Dina Neuman - a chat about creativity, tone, and the freedom of cross-genre
Hey! Welcome to another issue of Frum Books, home of everything related to frum publishing. Dina Neuman’s work can’t be easily described, since she’s breaking the rules and making up her own. Dina is a long-time Ami fiction writer for both adults and children. Her published books include Daddy’s Girl and the recent genre-breaking Eureka.
Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you were reading?
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. The legend is that I taught myself how to read when I was 4. I read everything I could get my hands on, you know cereal boxes, tissue boxes... I read every genre, anything that had words on it, until I got a bit older and then I became more of a literature snob and only read “Very Important Books”. It’s amazing, I stopped reading non-Jewish books a bunch of years ago, and now I read things I never thought I’d read. The one thing I never read when I was younger was biographies, which is what I mainly read now.
When did your love of reading turn into writing?
I always enjoyed writing but never thought of it as something that would interest anyone. I started keeping a blog online, mostly musings and thoughts. I didn’t tell anyone about it, so I had people who read it but they didn’t know who I was, I didn’t know who they were. It was nice because it was like throwing it out into the darkness, there were no real ramifications.
And then, a friend took me to a writer’s workshop by Sarah Shapiro. I read Sarah a piece from my blog, and she said, Wow, that’s such an interesting nonfiction piece for adults, would you be interested in writing fiction for kids? And I was like, That’s kind of out of left field, why? And it turns out that she was editing for a brand new publication, Ami Magazine, and they were looking for a children's short story writer. I said, Okay, I’ll try it, and then it became a thing. But I never thought of it as a career, I wanted to be a psychologist.
I have a BA in psychology, like they say, a bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. My plan was to come to Israel for one year, support my husband in learning, and then go back home and do my Masters. But it's been a long year, it feels like 18 years. So that didn't materialize but it's definitely something that is in the back of my head and maybe at a different stage in my life... I still love it, which is why I do these features on psychology for the Ami. Not anything heavy or deep, sort of like pop psychology. So it's still in my life. And I think I use it in my phrasing. And in my parenting, I hope!
Your writing covers the gamut of so many different styles, genres, formats, and even audiences. From all the styles you've written, what do you feel represents you the most?
I like kind of a mishmash. First of all, I don't know who decided that things have to be divided into genres in the first place. We all enjoy a bit of everything, life is a bit of everything!
I also think that with anything that's a pure genre, you lose out a lot. If something's just a straight-up drama, it’s almost like life happening through the window, you don't get a sense of things happening like they do in normal life. And then a thriller is the opposite problem because there's no character development, it's just one thing after another happening. Some pieces of science fiction get caught up in the gadget-y of itself, and you lose out on story. So I like just taking bits and making a story out of the best elements.
How were you able to retain such a distinct tone with so much else going on?
Humor is very, very important to me. I actually learned this from Rabbi Orlofsky. I mean, this is what I've seen, not that he ever said this. It seems to me that when you make someone laugh, it opens them up to everything else. A lot of other emotions close people up, but something with laughter opens you up to feeling all kinds of other feelings and learning all kinds of lessons. So I feel like I can sneak in more nuanced thinking when there's humor involved. And then also, if the nuanced thinking is not your thing, at least there's the humor, there's something for everybody.
When reading your book, it seems like you were in a good mood for the entire time you were writing it. What happens when you're not in that mood?
I actually had this conversation with someone recently, a reader said she read that I had lost my father and things were hard for my family when I was younger when my father was sick for many, many years. She said, I never imagined that you would have gone through something that was so hard, you always write so humorously. And I responded to her, No matter what your life circumstances are, humor is a choice. You can choose to see something funny and the lighter side of things, or not. It’s not depending on your circumstances but depending on what you want to see, on your point of view. My mother always used to say, you can either laugh or cry, so you might as well laugh, you know?
You share a lot of personal information in the Ami. What have you found is the difference between the perception that your readers have of you versus the reality?
Yeah, mostly because of the back page, which is kind of like the magazine version of the blog that I had. I basically just write about stuff that's happening or whatever comes to mind. I give it over as if I'm sitting with the reader at a cafe having coffee and chatting. So when we chat like that, stuff comes up. So people think they know everything about me. One time I got an email from someone who said something like, I know everything about you! And I said, Well, I don't know if you know I have a tortoise. And she was like, Do you have a tortoise? I did not know you have a tortoise!
It definitely should be clear that like I'm obviously sharing what I want to share and there's plenty that I'm choosing not to. I only share about myself, I don't share about people I'm close with. I even ask my kids for permission before sharing anything. So obviously that means many pieces are missing. But I do very much enjoy that people feel like they know me and feel comfortable with me. It's nice that we have a rapport, even if it's not 100% true that they know everything about me.
You're producing a huge, huge amount of material. How do you keep yourself from getting burned out?
There definitely have been times when it's not really a creative product, it's more like there's a deadline. When that happens it's really painful, every word that comes out is hard and not fun. But I think it's the only way to write a lot because hopefully that tekufah will pass and you'll go on to new creative vistas and get excited about a different story. People who wait for something to hit them don't end up actually writing all that much because you're waiting for the perfect environment. It’s just like anything; waiting for the perfect day to start your diet doesn't work. You just gotta go into it, and just daven that you keep the excitement and the creative juices flowing.
Sometimes I'll write a piece and only on the second reading will I realize there are things that are in there that went in unconsciously. On the editing, I'll pull threads of those themes so that they're visible for everybody. There's a great mashal that I heard once. The first draft is like you're putting the sand into the sandbox. You fill up the whole thing with sand. It's sometimes work, it's not so much fun, but afterward, you have this whole nice pile and you can start creating your sculpture, now that all the words are there.
I've had different points in my life where I wrote more or I wrote less. When I first started it used to take me literally a week to write a short story because I didn't have the muscle memory of it. It was a whole huge job and very overwhelming. But I've been writing for a while now, many years, oh gosh, I'm old, it’s 12 years! So it definitely got easier and I took on more things to write. At one point I was writing nine things a week, it was pretty wild. I did that for a while and then I slowed down because life happened. In the beginning, my kids were small so I had evenings, now I don't. Right now I'm doing three or four things and that's much more doable. I guess you just have to keep your fingers on your pulse.
When you talk about muscle memory, do you find that writing is less creative as time goes on and it's a little bit more you're able to do it more by rote, you don't have to put it in the same amount of energy into it?
Let's say I write a short story that's 1300 words. Before I knew what 1300 words actually meant in my mind, I would finish a story and then see that I had to cut or add. I’ve developed muscle memory, I automatically know without thinking what 1300 words means when I'm writing. It's not by rote, I actually think it’s better; I'm able to concentrate more on the actual story and less on the word count.
Do you find it easier to write for kids or for adults?
Probably for kids, just because I'm very immature underneath it all. So I relate to kids more in a way. I also find that kids are very optimistic. They really like happy endings and when everything goes well. Adults sometimes want it to be a little bit more complicated.
What do you think is the most important aspect for a kid to appreciate a book?
Kids don’t like being condescended to, they appreciate it when you’re respecting them. I think nowadays chapters should be shorter because kids don’t have long attention spans. You look back at books that kids used to read, even just a couple of decades ago, books had long descriptions. Now it has to be a lot of dialogue, more things you can instantly visualize. A hundred years ago, a book like Treasure Island was a trashy book for kids; now it’s something we read in high school. People say it’s because of screens, etcetera, but there are plenty of communities where the kids don’t have screens, and it seems to cross all kinds of borders. I don’t know, maybe it’s something in the water.
But even if you do need to change the writing and make it more friendly for this generation, I don't think you need to lower the level of themes and complicated character development. You can still respect their intelligence even if you're using shorter chapters and smaller words.
You’ve done a lot of insinuating about your relationship with Rachel Berger. Who is she?
Rachel Berger is a fellow writer. We've been inseparable since the moment we met, and I feel like I've known her forever. She's definitely been inspired by my style, and I've been inspired by hers, in turn. I would say that sometimes we think strikingly similar to each other.
Do the two of you have different genres or is there overlap between your work?
Again, I feel like you're now that you're mentioning it, we generally are of the same mind about many things. She would agree with 99% of what I told you about cross-genre and not staying in your own lane. 99.9% probably.
She hasn't branched out yet into many children's books. She's written some short stories in the Aim Yom Tov editions, but she's still dipping her toe into that water. When I read her things I feel l like I'm reading my own.
Is there a genre or style that you would never touch?
I would never probably do straight genre. I don't think I'd ever write a straight drama or a straight thriller. Or a straight anything.
Daddy's Girl is definitely closer to a straight drama, probably because I had just lost my own father and it was a what-if kind of thing. My family was BH so so so supportive of each other, and I was thinking, what if we weren't?
It was my first fiction for adults and probably in retrospect, I was following a certain mode of what an adult serial was, which is more drama. Also, I had other elements I wanted that my editor was not happy to add. But then she started trusting me more in terms of adding in a lot more thrilling adventure kinds of elements, and she said, Oh, people actually do like it. She thought people would only want straight-up drama. But I did manage to put in other elements, let's say with the painting and all that stuff. So even though it was very wrapped up in the drama, it was still like a little bit of a mystery, like where is it? What happened to it?
Do you ever read Jewish fiction?
I definitely do, I stopped reading non-Jewish books. I didn't ever mention it to my readers because I felt like that'd be a little alienating for people. I don't want to make people think I'm holier than thou, I'm not, it was way long and coming.
For a really long time I was telling myself that I'm a writer, I need to read quality fiction. It's kind of like putting the gas in your car. But I reached a point where I was keeping these books in my room and not letting the kids read them. And then I was like, What am I doing? This is not more important than anything else. Also, I'm very affected by what I read, it's literally in my dreams, so it's something I needed to do a long time ago. I did it on a month's trial basis, I said if my creativity runs out like I expected it to, then I'll have to rethink it. I had all these ideas, I was going to only buy award-winning books… Even award-winning books these days are also horrible, there was no good solution. I stopped slowly, month by month, and Boruch Hashem I think I'm still fine. So I just kept up and it's been a couple of years already.
When I started off I said, Okay, I'm gonna stick to quality Jewish non-fiction because I was naturally such a literature snob. There are some really well-written biographies these days that are coming out, Sara Yocheved Rigler's biographies, Nachman Seltzer's biographies, much better than the ones we grew up with. I read those also, because they had words on them and that was my criteria for reading, but they definitely have come a very long way.
I started kind of getting desperate and drying up, so I started reading fiction, too. And you know what, some of them are absolutely wonderful! I feel ashamed that I refrained from reading them. And some of them are not so wonderful. But those I read as a writer, to learn what not to do. There's something to be gotten out of all of it. I'm reading all genres again!
What are your favorites?
Right now I am in the middle of reading this really, really riveting, wonderful historical fiction, called The Last Slave by Y Kormornick - I can't put it down! It's amazing.
In biographies, I read Emunah with Love and Chicken Soup by Sara Yocheved Rigler which is really wonderful. It reads like a Mussar Sefer, in a good way, but you have to be ready for that, it's not going to be cozy reading. Highly recommended.
What's next for you?
So next is a book of short stories for boys from Menucha Publishing. I mean, girls are welcome to read it too, but it happens to be all the characters are boys. And then I have a couple of books that are kind of waiting in line for me to do something about them. So there's more in the pipeline.