Keep Writing No Matter Your Age: Interview with Teddy Jones

On today's episode we speak with author Teddy Jones about writing no matter your age. She was a joy to interview, and what a lovely voice she has. 

Teddy Jones is the author of five published novels, Halfwide; Jackson’s Pond, Texas; Slanted Light, the second in the Jackson’s Pond, Texas series; Making It Home, the third, and Well Tended; as well as a collection of short stories, Nowhere Near.

Her short fiction received the Gold Medal First Prize in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition in 2015. Jackson’s Pond, Texas was a finalist for the 2014 Willa Award in contemporary fiction from Women Writing the West. Her as yet unpublished novel, A Good Family was named finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing competition in 2018.

Although her fiction tends to be set in West Texas, her characters’ lives embody issues not bounded by geography of any particular region. Families and loners; communities in flux; people struggling, others successful; some folks satisfied in solitude and others yearning for connection populate her work. And they all have in common that they are more human than otherwise.

Jones grew up in a small Texas town, Iowa Park. Earlier she worked as a nurse, a nurse educator, a nursing college administrator, and as a nurse practitioner in Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico. For the past twenty years, she and her husband have lived in the rural West Texas Panhandle where he farms and she writes.
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Transcript

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Hey, gimme affairs, head over to MFA payday.com to get your very own customizable free picks your pants off tracker that's at MFA payday.com. Welcome to MFA Payday where we talk with people about how they make their M FFA pay. We're your host Dreama Drudge, Anne Barry Drudge. We wanna welcome Teddy Jones to our little humble podcast, Welcome. And we wanna read a brief bio about you. Teddy. teddy Jones is the author of five published novels, half Wide Jackson's Paw, Texas Slanted Light, the Second in the Jacksons Pond, Texas series. Making it home. The third and well tended as well as the collection of short stories. Nowhere near her short fiction received the Gold Medal First Prize in the Faulkner Wisdom Competition. In 2015, Jackson's Pond, Texas was a finalist for the 2014 Willa Award in contemporary fiction from women writing the West her. As yet unpublished novel, a good family was named Finalist in the Faulkner Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in 2018. Although her fiction tends to be set in West Texas, her character's lives embody issues, not bounded by geography of any particular region, families and loaners, communities in flux, people struggling, others successful. Some folks satisfied in solitude and others yearning for connection, populate her work. And they all have in common that they are more human than otherwise. Jones grew up in a small Texas town, Iowa Park Earlier. She worked as a nurse, a nurse educator, a nursing college administrator, and as a nurse practitioner in Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico. For the past 20 years, she and her husband have lived in the rural West Texas panhandle where he farms, and she writes, you can find Teddy at www.tjoneswrights.net. www.facebook.com/ teddy.jones.one 48 instagram.com. Teddy Jones writes Amazon Author page, Teddy Jones. Good Reads author Teddy Jones. And at Twitter it's at Teddy Jones Rights. we wanna welcome you, Teddy, welcome. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. so, Teddy, do you wanna tell us a little bit about your writing journey? When you started writing and then talk about your MFA experience As you probably know and probably have experienced yourself way before you were ever able to focus on a specific area that you wanna specialize in, for example, you dream of with fiction, part of what I did was to write, grant proposals, curriculum materials, procedure manuals, all kinds of things of that sort, which meant it was necessary to know how to string sentences together and to use various rhetorical devices to make convincing arguments, if you will, in the writing. But that, that was not what I really wanted to do. Eventually, I had in my mind for a very long time that I wanted to write fiction. That was about as far as it went, except that I made a lot of notes. Uh, I have notebooks full of notes I wrote this down because it struck me. It was something I needed to remember. And of course, since I put it on paper, I didn't remember it. I look at things like that I wrote, then I go through those notebooks from time to time looking for some sort of note that I might be using in this particular thing I'm writing, and I'll think who wrote that and should I have cited that for somebody else writing it? I be like, no, that's one of my notes. Anyway, so fast forward, at, about, let's see. 2000, I wanna say it was eight, maybe, or seven. We were out here and we had come out after leaving our paid jobs at the University Health Science Center in, uh, Lubbock, at Texas Tech. Both of us were there and, I had, been helping my husband who was helping his brother who was running the farm. And I was learning all these interesting things and I thought, oh my goodness, this is just great. When I was growing up, my family didn't farm. It was like, yes, now I can drive a tractor and looked this is a wheat truck with a Mac bulldog on the front. Oh my God, I'm driving it. And so, it was great. We were having great fun, and it's just the two of us. And so we were just wheeling and dealing. So we decided that we were having more fun doing that than we were going to work, and so we decided it was time we could leave. So we did. About the same time, his brother needed to move on, and so my husband was taking over the family's farm to, uh, keep it in the family. And so so for a few years after we first got out, this was in 2000. I met the man who was. Editor of the Farmer Stockman, which was at the time, a well-respected and very old farm publication. So I thought, here's a chance to do something different. So I pitched this idea you, you don't have any. And I've been reading Farmer Stockman. I knew what they carried and they had Baxter Black, who you may have read, Baxter Black. Western poet, who's a small animal vet out in the west in Colorado. And he, uh, he had a big syndicated following with these poems and songs and things he wrote in these columns that he wrote that was called, uh, on the Edge of Common Sense. And so I thought, okay, I'm gonna pitch something to this guy because why not? and so I said, I think you need a health promotion column, and I would like to write one. And I even know what the title's gonna be. It's gonna be called, uh, in the middle of it all. It's sort of taking off on what Baxter blackhead, which is on the edge of common sense. Well, in the middle of it all would be people needing to focus on promoting their own health on the farm and on the ranch, where, where they're in certain circumstances different than they are typical for a lot of people who are more interested in health promotion. So he said, well, write me a column and gave me, you know, 700 words and send it to me and see what happens. And so for. 13 years. I wrote a column once a month for the farmer Stockman, and so I thought I would, I would start trying to write fiction. That's when I started. And, uh, After that, I, uh, went to a few conferences and I thought, you know, I've learned a lot of things on my own, so I thought I can learn this on my own. Read books, read writer's digest, read, you know, do whatever you do, the stuff you do whenever you're just starting out and think you're smart enough to do it without any help. Well, I wasn't, and so so I thought, oh, well I, there's things I should know and I don't, and I love to go to school, so I thought, well, you know, maybe I should go to school, but first I think I'll keep, I'll go to some conferences. Well, I went to the conference, another conference over at University of New Mexico, sponsors in Taos at the time, and I went, the first one, I thought, well, I'll just sort of, you know, get my foot in here and see how it is. I might not like it, and it may not be for. And so I went and it was interesting and I was in a, with just, you just said, submitted a short story and I got, you know, some positive comments and nobody slapped me down and said, oh my God, why are you here? Any of that. So it was, and besides, I loved Taos when I got there. Oh, I need to be here as much as I can. And so, and so, uh, then I went back the next year and that year I had, again, it was a short story. And, uh, meantime I had started on my own, not related to what I was taking to workshop. I had started, uh, I thought it was gonna be a novel and, uh, that was just on my own. Anyway, so I went to this workshop and I had Robert Boswell as my instructor. And he said, when you got a real treat for that was you got 30 minutes, one-to-one after, after the workshop with the individual instructor. And so he said to me, during this one to one, have you considered. A graduate program. And I said, well, I like to go to school a lot. And I've done that a lot in my life, so I'm certainly not averse to it. Tell me what, why you, why do you say that? And he said, because I think you have some talent. I said, oh my God, someone thinks I have talent. And so sure. I just think that's great. I'll apply where. So, so I'll apply to Warren Wilson and to Spalding. Besides, you know, Kentucky is like a place I could go. And, uh, so, um, Warren Wilson didn't accept. And Spalding did, So, so with that, I now continued riding along on that one that I was working on until I got start, which was in 2010. Little by little, it was not necessary for me to drive a wheat truck or to try to plow. I cannot plow a straight row It doesn't massive. My husband. It's, I'm, I'm compensating for the cur of the earth. Think of it that he's not, it's not working. And, you know, I do, you know, bookkeeping and things like that and the occasional. Extra hand when he is working with a wrench or something, but I'm not doing that I Rio full time now, so that's what I do. Fascinating. Absolutely. So what are you working on now? I mean, you've got a quite a, a collection of books. It looks like you're, which as soon as I see titles like that, it's like, oh, I've gotta read one of these. It's, it's, it's important to me. Well, I hope one day you read'em all. There we go. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what'll happen. He'll read one and he'll be like, oh, there's another one in this series. And then there's another series. I'm, I'm a bit compulsive that once, I start, I have. There's gotta be, well, that's me. We both are, yeah. Eight 18 in a row of one. I can't even now tell you who it was. Uh, a detective series. I was like, okay, I'm gonna read all of these. And it was, they're like, candy. So that book that I was, that novel that I was working on half. When I began, before I went back to school, I finished it. I mean, I had a manuscript and I thought, okay, I'm gonna find an agent. And so I submitted and I, and I submitted to editors. And then I thought, as I kept getting these very kind rejections, I thought, I'm gonna give myself a limit of how many rejections I'll have before I change my strategy. And so, at 60, which was the number of rejections I was willing to accept before I went on, I said, okay, I'm gonna learn something else. I'm gonna find out about self-publishing. So that first one I went, I used the Amazon at that time is called Create Space. I used their, uh, platform. And purchase their services because I don't do formatting and all of that interior design, none of that. I mean, cover. I don't, I don't know how to do that. That's not me. And so I purchased that and then, then I, uh, act, I published it and I, you know, put it out in the world. And people, some people really actually liked it. So I thought, well, okay, I'm gonna continue. And so the next thing was whenever, um, I finished my thesis novel, that was Jackson's Pond. And, uh, I thought it was a one-off. But I, uh, I found through a, a colleague, I found, um, a small independent publisher. They don't pay. Advances, but I don't have to pay them anything like the hybrids required. So I thought, well, you know, how, how bad could it be? I do my work, they do theirs and we, you know, if it works, it works. And so that was published and that was the one, that one that got me to think, oh gosh, this is great because they made me a finalist for the Willow. And that's where the agent found me and me. I, meanwhile I had been, you know, querying agents and all that and like two no avail. Wow. This woman heard, she heard me read from that. You got, if you were a finalist there, like two finalists in a winner in in the contest. And if you were a finalist or a winner, you read at the conference, women Riding the West Conference. And so I read that evening and so after that was over. Approached me and asked, do you have representation and I said, no. And at, at the time I wrote it, I didn't think Jackson's pond was the place was gonna continue. And so the next thing I did was not another Jackson's pond. It was, uh, well tended after that. And that was a different town of different characters. And people kept asking me who, the ones who had. Jackson's Paw. What happened to those people? What, what happened in their, what, what else happened in those their lives? Mm. And so I thought, you know, I wonder too. And so so now, and, and in February the fourth one will be out and it's called Mar of a Cope. And it's an, it's, that's different in that it's not, the primary character is not one of the members of the Jackson's family. She's a stranger comes to town, you know that Oh my, yeah, that story. Well, she comes to town as the, uh, new postmaster in Jackson's pond. So Jackson's Pond itself has had, was in continued, continues to be a character of its own. And so now I've introduced, Cope. We'll see how she goes with people who have read that before. And that's, that's fascinating. I'm a big William Faulkner fan. When I saw the, the Faulkner Award here, I was like, look at that Faulkner Wisdom creative writing competition. And he created his own, as you probably well know, his own county mm-hmm. that that characters from different novels seem to cross one another's path. Yeah. I love that. I mean that you could, you have enough of a, a work, an rah that you've got, got the ability to, create different scenarios from the same area. I like that. It, it, it saves you the trouble of reinventing a town as well. There's a lot to be said for that Cause you know, all those little sticky notes you have that this ha this happened in such and such a year in the town. You have to remember that. So we have it I have to rewrite it. you know, there, there's software now that'll help with that. But I find No, don't tell me something. No, no, no. It's more confusing to me. I can't even use it. I bought it. I'm like, no, I'll just use sticky notes and whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I have those, those, uh, fold out boards that they make for, uh, teachers to make a posters on, you know, like on tabletop thing. Oh yeah. And I use those and organize things on that. And then when I'm through, I just. Fold it up and put a Gator clamp on the top of it, and so all those are stored in there. Ooh, I love that. you talk about how of course you're writing transcends place. However, it sounds like place is an anchor in your writing. Well, I, I'd like to tell you that the place I invented that I called Jackson, I can point to where it is, it's but I, I specifically identified a spot, uh, if you were to leave where we are, which, and Head East, we'd be going across the bottom of the panhandle of Texas. You know how the panhandle is shaped, okay. Mm-hmm. And there, there are, uh, 15 counties in the panhandle. We are the bottom left corner, Parmer County, and it's right up next to the New Mexico line. So if you were to head east from the New Mexico line, going to, as if you were headed toward, um, Highway 2 87 and the, and the north central part of Texas. Then you would see a place where the, you leave the farming land, the, the flat land. You leave the cap rock is what that's called. And you go off and there's these breaks and then you go down onto what's called the rolling planes. And so I situated my town just at the top, just before you go off. And so I get to describe not only the farming area surrounding, but the ranching area that's primarily, uh, what happens in, in the breaks. And uh, and so that's one of the reasons I chose it because it gives a, a broader spectrum of, of, uh, geography right there. And it also was at the time that I invented Jackson Spawn, one of the first places that had. Wind turbines up on the situated up there, up on the edge of the cap, which is makes sense. Wind flows across there and is sucked forward toward the east. And so that's why they began situating them up there. And that was one of the first places. And one of the, one of the segments of that novel is where the first landman comes through. Try to get contracts to put these towers on the, uh, various parcels of land that people had. And so of course the Jacksons have to make a decision. Are they going to allow any of those on their land? And so that's one of the other reasons I wanted to situate there, cuz I knew that was gonna be something that was gonna be in there because that was what was happening at the time. I was just beginning to put them out. Now they're all over and, uh, well we don't have one nearby here, but I mean, a lot of people have a nice income from their, from their, uh, wind, wind tower sits in the middle of their quarter of wheat or whatever. And so that's one of the reasons. So it's, it is a matter of creating place both to suit the story as well as, as to leave opportunities for other things to occur there. At least that's what it was in my mind because I wanted to, to make something that was identifiable to people who knew the area. And, uh, and Texas is about a lot of, uh, pride in Texas about stories that reflect Texas mm-hmm. And so it was a big market for that kind thing. And I've always been a big admirer of Larry McMurtry's work. Oh yes. So he was an in his, see I grew up in, in Iowa Park, which was 35 miles from Archer City, which was what he converted into failure, which was Oh yeah. Home of the last picture show, picture show in Texas Hill. And uh, and then up near Clarendon was where his, his family head land. And that's on the east side. If you were aiming from here, it'd be east up here on in the panhandle. And that was where my very favorite, one of his, his first almost first book was leaving Cheyenne. And that was upset up in that area with, so I. It was natural for me to choose something that reflected all those things. I, I wouldn't want a, an urban circumstance. Larry McMurtry used, uh, the second follow up book to the last picture show and said it in 1982. Right. And during the middle of all the problems with oil being, you know, and people going bust mm-hmm. And so they, I loved the fact at that point that it was a more current event than say 1880 Texas. You know what I'm saying? With the Rangers or something, you know, all of that, was. Prologue and you're doing that as well, you know, as you're bringing in windmills and things. Mm-hmm. it's, it's a much more modern Texas And then you have the whole microcosm that each town is in terms of its own. Culture that's created in the town and how it changes. I have now in the, one of the later books, a a, a new business was brought in from some by someone who, it's not an agricultural business at all. And so they purchased land on the edge of town. This fellow grew up there and had made his money elsewhere, and he wanted to do something for his hometown. And so this is one of the things that's happened. So it's changing some of, the culture of the town. And so when I bring in more of a cope, it's not inconsistent with the fact that it's not all the old families anymore. I know these people, I mean, they're in my head, and I, that's, yeah. Yeah. I hate to let'em go. I guess. Do you have one tip that you love to share with people about writing in any vein? That's an interesting question. I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what Robin told me. He said that the best advice about writing he ever got was from, and I can't remember what writer it was some woman that he admired her writing and I can't think what it was right Then he said her advice to him about writing was to keep your overhead low. And so Oh, and then don't ever think you're gonna make a living at right? Keep bit low perfect overhead. Yeah. Yes. So I've taken that to heart Yes. And, and I think the other thing is that, that I, again, I learned it at Spalling, is that, that the, the heart of any good writing is revision. And you, you must never, ever slack and, and on revision. And, and I know that a lot of people say, oh, the best thing to do is advise somebody to write every day. Well, some of us aren't built that way. Some of us built work in projects. But the point is, You should be keeping notes all the time, either mentally on your machine, pencil, whatever you, whatever your style is to do, to keep notes. But I don't think it's necessary to force everybody into the same mold in terms of process. But I, I do think that, uh, that an important and absolutely vital element of writing, whether it's, I'm sure it's the same for people who are writing created nonfiction, poetry, whatever, that you must revise and, and you must not feel so attached to how something was said that. You know that you're not wanting to change it or discard it, you know, so that's important. So those, that's my tip. Those are my tips. Well, that's excellent. Excellent. Hardly, yeah, we hardly agree with both of those. We're Oh, yeah. I'm a huge reviser. I will sacrifice anything that doesn't fit, I will go over and over that writing. Yeah. That's, that's important. Yeah. Yeah. It's the process that I'm in right now with my novel, my first novel. I'm in the revision and I'm enjoying it because, you start looking at what's important. Does this sentence really carry me along? Does it clearly state what I want it to be? is this character going in the right? I mean, of course the, my characters are like hers. If I take them the wrong way, they, they shake me and go, Hey, you're, you know, you can't do this, do you? That's one of the reasons why I love our workshop that we created on our own, or that we have fallen together because we know each one another. And, and even though it may not be the same six of us every time, it's enough of the same people that we don't have to be cautious about, you know, saying, well, thanks, but no, I don't think I will. Uh, or Oh my gosh, I never thought about that. But that came with me because, part of my professional career. As a nurse, you're constantly evaluated formally and informally, and you have to learn to trust yourself enough that you, you've done the work to know what you intend to be accomplishing. Mm-hmm. And so it might not agree with everybody, or they may have found it lacking in some way, and you can always learn from someone else, but you have to always say, all right, what am I gonna be satisfied with? What do I know is, is good practice? Whatever that's writing or nursing or whatever. You have to be able to have some confidence in yourself. So what are you reading or have read that's been impactful? Hmm. I, I'd have to admit to being what you might call an eclectic reader or perhaps Oh, that's quite all right. Like I mentioned, I read, all kinds of, mystery stories just as candy. I read, uh, other things that are recommended because of the topic or the name of the author that I wanted to pursue. And I'm really fond of, of, uh, Amorals books and was particularly like a gentleman in Moscow. The prose is beautiful. My brother gave me a book that I took with me to workshop this last summer because it was struck me as so beautiful. Anne Michaels is the name of this woman and, She's a poet. This first novel she had written This book by Anne Michael, this is called Fugitive Pieces, and it's, uh, it's the most amazing thing. See all these, see all these note, these tabs. Yes. This is somewhere where there was a, a phrase or a segment that was so beautifully written and I don't ordinarily fall into love with someone's style, and if it's overdone, it's too much. Oh, yeah. But this was just, I mean, I was just so struck by how beautiful it was, and I know it's because she's a poet first. And then there was a book that I didn't even know that, uh, Barbara King Solver had written. I found it at a V R B O place. We stayed in TAs, it was on the bookshelf there. And so I started reading it just because I don't not read every, I'm reading'em all the time. And so that book was there and I thought, well, I've read other things of hers. I really liked the Poisonwood Bible many years ago. And so I opened it up, started reading it, it's called the Lacuna, L A C U N A, like a, a Cave or something. And, uh, it was really, really good and I really enjoyed it. And I got about. Little more than half finished before we were ready to leave. And so I said to the woman who owned the place, who lived up there, just, you know, on the hill away from where the little Cato was, I said, is it possible I could buy this book from your shelf? And she said, no. And I, she said, I'll give it to you. I'm looking forward to Barbara King Solver's latest. I haven't read it yet, have you? No. Um, I'm trying to remember. Demonn Copperhead. Oh yeah, yeah. Something like that. Yeah, something like that. I may have the first paper. Copperhead is in. Copperhead is in it, and I am really looking forward to that. I put that on my Christmas list. I've asked Santa for it. So what is he listening? I have see this file, this has got, I said something like this. All these little scraps and these scraps each have one or more titles. And the title of this file is to read. And so anytime I think, what am I gonna read next? I'll have to do is look in here, because I will have, as soon as I write it down, I might forget it or forget the title. Oh yeah. Until I decide. Okay. Now I'm out of things and I, I do a lot of the reading I do at night on Kendall, but I really prefer having an. Book. Oh, understood. Yes. Yeah. So I love that method. So am my Perfect. I said when I came back to school, it was partly because I enjoy going to school and, uh, I was counting up one day. How many times I'd been to school and I thought, yeah, that's a lot of times going back to school for, you know, a degree or certificate or whatever. But then I realized that I'm very old. And so one of the things that I, that I think is important to know, to say to people is, you don't really have to pay attention to your age. If you're a writer, you can just keep on as long as you feel like keeping going. Yeah. Well see, I was, I was a nurse. I, I saw my last patient as a nurse practitioner in 2011. I decided then that it was time I didn't have to try to do everything, so I quit. I was on, and then I was just being part-time filling in at a clinic, uh, urgent care clinic in Clovis. And I thought, you know, you don't really have to try to do everything and if you wanna write, you better just keep at it. And so that's when I stopped doing that. And so I counted up and I, the first time that I was able to sign my name RN was after having graduated from a diploma nursing school in Wichita Falls, Texas. And that was the day that John Kennedy was shot. Oh my goodness. November 22nd, 1963. So if you calculate that, that means that it was 48 years that I was able to sign my initials or see I went back to school, back to school, back to school all those times. And you know, every time that I changed positions and such, and so, I think maybe doing different things like that and continuing to have either formal and or informal education keeps things fresh and so you don't feel like you're getting old at what you're doing. That's what I mean. I really think. It keeps life interesting for you. And so this is another thing that keeps life interesting for me. Very. And uh, so anyway. That's wonderful. You shouldn't Oh, thank you. You shouldn't say, well, I should stop. I'm 70 now. No, Not at all. No, no, no. Okay. Well great. I'm glad to have talked with you and so I appreciate your having me on Oh, sure. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, we, we just appreciate so much, Teddy, your time today, your, your wisdom We've just made a new writing friend, I think today. Yes, And very excited to, to taste your wares. So that's, that's gonna be our next thing. go to, www.tjoneswrites.net. To look her up or Facebook, just go, Teddy Jones. 1 48 is Teddy Period. Jones, period. 1 48. Instagram dot com's. Teddy Jones writes, uh, Amazon Author page is Teddy Jones. Make sure you look that up. We try to stress to people, don't just listen to us. Go out and be proactive about, helping support the writing world., good reads, author pages. We just wanna thank you so much and listeners, just make sure that you keep writing all the, all the things.