5 Questions with my Favorite Writers: Jane Ratcliffe
Wisdom and advice from a renowned essayist, journalist, and novelist
Reminder: Our Book Club meeting is tomorrow, Monday, May 27th at 5pm PDT / 8pm EDT. You can find the Zoom link here.
Hello, lovelies!
Today, I am so excited to have
here on WORDPLAY. Jane has had a legendary and varied career as a writer. She’s interviewed musicians like Sinéad O’Connor and Metallica and authors like Cheryl Strayed and Elizabeth Gilbert. She has published her own personal essays in places like The Oprah Magazine, and her work has been included in Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories Notables. Jane also has a MFA and has taught Creative Writing at Rutgers and The New School. And she also writes a beautiful newsletter on Substack called , which features wonderful, warm interviews with authors and other creatives with heart-centered minds.
Jane! I can’t even express how happy I am to have you here. Thank you! I have so many questions I want to ask you, but since this is called “5 Questions with my Favorite Writers,” I’m going to have to keep myself in check.
(1) I think what I really want to know first is—How did you get started in writing, and did you have any idea your career was going to end up looking like this? (See what I did there? I cheated and put two questions together into one.)
I wanted to be a writer ever since I was little. I was always the kid who ordered stacks (and stacks!) of Scholastic books, too many to take home on the bus all in one go. I was later the twelve-year-old reading Dostoyevsky and Faulkner. But I had an older brother who first pursued writing, so I thought he was the writer and therefore, I wasn’t.
It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I decided to give writing a shot. I went with a friend to hear Norman Mailer speak. Until that night, I thought before you could write a word you had to have your entire plot figured out, know every last thing about your characters, and have A Very Important Theme. When I got up the nerve to ask him how he tackled all this, he said, “I just get a voice in my head and see where it takes me.” I ran home and started writing – and that first paragraph I ever wrote is the first paragraph of my first novel.
After that, I wrote daily. Eventually I got my MFA from Columbia. To support myself, I interviewed musicians for Vh-1 and Interview and a few other places. In one way, my career makes perfect sense. I love interviewing people! It makes me ridiculously happy. I switched from musicians to authors and I’m incredibly lucky with the people I get to speak with. In another way, my career was derailed by head and brain injury and looks nothing like what I expected. But on the upside I believe the struggles I’ve faced, have shaped my writing profoundly.
“Jane is a great interviewer – her warmth draws the interviewee out into new territory…”
— George Saunders
You’re known as an incredible interviewer who brings out the best in her subjects. However, you also turn that lens on yourself when you write personal essays. One of my favorite pieces you’ve written is about how walking your neighbor’s dog helped you heal from brain injury.
(2) But for a lot of us, it’s difficult to open up so fully. Sometimes, telling the full truth to ourselves is the hardest thing. Do you have a trick to access your own vulnerability, to give yourself permission to see the rawest parts of your heart?
Thank you so much for your kind words, Evelyn. I wish I had a trick! Because then I would be able to apply each time. Mostly I approach the page with a mixture of excitement, fear, and the tiniest dollop of a notion of what I want to write about. Though sometimes I have very grand ideas of what I want to write about. With either approach, I end up in the same place: getting a whole bunch of words on the page and then doing my best to transform them into something.
As far as accessing my vulnerability, lately I’ve been realizing that I’m more open-hearted and vulnerable than I think I am. I think of myself as very guarded. Well, because I am! But somehow through my guardedness my love of the world shines through.
I’ve lived through so very much with my health. I still am. It’s taken a tremendous toll on me but I’ve also become profoundly loving of myself. And I think from having to tell my story to various doctors over the decades in order to get help and sharing my struggles with friends and family in order to stay sane, I’ve become accustomed to speaking my truth without realizing I’m doing so. But for every layer I uncover, I later discover there are so many more. I don’t know that we ever arrive at the full truth. But the best truth in that moment can be so healing and also help others.
Wow. You’ve just demonstrated to me again what a beautiful, open heart you have.
(3) You have also written a couple novels. What’s been the hardest part of shifting between shorter form non-fiction writing (essays and interviews) to long-form fiction?
For me that shift is fairly fluid. With nonfiction, I’m either writing about myself or immersing myself in the world of others – in both scenarios, they are grounded in history and lived experiences. So I am guided by what has been – even as I reach into the future. With fiction, I am guided by these beings who live in my head and my heart and, I believe, also in the world but they are taking me by the hand and leading me through their lives: their loves, troubles, desires, failures, heartaches, joys, and more. My job here is to take notes and represent them as accurately and beautifully as possible.
(4) I always love to know what other writers are reading. What are two books or authors who have inspired you lately?
Ooooh, this is tough! I’m inspired daily by authors. And I always fall a little bit in love with whomever I’m prepping to interview. If I focus on recently,
’s The Fixed Stars really blew my heart open and blew my mind. The structure is so elegant. Each section/chapter holds just the right amount of backstory and frontstory and tenderness and honesty and humor. Molly moves time beautifully. And the depth of emotions she renders – I was gutted in places, delighted in others, full of wonder and longing in others, riddled with suspense in others, drawn in every moment.Brandon Taylor. My god, he can write! His prose is so tight and clean, yet also magically lyrical. And his characters are so vivid and complex. He focuses a lot on friendships and they are never pat. Each one carries so much complexity from deep tenderness to fierce anger. But they always stand by one another. I love that.
(5) Do you have any advice for writers who are just starting out? Like, if you could time-travel and whisper some wisdom to young Jane, what would you say?
I’d let her know that every writer struggles to believe in their writing in a consistent and meaningful way, even the most successful or most gifted ones. One day you think you wrote the greatest thing ever to hit the planet, the next day you’re looking for a book of matches. Don’t harm your gentle heart trying to be someone else’s writer. Be your own. Let your curiosity, compassion, and love guide you. Tenderness toward yourself and others lights up this crazy hard world we’re all in. Don’t be afraid to be the light.
It is always such a joy to be in the presence of your words, Jane. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today!
To all my dear readers, I highly recommend if you’re looking for some calm, writerly inspiration in your life. To help you get started, here are a few of my favorites that Jane has written:
The story of how walking a neighbor’s dog helped her recover from a freak accident that caused brain injury:
Her essay about choosing divorce even though she was still in love with her husband:
Writing advice from Elizabeth Gilbert:
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Jane and Evelyn,
This was a great interview. My aha moment that writers do not write perfect first drafts was when I saw the outline in the back of Fitzgerald's unfinished The Last Tycoon.
"Don’t harm your gentle heart trying to be someone else’s writer" -- I think this just changed my life. Thank you!