Bookpleasures.com welcomes our guest, Judy Reeves, an accomplished writer and teacher. 

Her notable books, including A Writer's Book of Days, have earned awards and recognition. Judy's writing spans fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, appearing in various journals and anthologies. 

As a seasoned creative writing teacher, she's influenced countless writers and co-founded San Diego Writers Ink. 

Judy's contributions have been acknowledged with awards from multiple organizations, and she even has a day named after her by Mayor Jerry Sanders in San Diego. 

Judy has just published WHEN YOUR HEART SAYS GO: My Year of Traveling Beyond Loss and Loneliness. 

Norm: Welcome, Judy, and thanks for participating in our interview.

Your writing is often described as "elegant" and "poetic." How do you approach the craft of writing, and what advice would you give aspiring writers looking to develop their unique voices?

Judy: Thank you for inviting me, Norm. It is a pleasure to be here. As I begin to respond to your first question, "how do you approach the craft of writing," I find myself "thinking."

What's the best way to answer Norm's question? What do I want to say? I've learned that this approach doesn't always serve me.

Instead, if I pause and settle into a less thinking, more "thoughtful" place, the right words will find their way; that is, without all the judgment and analyzing and comparing, a more intuitive voice can emerge that speaks from a more authentic place.

Where "thinking" serves is when I have words on the page and have something to work with that I can make better.

My approach then is to come from a place of intuition and trust, trust in my own voice and in the process. Because I want to become a better writer, I also read, especially writers whose work I love and that inspires me.

I'm always curious to learn more and to find teachers who I can learn from. 

My message to others is basically what I tell myself: Write spontaneously, surrender to the page, allow yourself to play. Trust the pen and your intuition; you can always make it better in the next draft.

Slow down, pay attention, and notice what you notice, then write. Write on a regular basis—create a writing practice. And read! Books can be our teachers, too.

Find writers whose work you love, learn from them. Find a writing community and be a lively, generous participant.

Norm: As a renowned writing coach and author, you've helped countless others find their voice in writing. How has your own writing journey influenced your teaching and coaching style?

Judy: All my life I have been blessed to have teachers who encouraged me and supported my writing—beginning with Mrs. Chairs in the third grade.

This has made all the difference. Some of us, I would say most of us, especially when we're just beginning, need support and encouragement. We need cheering on, particularly when we're working with difficult or challenging pieces.

I want to be the supporter and encourager; I want to be the cheerleader. Part of this is knowing how to provide response and feedback in a receivable way.

Kind, honest, and objective are words I use to describe my approach when I respond to someone's writing; this is what was modeled for me by my teachers and writers I worked with. I like to have fun as well; humor is an important part of it for me. 

Norm; Can you tell us about the inspiration behind When Your Heart Says Go and what motivated you to share your journey now, after thirty years?

Judy: I have always been a reader of travel memoirs or "traveloirs," as they're sometimes called, and collections of personal narrative travel essays.

These writers' work influenced my desire to write my story in that genre, but I never set out to write a complete memoir.

Then one June day in 2016, the words, "this is a memory" appeared on the blank page in a spiral-bound notebook during a mini-writing retreat, and the account of at a "sensory circus in Salzburg" filled the next six pages.

I set aside the novel I was working on and writing the story of my journey and my husband's illness and death became my daily writing practice for the next two years.

After that came many drafts of revising and editing, working in writing groups and with editors and finally, after seven years of near daily work, here's the book. I'm a believer that the story will appear when the writer is ready to receive it.

For me and my story, it took thirty years.  

Norm: Your memoir has been described as a combination of a memoir, a travelogue, and a writer's origin story. How did you balance these different aspects while writing it?

Judy: I describe the "travelogue" part of the memoir as the outside container for the inside, deeper story, which is how the solitude of my solo journey allowed me to grieve the loss of my husband, to learn what that grief had to teach me, and how memories from my early life and formative years informed and illustrated who I had become.

As I wrote all this, my earliest dreams and desires of being a writer appeared again and again. The balance became the weaving of these aspects that were part of who I was, who I became, and who I am now.

All the revisions and editing and finding the threads is part of the process.

But working so long on a piece and being so deep inside, we can lose perspective. I've found that getting feedback from others and working with editors who view the story from a more distant perspective makes all the difference. 

Norm: Your memoir is described as an "origin story" for your writing career. Can you elaborate on how this journey shaped you as a writer?

Judy: I have been a journal keeper most of my life. During the time I traveled, my journal was my daily companion, my best friend, and confidant. I wrote about my experiences and events—from the mundane to the wondrous.

I paid attention and took notes, I described people, places, and things. I took "sensory inventories," writing down what I saw, heard, smelled, tasted, touched.

I wrote the names of things. I did what I knew "real" writers did, and I did it every day, sometimes several times a day.

Rather than as the writer who wrote what I had been paid to write during my career in newspapers, radio, television, PR and marketing, advertising, I began writing in my own voice.

I also read. A lot. All that solitude gave me time for both the reading and the writing.

So, although I had always earn a living by being a "commercial" writer, I determined on this journey, that I would become the writer I always dreamed I'd be even though I didn't know exactly how that would happen.

Norm: You've been a writing coach for many years. How did your personal journey inform your approach to teaching and guiding others in their writing?

Judy: I saw and felt the difference having a daily writing practice made in my own writing. I stopped "trying" to write a certain way and began trusting my own voice; writing what I cared about, what I was curious about in ways that felt "right" to me.

I became a student of writing through reading books on the craft as well as wide variety of genres in both fiction and nonfiction.

I sought out teachers with whom who I wanted to study and learn from and I've been fortunate to work with many generous writers.

Their generosity has been my model. My approach then to teaching and guiding others was and is to share my experience—"this worked for me, try it and see if it works for you."

I also want to introduce them to books and writers and teachers who can help them go further or in another direction if that seems appears to be their next step. 

Norm: Your memoir explores themes of independence and self-discovery. Can you share some pivotal moments from your journey that led to personal growth and empowerment?

Judy: Seldom in my life before my husband died had I ever lived alone.

When I sold everything and bought that around-the-world ticket and set off alone on a year-long journey without a plan or any agenda, I experienced real solitude for the first time—long stretches of solitude.

It was this solitude that allowed me to be still long enough to look deep inside, to listen to myself, to ask myself questions, to wonder as I wandered.

As I've said, my journal was my constant companion and over the long and often lonely stretches of solitude, I had many dialogues with myself through my journal writing.

For the first time, I was making decisions and choices based on what I liked, what I wanted without consideration of someone else.

I could use my time any way I wanted—and I did. I listened to my body and when it said, "let's have another coffee," I'd have another coffee. I slept as long I wanted to, stayed up as late as I wanted to.

If a hotel or pension where I'd taken a room wasn't comfortable and I didn't feel at ease there, I'd simply pack my single suitcase and find another one.

These are all small, quotidian choices, but it was in the everyday that I experienced empowerment that can come in making decisions and choice after choice based on listening to my own body, my own desires.

So in many ways, none of it was pivotal, but yet in aggregate, all of it was; the pivot was a gradual one and might be compared to the dawning of the day or the change of seasons.

Much of the reading I did as I traveled, picking up books at used bookstores and leaving them behind as I went on to the next place, influenced my perspective on living in the world as a single, independent woman.

I had time to read in ways I hadn't before. I read books by Marilyn French, Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, Carson McCullers, Sarah Bayless…and so many others.

These books, these writers nourished my desire to live life differently; to claim my sovereignty, to take risks, to ask for what I wanted and name my hungers. 

I also chose to remain celibate during my time away with only a single exception when a previous boyfriend visited me in Paris.

This was decidedly different for me, and empowering in a way I was not expecting. I believe some of the reading I did during that time may have influenced that choice, too.

Norm: Loss and grief are central themes in your memoir. How did your travels and encounters with strangers help you navigate these emotions and heal?

Judy: For the first couple of years, one of the ways I coped with my husband's death was to get really, really busy! Of course, I discovered I wasn't coping, I was avoiding. Avoiding the grief, avoiding my emotions.

When the idea came that I should  "go, just go" on that trip, part of me was relieved to escape my too-busy life.

Then I discovered solitude. Sometimes I felt like I was ambushed by loneliness, but over time of being alone, of writing in my journal, I learned what a gift solitude can be.

In almost all of the great cities I visited, I found old and beautiful churches where the doors are almost always open and strangers are invited to come in and just be.

I found tremendous comfort in these places even though I was not of the faith. Still, I could light a candle and sit among the prayers others had brought to the place. 

Also, because I am a member of twelve-step groups, in almost any city I visited, I could find an English-speaking meeting. Going to these meetings, being with others in a community of recovery is always a safe place to tell my story, share my "right here, right now" emotions, and find like-spirited people who speak the same language—the language of recovery.

And I had time—time alone looking out train windows, walking cobblestone streets, finding park benches among ancient trees and lovely flowers—time to just be and allow the feelings of loss and grief to be present; to simply be with the feelings.

Over time, I learned  grief is not something we get over; we learn to carry it with us. History was alive in the places I traveled, remnants of wars and plagues, ancient cemeteries, reliquaries that held bones of saints, buildings and churches that had been bombed, countries whose names and boundaries changed and changed again. Loss is a presence almost everywhere. To be human is to know loss.

Thus, my own loss became part of human history and the human story. To know I am not alone in my loss is of great solace.

Norm: What was the significance of the year 1990–'91 in your life, and how did the geopolitical events of that time impact your travels and personal experiences?

Judy: It's something to sell or give away or otherwise let go of all the things that give you identity.

The spring of 1990, I sold the business my husband and I had, sold my condominium, sold my car, put a few things in an anonymous storage building, packed a single suitcase and left it all. Without all that "stuff," who was I?

The day after I landed in London, I happened to see a copy of the International Herald Tribune at a cafe  where headlines shouted that the day before—the day I was flying away from home—Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait.

Throughout my journeying from country to country, city to city, tensions were building in the Middle East.

Though it did not affect me personally, not in the early days, the world was experiencing and responding to the tensions, which nonetheless caused an undercurrent of every day life.

Then I would meet someone whose son was deploying to "the desert," as they called it. I would read headlines or see photographs.

As time went on, the news carried more stories—negotiations, lines drawn in the proverbial sand. In what was then the Soviet Union, as politicians gave speeches in celebration of the seventy-third anniversary of the October Revolution, there was evidence of, not revolt and not exactly protest, but disturbances among the populace.

The tight grip of the Soviet Republic was loosening as some of the Baltic stages declared independence from the laws of the USSR. More seismic disturbances.

The day I left Europe for India, the Frankfurt airport was mired in military. More troops were deploying to the desert.

Ultimately, that line in the sand was crossed and what had been Operation Desert Shield that had begun in August 1990 became Operation Desert Storm in January 1991 when the bombing of Iraq commenced. 

It wasn't safe for me in India, my family wanted me to come home, a friend I was to meet to travel to Thailand and Nepal couldn't come. Through the kindness of strangers, I was finally able to get a ticket from Bangkok to the US. My year-long journey was severed after only seven months. 

Norm: You mention flashbacks to your life with your beloved husband throughout the book. How did these memories shape your understanding of your past and present self?

Judy: A really interesting thing happened as I wrote some of those flashbacks to times before, when Tom and I met, when we fell in love, when we traveled together and lived in San Diego's backcountry—I found joy in reliving those memories, joy tinged with sorrow. I realized how much Tom had influenced my idea of myself as someone who had certain skills and talents, ideas I had never allowed to take shape before because of childhood messages about self-importance and "bragging"—that old saying about keeping our light under a bushel.

Every now and again I still hear those old messages, but now I can put the bushel over them. I know I have value and I have a right to my own voice.

Tom's illness and death also gave me the gift of compassion in a way I hadn't experienced it before.

Writing the flashbacks and living inside the memories as I wrote them, kept my heart open to others' pain and gave me the willingness to sit with it and hold it and be present with it. 

Norm: Many readers have praised your memoir as a reflection on midlife and an invitation for women in their "third chapter" to meet the person they are becoming. Can you share more about this aspect of your story?

Judy: The sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot published The Third Chapter in 2009, in which she wrote about the cultural shift in our country that is a distinct developmental phase: the time between being young and old when many of us explore new challenges and ways of being in the world.

When I embarked on the major changes in my life as I approached fifty—leaving who and what I was behind and traveling toward…well, I didn't know, but I did know I wanted to live passionately and authentically even though, at that time, I had no idea what that life might look like. I traveled light, that is, a single suitcase, a whole lot of trust, and belief that I wasn't done yet.

Traveling for months without a plan or agenda, alone in foreign countries where I didn't speak the languages or know anyone, showed me that I could do this: I could live as an independent woman. I could explore the world outside and the world inside in anticipation of what might be revealed about that world and about myself.

There's a freedom that comes with being done with raising a family, with recognizing that a life-long career might not be the only road out of what was and toward what might be.

This cultural shift invites exploration for both men and women, but I think more for women. Many of us at fifty or sixty have lived in a larger world than our mothers, certainly than our grandmothers, and many of the restrictions and traditions that they experienced have lessened, in no small part because we took our stands and raised our voices.

Books and movies and theater and art gave us role models and we supported each other as we stepped into that larger world and into a culture that invited self-expression, self-examination, self-consideration.

Because of this, we know more of who we are and what matters to us. We're more vital, physically healthier, more active and more willing to take risks, to ask, "what's next?" and to go toward what beckons. This is an exciting time for us and what we can contribute to the world.  

Norm: Where can our readers learn more about you and When Your Heart Says Go?

Judy: Thanks for asking, Norm. Your readers can find me on my WEBSITE . 

There's a form on my website to subscribe to my monthly newsletter where I write about the writing life as I experience it. 

And I hang around a couple of the social media sites: 

FACEBOOK

 

INSTAGRAM

My website will have listings for upcoming events including where I'll be teaching and speaking. I hope to meet some Bookpleasures readers sometime, someplace. 

Norm: As we end our interview, what message or takeaway do you hope readers will find in When Your Heart Says Go, and what are your future writing or teaching endeavors?

Judy: I hope readers find in my story the idea that great losses can also bring great gifts, that grief can crack open your heart and within these openings may be messages you have been waiting to hear. I hope the message I conveyed is that you don't have to travel the world alone to explore new territory—it lies within each of us.

As for my future writing and teaching, I have been working (and playing) with the concept of capturing moments through writing in brief takes of flash essays or micro memoirs.

I lead a monthly Captured Moments writing group on Zoom (on hiatus until after the first of the year). Some ideas are forming from my own writing and from working with others in group.

I'll be at the San Miguel Writers' Conference in San Miguel de Allende in February and then probably back to a regular schedule of teaching and writing, writing and teaching. Who knows what can come of all that.   

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your endeavors