October 18, 2020

Pamela Redmond – Younger and Older

38 minutes

Pamela Redmond’s funny, perceptive romcom Younger is a current popular TV series - billed as “the next Sex in the City” – and now she’s back with a comical and poignant sequel called – you’ve guessed it - Older. What happens when a woman lies about her age to get a job and then where is she left when the charade has to come to an end?br /

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Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and Pamela talks about the ageism both men and women face in the workplace these days, feeling the fear and doing it anyway, and her dream of turning Younger into a Broadway musical.br /

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Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:br /

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Pamela's years as a Glamour editor - and the controversy that followedPamela's latest challenge - a Broadway musicalThe challenge of 'feeling the fear and doing it anyway'Owning the biggest naming site on the Internet30 things all women should know by age 30How she can't resist learning new thingsbr /

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Where to find Pamela Redmond:br /

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Website: http://pamelaredmondsatran.com/br /

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Facebook: @thepamelaredmondbr /

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Twitter: @prsatranbr /

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepamelaredmond/br /

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What follows is a near as transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.br /

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Jenny Wheeler: But now, here’s Pamela. Hello there Pamela, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us.br /

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Pamela Redmond: Thanks, Jenny. Great to be here.br /

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Pamela Redmond - Novelistbr /

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Jenny Wheeler: Beginning at the beginning, we always start with this point, people love to know the answer to it. Was there a Once Upon a TIme moment when you decided, I want to write fiction? I'm aware that you'd written quite a lot of nonfiction, but when did the fiction light bulb switch on and was there a catalyst for it?br /

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Pamela Redmond: I remember wanting to write fiction as early as high school, but it was daunting to figure out how to do that and earn a living. Even though I took fiction writing classes in college and when I first moved to New York, which was in the seventies, I worked as a waitress and wrote short stories at night. I tried that for a couple of years, which seems like an embarrassingly long time now to take figuring out that that was not going to be a way to earn a living.br /

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Then I got married and had kids and had a career as a magazine journalist and started writing nonfiction books and through all that the desire to write fiction grew, but I was bedeviled how to make it a reality. It wasn't until my youngest child started school and I had a little bit of time and a little bit of freedom in terms of my mind, that I took a fiction writing class and started trying in earnest to write a novel.br /

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Finding time as a Mom to writebr /

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It's funny because – she was a girl then, now she's a woman – my babysitter at that time is now the age I was when I started. Her children are 4 and 6 I think, the same age that my children were, and she’s trying to write and it's challenging.br /

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Jenny Wheeler: It is quite a common unfolding for women who have children and families. I didn't have children of my own, I had stepchildren, but you get very consumed with family life in those middle years, the twenties and thirties, don't you?br /

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Pamela Redmond - Younger - the novelbr /

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Pamela Redmond: Yes, you have to. You don't really have the choice, like I'll work on my career now and deal with children when I'm in my forties or fifties or whatever. If that's something you want, you have to get it together and do it,

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