 Hello and welcome to senior moment. My name is David refson. I am your host With so many seniors living in the valley, it's no wonder they decide to both live here and retire here There are many many things to do, but I should just preface that the show is about seniors and for seniors There are so many artists writers and musicians Where seniors who live in the valley and it's a great place to have seniors get involved in those activities We are very honored to have with us Jacqueline Sheehan. She is a noted valley author and Our book lost and found has been on the New York Times bestseller list now, and we're happy to have her here So I wanted to talk to Jacqueline a little bit about how she made this transition from being a clinical Psychologist to being a writer of many novels Yeah, well David for me. It's just a perfect transition and really everything that I learned as a psychologist Applies to writing, you know all my years as a psychologist Really if someone came to me into my Therapy practice It was because something was not going well in their life and my job was to find out A little bit like a mystery What's not working? What usually works for you? How can we what's the conflict? What's the hurdle that you're facing? And you know, what motivates you and what what matters to you and you know, what would you go to the mat for? Those are all things that I have to know about a character Um, but I had always liked writing. I just couldn't figure out Prior to becoming a psychologist How the heck to make a living at it, right? Yeah, I had done journalism in new mexico Um, but you know really the pay was so small. It was just ridiculous. So my second love was psychology Um, and then I began writing quite seriously when I was a psychologist and I would Wake up at five in the morning when my daughter was still in school And write for an hour or two before I would commute to westfield state college and um, every snow day every holiday Um, I would write I would imagine it takes an enormous amount of discipline And patience to be a writer because it's not like you're writing one page You're writing hundreds of pages And well, you are always just writing one page if I thought I had to write 80,000 words that would be overwhelming and I would just go Run screaming out of the room, right? But if I knew that I had on this day to write a scene if I had to get Cooper from the back of a pickup truck onto a ferry Over to portland I could write that and that would be a scene and I'd I'd be good That it really had to get down to kind of manageable chunks I don't know if there's something typical, but how long does it typically take you to write a novel or is there not a typical Scenario for that You know, there doesn't for me. There doesn't seem to be anything typical My very first novel was historical fiction. I was working full-time. It took five years Um, this next book lost and found Took about two years and I think if I averaged out It would be a little over two years for each book depending upon the amount of research Now you have done Many different types of books You mentioned historical fiction with sojourner truth We talked about lost and found here Which is about a dog and a woman and their relationship And then there was center of the world which had to do with the girl trying to find out About her adoption and what how that happened I mean I go through a day and I'm sitting in a car sometimes and I say, you know That's a great idea for a novel and it lasts about two seconds until next week and I come up with another one Yeah, so how do you pick your topic? So how does that Go so you have a a sense of this is what I'm going to write about So when you're driving and you think to yourself, wow, that's a terrific idea for a story. Do you Forget it. Do you let it go oftentimes? I let it go because I don't see myself as a writer per se Everybody everybody thinks they have a novel You know and so I don't see myself in that regard But maybe as I become older and as a senior that might change Yeah So I have sort of a backlog of those, you know, and I've I've always You know walking down a sidewalk I do a lot of athletic things When I'm walking when I'm hiking I am always thinking about a story Um and most of the time I can kind of file it away So I'm never without material to write about And for example with lost and found I mean you said it was about a dog and a woman and it is But it's also really about the very strange ways that we Handle grief on a loved one dies And that was very much a part of my life. My father died when I was nine. So it made a huge stamp on me And with my clients, you know every single person who lost a loved one dealt with it in an entirely different way ways that I could not imagine And and that was part of the motivation for me writing this book. Sure Part of interest to me about center of the world too since I have two adopted children Was this whole idea of kind of really what's going on where I came from And obviously there's a lot more to it than that because she she sets out on a journey to find out what's really going on in terms Of her adoption. So it's very fascinated by that. Did you actually travel to? Guatemala Yeah, I have been traveling to Guatemala since 2006 Um always going to the same location. It's in the Mayan Highlands around Lake Atitlan and there's one village in particular where I've come to know people and it's called santa cruz la laguna and So as I got to know the Mayan people and some of their history And the terrible civil war that they had for 35 years that Unfortunately, united states has so many fingers in that a particular war and a war breeds adoption because there are death and there are orphans and for a long time that there was just a river of kids being adopted in the United States and some European countries out of Guatemala and Some of these were acts of desperation. Some were mistakes at some Very Successful adoptions, but it did run the whole gamut And I became really fascinated by this that door has since pretty much closed solid now The country Is doing better in many ways so that that river of adoption does not exist so much Well, that actually is true about most of the countries now where adoption is getting more difficult to To do now for folks and at one time you're right It was open Within a lot of countries and now the doors have closed a lot and that's kind of unfortunate for the children who would Want to be adopted and have a better home here And that's kind of unfortunate. Yeah Yeah, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the the idea of being on the new york times best soloist We've talked about this for a minute. Yeah, but how did this kind of come about you wrote your your novel And What happened? Yeah, so the I wrote the first book that I wrote had very modest sales And I thought well, that's what being a writer is you work your butt off for five years You know You get an agent you finally get a publisher you're rejected so many times and then the sales are modest and I assumed the same thing was going to happen with this book and Partly what happened when I first realized that something was happening with this book I got a call from my sister And I think the book came out in april and she called me around mother's day and she said Did you really publish this book because I can't find it anywhere And so I thought you know, I'm irish and I have a dismo outlook on life So I just thought the worst had happened so I called the publisher And I said carry What's gone wrong because the book is not out there and she said it's not out there because we can't keep it on the shelves I said, you're kidding. You are kidding me You know, it's that one moment that you think will never quite happen to you and then it does But it has sold about a half a million copies and many more with international sales and CDs and so forth. It was just a book that caught people There was something about it that really caught people. It's it's it's a somewhat simple book in some ways um, but it appealed to people who experienced that paying of loss And it mattered to them that someone else knew what that felt like I think Uh, one of the things we just talked about before we went on the air was this idea of being stamped so to speak Yeah, so can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah So it was on the bestseller list for two weeks. I had another book that was on the bestseller List for one week, but here's the thing Once you are on the new york times bestseller list you are forever tattooed New york times bestselling author you you just get to keep it and that that's kind of on here, too If you take a look at uh, yeah at the book here at the top of the thing says new york times bestseller So that's kind of interesting. So does that make it easier for you now to Sort of get either published or people interested in your book because of this The publishing world is this wild it's like the wild wild west it is constantly changing How people read is constantly changing the length of a book that people are willing to read is constantly changing You know, we've all sort of had this adult acquired add now Where you know if our paragraph is longer than three sentences our mind starts to wander So it is not always easier Um To find the same Readers for example that Were captivated by this book. They might not at all be captivated by another book. But there's there's a Give you sort of an in so to speak with publishers who say right here. Well if you did this so you know We'd like to take let's hope you can do it again Let's hope you can do it again and hopefully the next book is is going to do that. Yeah, which is kind of interesting Yeah, um, I know you have Some book in the pipeline so to speak at this point or something that you're working on right now Yeah, I don't know how much I want to talk about it because it is, you know, pretty malleable at this point But um, I am working on a book that is uh I guess you would call it historical fiction at this point the two timelines, but the most compelling timeline is 1938 america When the american nazi party Was really gaining some traction in the united states. It sure was You know, and we did not have for knowledge of what was to come We just did not know that that storm was gonna hit With hitler as as horribly as it did So here's this american nazi party kind of gaining traction in the united states and some people were trying to raise the red alert And other people were just saying, you know, well, you know, we have a lot of different political parties We have socialists. We have communists and I guess we have nazis Yeah, it's it I don't want to see it it went mainstream, but in some small regard it did There were rallies. There were even marches and so on and so on Madison square garden, right? So there was a big interest in that and There were some people who were sounding the alarm I mean, certainly one of them was Winston Churchill and he realized As he became prime minister later on that this was a real Threat to our country and I wonder if president roosevelt realized it at the time too to some extent They were others like Lindbergh who wanted us to stay out and have nothing to do with what's going on there and then Well, he was quite a right-wing fellow himself He really was yeah, and that changed rather quickly by obviously by 1939 Yeah, yeah when that all happened. So I will not ask you further about the book Sounds like you're in the process of writing One of the things that I didn't mention before but I want to certainly talk about now Is that you are one of the founding members of a group called straw dog writers? Yes so Tell me how that got started why it got started and I noticed when I went on to look on the website I noticed there were a lot of folks senior folks who were Writers and writing various whether it's poetry or whatever they're doing. So how did it get started? Yeah, it was started by a group of about six or seven of us in 2010 we got together at patricially lewis's house in west hampton Because we were all thinking the same thing where we're all thinking while look there are so many incredible writers in this valley, you know in western massachusetts Why can't we develop an organization that would support us a little bit more that would You know that if you wrote a book, I could help you promote it a little bit. I could put a spotlight on you if you're a brand new writer and you're trying to Improve your writing skills. Maybe we've got a workshop for you And writers like to be with each other so We began pretty small And I think today we have about 250 paying members. It's a paid organization But you don't have to be a member in order to get on the newsletter and the newsletter Now is monthly and it's just brimming with events that happen in the valley absolutely brimming with events Well, let me ask you this so I'm a new writer. I've never written before now. I decided I wanted to get involved There are actually workshops to help me sort of both either get started or Ideas of how to proceed if I want to become a writer and what that's all about. Is that something that's Yeah, that's that that's absolutely true Um, so straw dog writers offers workshops at lily library north hampton setter for the arts We've expanded now into south hadley turners falls So if you were wondering wow, how do these people How do I write dialogue, you know that you could catch up with a workshop that would at least give you A little taste of you know, here are some resources for you. Here's some examples. Here's what dialogue can Can do, you know here this here's the purpose that it can serve Now do you do you actually teach some of the workshops yourself? Sure. I have yeah. Yeah, and I also teach Um With another organization called writers in progress that is run by dory astra miller, right writers and writer progress right teach over in boston at grub street and also teach workshops Very often about for for about 17 years with patricia lee louis at international writing retreats in guatemala in the uk in Um Jamaica where else have we gone? ireland of course, I know where you're about to go But I wanted to talk to you a little bit. Yeah, I mentioned the fact that there's an open mic once a month Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yes. Yeah, so there are quite a few poetry open mics in in the valley But what uh one thing that I started about six years ago is a open mic that is poetry pros Pretty much anything that you're writing and it's a two hour event We currently hold it in the basement In north hampton, which is right near the police station. You know just in case writers go crazy, I guess right and 21 center street in north hampton. So the first hour Are it's an open mic and if you want to Have a chance to read you put your name in a hat and if you get to read for five minutes So you can read anything that you've been working on Even a research article pros poetry fiction Flash fiction just about anything And then after that hour people can you know let you know what they Thought you know if they loved what you wrote. I urge them, you know, you know Tell david you love what he wrote well that that was my my next thing because unless you have critique How do you know that you're even That it's okay if you're hitting in the right direction that it's something worthwhile to continue along that So I assume that's part of what goes on. Is this method of critiquing not not at the open mic so much There just really isn't enough time for that You know, but but there are critique groups that do specifically that and I really urge people once they've got a Project well underway a critique group of trusted people with A group that has strong guidelines can just be so valuable And then the second half of the open mic, um, I bring in a featured Writer so they pretty much have the whole second hour and this month it was michael ponzer Who's a federal judge lives here in amherst and he has written two mysteries Interesting he's terrific Yes, and we can talk more about him at some point. Um Can people just show up anytime they want do they have to make appointments they have to schedule time to meet with people So, um, if you were to look, uh strud struddog writers.org on the web page There would be a listing of our events and anyone can attend those events Every once in a while, there'll be a fee It usually means we have to pay rent someplace But that will be listed if it's five dollars or or whatever it is interesting You mentioned that you're doing a trip to prog Yeah, can you kind of talk about that a bit? Yeah, so I work with another writer in new jersey her name is julie meloni and we've been working together for about 10 years and um We decided to set up mostly julie setting up a Writing retreat to prog neither of us have ever been to prog And it will be it's a 10 day writing retreat About three of those days are in prog seven of those days are out at a Retreat two hours outside of town called I think santa catarina and If anybody wants to find out more about that you could go to my web page Which is jackwell and shan dot com and we'd be So glad to talk with you about that when you when you say your retreat so folks sign up and these are either People who want to know about writing who are writers are ready Yeah, it is always a wild mix. It is always a mix of people who may have written several books People who I remember one person who attended a retreat in scotland And you know she was probably about our age And she had never written but she had always wanted to and she said I have been waiting all of my life for this For just you know to to be willing to give myself this time To be with writers to write together to get feedback So it's a great mix of people. Is there a limit meaning No more than 10 it's open to yeah, there's always a there's always a space limitation So I think with prog That's it's quite a bit larger group. So that's 18 And I think we're half full there and some retreats are smaller some are just 12 And I think for a workshop size some of the local workshops Um, I think 12 is a great number eight is sort of my favorite number Can you talk a little bit more about actually what goes on in the retreat? What what's your The like the retreat and prog yes, well, yes, okay, so Part of the time is simply, you know, you're being taken care of your meals are taken care of You know, you're not scheduling stuff with your kids. You're not worried about your dog You're being cared for and your only reason for existing at that moment in time is to write So all of your needs are taken care of you're in a beautiful place to write and There are times when we all get together and in smaller groups And julie and I will offer a prompt to the group that's usually pretty open-ended that gets people started But we always tell people, you know, this is all of your time This is your time and if you want to come back and share your writing with us Please do if you want to keep writing if you are on a roll Stay with it. Is there any one-on-one time with these folks? Um Meaning either you yeah Or whoever else is going to be there. Do you spend individual time or is that more of a group situation there? It's almost always a group situation When I work with patricia lee louis, we always offer The people can schedule individual time with us They could either have handed in a manuscript to us ahead of time Or if they just want, you know 45 minutes to talk with someone about their writing because there there may not be anybody in else in their life Who will listen to them talk about their writing? right now once Let's say they come with a novel just for argument's sake And you read the novel or they do and you say well, this is pretty interesting. Do you help them lead them in a direction to Publishers or that kind of part of it or is it's just strictly instructional on what? Writing is or what they've done or how you can help them write Yeah, that I mean if I can if um if an agent comes to mind if they if I If I can I will do that, but that is pretty much the the job of the the writer You know if you're writing in a genre that I really have no Connection with whatsoever. I am not going to be helpful to you right So yeah Really interesting. Do you get a mix of like young and old at a place like prod or is it mostly Older folks You've done these workshops before so yeah, so I would say You know it's uh, it's on a bell curve and the big part of the bell curve is um middle age I would say 40 to 60 65 right in there We do get younger people and we do get older people I remember at one of our retreats in Guatemala, which is sort of rugged means this is we go to a place where there are no roads You're walking on paths from village to village Um, one of the gentlemen that joined us from texas was 84 years old wonderful And he loved it and we loved him Last question before we need to end is it strictly like Novel can they be a poetry person there right so the genre is kind of open-ended. Yes That's terrific. Yeah Jacqueline, this has been really wonderful. I want to thank you very much for being a guest I'm going to hold this up one more time folks lost and found new york times best-selling author and noted valley writer Jacqueline she and thank you for your time. Thank you david