Waiting to Exhale

Terry McMillan

You’ve written several books since WAITING TO EXHALE. What was the motivation to write the sequel almost twenty years later?
Actually, I never had any intention of writing a sequel to WAITING TO EXHALE, or to any of my other books for that matter. I found myself thinking about women in middle age -- in their late forties and early fifties -- and a lot of them seemed sad to me, like they’d somehow thrown in the towel. Many of us have to deal with different challenges at that point in our lives, including loneliness and loss, divorce and betrayal. I thought it would be worthwhile to explore these problems through different scenarios, and it occurred to me that I already had four perfect candidates -- the women from EXHALE. I had always thought that old characters were like old lovers, best left forgotten. But then I realized that they can be more like college friends, who always have a place in your heart. So I thought I’d check back in with them, fifteen years down the road.

Do you feel that contemporary fiction for African American women has taken a hit since the rebirth of urban or street fiction a few years ago?
I think that the landscape of African American fiction as a whole is not what it could be. There’s a shortage of really good stories, and it’s always an uphill battle connecting readers to the authors who are telling the good stories. Urban-ghetto fiction tends to cancel itself out: many of those stories are glorifying the very things we should be trying to scale back, everything from needless violence to cheap sex. Nevertheless, there are a lot of truly talented black writers and I try to support them and tell people about them wherever I go.

Writers grow and mature as a result of their life experiences. Do you feel that your writing has evolved since your last book? Since WAITING TO EXHALE?
My writing has definitely evolved from book to book. I thought I had things figured out in my twenties and thirties, but I had nothing like the knowledge I do at 58. And that experience, that deepened perspective, has made its way into my writing. I have always focused on women's empowerment in my work. Now that I and so many people I know have lived through our forties and fifties, I’ve realized that this challenge can continually present itself in new guises. Middle age -- when many of us lose friends and husbands, and our children go off to college -- can be difficult. It often calls for resurrection and reinvention. After my own divorce, I lost my center. I struggled for a while but I found control again. My characters do they same thing: they are always active rather than passive.

What advice would you give an aspiring author?
On a practical level, I would advise aspiring authors to find the best agents they can. Agents are the people who will know what publishing house is the best match for you and how to get your book to the right readers. I would also say that anyone who wants to write should make spend a lot of time reading. Read widely -- classic authors and contemporary authors, books you connect with immediately and books you have to work your way into. Slowly you’ll develop a sense of what matters most to you, what stories you want to tell and what voice you want to tell them in.