Second Careers and my Supposed Retirement

SECOND CAREERS AND MY SUPPOSED RETIREMENT

“Retirement” is not something I ever aspired to, even when I took a buyout after more than two decades as the theater critic of The Baltimore Sun. I’m not particularly good at semi-retirement, either. I am an expert on second careers, however. I’ve had at least five. The most important of these is becoming a published novelist. 

Today is the official publication date of my debut novel, Please Write. Bancroft Press has published it in hardbook, ebook and audio book. Written entirely in letters exchanged between two Baltimore dogs and a Cleveland artist, Please Write delivers a distinctive account of coping with heartbreak and loss through the power of imagination and love.

But back to the issue of post-retirement careers. One of my relatives says I’m the busiest semi-retired person she knows. And considering that for a while I was juggling at least five part-time “second” careers, I guess my relative is right. Here’s how that came about.

When I was considering leaving The Sun, I knew I had to have something lined up, something to look forward to, something new. As The Sun’s theater critic, I had interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel several times and developed a strong professional relationship with her. In 1998, she invited me to attend a playwriting workshop she was giving at Arena Stage in Washington for the members of the media. Part of the workshop was an assignment to write a mini-play during lunch break. I was among those chosen to read their plays aloud in the afternoon. When the workshop ended, Vogel said to me: “You could do this.”

I never forgot that comment, and a month before The Sun’s buyout deadline, I called Vogel. Theater criticism includes a good deal of reporting, and I told her that after years and years of reporting on what I saw happening in front of me, I didn’t know if I had any creativity left. But if I did, I was sure she could find it. She generously invited me to commute to Brown University for the upcoming academic year and be a visiting student in her graduate playwriting program. Had I not studied with Vogel, whose plays make giant leaps in form and structure, my novel, Please Write, would not be the iconoclastic epistolary work it turned out to be.

But commuting weekly to Brown was only part of what I did that first year. A week before leaving The Sun, I got a call from Baltimore’s NPR affiliate asking me if I would like to review plays on the radio. I’d never done that before, and I jumped at the chance. Sixteen years later, I am still the theater critic at WYPR. 

At the same time, I joined a group of volunteers who visited an inner city kindergarten regularly to read and share books with the students. By then, I had begun Please Write, in which dogs figure prominently. When I discovered that most of the kindergartners were dog lovers, I wrote a little children’s book about a dog coming to their school. I included all of the students’ names in the book and gave a copy to each child.

That was Year One of My Supposed Retirement. I was so pleased with trying new things, I decided that any time I was offered a job I’d never done before, I would take it. As inspiration, I kept Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote, “Do something every day that scares you,” displayed prominently on my desk.

Taking that philosophy to heart, a short time later I found myself: Teaching public speaking in the theater department of Goucher College; creating a program to introduce inner city school students to theater; serving on the artistic advisory board of a statewide, non-profit arts organization; lecturing about theater to groups ranging from senior citizens to the Rotary Club; and, of course, reviewing plays on the radio. Oops. Almost forgot. I also taught  adult education courses at Johns Hopkins University.

At the same time, I joined a long-established writing group. I had discovered that after decades of meeting newspaper deadlines, I had a lot of trouble believing that my made-up deadlines were real. As one of the founders of the writing group told me: Join this group and you will finish your book. He was right (although it took several more drafts).

After the second draft, Please Write was beginning to take shape, and I realized I needed to shed a couple of my “retirement” jobs and devote more time to the novel. With the arts increasingly crowded out of public school classrooms, it was difficult to walk away. But after more than a decade, I was confident that I had inspired a number of students — and even some teachers. If there was any hope of polishing Please Write, it was time to close a few doors.

I’ll stay at WYPR as long as they’ll have me. But Please Write has garnered wonderful advance reviews — including a rave from BookLife-Publishers Weekly. And a pre-publication launch at Baltimore’s premiere bookshop attracted a standing-room-only crowd of more than 100, and the books sold out. Though I can’t resist giving the occasional theater lecture, the rest of my time is spent promoting Please Write. I’m doing a publication-day book talk and signing tonight. Later this month, I’m off to book events in Chicago, and then to more in Cleveland in December.

As to “retirement,” well, I still don’t know what that means. But I can’t recommend second — and third and fourth and fifth careers — highly enough. Try something new. You just might find yourself sharing your adventures with the readers of Women Writers, Women’s Books.

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J. Wynn Rousuck is the former longtime theater critic for The Baltimore Sun and current critic for WYPR, Baltimore’s NPR affiliate.

Among the highlights of her years (1974-2007) at The Baltimore Sun was her extensive series on the making of the Broadway musical Hairspray.

Her interviews have been published in Hairspray: The Roots (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (2003) and Conversations with Neil Simon (University Press of Mississippi, 2019).

Other non-fiction has appeared in magazines ranging from Dog World to American Theatre.

Her short stories have been honored by Creative Loafing of Tampa’s Fiction Contest (2013 and 2017) and Atticus Review’s “From Here” competition (2014).

She has taught writing and theater at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute, Goucher College, and in various programs at Johns Hopkins University. In addition to WYPR, her broadcast experience includes a year on Maryland Public Television.

She graduated summa cum laude from Wellesley College with honors for a novel written as her senior thesis. In 2007-2008, she was a visiting student in Paula Vogel’s graduate playwriting program at Brown University, where she wrote a number of plays and adaptations.

Please Write is part of her family heritage: Her father was a dog judge and his oldest brother wrote the first book about Boston Terriers, a breed that figures prominently in this novel.

She lives in Baltimore with her husband Alan Fink and their Boston Terrier, Juno.

Find out more about her on her webite https://jwynnrousuck.com/

PLEASE WRITE: A NOVEL IN LETTERS

An epistolary novel with a twist, Please Write chronicles the correspondence between Vivienne, the alter ego of a recently widowed Cleveland artist, and Zippy, a mixed-breed terrier rescued off the streets of Baltimore. Their letters change and enrich their lives as well as that of Zippy’s owner, Pamela, a harried journalist whose life is unraveling.

Combining the canine viewpoint of A Dog’s Purpose with the poignant style of The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society, Please Write, with Disney-like charm, delivers a distinctive account of coping with heartbreak and loss through the power of imagination and love.

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