Pump Up Chats with Jane Rowan

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Jane Rowan photo Jane Rowan is a New England poet and writer. After teaching science for three decades in a private college, she retired to pursue the creative life. She has published numerous articles and the self-help booklet Caring for the Child Within—A Manual for Grownups, available through her website and through Amazon (Kindle). An excerpt from The River of Forgetting appeared in Women Reinvented: True Stories of Empowerment and Change. Visit Jane at www.janerowan.com and find out more about her memoir at www.riverofforgetting.com.

On The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse

Q: Can you tell us why you wrote your book?

It was sheer gratitude that impelled me to write—thankfulness for the hard, healing work of therapy and for my wonderful, kind, smart therapist. It astounded me that healing was possible after all the decades that these memories and feelings had been stuck inside of me. In therapy I learned to experience the pain, grief, and anger that I’d had to repress as a child and then to nurture that inner child who had been so betrayed. There is a beauty in the process that I wanted to express.

Q: Which part of the book was the hardest to write?

I came to a dead standstill about halfway through. I’d already spent about two years writing, finding a tone and form that worked to convey the story. One thing I did was to incorporate snippets of my journals in the story, so the narrative could keep flowing in one voice, and then the raw, uncensored voice of my journals could also enter when appropriate, but the reader would not have to be immersed in it all the time. I think it’s important to give the reader a break.

Anyway, I was trying to write about a year of my life that was just chaotic in the intensity of the flashbacks and emotions that swept through me, and I stalled. My therapist, the same one who had guided me through the years, said, “Just wait, it will come,” but this felt different from the other times I had stopped and started. Finally, I said to her, “I just don’t want to write this part. How many times do I have to go back there?” “Good question,” she said. I realized it was time to go on to the next part and write about finding the little girls inside of me, my inner children, and how I learned to be trustworthy for them and they learned to trust me.

“It’s a love story,” my therapist said, “a love story of you and the little girls inside.” And then I was able to write the rest of the book.

Q: Does your book have an underlying message that readers should know about?

Change is not only possible, it is exciting. I believe the only way to achieve deep and lasting change is to go through the pain and out the other side. Along the way I developed my creative side in ways that utterly surprised me. I hope that my book will encourage others to undertake their own individual heroic journeys.

On Writing

Q: Do you remember when the writing bug hit?

Which time? I had the bug in high school, when I mainly wrote poetry. Then in my thirties I began keeping the journals that have been my constant companions ever since. Then, ten years ago, I joined a writing group and began to take writing to another level—writing for others rather than just for myself. Since then I have delighted in the development of the writing craft, whether it’s honing a poem down to its bird-bone slim essence or adding sensory detail to a passage of my memoir to make it real.

Q: What’s the most frustrating thing about becoming a published author and what’s the most rewarding?

The most frustrating part is having a book I really believe in and having great blurbs from the likes of Ellen Bass (coauthor of The Courage to Heal) and Marilyn Van Derbur (author of Miss America By Day), and still having to go out and sell, sell, sell it. My consolation is that most authors these days are in the same boat.

The most rewarding thing is when someone emails me or sends me a real paper note to let me know that my memoir was meaningful to them. They tell me that it validated their own experiences and made sense of some of the chaos that happens inside when one confronts childhood abuse. They say that it inspires them to keep going in their healing journeys.

Q: Do you have a writing tip you’d like to share?

Write what you love. Follow it to extremes. Get right inside your story, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, and push it all the way to the edge. After you’ve done that to your own satisfaction, then it’s time to seek outside advice.

On Family and Home:

Q: Would you like to tell us about your home life? Where you live? Family? Pets?

I live in a modest wood-frame house in the woods only about five miles from town. I have a garden in the backyard. My house is full of art, most of it mine. As a friend of mine said, “How else can we afford to be surrounded by original art we like?” My home is both messy and colorful. At the moment I have just one cat, Jenny, who was adopted from a shelter. She’s a love.

Q: Where’s your favorite place to write at home?

I write in a rocking chair by big picture windows that look out onto my yard and beyond it to the woods. My laptop, Esmeralda, is my buddy. Sometimes I’m surrounded by printouts of previous drafts or by my old journals and sometimes I put pieces of art around me for inspiration.

Q: What do you do to get away from it all?

Some of my best get-aways are close to home. I live opposite some protected woods with a pond. Hiking there gives me great peace and joy. Otters visit the pond, dragonflies live there, and some years the herons build nests there. One young heron just learning to fish let me get very close and take this photo.

On Childhood:

Q: Were you the kind of child who always had a book in her/his hand?

You nailed it! I could walk down the street reading, and often did. I loved the classic fairy tales, the King Arthur legends, books about horses, and many, many of the classics. We had one stuffed chair that I’d drape myself across and just fly away to other places. I also read perched up in a maple tree and on the dock by the river. My parents were also great readers; in the evenings we would read aloud to one another.

Q: Can you remember your favorite book?

Perhaps it was Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. At that time, Tolkien and the Hobbits weren’t well known, or that would probably have been my favorite.

Q: Do you remember writing stories when you were a child?

No, I don’t. I do remember loving all the details about books from their covers to their tables of contents. I started a little lending library for my friends, but I didn’t then think of myself as a writer. That came later.

On Book Promotion:

Q: What was the first thing you did as far as promoting your book?

I made sure it was on Amazon with the “Look Inside” feature. That’s such a great boon to readers!. I’ve been selling my little booklet, “Caring for the Child Within – A Manual for Grownups” for several years through my website http://janerowan.com , so people already know about my work. I also keep a blog at http://janechild.blogspot.com

Q: Are you familiar with the social networks and do you actively participate?

I’m pretty active on Twitter (@riverforgetting) and somewhat active on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=606784746 ). I’ve found a lot of interesting people that way.

Q: How do you think book promotion has changed over the years?

In the old days, publishers spent time and money promoting books for their authors. Now, only a few authors get that treatment, the ones who write blockbusters. The rest of us have to do our own work, with the help of services like Pump Up Your Book, for which I am grateful. It’s both exciting and daunting to do one’s own promotion.

On Other Fun Stuff:

Q: If you had one wish, what would that be?

I’d wish all the children of the world to be safe and happy.

Q: If you could be anywhere in the world other than where you are right now, where would that place be?

I’d love to go back to Australia. The people there are so open and pleasant and the scenery and biology are astounding! There’s a vividness and immediacy.

Q: Your book has just been awarded a Pulitzer. Whom would you thank?

I would thank all my writing friends. I find writers an amazingly supportive group for the most part, kind and generous with their time.

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Kathleen Shaputis, HIS KILT DROPPED HERE

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Aiken Brown, SON OF A SOLDIER

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Miri Leshem-Pelly, SCRIBBLE & AUTHOR

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Bacon Press Books

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T.M. Wallace, WINTERGARDEN

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Deborah Serani, DEPRESSION AND YOUR CHILD

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Mary Lawlor, FIGHTER PILOT'S DAUGHTER

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Karen-Anne Stewart, ASH TO STEELE

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Lauren Carr, Best-Selling Mystery Author of Mac Faraday, and Lovers in Crime, Mysteries

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Question of the Day

How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

-- Sheila Roberts, Author of Winter at the Beach