Meet Pamela Stockwell

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Pamela Stockwell. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Pamela, thank you so much for joining us. You are such a positive person and it’s something we really admire and so we wanted to start by asking you where you think your optimism comes from?
My mother taught me to always look for the silver lining. Sometimes, that’s really hard. But I have found there can be some good that can usually be found. As an example, I lost both my mother and my only sibling within two years of each other. It would have been devastating enough for my dad, but my sister had lived with him so he felt her loss even more keenly. But we were in the process of adopting our second child from China and did not want to leave our first child with anyone when we took the adoption trip. So we invited my dad to go with us. He was an invaluable help to us–we adopted a Deaf toddler and our daughter was the same age–both were not quite three! We traveled four months after my sister passed away and I am pretty sure that trip was a huge distraction for all of us, but most particularly my father. And we got my son out of it.

Another silver lining came with the pandemic. At the start of it, some members of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association began meeting daily on Zoom to write, turning a solitary activity into a group filled with vibrant, creative energy. We’d state our intentions, then get to work. At the end of the sessions, we chatted, and that’s when I learned that Kelly, one of my fellow writers, had Polycystic Kidney Disease. I followed her updates on social media and, one day, when I was on a twelve-hour drive to visit my dad, and my oldest daughter was at the wheel so I opened Facebook to pass the time. Kelly had posted: “You know how you sometimes (in pre-Covid days) you would ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar, or a couple of lemons off their tree?” she wrote. “Well, I need the equivalent of a human charger. I need a kidney.”
On a whim, and with a desire to do something even if it would never come to pass, I clicked on her link. I spent at least fifteen minutes filling out a detailed questionnaire about my health. Then I hit submit. To make a long story short (a long story filled with tons of medical tests!), twelve months and two weeks after I applied, and two years and two weeks since the pandemic my kidney was removed and flown to California. Two years after the transplant, we are both doing very well. We met in person six months later–a meeting filled with lots of joy and tears. If that’s not a silver lining, I don’t know what is.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I always wanted to be a writer and started writing a novel in my early thirties, which is in a box somewhere. But while it was still in draft form, I got married, adopted three kids, and became a stay-at-home mom. I know plenty of people write with young children around, but I am not one of them. I have found I need time to ruminate and with three young kids, that never happened. My oldest child was my busiest kid, and I spent a lot of time driving her to and from her many activities. And because the driving age in New Jersey is 17, she didn’t get her license until her senior year of high school. But when she started driving, I started writing. Maybe it was to distract myself from worrying about her! But I wrote a not-very-good novel that will never see the light of day. I realize looking back at that effort, I had not found my voice yet. But when I started writing A Boundless Place, which was published in October 2021, I discovered I like to get to know my characters deeply and that I like glints of humor to peek out of the story. That other book took itself way too seriously! Since then, I’ve been writing short stories, poetry, another novel which came out in April of this year, and I have a third in progress.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I think the first skill is perseverance. It doesn’t matter how much talent you have naturally if you give up too soon. In fact, one of my characters in The Tender Silver Stars, Mrs. McCabe, sums this up rather well: Not being successful a few times isn’t failing. Giving up is failing.” When I finally decided to write, I established a time I would sit down and work, and I put that on my calendar. And stuck to that as much as life allowed. Another skill–which is essential if you are trying to get published–is handling rejection. I think so many creatives suffer through a lot of rejection because what we do is so subjective. And that’s what I tell myself. It’s not personal. It just might not have to their taste. And the third skill balances that out a bit and that is learning to accept constructive criticism. For my first novel, I got a round of edits back that made me throw up a defensive wall. But I set the edits aside for a few days and came back with a more open mind. Then I was able to see where the editor made some excellent points and also where I wanted to stick to my guns.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
I have a hard time switching between writing and marketing, and with a book just out, I am doing a great deal of marketing. I miss the creative flow crafting a piece of fiction usually brings, but when I sit down and try to write, I can’t seem to reach that creative well. For now, I have decided to concentrate on getting the word out on on my newest novel and trusting I can back in my creative groove soon. In the meantime, I am doing research for my third novel and that often stirs my imagination and makes me want to put words down on paper.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Tom Fisher, Kiana Stockwell, Stephanie Ciecierski at Burlington County Library System

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