How Jessica Anya Blau Sits Down & Writes
'Mary Jane' is a coming of age story set in the '70s that feels as relevant as ever today.
In 1970s Baltimore, fourteen-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her family’s subscription to the Broadway Showtunes of the Month record club. Shy, quiet, and bookish, she’s glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Jane’s mother says. In a respectable house.
The house may look respectable on the outside, but inside it’s a literal and figurative mess: clutter on every surface, Impeachment: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers on the doors, cereal and takeout for dinner. And even more troublesome (were Mary Jane’s mother to know, which she does not): the doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important job—helping a famous rock star dry out. A week after Mary Jane starts, the rock star and his movie star wife move in.
Over the course of the summer, Mary Jane introduces her new household to crisply ironed clothes and a family dinner schedule, and has a front-row seat to a liberal world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (not to mention group therapy). Caught between the lifestyle she’s always known and the future she’s only just realized is possible, Mary Jane will arrive at September with a new idea about what she wants out of life, and what kind of person she’s going to be.
Mary Jane is perfect for fans of Almost Famous and Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
We talked with Jessica Anya Blau about bringing the ‘70s to life in Mary Jane, finding story inspiration, and so much more.
Q: Where do you like to write the most?
In a café with a friend sitting across the table. I write in 25 minute spurts. It’s nice to look up, see a face, and chat between those spurts. Since COVID and the lockdown I’ve been writing with friends on FaceTime. We’re each at a computer working on our own thing and every now and then we look up and chat. It’s not as fun as a café, but it’s better than complete solitude.
Q: When do you like to write the most?
My writing life has run concurrent with motherhood, so I’ve never been precious or picky about when I write. I will write anywhere. There have been years when I was teaching, working on my own book and ghostwriting and I had to write anywhere I could, any time I could. I’d haul my computer around and write whenever possible: in the carpool line picking up kids, in the waiting room at a dentist office. No amount of time was too little to at least get out a couple sentences. When you write like that--during all the little gaps in life--it’s amazing how much you can get done.
Q: When it comes to drafting, do you prefer writing on a computer or freehand?
Always a computer. One of the reasons is because my chicken-scratch handwriting is so illegible that even I can’t decode it.
Q: Are you more of a plotter or pantser?
Oh, I guess a pantser. I don’t plot out books but I do think about what I’m working on. At the top of my document, at the start of the first page, I write a simple one or two-sentence idea of what I’m doing. That idea often expands or changes entirely as the writing progresses. Often, at the end of the day, I’ll write on the place where I’m ending (in all bold caps) what I think will happen next. When I get to it the next day, something in my brain has processed what’s been done and I often don’t do what I had thought I should do. So there is a sorty of pantsy-plotting happening, right?
Q: Stephen King has a great line in On Writing that says “the scariest moment is always right before you start. After that, things can only get better.” That scary pre-start moment often inspires procrastination in writers. Suddenly, you have to clean your entire house, do the laundry and play Candy Crush for an hour before you can actually start writing. Is there anything you need to do before you can actually sit down and work?
I have two games of Words with Friends going, so I’ll often play those words before I start work. I used to play solitaire on the computer and I had to win the game before I started. And there was a period of time when I had Yahtzee on the phone and I had to score over 300 before I started. Lately, during Covid, with all these strange hours, I just sit down and do it. But, yes, it can be scary. I’m frequently scared and often tell myself to just write anything, you can fix it later. This helps.
Q: Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what music? Is your choice of music inspired by the project you’re working on?
When I work in cafés there is usually music playing and I like that. I can tune it out when I’m in the zone and then focus in on it when I come out of that space. At home, I listen to music before and after I write. I always listen to the music my characters would listen to, or music from the time of the book. With Mary Jane I put on Billboard’s Top 100 Songs of 1975 every day. I’d put it on in the kitchen when I emptied the dishwasher and did the dishes. I’d put it on when I was cleaning up around the house. And I put on the Sirius 70s station in the car. I love that music so it was loads of fun playing it over and over again for months and months.
Q: Some writers believe you have to write every single day. Is that true of your process? How often do you write/how long for each session?
I write most days. If I’m doing many projects at once, I’ll write on the weekend. If I’m not so pressed for time, I won’t write on the weekends and will try to let my brain really look away from what I’m doing and let it breathe. I write anywhere from two to four hours, but in spurts. Never four hours straight. I’ve gone to writers’ colonies and I’m always a bit unravelled by those people who go in their studio and write all day long. I’m the person standing outside their windows, looking for anyone to go on a walk, or do yoga, or just hang out and talk. An entire day alone with work is torturous for me. Two or three two-hour stints at a computer is pure joy.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d give an aspiring author?
Accept the fear and just write anyway. Don’t think that what you put down on the page is permanent, because it’s not. Put down anything. Move forward. Keep moving. Fix it all later once you’ve figured out what you’re really doing.
Q: Where do you normally find story inspiration?
I find that much of life is pretty odd and hilarious. Most of what I write is taken from my own life. The Summer of Naked Swim Parties was inspired by a memory I had of my parents and all their friends swimming naked (it was specifically the image of one of their friends, a grown man, jumping on a diving board naked). It was such a strange thing, as a kid, to witness grown-ups finding their way through life, sex, marriage, therapy, pot-smoking, etc. Drinking Closer to Home was veiled autobiography. Mary Jane has a lot of me in her. And the Cone house, the place where she is the summer nanny, is essentially my childhood home.
Q: Mary Jane is set in the 1970s and, through the characters, that time period is really brought to life. What made you want to set the novel in the 70s?
I think it had to be the 70s in order to have someone as naïve as Mary Jane. Today with the internet and cell phones and streaming TV, it would be hard to find a 14-year-old who hasn’t seen much of what is revealed to Mary Jane over the summer. Also, Americans were teetering between a certain prim, prudishness and an opening up and discovery of alternate ways of being. So it was a time when you’d have many or most people who wouldn’t go to therapy, and certainly wouldn’t talk about it if they were to go, alongside people who were experimenting with group therapy and family therapy. And there were what was then thought of as “traditional” American families with a working father and stay-at-home mother who was called a housewife, alongside people exploring open marriages and queer culture. In the American timeline, the 70’s offers a lot of tension, or a lot of story, simply because it was such a transitional time.
Q: Mary Jane is such an intuitive and instantly loveable and empathetic character. How do you think she became this way after being raised for 14 years by conservative, tight-laced parents?
My mother often told me the story about being with her parents and--from the time she was a little kid--thinking, something is terribly wrong here. I am not like these people. In other words, she had an awful feeling of being misplaced in her family. I imagine that thoughts and feelings like that aren’t that unusual. Every queer person in a far-right conservative family might feel that. Mary Jane, isn’t necessarily feeling that, as she doesn’t question what’s going on in her home until she’s exposed to another home, another world, in a sense. But just that exposure puts a light on how things are in her home, and the country club where her dad golfs, and the neighborhood in general. I think the fact that she really likes the Cones and Jimmy and Sheba (loves them!) makes her more open to their alternative ways of being in the world.
Q: There's such a great cast of characters in Mary Jane. Did you have a favorite besides Mary Jane to write?
I loved writing Jimmy and Sheba. They were both fun to think about and I liked being in their heads. Who wouldn’t want to be a massively talented star like Sheba? In writing her, I got to be her in my imagination. And I loved Jimmy. I would have fallen in love with him, though Mary Jane definitely didn’t.
Q: The relationship between Mary Jane and Izzy is one of my favorite parts of the novel. How do you think Mary Jane's influence on Izzy carries on in her life as she grows up?
Oh, I love this question! How nice to think of them as having lives past the time in the novel. Izzy’s world is so rich and full of love and people. But it’s also full of chaos and disorder. I imagine that Izzy, as a grown person, might organize her closets, alphabetize her books, iron and fold her laundry and think of Mary Jane each and every time.
Q: Do you think that Mary Jane ever sings with Jimmy on a track?
In the second or third ending I wrote for the book (I wrote five or six endings before landing on what is now the end) Mary Jane did sing on a track with Jimmy! So, yes, I did go there. I like thinking that, don’t you? I love the idea that her life really spins off in a direction no one in her family would have expected. My dream for her is to go to college in New York City, hang out with Jimmy and Sheba. Maybe she’d nanny for them after they have a baby. Throughout college she’d sing on Jimmy’s albums. And then, when she was ready and mature enough to handle it, she’d launch into her own career. It would be like Sheryl Crow who started out as a background singer for Michael Jackson.
Q: What is your favorite coming-of-age story?
Oh, there are so many wonderful coming-of-age stories. The first one that comes to mind is Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, though I probably should read it again before I say that it’s a “great” book! It was written in the 1950’s when Sagan was 18-years old. I find it appealing on so many levels: it takes place on the French Riviera; it’s in a decade that I love stylistically, in France in particular; the adults are figuring things out just as much as the 16-year old protagonist; and there’s love, sex and heartbreak.
Pick up your copy of Mary Jane at Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, or bookshop.org. Happy reading!
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