A Woman’s Ring: An Interview with Rea Frey
By Eric Cherry
Eric sits down with author Rea Frey to talk about the story behind her newly published novel, A Woman’s Ring. In an engaging face-to-face, this promising, young writer shares tips and anecdotes about her writing process and burgeoning career.
It all began with Lisa Rogers Lowrance contacting me about an author, Rea Frey, whose first novel, A Woman’s Ring, was released last year. At the time, I’d been discovering a pattern among the stories of how various professional authors got from scribbling on walls with crayons to signing their first publishing contracts. Some of the patterns were no pattern at all: Each story stood apart from the others, with each author taking a unique path. Real patterns emerged, though: Getting published tended to occur by dint of applied effort over the long haul. I studied these stories to extract the secret of how to apply that effort in order to get published.As it happens, it’s not such a great secret. The first step is to write something. This sounded too obvious to be of any use, the first time I heard someone say it in so many words—but it came from renowned author Neil Gaiman, so I decided to pay attention. He spoke at a book signing for Stardust several years ago, fielding questions from the crowd. He went on to say that the second step was to finish what you write. The point, I gathered, was that not everyone who wants to be published wants to do the necessary work up front. Finally, he said, send it to someone who is likely to publish it. My memory is that he rendered this point in detail.“Write and finish what you write.” Starting with crayons appears to be optional, but the “butt-in-chair” step is unavoidable. I’ve been told to write for two hours each day, that one thousand words per day is a novel in three months, and more along similar lines. Who says these things? I’ve received this wisdom from every professional writer I’ve talked with.
“Submit what you finish to someone likely to publish it.” An unsubmitted story remains unpublished, guaranteed. They say that, eventually, a submitted story runs the risk of getting into print under someone’s auspices, over someone’s better judgment, or in spite of itself. In the best of all possible worlds, the writer is paid and takes on the rank of professional.
Let me get back to Rea Frey. Her story interests me, because I’ve had a mix of conversations in the last few months about genre writing versus literary writing and popular markets versus niche markets, and where the authors in these areas got started. I interviewed Rea by e-mail, inquiring about the path she took from crayons to contract. As with the other biographical sketches I’ve studied, hers revealed patterns both unique and familiar.
Twilight Tales: Since many writers say they’ve been writing for what seems like forever, I draw a distinction between playing with words on paper (with crayons, sometimes) and writing “with intent.” When did you begin writing with the inclination to be a professional writer?Rea Frey: I began my quest as a writer at a very young age, though, at the time, I did not know what I was creating. Writing, for me, began with reading—hours of learning words through dictionaries, TV Guides, and Dr. Seuss books. My father would sit next to me and help form the words, tracing his fingers along the page to make sure I was following him. I began to love the language and began to write stories, drawing pictures to accompany them. When I could first put my hand to paper, forming thoughts, characters, and an actual plotline, I was smitten.The finished story or poem always made me more excited than anything else in the world. During the third grade, I entered a poetry contest and won. My father and I had been in the kitchen one night, me propped up on the counter and him washing dishes. Soapsuds were flying dramatically through the air, so we constructed a poem about soapsuds and won. Being published was wonderful, but soon, the world of sports entered my life and writing with intent fell to the back burner, until I went to an arts high school and began to write constantly—poetry and vignettes and short stories. I got my voice out in the classrooms and submitted a short piece to a magazine called Sensored. When I saw my piece in the small, square pages, I knew it was what I wanted to do.
After high school, I made a portfolio of my work and sent it for admission to Columbia College Chicago, receiving the Presidential Scholarship. While there, I participated in readings and won scholarships for my fiction, which felt better than anything. I wrote a book and entered a chapter into a contest for the Civic and Arts center and won a prize, winning money and having that chapter published in actual book format. It was glorious to see. Next came the book publication with Dare 2 Dream Publishing.
Now, I am writing with intent full-time. There is nothing else I’d rather do. There is something so raw and challenging and endless about writing a novel. To start with a blank piece of paper and construct a full movement—something that you’re proud of. That is special. That is what it’s about for me.
TT: I know that I’m never satisfied with my own production schedule. Other writers I talk with usually have troubles juggling projects, non-writing work, and having a life. How are you working now, and on what?
RF: Currently, I am writing full-time. I graduated from Columbia College Chicago in May 2004—Valedictorian—and am working on promoting the book, as well as finishing the second novel, Wherever You Go. I have never had so much fun writing anything.
TT: That’s the time-honored question right there: What are you working on next? Tell me about Wherever You Go.
RF: This book chronicles the novel’s protagonist, Daniel, and his quest away from his family, who are all crazy. He lives in Georgetown, Kentucky, where he has grown among the pleasantly plump inhabitants of the South, and endured a painful upbringing with his wallflower mother and drug addict/musician father. At the novel’s opening, Daniel has managed to gather enough money to escape to Europe, where he is riding a train from Austria to Rome, in hopes of finding something substantial about life as he knows it.
Before his departure, his father dies in a car accident, high and accidental, and his mother, upon this news, literally breaks down and cannot take care of herself. Daniel’s longtime girlfriend, Louisa, has become a family friend and the steadfast glue that binds the family together. Milton, Daniel’s grandfather, is a bipolar/schizophrenic amputee who now has two fiberglass legs, many stories to tell, and an opinion about everything. When Daniel’s mother, Virginia, discovers she has colon cancer, he leaves them all, going to another continent in hopes of self-discovery, and, above all, distance.
What Daniel discovers is love through a pregnant stranger, murder, acceptance, who and what is important, and the significance of creating your own family, while remembering the ones who have raised you.
I have a third novel on the back burner, as well. To me, it is so important to establish myself as a writer at a young age, and to publish as many quality novels as I can. It is the only thing I truly want to do and will do.
However, there are many struggles being a young writer, in that you often don’t have as many connections as the more established writers. Though I am happy about having a book published, I have encountered many problems and frustrations along the way. I am seeking an agent and a larger publishing house now, which is difficult when sending out anonymous queries. It is hard to get your foot in the door, but that is part of the challenge, which I love. I am taking so much that I have learned from the first book into the second. I will be patient this time and aware. I know that it’s never going to look like what you think it’s going to look like and that’s okay. And most importantly, I will hopefully write something that will withstand the test of time.
TT: That sounds right. The professionals I’ve met talked a lot about the constant learning process. When I met David Gerrold at WorldCon last year, I asked him when he found that writing became easy. He responded with, “What makes you think it ever gets easy?”
Since it’s where you’ve started, tell me about A Woman’s Ring.
RF: A Woman’s Ring is a strange concoction. Each chapter is like a separate story and takes a stab in time. The novel is about a woman, Katherine Sinclair, who makes choices that society might not necessarily agree with. She is selfish and very unlikable at times, which makes her real to me. Katherine wants nothing more than to connect herself to the people she loves, and boxing is one way of doing that. She encounters so many struggles—being a wife, a mother, abandoning her family, entering the world of boxing, and then having brain surgery—and still being forced to make decisions on her own.
A good scene is Katherine’s first fight—here is this woman who is good at boxing, who has left her children in another state because she loves the sport so much and, all of a sudden, she is vulnerable, insecure, and shoved into an atmosphere she knows nothing about (the world of competition). The reader has been following her progress in the gym, and now you do not know if she is going to win or lose. It’s dramatic.
To me, the hook of the book is finding out if Katherine is successful. Does she return to her children? Does she win a fight? Does she make the right choices? I hope that’s what will keep readers intrigued—finding out how this girl ends up.
The best part of writing the story was when I finally found the voice. A Woman’s Ring started out as something else and, with the help of Antonia Logue (author of Shadow-Box), I realized that I was selling myself short. When I found the voice of Katherine, I was able to take the novel to a new level. On the flip side, the biggest challenge was not having the voice and thinking I had it, but admitting I wasn’t quite there yet. As a writer, you have to trust yourself so much. If you don’t, you start analyzing, critiquing, and questioning everything, so there is a certain level of trust and confidence that you must possess to believe you will get there. That you will reach the level that you’re afraid you cannot reach otherwise. It is a scary process. The easiest part, however, was probably the boxing scenes, as I am a female boxer. It is ingrained in me, and though some may think it is romanticized in the book, I simply wrote it like I feel it, as well as with the brain surgery. Those were the two components that were taken from my own life—mixed with this woman’s different world and attitude. It was a strange, but intoxicating combination for me.
TT: You mentioned the strong influence of your father on your writing when you started, on college programs later on, and just now another author who helped you directly. Who else’s work do you read?
RF: I began reading at an early age. Some of my favorite authors are Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Fyodor Dostoevsky, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, Edith Wharton, Don DeLillo, Richard Ford, Philip Roth, Ann Petry, Jhumpa Lahiri, Donna Tartt, George Eliot, Dorothy Allison, Michael Cunningham, Harper Lee, Vladimir Nabokov, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I tend to like classic novels, although at the present, I’m reading a bit of everything. I will read a classic novel, a literary novel, followed by a mainstream novel. Currently, I am reading Mary Oliver’s poetry, I just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami, and am also reading a contemporary novel called Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner. I like to keep up with different markets, publishers, and what people are buying. Reading is so incredibly important as a writer.
One novel that I think helped inspire me as a writer was Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. She wrote with such raw emotion, breaking all the rules on structure, voice and what a novel was supposed to be. It inspired me and awakened me to the fact that I could do whatever I wanted to in a book. That’s what I have attempted with A Woman’s Ring.
Visit Rea’s web site at www.awomansring.com to learn more about Rea and her work.
