BWW Interviews: Rebel with a Typewriter - An Interview with Julia Park Tracey

In May, I reviewed Julia Park Tracey's most recent publication, "I've Got Some Lovin' To Do: The Diaries of a Roaring Twenties Teen." The author kindly agreed to do an interview for BWW about this fascinating project. Her responses provide poignant insight into her process and her relationship to the ever-evolving entity that is Doris.

Karen Biscopink: Can you describe the project's roots, its inception process? At what time and in what form did you receive Doris's journals? I imagine "unearthing" something so historically valuable from an ancestor as an incredibly exciting, visceral experience.

Julia Park Tracey: I knew my Aunt Doris (great aunt) my whole life. We were very close; she told me things she didn't share with the family, and I trusted her likewise. But I never knew she kept diaries. She passed away two years ago, at age 101. I saw her in the last few weeks, when she could still speak, and she didn't say a word. She had asked me, about six months before she died, to please be the one to clear out her drawers and to get rid of anything incriminating. (Don't we all need someone like that?)

There was a quick turnaround on her house, since it had been sold already, so I took home carloads of dishes, linens and more. I had several boxes of odds and ends to consign, and also this one box of letters and photos, or so I thought. Turned out to be her diaries -- from 1925 through 1938. Blown away? Yes. Delighted? Absolutely. Who was this unknown person, anyway? It was just that -- delightful.

KB: I find your use of social media to engage Doris's fans, your readers, to be a really layered choice. Part of this is that I feel like, while Doris's mind would be blown by things like Facebook and Twitter, they seem like tools upon which she would absolutely rely and adore. What has your experience been like with this online, more interactive side of the Doris Diaries project?

JPT: I think you're right about Doris. She embraced technology from the start of her life as a writer (age 15,1925). She loved the telephone, the Victrola. She learned how to type, and thereafter, left the fountain pen behind; her fingers could finally keep pace with her thoughts. She had an email account in her last decade, until she lost her vision (macular degeneration). Her screen name was RebelGrrl.

I think posting on Facebook and Twitter has the same effect of writing in a diary - little snippets of thought. Just enough at the water cooler to keep you thinking about whatever the topic. And yet, because social media is so wide and vast, there's a Peeping Tom mentality -- a slightly salacious feeling of peeking, that I think she would have appreciated. Who doesn't want to sneak a peek at something forbidden? And what we find in the pages of the diaries is a woman whose heart was an artist's heart, who longed to write her stories, and did so in private. I think the Facebook and Twitter and print publication of these fulfills her unspoken wish.

KB: I am always curious as to other writers' "origin stories." You've written two other books, have worked and written for multiple publications, and have many other writerly credits to your name. What has your journey been like, up to this point?

JPT: Frustrating and fulfilling in equal parts. I frustrated myself early on by getting pregnant in college (majoring in journalism at SF State) and having to skip all the really cool internships at The New York Times or chasing rebels in Central America, because I had a baby and couldn't go. And I was frustrated in not being able to take a reporting or editing job because of the weird hours required, with a baby at home, single parenting her. I was extremely frustrated working in other fields (restaurant, data entry, telecom) for money instead of writing, and so I wrote a lot of poetry and got my foot in the door as a poet. But not a lot of money there.

I got married and no longer had to work, and had two more children, which was also frustrating to my writing career. However, three daughters have been very fulfilling in my life, so no complaints there. I felt that each child held me back another five years, at the time -- again, very frustrating. But I eventually was able to get my Master's in English and creative writing, and got my novel written, and was getting a lot published, from poetry to feature articles. I realized somewhere along the path that I wasn't really being held back -- that it is all apprenticeship, and all good material, and that my mind had been free all along.

When my youngest stepped out the door into kindergarten, I found that I was a highly skilled writer, and shortly thereafter, in the throes of divorce, I walked into a features editor position in newspaper, and that took me right to a managing editor's job and eventually, publisher. The lesson in all this is that no time is really wasted when you're a writer. And I find that now, I can write fast and clean, from all my newspaper deadline days. I have a deep knowledge of other writers from all the reading I've done. I have a vast vocabulary because of the work I've done, and my exposure and pursuit of poetry gives me a turn of phrase that most journalists don't have. I have a full toolkit. Time is really not the problem at all. It never was.

KB: There is an apparent amount of research and factual untangling involved in the Doris Diaries project. How did you approach these tasks? I kind of picture you as the Nancy Drew behind the book, searching for clues and piecing things together, which of course romanticizes a huge amount of work.

JPT: I discovered literary detective work in grad school (in the late 1990s, before the internet was so prevalent), trying to find what these obscure allusions might mean in Jane Austen or Shakespeare. Why would (s)he have said (whatever) there? I loved dictionaries and other resource books and still do.

When I'm trying to figure out what Doris means, I go online, I look at old newspapers, I read phone directories from the 1920s, I look at maps, dig through old deeds and permits -- it's dirty work, but I love it. It's kind of a thrill to discover a book with information you know is wrong, because you've seen the original documents yourself. And yet, I am clearly not a historian. I am much more a journalist, and a word nerd, than anything else. I don't remember dates, and I might not always see the big picture. But stringing the details together into one beautiful span of information -- that's just fun.

The next installment of Doris's adventures will be released this September. Get updates on its arrival at Julia's website.