We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Debby Mayer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Debby below.

Debby, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I feel like I waited my whole life for Governor Newsom to tell me just to stay home and write.

Then he did, and I did.

When the California pandemic shutdown was announced, in mid-March of 2020, I had worked at home for almost ten years, so my routine didn’t change: up at 5:30, write for an hour before breakfast. Stretching exercises, done to prayers; take care of Sizzle, my dog, and me, then back to the desk, work until lunch. Of course I got dressed, including shoes—I masked up and walked Sizzle four times a day, as usual, and did my own local errands once a week.

The big change was that I lost my part-time job. Advertising vanished overnight from the weekly newspaper that I helped to edit, along with the arts and entertainment events that were my department. Yes, I was sad. That newspaper, those events, were an economic lifeline in the rural upstate New York county where I had lived for 21 years. Yes, the long Covid and the short Covid and the deaths were most important, but people’s jobs were life-giving too.

But, as for me—I banked my last check from the newspaper, and I was free. No more deadlines three days a week. I wrote a poem about it, and then I made a list of writing projects, my projects, that I wanted to work on.

But you want risk. The risk was that for decades I hadn’t been without a day job (see Pivot), without a steady source of earned income no matter how small. I steeled myself and made a budget within my holdings of Social Security and mutual funds.
Then I got to work.

Mostly I did three deep revisions of Sheet Music, the novel that I had been writing for so long, guided by a freelance editor I trusted. I took to carrying a small notebook around my little condo because the book now stayed in my head, and I made notes about what to what to do next, what I really meant here, or there.

I also pulled together #travelswithsizzle, a short humor book, drafted “Go West, Old Woman,” a long essay, and brought some old short stories into the digital world, aka typed them up on my laptop. I read books—novels by John Le Carré and Edith Wharton, Tana French and Kate Atkinson. I attended some two-dozen helpful professional webinars and author interviews; no more missing the LA Festival of Books or a program that took place in San Francisco or New York. Zoom was my friend.

I don’t write after lunch—my focus just isn’t the same—so I created a folder called Big Chores. Most important of those, I finally got debbymayer.com online.

But you want risk. If Zoom is my friend, risk is my roommate. Despite all my efforts, two + years later, I have very little to show for them, publicly. The poem and a chapter from Sheet Music published. Sheet Music made the Finals of the Screencraft Cinematic Book Competition. But I’m still looking for an agent. Essays and other book chapters-as-stories remain unpublished.

So if risk is my roommate, failure is sitting out on the balcony. I like to tell stories, always have—it’s fun. But I want to share my stories—vision, characters—with readers. Failing that, I have taken the risk, and failed.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

 I write stories for Baby Boomer women. Some of the stories are true, some are completely made up and most mix my experience with my imagination.

 I’ve published a novel, Sisters (Putnam’s, Berkley); a memoir, Riptides & Solaces Unforeseen (Epigraph Books); short stories in The New Yorker, Redbook and several literary magazines; and reams of community journalism. I’ve received two grants from the NY Foundation for the Arts, one for “The Secretary,” a short story published in The New Yorker, and one for “Therapy Dogs,” an excerpt from Riptides. I have an M.A. in creative writing from City College, where Sisters won the DeJur Award. My day jobs have been in arts administration (Poets & Writers, Inc.) and editing (Bard College and two community newspapers).

What inspires me is the germ of a story in my head.

What keeps me going is the Talker part of Debby Mayer, Writer and Talker.

I’ve written since I was a kid. But as an adult, until recently (see Risk) I always had a day job—arts administration (most writers love to organize things), journalism or editing.

These days, while I love best to sit quietly and write, I also love to stand up and talk. I tell stories, and I give readings and workshops from my fiction, memoir and essays.

I don’t write to process things. I process the thing and then I write about it. My nonfiction isn’t what’s known as “prescriptive”—self-help. I don’t list A, B, C, D. I’m not a professional widow. My job is to facilitate your discussion.

So let’s talk about:

—Compassionate health care. Every patient and every family member is a “living, human document” —a story waiting to be heard, wrote Antoin Bolsen, the father of clinical pastoral education. My memoir, Riptides & Solaces Unforeseen, tells the story of Dan, my late husband, and our family. I’ve shared this story in workshops with health-services students, and I’ve learned so much.

—End-of-life issues. Church and community groups face up to these, talking about Riptides, and a lot of other good reading.

—Bereavement. My essay-as-list, “10 Scary Things I Have Done Since My Husband Died,” ranges from the bittersweet to the funny, from accepting the pain of grieving (#10), to hosting my first solo dinner party (6), from dealing with the snake in the bathroom (2) to selling the home we had shared (1).

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

There came a time in my life as a freelance writer and editor, when 1) I wasn’t getting any younger and 2) I wasn’t earning enough money. For five years, I had made a part-time living from movie options on Sisters, my novel, but the movie never got made. That kind of thing.

So, one spring, I was looking at two jobs. One was part time, temporary, about half an hour away. But it might turn into permanent full time and in any case, it would be a foot in the door of one of the best employers in the region.

The other was full time, in New York City, two hours away, requiring bouncing back and forth every week.

The part-time job asked me what I wanted in the way of pay. What you’ve budgeted for the job, I said. No, they said, the person on leave gets her salary for her experience in the job. So they knew what I wasn’t worth, but wouldn’t tell me what I was worth.

The full-time job had a published salary and benefits.

I made lists, the pros and cons of each job.

Then I signed on for a full-time job, outside my home, working for somebody else.

At the end of May, I received a partial paycheck, having not worked a full pay period. And I used that money to pay the rent on my apartment. That’s how close I was to the bottom of the bank barrel. If I hadn’t got that job, I would have been borrowing to pay the rent, a position I never wanted to be in and that I promised would never happen again.

It didn’t. I held three different full-time jobs over the course of the next 23 years. And I learned, among other things, to get up half an hour earlier, so I could write for an hour each morning before I went to work.

Another writer would have done it differently—swallowed her pride, taken the part-time job, and borrowed when necessary, all to keep on writing. Indeed, I had a friend like that, who would turn up her nose at good gigs because they required too much of her creativity, and at one point I thought, She’s right. I should have been truer to myself. Now I think, No, I did what was right for me. Financial stress would not have honed my writing.

You make your choices. You pivot when you need to, and go on.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Telling stories!

Years ago, a writer friend was moaning, Oh, what’s the point of fiction?

I like to tell stories, I said, a little timid, and as I expected, she rolled her eyes: Debby did not understand the concept of Art.

But really, isn’t that what all this is about? You go to the computer, the easel, the piano, the notebook; you start to pick out a tune, a line, a sentence. The story begins.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://debbymayer.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DebbyMayer