Why We Write: Author Ronni Diamondstein on Jackie and the Books She Loved

Wow, November just flew by! Nia’s Rescue Box is published out in the world digitally and in print at your favorite bookseller. 

I apologize for not keeping Author Spotlights this month, but if you’ve ever seen a school in winter, you’ll understand when I tell you my whole family has been sick over here for a week and a half straight! Thank you for bearing with me and all of life’s unexpected adventures. Without further ado, let me introduce today’s guest, Ronni Diamondstein!

Ronni is the author of Jackie and the Books She Loved, a picture book biography about Jackie Kennedy and her career as an editor. She’s been busy with a virtual launch at her local library and many events hosted all over like her talk with The First Ladies Library and I’m so thankful she had time to speak with me!

I always like to start with how old were you when you started creating books– full stories from start to finish?

I used to write and draw when I was a child and I won a writing contest in my Hebrew school when I was in third grade. A little after that I started writing little books and drawing pictures with them.

…I knew I always wanted to write books so when I was in my senior year in college, I took a children’s literature class. You could do anything for a final project so I wrote a picture book.

It was an ecology story which was ahead of its time, I think, about this little pumpkin who was a mouse who lived in a book. Then he escaped and found all this debris in the ocean. I should probably try to rewrite this now to tell you the truth.

Then he floated over a farm and scurried down from the roof and got into the house because he was taken home by a little girl. When he got home, he thought about everything. I guess that planted the seeds for me for writing.

When you are writing nowadays, what’s your ideal time and place to write?

This is so funny because I used to write when I was teaching. I would get up really early in the morning and write but that’s also before I had my dog who takes priority in the morning. Now, I often write in the morning and in the late afternoon.

I didn’t really want to say where I did most of my writing because first I write by hand. Especially because I’m doing nonfiction, I research a lot and I’m reading magazine articles and things like that. I was shy about saying where I like to work when I’m doing that, but after watching Barbara Streisand talk about her book and say where she did her writing, she said she did it on her bed. 

I like to sit on my bed, on top of the covers, and I put things around. Then I’m really comfortable, in a good position and I’ll be taking notes. Or when I’m working on a draft, I’ll print out something and then go sit on my bed and work on it because it’s really comfortable.

Then I will go to my office and type it up.

I’ve heard of writers writing in bed before, I guess maybe for some people it might seem unusual. 

Yeah, it’s nice to have that space to spread things out, I can’t really do that at my desk because I have the printer here and I’ll have a little space here and a little tiny space there but on your bed you can put stuff all over. So, there you go! Now the cat’s out of the bag!

How has your involvement with the writing community affected your life and when did you first get involved with it?

In the 1980s, I went to Breadloaf Writers Conference after getting accepted. I had just been published after taking some writing workshops. I took an adult ed writing workshop when I lived on Long Island and, it was funny, I took it with one of my housemates that I’m still really good friends with who’s a writer too.

After that I wrote an op ed in the New York Times called ‘Seeing the Light on Blind Dates’ and then I got accepted to the Breadloaf Writers Conference. Then I started an MFA program at Stony Brook University but I wound up working in the Netherlands at an American International School. 

When I came back, I started an open mic for writers at a Starbucks in a town near here and I invited people to come including Esmerelda Santiago who just put out a new book. I was always involved in some kind of writing workshop. I even ran writing workshops for adults for teachers in my school. 

Then I took a writing workshop at a college here for a week-long program before joining SCBWI. I didn’t do that much with it, but I have to say joining 12 x by 12 has really been amazing because I’ve met wonderful people like you!

The other thing is I got in after I retired. It was coincidentally when the Chapaqua Children’s Book Festival started in my town which is one of the biggest book festivals in the country. My friend was starting it and I worked with her so I met a lot of writers through that too.

It seems like you’ve been involved pretty much your entire life in some way or another with writing and the community that it creates! How do you refill your creative well?

Well, I don’t do this much now after the pandemic, I used to go into the city more and go to museums. I walk a lot. I’m a photographer too. Before this, I was taking my dog for a walk and I don’t know if you noticed but every day I post a photograph and a quote usually about kindness. I’m always looking for something in nature to take a picture of, so when I was walking Maggie I saw some interesting things and switched the creative side.

I used to bake a lot. I haven’t had a chance because I’ve been so busy but I’m famous for my amazing double chocolate brownies that people are probably annoyed I haven’t baked in a year. 

Now they’re just going to savor them even more the next time they get them!

And I have to say I do like to watch television. I loved ‘Ted Lasso.’ I watch ‘The Crown’ and ‘The Morning Show.’I even watch things like ‘Magnum PI’ for a change of pace because it’s a really good show and the other thing that I’m not shy about saying is I always loved soap operas.

When I was a kid I used to watch soap operas and when I lived in Holland–most programs on Dutch TV don’t dub, they have subtitles. They used to have on ‘As the World Turns’ and ‘The Bold and The Beautiful.’ They would be in English with Dutch subtitles so I could look at the subtitles and learn a little bit of the language.

I still watch them. ‘As the World Turns’ went off the air but ‘The Bold and The Beautiful’ is still on and I record it every day.

When you hit an obstacle what keeps you writing?

Because I have so many ideas I just go on to something else.

I have a whole bunch of picture books based on this puppet I had when I was the school librarian, Murray D. Mouse. D for Diamondstein. I used to tell the kids stories about him and so I have about 3 of those I tried to sell 20 years ago.

I sent them to this agent and she wasn’t interested in them. Then I had tons of ideas, so I just worked on something else and that’s kind of what happened with this book.

It started when Jackie died in 1994. I actually had an idea for a novel about her because I was writing adult things too and then I started doing some research. I talked to some people that knew her, I spoke to Margot Datz who’s the illustrator of Carly Simon’s picture books Jackie edited.

Margot said to me, “You should write a children’s book because you’re a children’s librarian.” 

I put the novel aside and started working on a chapter book kind of thing because there weren’t these picture book biographies at that time.

I knew an editor, sent it to him and he wasn’t interested but this guy would always say, “Send me something else.”

I just have a lot of ideas, so you just go on to the next thing.

I love that! Why do you write?

Why? Because I’m a storyteller and I guess that’s why. I want to tell stories. It’s my voice and I always was doing it, even when I was a kid. 

When I went to high school and I joined the high school newspaper, it was hard to get to write an article because they had a column for seniors and they had a column for juniors but none for sophomores. So, I said to the editor, “Can the sophomores have a column and can I write it?” And he said okay so then I got to write a column. 

I created this writing opportunity for myself like I created the writing opportunity for my Maggie Mae Pup Reporter column. It’s just something that’s in my DNA.

That’s awesome! I love that! If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice when you first began your writing journey what would it be? 

I think I might tell myself don’t give up because I didn’t. Keep reading a lot and keep writing a lot because that’s the advice I give when anybody asks. 

I was lucky because being a librarian, I had to read a lot and even when I was in college I got this job in my local library in this summer reading program. I used to come home–my mother thought I was nuts–with a stack of picture books to read.

Then the kids had to report on their books so they would come in and tell about their books. There are books I know about that I didn’t even have to read because I heard about them from the kids.

Read a lot, write a lot, and keep enjoying the process. 

Fantastic! I think that’s something we could all do a little more of–enjoying the process. Now tell us about your latest book and where it’s available?

Jackie and the Books She Loved debuted on November 7th and is beautifully illustrated by Bats Langley.

It’s the story of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis who loved to read as a child and write stories and then went on to work as a journalist. She helped President Kennedy when he was Senator Kennedy with researching his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage. She did the White House renovation and felt children needed to have a souvenir so she created the White House guide book and edited that.

Also, she encouraged her children to read and write poetry. After President Kennedy died, she got a job in publishing and published nearly 100 books. One of the things that was very special about her was that she always always wanted the author to be the star. She was so famous but she didn’t want to outshine the author.

There’s an author’s note that gives a lot of details, a timeline of her life, 18 titles of the nearly 100 books that Jackie published, and then I love the end papers which are quotes I collected through my research.

If you want signed copies, you can go to my website. There’s a link to a book store in my town Scattered Books and they will have me come over and sign the book personally. 

The other thing I want to say is because I was a teacher and I know this is a great book to use to launch reader and writer workshops. On my website there are some things for kids like write like a journalist like Jackie, and be an inquiring photographer like Jackie.

For teach teachers and librarians there are 2 links for downloadable activities sheets. For the writer and reader workshops, I worked with my friend who’s still teaching third grade.

Cool! Well, you’ve done so much with this book and Jackie did so many things. I just love the end of the book with the portrait of who she is surrounded by books. Like we talked about earlier, now a whole new generation of readers will know about her legacy and maybe get inspired to create their own.If anyone wants to connect with you, where is the best place to connect?

You can go to my website. There’s a link to where you can email me. I’ve had people get in touch with me through that–the First Ladies Library initially got in touch with me through that. 

Because they have an exhibit about Jackie that’s running through next April–yesterday after the launch, I told people that if they bought a book from Amazon and they wanted a signed bookplate, they could contact me through my website and sure enough 15 minutes after that I got this email, “I ordered four copies. One for each of my libraries and one for me. Can you send the bookplate?”

They went in the mail this morning! So, people can contact me through my website and I respond.

Much thanks to Ronni for her time and wisdom. I have more upcoming author interviews and some interesting articles planned about story. Stay tuned! Also, Author Spotlights will now be called ‘Why We Write’ from this point on, though I will file them all under both tabs so they’re easy to find. Thanks for joining me today!