Are We There Yet? By Thelma Adams

Are We There Yet?

By Thelma Adams

I have a day job and a night job and sometimes they intertwine. My day job is as a film critic and entertainment journalist; you know what I do “at night.” Write novels.

Last month I interviewed X-Files superstar David Duchovny, 62, about Bucky F**king Dent, the film he produced, wrote, starred in and based on his own novel. I was curious. Where did he get his wellspring of creativity in arts that require different skills? He answered that he accessed his Zen mind, his beginner’s mind. Hmm. I thought. 

For my AARP interview, he continued: “[It’s] healthy and wondrous to approach it with the beginner’s mind. That was the case with the novel. I opened up a stance to creativity that feels authentic to me even when I go back to music or acting. If I approach it as a kid again, that’s actually the most mature way to do it.”

Where was my child’s mind? I seemed to be more like a scolding teacher. But I saw potential in accessing Duchovny’s wisdom for my own novel-writing. I may be atypical in seeing three of my books published – The Last Woman Standing, Bittersweet Brooklyn and Playdate – but I’ve stumbled when it comes to structure. I can write like the dickens, paint backgrounds with words, trick out dialog, steam up the sex, torque narrative tension – but ask me what is the question of my book and I’m stumped.

In retrospect, I see the questions of my past novels fairly clearly. The historical novel The Last Woman Standing asks the question – what was it like for a Jewish female firecracker named Josephine Marcus from a conservative San Francisco family who wanted an adventurous life to land in Tombstone in the run up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral – and capture the heart of Wyatt Earp? In short, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?

For Bittersweet Brooklyn, I wondered what it was like for my grandmother, a smart, lively, sex-positive Jewish woman, to have all the feelings and desires I had but lacked the privilege to go to Berkeley like me, and was instead stuck in a hardscrabble world of limited opportunities, the younger sister of a mobster in Brooklyn’s Murder Inc?

For Playdate, I crossed the movies Mr. Mom and Shampoo, and wondered what sex and parenting were like for a mellow stay-at-home-dad who finds himself involved with three women while his entrepreneurial wife works?  

When it came to my current novel, working title Lily Dale, I turned to the brilliant and generous novelist Caroline Leavitt for help with a work in progress that didn’t seem to be progressing, although I had all the words in a row at a 65,000-word count and had typed ‘The End’ on the final page.  

Together, we cobbled together this notion: How can a grieving medium who’s buried her only daughter, after a tragic accident she never saw coming, self-exiled from her nuclear family of psychics, overcome estrangement and open the door to reconciliation and acceptance of herself, and her family?

I needed a lifeline to get that far. Thanks, Caroline. I find this work even harder than a blank page. It’s so challenging to self-judge without being harsh. And, so, I am trying to get my beginner’s mind in gear. The challenge here is to identify a weakness in my skill-set without blame, and to work as hard as an Olympic athlete to conquer the craft.

There once was a time where all I wanted to do was write a novel. There’s no right or wrong way. I’ve gotten this far. The child inside me asks: are we there yet? No, not yet. But we’re driving in the right direction.  

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Thelma Adams is the author of the best selling historical novels Bittersweet Brooklyn, The Last Woman Standing, which has reached 100,000 readers, and Playdate, which Oprah magazine described as “a witty debut novel.” In addition, Adams is a prominent American film critic who twice chaired the New York Film Critics Circle and an outspoken voice in the Hollywood community. She has been the in-house film critic for Us Weekly and The New York Post, and has written essays, celebrity profiles and reviews for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, AARP, The Wrap, O: The Oprah Magazine, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Parade, Marie Claire and The Huffington Post. Adams studied history at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was valedictorian, and received her MFA from Columbia University. She lives in upstate New York with her family and four cats.

Find out more about her on her Website http://thelmadams.com/wordpress/

THE LAST WOMAN STANDING, Thelma Adams

At once an epic account of an improbable romance and a retelling of an iconic American tale, The Last Woman Standing recalls the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral through the eyes of a spunky heroine who sought her happy ending in a lawless outpost―with a fierce will and an unflagging spirit.

Two decades after the Civil War, Josephine Marcus, the teenage daughter of Jewish immigrants, is lured west with the promise of marriage to Johnny Behan, one of Arizona’s famous lawmen. She leaves her San Francisco home to join Behan in Tombstone, Arizona, a magnet for miners (and outlaws) attracted by the silver boom. Though united by the glint of metal, Tombstone is plagued by divided loyalties: between Confederates and Unionists, Lincoln Republicans and Democrats.

But when the silver-tongued Behan proves unreliable, it is legendary frontiersman Wyatt Earp who emerges as Josephine’s match. As the couple’s romance sparks, Behan’s jealousy ignites a rivalry destined for the history books…

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