Even after five decades, Blume is still exploring new stories. Excerpted from Inforum’s “A Sunday with Judy Blume and Molly Ringwald,” June 7, 2015.
JUDY BLUME, Author
In conversation with MOLLY RINGWALD, Actress

JUDY BLUME: My husband said, “You know, people will say [my new novel In the Unlikely Event] is a historical novel.” I said, “What are you talking about? It was just a few years ago in my lifetime. This is not a historical novel.” Then he counted the years and said, “How many years ago was 1952?” Was it really that many years ago? Because it feels to me like yesterday.

MOLLY RINGWALD: A lot of this book was written through research. I read that it was researched more heavily than your other books.?

BLUME: Yes, well, five months of research because, though I remembered a lot, I didn’t know anything really about the crashes. I got so many characters and so many moments and so many scenes from the research be- cause there was no television news then. You couldn’t come home from school and put on the TV set and watch this. It was all up to the newspaper men who painted the picture for us, and the photographers.

RINGWALD: What made you decide that now was the time to tell this particular story?

BLUME: I got hit over the head – like boing – when someone on stage was talk- ing about the 1950s. I didn’t hear another word but “the ’50s” [and] I had a story that I had to tell. I have this story that I know so well. How could I never have thought to tell it? How strange. My daughter became a commercial airline pilot, and she’s a reader; she read an early draft of this book, and she said, “Mother, how could you never have told me this story?”

RINGWALD: I feel like the book is really not about the crashes. It’s really about these people and this town and this place and this time.?

BLUME: It is. It’s about a time and a place – Elizabeth, New Jersey, winter of 1951-52 – and about all of these characters – three families. It all came to me in a flash, some- thing that had never ever happened to me. With all the books, [it] never happened this way, and that happened over a weekend. Monday morning I started the research, and I couldn’t wait to get up every day to get into this.

RINGWALD: What is your process of writing? Did it change for this book? Has it always been the same??

BLUME: It’s always been pretty much the same, and it didn’t really change for this book. I always have a security notebook before I start, which is just me jotting things down about some character who is in my head; but in this case, I had a real security notebook with stories from two now-defunct newspapers that covered this widely. I wanted to use all of those newspaper stories to help tell this [story,] because a little secret about me is I can’t write descriptive prose.

RINGWALD: Why is that?

BLUME: I can’t. I never write descriptive prose. I’m good at characters and dialogue and stories, but I don’t write descriptive prose. Thanks to these news reports, I was able to allow my characters to describe the situations. In this book, there had to be descriptive prose, because how else are you going to describe what happens and what certain characters see and feel? I needed to have it.

There was language of the ’50s that you won’t find in The New York Times today. You won’t find a plane “coming down like an angry, wounded bird.” That’s a quote. Or, a plane that “breaks apart like a swollen cream puff.”?

RINGWALD: How did you come up with the characters? Are these people you knew and grew up with? Are they entirely invented? Are they a combination of both?

BLUME: They’re all fictional characters, except for the people on the planes. With one exception, Estelle Sapphire, all of the people on the planes [in the book] were inspired by real people on those planes. Everybody else, everybody who’s telling the story, is fictional. My father was a dentist. I adored my father and he was much beloved in our town. The character of Dr. O, a dental hero – I always have dental heroes – is inspired by my father. Dick Jackson, my first editor of all the books that you all grew up on, said to me, “Judy, someday a graduate student is going to do his or her thesis on teeth in Judy Blume books.”

RINGWALD: Have any of the relatives of the people who died in those crashes contacted you? Have you spoken to any of those people?

BLUME: Many. When the book was announced, I began to hear from people all over who had connections to this. When I’m in Austin, I’m going to meet a woman whose father was one of the journalists who reported widely on it. She wrote a letter and said, “I’m just curious, did you ever come across someone named Melville Shapiro who covered these stories?” and I’m like, “Mel Shapiro? It’s like he’s my friend, it’s like these journalists that I lived with for all these years. Yes! Of course.” So, when I’m in Austin, I’m going to meet her. I met a lot of people in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a few nights ago.

RINGWALD: Do you feel like this is your last big book? Do you feel like you want to continue? How do you feel about writing? Are you one of these writers that feels compelled to write?

BLUME: Writing changed my life. Writing gave me everything. I think you don’t write if you don’t have to. I think there’s that something in there. It’s the creative energy. I mean with me, I think it could have gone any way, writing or whatever else.

RINGWALD: Did you ever do anything else? Did you ever act or dance?

BLUME: No, but I want to.

RINGWALD: I heard you’re tap-dancing now.?

BLUME: I do. I like to dance.

RINGWALD: Have you always loved musicals??

BLUME: Always. I have one fantasy left.

RINGWALD: Which is??

BLUME: Musical theater. [Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself] on the stage.

RINGWALD: Wifey really did scandalize my mother, and still does to this day. All of these things that we are not supposed to talk about or we’re supposed to be ashamed of, you talked about with such humor and grace. I feel like you’ve been a guide for me and, I think, all of us.
I just want to know, how did you do that? You have this image, and you want to be a certain way, and also you have your family, who I presume has been reading your books all this time. How did you overcome that barrier? Or did you even feel that?

BLUME: I actually never felt it while I was writing. I must be some other person when I go into that little room to write.
I was lucky [as an adolescent], I had friends, we talked about it. We didn’t know anything, nobody told us anything. My friend had a book, and we all looked at the book. The book didn’t make any sense. My father tried to tell me about the menstrual cycle, and it wound up [being] something about the lunar cycle, so every time the moon was full, I would go to the window and look at the moon and say “Ah, all the women in the world are doing this now.” I couldn’t wait. I was very excited about [it]. I was a late developer. I really, really wanted to get my period. [Laughter.] I wanted it!

RINGWALD: How late were you?

BLUME: I was 14. My mother was 16.

RINGWALD: I was 12. I guess that’s sort of average.

BLUME: My daughter and her friend asked their Ouija board when they were going to get their periods.?

RINGWALD: And what did the Ouija board say?

BLUME: The Ouija board said 14.

RINGWALD: Your books have been an incredible comfort for me, because it’s scary when your body changes, when everything changes. I think that there are periods of life, and you’ve managed to cover just about all of them, because you’ve written books for very young readers and then grammar school, or elementary school, middle school. You’ve pretty much covered every generation.

BLUME: So let me just tell you, for all of the women who ask me to write about Margaret in menopause: It’s not going to happen. But – and this is not a spoiler, so I can tell you – in the first two pages of In the Unlikely Event, Miri, who is the major protagonist, does get a hot flash.

RINGWALD: So what’s next? You’re going to be on book tour for a little bit.

BLUME: Yes, until July 20-something-or- other, and if I survive, then I’m going to take a break.

RINGWALD: I think you deserve it.

BLUME: After Summer Sisters, I said to George, my husband, “I’m never doing this again. Ever.”

RINGWALD: The book tour or the writing?

BLUME: The writing. It was three years of torture; very painful, very difficult.

Then I wanted to write for young chil- dren, and so I wrote a series of four books based on The Pain and the Great One for little children. Then I got hit over the head [with an idea for my newest book]. So I can’t say what’s going to happen. I mean years and years ago, I knew if you asked me “What’s next?” there would be another book and another book and another book, because I couldn’t not do it. It was there, and it came out, and it took me from being sick in my 20s to being healthy and alive and anxious to get up every day. But then I met George, and I got a little happier and, well, I didn’t have to do it so much.?

RINGWALD: Do you find that you write more when you’re happy or you write more when you’re unhappy?

BLUME: I would say in the beginning, angst is very good for the writer. Now it doesn’t have anything to do with happy or not happy.?

RINGWALD: You just have a writing habit.

BLUME: I don’t have to write. I can be happy without writing. I think [I’m] not happy without a creative project, because the creative juices keep going and going. Eventually they have to come out in some way, and so you have to do something, right?

RINGWALD: I was just telling my friend Meredith last night that I feel like writers or any artists – we have to find some way to get it out. Otherwise, you just go crazy.

BLUME: Yes. And I would have. As it was, in my 20s, I was sick all the time. Exotic illnesses.?

RINGWALD: Like the character Sandy.

BLUME: Yes, like Sandy in Wifey. Yes, exactly.

RINGWALD: Did you think they were related to your dissatisfaction, your frustration? Once you found that creative outlet and that success, did those illnesses go away?

BLUME: They did. They went away before success. They went away when I was writing. They went away because there was a way to let all that stuff out. I’m much older now, and I realize that I don’t want to spend five years on one project – unless, of course, it was a musical of Sally J. Freedman.

RINGWALD: Have you ever pursued that or spoken to any composers about that?

BLUME: I actually am talking to somebody about it, but I don’t know if it will happen. It’s just fun to think about.

I’m thrilled that I finally finished this book. It’s an emotional book, but I think ultimately, even though there’s a lot of tragedy in it, it leaves you with the feeling that life goes on, and there is hope and joy and love.

RINGWALD: I wonder how things would be different if you had written your books in a digital age.

BLUME: I’m so glad I didn’t have to do that. I have a lot of younger writer friends who write today. I think a lot of that gets in the way of your story. You want to tell a story, and you don’t necessarily want it to be about electronics. I might just leave it out. That was the great pleasure about writing about 1952. You put your angora sweater in the refrigerator, and you danced with your boyfriend to Nat King Cole, and you talked on the telephone, but communication was so different. So different.

RINGWALD: People ask me the same question about The Breakfast Club. They say, “What would it be like if that was done today?” I think there’s no way they could remake this movie today, realistically.

BLUME: When you see a contemporary movie that uses a lot of electronic devices, it’s very specific. But not every contemporary movie does; you might see a cellphone, but you don’t have a lot of people walking around texting.

RINGWALD: I think right now, the film- makers are figuring out ways to get around it. Because it’s one of those things you can’t ignore because it is definitely here to stay, and it’s changing the way that we make films. It’s changing the way that we tell stories. We have to acknowledge it in some way, but figure out a way to make it interesting and still about people because all the feelings are the same.?

BLUME: They are.

RINGWALD: That never changes.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: This is a question for both of you. Do you think the Internet and social media makes it easier to be a young woman in this world right now?

RINGWALD AND BLUME: No.

RINGWALD: I don’t think it does at all.

BLUME: It probably makes it harder.

RINGWALD: I think it makes it exponentially harder.

BLUME: Everything is there. Everything I say. Things I don’t want people to know, but I said them anyway. [Laughter.] It’s all out there.

RINGWALD: I’ve been in the public eye for a really long time and [I am] very protective of myself, and that’s really because of my parents. My mother always said – which is not the greatest thing for a writer, but I think it’s good, very protective for a public person – “Never put anything in writing that you wouldn’t want to see on the cover of The New York Times.”

BLUME: Oh, I know that one. I forgot to tell that to my kids.

RINGWALD: Yeah, and I say that all the time to my daughter, because I didn’t grow up with the Internet. I got the Internet in my early 20’s. I’m not a digital native. I feel like it’s so hard to impress upon children the importance of privacy. That’s something that we have always had, for the most part, in our country, that we’re in danger of losing now. It’s really important that we don’t support our own loss of privacy, because people are already trying to do it for us.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: You both have portrayed iconic roles of adolescence, and I’m wondering if you can share a story, as mothers, if there’s been a moment when you’ve drawn upon those iconic portrayals in your own parenting.

BLUME: What I wrote is pretty separate from where I was as a parent. I wanted to be honest and truthful with my kids the way I wanted to be honest and truthful in my books. But it’s one thing for all of you to think I was the greatest parent in the world, but really I was just a parent floundering like every other parent and not always knowing how to deal with the situations.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Forever, which I had out of the library for longer than I care to admit, is a really honest, frank, very open look at teenage sexuality, and it came out in an age when most young adult books wouldn’t touch that.
I’m wondering if you got any pushback from your publisher or your editor about putting that kind of openness out there. If so, how [did] you advocate for the im- portance of it??

BLUME: Ok, first, I have to tell you, there was no such category as YA books. Everybody thinks I write YA books. I never wrote YA books until – I mean, Forever would have been published YA, but there was no category called YA. All the books that you’re talking about today, Margaret and Sally and all of those, they were what we called [then] middle-grade books. They were kids’ books. Then I wrote Forever – it was a very open, free time. The 1970s were a great time for writers and readers and, yes I know, for a lot of stuff.

I met my husband at the tail end of the ’70s, and he moved in two days later. That was 35 years ago. So the ’70s were different, but the publishers were willing to take chances. A lot of us came of age at the same time – Norma Klein and Norma Fox Mazer and Richard Peck and probably a lot of the writers that you all grew up with. When I wrote Forever, I wrote it for the worst reason in the world. You never write a book because somebody asks you to, but my daughter, who was 14 and was reading a lot of books in which, if a girl succumbs to this thing, something terrible will happen, she will die, she will be sent away forever. Boys never had any feelings – and I had a son – and girls never had any interest in sex. [Laughter.]
But Randy asked me, “Mother, could you write a book? Could there be a book in which two nice kids do it, and nobody has to die?”

RINGWALD: Thank you, Randy!

BLUME: I wrote Forever, and it’s dedicated to her.?

MATHILDA GIANOPOULOS (Molly Ringwald’s daughter): Have you ever stopped writing a book or stopped working on a creative project because you felt like you’d lost inspiration or [have] you just [said,] “Well, I’ve come this far. I’ve got to keep going”?

BLUME: In the very early days before I was published, I wrote some really bad things, which are in the cupboard, and there’s a big message on the box to my kids: “If you publish these after my death, I will come back and haunt you.” But once I really got started telling stories and being published, I don’t think that I ever stopped. I don’t think there was one that I gave up on, but that’s probably because they run around in my head for a long time before I commit to writing about them. There are tough moments when I think, “Ugh, this isn’t working. What am I going to do?” That’s when you go for a bike ride or a run, or you bounce a ball against the wall, or you do something.

Take a shower; very good ideas come in the shower. The entire idea for Superfudge came to me while I was in the shower. So I’m very clean all the time.

I guess the answer is that no, I haven’t found that, but I know a lot of people do, and that’s okay. What I tell kids is, “If it’s not for school, and if it’s not due, just write. If you get sick of it, just put it away. It’s okay, start something new. The more you write, the more you learn.”

RINGWALD: I’m one of the only teenag-ers in the ’80s that really didn’t have The Breakfast Club to guide me, because your experience when you’re in it is completely different. I’m just curious, who was your Judy Blume?

BLUME: Well, we didn’t have YA books. I finished reading children’s books early and by 12 and 13, I was in my parents’ bookshelves in the house, and I will say, my parents gave me one of the greatest gifts of all by making me feel that reading is a good thing, something to be celebrated.

They were never afraid of what I was reading. Reading was good, and they liked to read, so they were happy that I liked to read. There was never a time when I was told, “You can’t read that book.” They weren’t judgmental in what I was reading. So I was curious about the grownup world, and I satisfied a lot of my curiosity with those wonderful books.?

RINGWALD: American writers? European writers? Russians?

BLUME: John O’Hara, Saul Bellow, even Ayn Rand–God help us–was on my parents’ bookshelves. But, as far as I knew, these books were just really good stories. When you’re young, you read over what you don’t get, and I read it for the stories. We had a book called Seventeenth Summer. We all loved Seventeenth Summer. We all read it in junior high and it was a very true book, but other than that, I read adult books.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Nowadays, there’s a lot of media access to sex and whatnot through “The Kardashians,” “The Real World” and Fifty Shades of Grey. You were one of the first of your time with publishing books along these lines. What kind of backlash did you face, if any, with your publications back then??

BLUME: Again, because it was a different time, I didn’t get the backlash until 1980.
Everything changed with the presidential election of 1980. The censors then came out of the woodwork overnight. They came waving books into schools and libraries, and if those schools and libraries weren’t prepared with policies in place, frightened principals [and] teachers took the books off the shelves.?

RINGWALD: Your books are still being banned, aren’t they??

BLUME: “Challenged.” [Laughter.] We call it challenged. Not that I know of. I mean I don’t know about all of it, but we have so many things to help now. We have the National Coalition Against Censorship, which changed my life when I found them and began to work and speak out, because it always feels better to speak out and work and be determined; not just for my stuff, but right now Sherman Alexie is being hit right and left with people trying to ban his wonderful book.

RINGWALD: Toni Morrison is banned in some places. It’s incredible.?

BLUME: Where it started was the extreme religious right, but it’s gone to the left with trigger warnings. What is this? You’re in college. Do you need trigger warnings? What are you going to do when you’re out of college? You’ve got to learn how to deal with it.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What inspired you to write the book, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret?

BLUME: I think it was the first book where I really let go. I had written two books and published two books before it, but I call them learning experiences. With Margaret and Sally J. Freedman especially, I just said, “I’m just going to let it rip” – what I remembered about being that age; what I remembered very clearly from my own sixth grade experiences and my relation- ship with God. That had nothing to do with organized religion, but God was my confidant and friend and someone I could speak to, and I just let it out. It came out in six weeks because it was there, and it was ready to come out. Everything was new and spontaneous and exciting.

RINGWALD: When you finished, did you know that it was a hit?

BLUME: Oh, no! I didn’t think anyone would even publish it. I didn’t know that I was really a writer until I read it in The New York Times. It was a review of Margaret, and it was in a roundup of seven books, and I still remember the feeling, [reading,] the best book of the seven was Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and I was like “Oh my God, maybe I’m really a writer. Maybe I can really do this.” It was so exciting.

RINGWALD: Well, I think the world says a resounding yes, and we’re so grateful to you that you have done this.
What is your 60-second idea to change the world?

BLUME: I do think, especially as I grow older, that being kind and thinking about the other person [is ideal]. I think I’ve become much more kind. I would love everybody else to, too.

And eat pasta.