“It Was Like This Window Was Opened”
Sixty-one was a big year for Pamela Redmond. She walked away from her marriage of 33 years, leaving the home in New Jersey where she had raised her three children, to start afresh in Los Angeles. You could say it was her second chapter, except she had already lived that at 50. That was when she made the switch from journalist to novelist – she has now written 17 books – as well as launching the world’s largest baby-naming website, Nameberry.
Another fresh start, powered by a “once in a lifetime stroke of luck”, came five years ago when her 2005 novel, Younger – about a woman who pretends she’s younger than she is to secure a job at a publishing company – was turned into a hit TV show helmed by Sex and the City’s Darren Star and now in its sixth season. “The book was 10 years old, it had been optioned several times and nothing ever happened. And then this amazing producer came along and not only made it into a show – he made it into a great show.”
Now 67, Pamela has just released a sequel to Younger, called Older, which follows its protagonist Liza from New York to Los Angeles as her book is turned into a TV show in Hollywood. She is keen to point out that her own life – she still puts in 12 hours a day at her desk during the week – is nowhere near as exciting as that of her screen counterpart.
“People [like to think my life is glamorous] because it’s our wish to turn things into a fairytale. The reality is not that. After Younger became a TV show, I wrote three novels – whole novels! – that were rejected. I really thought I might never get published again.”
Not that Pamela is immune from the lure of the happy ending. “When I get to the end of a novel, I almost can’t resist the fairytale ending because I would want it to work out like that. We all do, right? I think that all of fiction and television shows and movies are a manifestation of that wish. We’re all looking to books or TV to have those characters live things out on our behalf and see how it goes: if it worked out for her, maybe it will work out for me.”
For someone who’s written a book that centres around lying about one’s age, it must be confronting to live in youth-obsessed Los Angeles, a city where, Pamela says dryly, “if you’re 40 and over, you’re a diversity hire.” However, Pamela says that she has long been aware of how ageing can impact women’s careers.
“At Mademoiselle there were some iconic editors who had been around forever and who I really revered … they were all fired. It really informed me: do not get old in this business. ”
“When I went to work at Glamour [magazine, where she began as a fashion editor], the day I started, my boss who was fiftyish and had been there her whole career, was fired. At Mademoiselle [also owned then by Conde Nast], there were some iconic editors who had been around forever and who I really revered – Edie Locke, Mary Cantwell – they were all fired. It really informed me: do not get old in this business.”
Her view about ageing is also coloured by seeing her mother get sick with rheumatoid arthritis in her early 40s. “She never had a full life after that,” Pamela says of her mother, who died at 61. “It affected the way I felt about my own life and future. I wanted to control my own destiny and it was like I was hearing this clock ticking – that time is always finite and you have to do this now. I get very panicky. Recently I decided that anything I want to do in the next five years, I’ve got to start doing now.”
At the same time, Pamela says that age bring benefits, particularly once you move beyond the child-bearing years. “At least for me, there was tremendous feeling in getting past [that] point. I had my last child when I was 40 and when that door was really closed, it was like this window was opened.” That release is one of the many things younger women don’t understand about passing mid-life. “The other day a young woman was interviewing me and said, ‘I’m really looking forward to getting older when I won’t care about how I look.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding? Of course you still care!’”
One thing Pamela has been pondering is what leads to success. “I’ve been reading a book called The Biggest Bluff, and the question I ask myself a lot lately is how much of your success is luck? The conclusion of the book is that luck is essential, but luck is also completely out of your control, it’s random. All you have is your skill, so all you can do to affect your success is to get as good as you can be. It might not be enough, but that’s all you can control.”
Persistence is definitely part of the equation. “I think a big piece of it is, are you willing to put up with all the shit involved? The fact is, it’s always hard. Maybe it’s like that Chinese proverb – good luck, bad luck, who knows? Something happens and you can’t always tell whether it’s good luck or bad luck.
“In some ways it was good luck that I married a journalist who didn’t make a lot of money, and so I always had to make money and that was motivating. Some friends of mine – because their parents left them money or they’re married to some hedge fund guy – are not that motivated. They’re like, ‘I wish I could write all these novels like you!’ And I say, ‘I might not be doing that if I had $10 million in the bank!’
“I think getting older is kind of like that. When I was younger and read stories about how the happiest age is 68 or 84, I didn’t understand how that could be. But now I understand that we all live our lives from inside our skin, and when you’re older – if you’re lucky – you’re able to appreciate all the things you’ve always loved about yourself and be more forgiving and let go of the bad. This is our moment, for all of us, so why spend even one hour of it being miserable?”
Older by Pamela Redmond is published by Hachette Australia.
Words_ Rachelle Unreich
Images_ Roberto Nickson/UnSplash; Mark Hanauer