’s next? I love the character of Violet—any chance we’ll get to see her in another book someday?

I’m currently working on another YA mystery, with very different characters and a different setting. Tokyo Heist sold as a standalone, but I’d love to write another Violet mystery someday, and have lots of ideas, so we shall see!

Thanks, Diana! And good luck with the release!

Thanks for the interview; it’s great to be in the company of such amazing jugglers! 


Here's new book trailer for the Tokyo Heist:



You can visit Diana's web site at:  www.dianarenn.net.  You can also follower on Twitter at @dianarenn   or on Facebook.

Fire on Earth reading on June 26, at Boston Playwrights Theatre

 

Fire on Earth, will get a reading from Fresh Ink, on June 26, 7:30pm, at the Boston Playwrights Theatre.  This is part of their InkSpot reading series.  My director will be the fabulous Rebecca Bradshaw. We're still putting the cast together.  I'm super psyched about this reading and the start of the process that will lead to a full production in February.

The Juggler Interviews, #11: Laura Harrington

Laura Harrington is an award-winning writer of plays, musicals, operas, radio plays, and her first novel, the heartbreaking and lovely Alice Bliss, has been met with critical acclaim.  She's also the mother of a daughter who recently graduated from college.  I've been a big admirer of Laura's work for the stage, and now I'm a big fan of her novel, too.  She's off in London for the paperback release of Alice Bliss right now, but took some time to answer some questions for me.


You’ve had so much success writing for the stage, both plays, musicals, and operas. What made you decide to write a novel?

A few things conspired to open up this world to me. I was given this incredible award for my music theatre work that gave me two years of writing time. Which was an awe-inspiring moment – so much validation for my theatre career coupled with so much possibility. But I didn’t immediately think: Great! I can’t wait to write my next musical. Instead I thought: This is my chance to be a beginner again, to re-connect to the creative process by trying to do something I’ve never done before. I also wanted to pick up my pen without thinking about anything other than story. No worries about the size of the cast, the cost of production, etc.

Did you find yourself able to do things in prose that you hadn’t been able to do in script form?


Yes and yes and yes. It was so liberating to be able to spend time with a character’s interior voice. I also loved being able to tell a story that unfolded slowly. And it was just plain fun to be able to play with language in new ways.

from the TN Rep production of THE PERFECT 36: "A Woman's Voice"

Your writing for stage often deals with historical topics, and isn’t necessarily grounded in strict realism or traditional styles. For Alice Bliss, for which the writing is heartbreaking and lovely, you chose to write a contemporary story, grounded in realism. How do your approaches to tackling prose and drama differ?

As for all that history: I write about what obsesses me, the things I can’t stop thinking about. In some ways, my stories choose me. I’m also drawn to the voiceless and the displaced. And I’m deeply disturbed about war and wish that I could do something to make a difference.

Is my approach to writing prose and drama really different? I’m not sure. For me it’s all about voice. Once I have the voice and the rhythm of the book, the play, the character, then I just follow it through the first draft. I’m sure that sounds overly simplistic, but it’s as though the world of the play or the book has a voice, a style, a look, a feel and so does each character’s individual voice. I’m fascinated by layering voice/ image/ sound/ smell, etc. For me writing comes from a very, very physical place, from specific physical observations, from all the senses, no matter what genre I’m in.


Your daughter is a recent college graduate. In this interview series, I’ve talked a lot to writers who are in the thick of raising kids. You’ve succeeded!

Thank you! She’s a great kid.

And you’ve written so many plays and operas. How did you do it?
I am blessed with a lot of energy and focus. People are always commenting on how self disciplined I am, but it’s more that I love my work. And, to be honest, I’m pretty driven and ambitious.


What advice can you give those parents of small children (and teenagers) who are also trying to write?

Don’t think about the big picture. Keep it simple and small and write a page a day. I love the story of Andre Dubus III writing his first book. He had 4 kids, was working construction full time and spent 20 minutes a day writing while parked at the cemetery before going home.

In some ways playwriting is ideal for short bursts of time because you really can write a play one scene at a time. I could not have written a novel while my daughter was young. It’s no accident that my writing world expanded as my daughter headed off to college.


I find that when I’m working on a novel, I need a long stretch of predictable time to write, whereas a play is so much shorter, so I can get more done in bursts. What’s your writing schedule like? Does it vary a lot, depending on whether you’re working a play, opera, or novel?


The actual writing process, the day-to-day activity of writing is the same no matter what the form. You have to show up and give yourself to it. But the book took more time, lots more time. I found I had to make my life very, very quiet in order to create the mental space for a book.

One of the best things about writing a book is that the fun part – what I think of as the honeymoon phase when you’re living inside the work – lasts longer.


It seems like Alice Bliss has really struck a chord with many readers, of various ages. You’ve attended many productions of your work for stage. How does the response from readers of Alice Bliss compare to the response you’ve had from your plays and operas?

A reader lives in the world of the book for much longer than an audience member lives in the world of a play. I would say that the response of readers has been more intense, perhaps because of that longer, more personal and more private relationship with a book.

from Pilgrim Theatre production of N (Bonaparte) directed by Kim Mancuso

Marketing a book is very different from marketing a play. These days, the author of a book bears a lot more responsibility for getting the word out, even when you’re with a large publisher. Talk about some of the lessons you’ve learned about marketing a book. Do you think they’ll have any use for you in your work for stage?

Book marketing feels very different from marketing for the theatre because - if you’re lucky - it lasts such a long time. I was working intensely on the hardcover release of Alice Bliss for a solid 6 months. And now it’s time to work on the paperback release, which will be more extensive.

Lessons learned? Getting up to speed with social media, learning how to reach out to and engage with readers and fellow writers. Learning how open and friendly and supportive novelists can be. Meeting dozens of book bloggers – a world I did not even know existed. There is a very generous spirit at the moment and the world of books feels very open. I don’t know if this openness will last, or whether it is just the first flush of all of this social media potential.

The contact and connections with other writers has been amazing and really fun. I’ve found people who are friendly, open, and supportive; I’ve met and corresponded with writers in South Africa, England, Sweden, Canada, and all over the US.


What are you working on now?

I’m about to begin work on a commission from Playwrights Horizons, to write Alice Bliss, the musical, with the composer Jenny Giering and lyricist Adam Gwon.

And I’m deep into my second book. My next novel begins with water, as Alice Bliss does. There’s a large Irish Catholic family with six kids. It’s 1966 and the Viet Nam war changes everything.


Thanks for taking the time for this, Laura!
Thank you, Pat. Always fun to talk with you. 

You can read more about Laura and her work at  www.lauraharringtonbooks.com and www.laura-harrington.com.

The next installment of the Juggler Interviews will feature a talk with Diana Renn.

Measuring Matthew Film in NYC, May 31

The film version of Measuring Matthew made it into the New York Shorts Fest.  This will be my New York film debut!  It will be screened on May 31, in Program 8 at 7:30pm.  You can now buy tickets online here. The festival is at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 E. Houston Street.  The screening room only seats 100, so if you're going to go, buy your tickets early. I won't be able to be there, but my producer and director will.

If you're in New York next Thursday, I hope you'll check it out.  With any luck, this will be just the first of many festival appearances around the country.

Playwriting in 3D: Playwriting and Puppetry, May 29

Next Tuesday, May 29, I'll be moderating the fourth installment in StageSource's Playwriting in 3D series.  This time we'll be talking about Playwriting and Puppetry.  We'll have an in-depth discussion at the Brookline Puppet Showplace Theatre with Roxie Myhrum, Bonnie Duncan, Faye Dupras, and Brad Shur.  And show-and-tell, too.

The use of puppets dates backs to the very beginning of theatre, and now more and more new plays and theatre productions are using puppets as ways to help tell stories. Recent examples include Paula Vogel's Long Christmas Ride Home and the production of Wild Swans at American Repertory Theatre.   The very popular Avenue Q is running right now at Lyric Stage.

The panel will discuss different uses of puppets in narrative theatre, and how writing for puppets is both similar and different from writing for live actors. Whether you're interested in writing your own puppet show or want to integrate the use of puppets into your own script/production, this is a great chance to learn from the experts.

Panelists will show examples of their own work, and there will be plenty of time for audience questions and discussion.

The cost $20 for StageSource members, $30 for non-members.

To purchase a ticket visit http://www.stagesource.org/store/product/53/

Come check it out.  We've had great discussions at the other panels and this one promises to be more interesting and fun than ever. 


(You can also help spread the word, by inviting people to the event via Facebook at the Facebook event page.)

2012 Boston Theater Marathon Round Up

I had a great time at the Boston Theater Marathon yesterday.  My daughter, Kira, and fellow Rhombus playwrights, Alexa Mavromatis and Ginger Lazarus, were part of our theatre-absorbing team.  We saw them all.  Yep, 53 plays in 10 hours. 

My play, Second Look, ran in the 6-7pm hour, and I was delighted.  It's a serious piece, and the audience was clearly with us.  The house grew very, very quiet, which is just what we needed.  Actors Charles Van Eman and Bob DeLibero did a fantastic job, under Stephen Faria's direction, of capturing the awkwardness and silent pauses in the difficult encounter portrayed in Second Look.  Much thanks to the Firehouse Center for the Arts for choosing and producing the play.

Bob DeLibero, Stephen Faria, and Charles Van Eman at rehearsal.

I was was a little concerned about how the audience would react to our piece when I first sat down and saw the program, because our hour started with Designated Sitter, by George Sauer, featuring Hannah Husband, Nael Nacer, and Ed Hoopman--and this promised to have the audience laughing.  (And it did.)  And then right before Second Look was scheduled Walt McGough's piece, The Dinosaurs Have a Request, with a cast of a dozen actors.  I'm a huge fan of Walt's work, and this promised to keep the audience chuckling.  How would we get them to settle down for Second Look?

Turns out, Walt's piece was funny, sure, but it was also extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking, and highly theatrical.  A hard act to follow, but it fully engaged the audience.  This was just what we needed and Bob and Charlie kept a tight trip on them throughout our piece.

There were many good plays and performances over the course of the evening.  Far too many to list all of them here, but besides Walt and George's pieces, here are a few that stood out for me:

• Shrapnel by young playwright Yavni Bar-Yam. Intense play about potential high school shooters.
• Love, Billy Bunny by Peter Floyd.  I'm a big fan of plays about obsessives, and any play that features a gun being held to the head of a stuffed bunny has my vote.
• Kevin LaVelle completely grabbed our attention in William Donnelly's play, Animal Boat, as a former writer of children's songs turned corporate PR hack.  (This was one of Kira's favorite's, too.)
• Ronan Noone's I Glue You showed his dark, dark sense of humor and clear love and skill with language.
• Bob Mussett and Lynn R. Guerra shone in an intense encounter between two people who have trouble dealing with other people in Sheri Wilner's Arts and Sciences. 
• Grant MacDermott made a fine playwriting debut with the heartfelt King Richards, with strong performances from Dale Place and Bob Pemberton.
• C.J. Erlich, whom I met at the EstroGenius festival last year, gave us some great laughs with The Lilac Ticket, about an elderly married couple.  Kippy Goldfarb and Stephen Benson had terrific chemistry.
• I was delighted to see Audrey Claire Johnson, who is in the film version of Measuring Matthew, give a strong performance as a sleepless mother in Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich's play, 3 A.M.
• Hand Down the Chesterfield, by Tom Grady, was one of the more ambitious pieces of the day, with Michael Fordham Walker giving a fluid performance as a coat, in a play that had a complex view of time, place, and memory.
• I like a play with a good surprise, and John Shanahan's play, Hot Water, featuring Will Lyman, Bill Mootos, and Amanda Collins, certainly made me happy.
• Erin Striff's The As-If Sisters was a solid adoption play, and I happen to love writing and watching adoption plays.  As well as plays with Georgia Lyman in them.
• Deirdre Girard's play, Frickin' Woodpecker, got a great cast in Steven Barkhimer and Barlow Adamson, that got this script to land with just the right gentle touch.
• Esme Allen blew me away in The Accidents of Bread by William Orem.  I turned to Alexa and said, "who the hell was that?"  Having spent the last zillion years working on a play about the creation of the English Bible, I loved seeing someone flip out over the nature of transubstantiation.
• And Reproduction by Elizabeth Dupre, featured some great romantic geek humor.  I adore romantic geek humor, since I might actually be a romantic geek myself (you'll have to ask Tracy for confirmation).  Excellent performances in this one by Andrew Bernap and Rachel Dulude.

 The day ran, as always, seamlessly.  The BPT staff, designers, running crew, and stage managers are special kinds of magicians and deserve high prize for this most intense juggling act.

I dragged Kira to the party afterwards.  I promised that we'd only stay 15 minutes (she protested that she needed to go home and get to bed because she had school the next day.  Pshaw!)  but of course I kept us there for almost an hour.  My wife pointed out that the BTM is basically Bring-Your-Daughter-To-Work Day for me.   [The following is apparently a secret.  Do not tell anyone:]  The BTM party is pretty much the ideal networking situation for playwrights.  There's plentiful, delicious food, cheap drinks, and LOTS of actors and directors who like working on new plays.  Is there a better place to catch up with old friends and make new contacts?  If you're a playwright working in Boston, you're a fool, a fool I say, not to go to the BTM and the party, even if you don't have a play selected.  You can scout dozens of actors, directors, and theatre companies.  What kind of new scripts interest these folks?  And then that very same night, you can hunt down the ones you like and introduce yourself, tell them how much you love their work, and give them business cards.  Seriously--you get all this for $25 (if you buy in advance).  It'd be worth that much just to go to the party alone, but no, you can watch 53 short plays, too.  It's pure insanity.   [Some playwrights are very shy and find parties painful.  The solution is to find an extroverted friend and go as a tag team.  It works.  Trust me.]


It was a great night.  I can't wait for next year!


(My apologies to playwright Erin Striff.  In the initial version of this post, I mistakenly gave writing credit for The As-If Sisters to Laura Crook, who was the director for the piece. Erin wrote the piece and North Shore Music Theatre produced.)

The Juggler Interviews, #10: Georgia Stitt

Georgia Stitt is a composer and a lyricist. Her musicals currently in development include: Big Red Sun (NAMT Festival winner in 2010, Harold Arlen Award in 2005 and and written with playwright John Jiler); The Water (winner of the 2008 ANMT Search for New Voices in American Musical Theatre and written with collaborators Jeff Hylton and Tim Werenko); Sing Me A Happy Song (a musical revue); and Mosaic (commissioned for Off-Broadway in 2010 and written with Cheri Steinkellner).  She's also released several albums, including My Lifelong Love, and is a music director.  And she's a mother of two daughters.  Together with actress Susan Egan, she writes about mixing busy musical careers with parenting in their blog, Glamour & Goop.  I was delighted that she was able to take some time to answer questions about juggling her artistic life and motherhood.

You’ve got two young daughters (how old are they now?) and also a very busy career, one that can require a lot of travel, sessions in the studio, rehearsals, performances. Plus your husband, Jason Robert Brown, is also a composer/lyricist, so you have two chaotic careers/schedules in the house. How do you balance the career stuff and motherhood?

Balancing -- it's the never-ending challenge in our household. My daughters are 6 (first grade) and 2 1/2 (starting preschool this fall). And the magical secret is that we have a nanny. After our house payment I think the nanny might be the biggest expense in our household, but there's simply no way we could pull off these two careers without her. She is a much-beloved part of our family. The gift of the third set of hands means that, for the most part, my husband and I both assume we have the traditional business hours available to work, just as if we went to an office. I schedule meetings, conference calls, rehearsals, recording sessions and writing during the hours when the nanny is on duty. And I stop working at exactly six p.m. so I can be with the kids for homework, dinner, bath, and bedtime. The mornings are great, because I work at home so I'm very aware of the rhythms of the younger daughter playing, eating, napping. And then in the afternoons, they head out. I do miss out on a lot of the after-school activity, but every few weeks I'll take the afternoon off to go watch a swimming lesson or a ballet class. And of course, if the nanny is sick, I cancel everything.

As far as the travel goes, Jason and I try as often as possible to make sure we're not out of town at the same time. In the few times when we've had to travel simultaneously, we've either taken the kids with us or hired the nanny to stay overnight. Neither is ideal, but all of the grandparents live far away so it is what it is. Getting on a plane is always hard, and I don't see how that will ever change. Theater is developed all over the country, and those of us who make theater have to travel. It is the necessary evil of this business.

Heidi Blickenstaff sings from “MOSAIC” (produced Off-Broadway, 2010)

How and when do you write and compose? Do you have a studio at home, or do you need to get out of the house? Do you have a routine that you follow, or does it vary from project to project?

Jason and I each have a sound-proof piano studio in our home. It's part of why we left New York and moved to Los Angeles. When we were young and childless we shared a one-bedroom apartment with a grand piano in the living room. We were each constantly encouraging the other one to go away so that we could be alone with the piano! When we decided to buy a house, we looked for one that had two separate spaces that we could adapt to accommodate our unique needs. My studio is the converted garage, so I do actually have to walk out the front door to go to work. I find that I usually get into the studio in the late morning, and there's the inevitable dealing with business -- returning phone calls, emails, etc. If I can get into writing mode by lunchtime I can usually have a nice long stretch of composing in the afternoon. Sometimes I come back to writing after the kids are in bed, but more often than not I'm dealing with household stuff in the evening and my creative energy is sapped.


I love the blog that you and Susan Egan write together, Glamour and Goop. In one post, you tell a great story about traveling with your kids to work on your musical at Goodspeed Musicals. How did it end up working out? It seems the ultimate juggling act to try to work on a workshop or production of a new play or musical, all while trying to manage the kids in a strange place.

It was really, really, really hard. Jason had work in New York when I had to be at Goodspeed (in Connecticut), so the kids had to come with one of us. He offered to take them (and our magnificent nanny) to New York, but we knew that I would have better housing and the temporary school situation in CT seemed more manageable than in Manhattan. My eldest daughter enrolled in public school a few miles away from the theater, and I drove her to class each morning before rehearsal. Any production or collaborator meetings we needed to have after rehearsal had to happen in my living room, because I had to let the nanny have SOME time off each day. I requested an electric keyboard for my bedroom, and I stayed up very late at night doing the orchestrations and rewrites for the next day's rehearsal. For five weeks I was underslept and anti-social but my kids, who are troopers, really loved being in New England in the fall. (The pumpkins! The leaves! The hayrides! The apples!) Just as I was about to say "never again," I realized how happy everyone was. It is an experience we will all remember. And the truth is, if I had said no, the production of that show wouldn't have happened. So that's how it goes. We've taken the kids across the country countless times, and they've been to Denmark, to London, to Australia. It's an adventure, to be sure, and every trip is different.

How do you find that being a mother has changed your approach to writing and composing? Both in terms of how you create and what you create. Your album, My Lifelong Love, seems so clearly influenced by motherhood, as is the work you did with Susan Egan on The Secret of Happiness.

I really think the biggest change in HOW I write is about time management, as described above. The change in WHAT I write is bigger. I always challenge myself to write about things in ways I haven't heard them said before. And as I entered this phase of my life and my career, I realized that most of the songs about mothers and children were written by men. (I mean, come on, most of the songs about everything are written by men.) So I figured I had this unique opportunity to describe something that was very real and all-consuming to me with a voice that was truthful but under-represented. I walk the line very carefully -- I want to write from a distinctly personal and feminine point of view, but I don't want to be a "girl writer." If all I wrote about was motherhood I would turn into my own little cabaret show. But I see the world through the eyes of a mother, a wife, a daughter, a writer, a former Southerner, a liberal Democrat, a church-goer, an almost-forty-year-old, a student... Somewhere in there is my voice.

Susan and I had a lot of fun putting the two albums together at the same time. We are in similar chapters in our lives -- former New Yorkers living in southern California and raising our daughters. Our collaboration -- the blog, the concerts, the albums -- all comes from exploring where those shared experiences meet.


You’ve managed to keep working, thriving really, while still being fully engaged as a mother. But the demands of working the theatre are intense and it’s not exactly known as being a family-friendly business. We lose a lot of promising artists in our field as they hit the age where they’re trying to have a family. Is there something that development or producing organizations could to be more accessible (or at least understanding) or artists with children?

It's lovely to read that you think I'm thriving. I think I'm barely coming up for air. I'm very aware that when my younger daughter starts school this fall I'll have my days back in a way that I don't have them right now, and I am trying to make sure that I'm up on the business I left behind seven years ago. I moved away from New York at exactly the same time I first got pregnant, and a lot of what I've done in the meantime is just try to stay relevant. I am active on social media because it makes people think about who you are and what you do, especially when you spend your days in a studio or a nursery or a carpool. I have to say, the organizations I've worked for have been very accommodating at every step along the way. I've nursed in recording studios, I've spread blankets and babies on the floor of rehearsal rooms, I've hired sitters in cities where the only contacts I had were the stage managers of my shows. What I won't do anymore is travel for something I don't believe in, or take a job that costs more in childcare than it returns in satisfaction. And if I'm going to have to miss bedtime, it better be good.

If it ever entered my mind to stop writing and focus more exclusively on parenting, it didn't last long. I would be a very cranky mother if I stopped working. I have convinced myself that it's important to show my girls what it looks like to be in pursuit of a dream. For all the good and all the bad, they seem to understand what I do and how much it means to me.



What are you working on now?

I have two musicals that are in various stages of development -- BIG RED SUN is a story about a teenager looking for his father in post WWII America, and the songs draw from the wildly different musical sounds of the 40s and the 60s. SING ME A HAPPY SONG is a book musical about five contemporary characters who are more technologically connected than ever but find actual human connection elusive. Beyond that, and the ongoing concerts with Susan Egan, I'm writing a musical this summer for TADA!, a children's theater in NYC, and I'm the composer in residence at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church here in California. I have the beginnings of a few new projects that are just starting to crack out of their shells, but I'm protecting them until they reveal themselves more fully. It's sort of like being pregnant again... but actually not like that at all.

Thanks much for taking the time to do this! Good luck with all your upcoming projects! 


Georgia will appear in concert with Susan Egan, this upcoming Monday, May 21st, in New York at Birdland, at 7pm, 315 W 44th Street.