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 Virginia Novelist Mary Lou Gediman
“I don’t think a writer ever stops writing,” says Mary Lou Gediman, Providence Forge resident and author of the recently published novel, Journeywoman. Whether she’s taking a walk or watching TV, she’s always thinking of ideas. Sometimes she has to stop what she’s doing to dash upstairs and write her thoughts down. She carries a notebook with her and is always listening and writing down what she hears. She says she’s learned that when it comes to balancing her life as a writer and all the other duties that come along, “creativity comes first” and “priorities are just a matter of perception.” If she has a good idea, whatever else she’s doing can wait.
That attitude of seizing the moment played into her writing of Journeywoman. “I’ve worked in administrative offices for most of my adult career. And one day, after getting a big jolt of creative inspiration, I just decided to write a book. So I quit my job in 2007 and started to write, and I haven’t stopped since.”
Writing is a passion she developed as a teenager in her native state of Connecticut and nurtured with creative writing classes. At the end of a day of school, she would ride her bicycle to the large pond at the end of her street and “just write down anything and everything that came to mind.” After school, she gave up writing for a while, saying, “Life steered me in a different direction.” During those years, she focused her creative energy on tactile arts like quilting and wreath making. “After my book was published and my children read it, they said, ‘Ma, I didn’t know you were such a talented writer.’ I told them that I’ve just traded in my quilting stitches for words on paper. "Creative is creative, right?”
When it came to writing Journeywoman, she was pursuing a goal she’d been considering for years. “In some ways I’m sorry I put my desire to write a book on the back burner for so long. I think about how many more books I could have written during that time. But I know Journeywoman would not have been such a good read had I written it when I was younger. There is a certain richness and depth that comes with age and one’s life experiences, and it shows in your writing I think. It certainly did in my book. There are a lot of life lessons in it. Lessons I probably wouldn’t have known about had I written it when I was younger.”
Journeywoman is part enlightening tale of self discovery, part gripping mystery. It is the story of Maggie Lerner, an obsessive-compulsive divorcee leading a quiet life as an administrative assistant at a psychologist’s office in Richmond. When she receives a mysterious email from a Native American spiritual guide named Chickahominy Grits, encouraging her to take a journey through Virginia and New Hampshire, everything changes. Running parallel to Maggie’s mysterious travels is the mystery of her father’s potential involvement in the murder of two policemen in a church basement in 1964.
Gediman approached writing her novel like a job, sitting down at the computer at 9 a.m. and working until noon. She says she “hired herself as a writer.” This strategy worked well for her. “And I must admit,” she adds with a laugh, “I loved my boss.” Even outside of those hours, she was always thinking about the book. “I lived and breathed Journeywoman for eight months,” she says. “The book took on a life of its own and so did the characters. And sometimes I speak like that too—I’ll speak like Maggie is a real person. But they are so real to you when you’re writing. Because you have to give them life and breath, and that’s what you want because the more life and breath you give them, the more real they become to the reader.” She wanted readers to feel whatever Maggie was feeling to make the experience intimate and moving.
When it comes to inspiration for her work, Gediman finds it “everywhere.” She loves cryptic words and things people say off the cuff. She tells the story of a book signing in New England where a young woman with flaming red hair wished her luck. When Gediman looked up, she told the woman “I love your hair.” The young woman responded, “Thank you. It was a gift from my father.” Gediman thought the answer was great, so natural and honest, and immediately decided to use it somewhere in her writing. She loves the things people say when they don’t expect anyone to be listening. Nature has always been another source of inspiration for her, ever since those high school afternoons by the pond.
In order to spread the word about her book and meet other writers, Gediman joined the Hanover chapter of the Virginia Writers Club. They meet the third Saturday of every month. She says many, but not all, of the writers are published and are trying to get their names into the literary market place. She describes it as “a great group of people who are very, very talented and very supportive of one another’s accomplishments.”
Gediman has no plans to stop writing anytime soon. At some point, she thinks she might want to create a novel around a flood that swept through Connecticut in 1955, an event members of her family experienced. Gediman wants to tell the story of the unsung heroes like her uncle, who carried her grandmother for a mile and half to the safety of higher ground. At the moment though, the novelist is hard at work on a follow up to Journeywoman, which will feature the same characters and take off where the first book ended. Gediman promises, “There are many surprises in store for our dear Maggie (and others) in my next book.”
For more about Mary Lou Gediman and Journeywoman, including ordering information, click here
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