The Gray New Deal
My first published novel, The Gray New Deal, is appearing as I turn 63. In the novel, seven seniors who shared a college co-op in Austin fifty years ago reunite to create another co-op. Together, this intentional community navigates Trump 1.0 and the first years of the pandemic. They’re a diverse group racially, in economic assets, and in sexual identity. They collaborate on household chores, concocting “econo-meals.” They make friends with younger folks. Sometimes, they share beds. Their hormones may whisper, but their lust for life and for finding ways to cope with grief and aging are loud.
I loved meeting the characters. One of them, for instance, is an Asian Indian-American widower, Vihaan, who used to compete internationally in tennis and who continues to make a bit of money as a rickety tennis pro. If I weren’t a fiction writer, I wouldn’t know Vihaan and how he fares when he reunites with his old buddies.
I generated the idea for The Gray New Deal after hearing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal for a Green New Deal. I’d been thinking about how many seniors can’t afford to retire or to incur medical expenses. Social services such as Medicare and Social Security are among the greatest innovations in our history and are now a safety net full of holes. In my novel, social capital helps knit together the holes. But that’s not enough. Recently, I googled “The Gray New Deal,” and found a prominent economist, Teresa Ghilarducci, who uses the term and proposes that Social Security and Medicare need to be more generous. Right on!
My novel’s subject is timely, and engaging to me as a writer, because more seniors are struggling to make sure they don’t outlive their finances. The statistics on what people have saved for retirement are frightening. The New York Times, The Guardian, and CBS News have all published articles on seniors pooling their resources in shared housing and other bartering arrangements. In the New York Times article, one situation mentioned is the Women’s Housing Initiative Manitoba (WHIM) in which six women from early 60s to in their 80s share a house. Their current favorite show is “Shrinking.” They help each other through illnesses, as do my characters in The Gray New Deal.
In my earlier years, I was a “creative.” Reading and writing were my first loves, nurtured by my English professor mother. I earned a top fiction prize at Barnard College and devoured books as an assistant at a Manhattan literary agency. I published my first stories in literary magazines. I earned a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing from the well-known Iowa Writers’ Workshop and taught for a year and a half as a writer-in-residence at a small liberal arts college.
I moved to Austin sight unseen and worked as a legal editor for the legislature. A prestigious artists’ colony gave me a residency, and I won the Poets and Writers Exchange Award which introduced me to established authors and editors. But none of the accomplishments gave me enduring success, financially or creatively. I felt stuck in jobs that didn’t suit me. I wasn’t going to be a great American novelist, so I took inventory. I love talking one-on-one with people about their interior lives, and that’s also why I love reading. I returned to school to get a Master’s degree in Clinical Social Work. I’ve been a licensed psychotherapist since 1995 and am honored to make a meaningful living.
Writing was backburnered. Work was emotionally heavy-duty. I also got married and had a baby three days before I turned forty. When my charismatic son was three, I discovered that I’m BRCA1-positive. I chose prophylactic surgeries to remove my ovaries, breasts, and uterus, which drained me literally and figuratively.
Non-coincidentally, my mother had ovarian cancer. During the last years of her life, I tried to be more present for her, especially after my stepfather died and she moved to an independent living apartment to be near me in Austin. Watching her die caused me so much anxiety that my writing pursuits became distant as the Arctic Circle. I was also saddened and deflated by the 2016 election, which happened a few days before my mother died (While she was in and out of coherence, she did learn about the outcome of the election, and I don’t think that helped her).
A Gray New Deal?
When I had the wherewithal to return to writing, a shift occurred. Before, I would endlessly chase my tail by returning to the first pages of a novel-in-progress to hone them. I couldn’t quite believe the Hemingway quote, “The first draft of anything is shit.” Then I let go. I treated the course of my novel-in-progress as a puzzle, a marathon; I was meeting the characters and following them where they led me. It was still strenuous to write. When the sports columnist Red Smith was asked if turning out a column was a chore, he responded, “Why, no. You sit down at the typewriter [ha!], open your veins, and bleed.”
I worked on The Gray New Deal by putting my butt in a chair and setting a timer for thirty minutes. I reminded myself that I’d gotten through hard things before (i.e., bodily losses and my mother’s death). The exercise of writing, like physical exercise, might not always be enjoyable, but the reward is worth it.
Some feel that scheduled creativity is a contradiction in terms. Poppycock. Setting aside time is honoring the impulse. Now, I get together twice a week with a friend. She works on her writing project while I work on mine; sometimes we give each other editing suggestions. We set a timer and eat snacks. I’m convinced that I wouldn’t have made as much headway in my current novel-in-progress (plus essays on the side) had I not had this buddy system.
Also, creativity is an elixir to ease the pain of dealing with depressing headlines. I encourage you to broaden your definition of creativity. A beautiful meal, which will disappear like a sand mandala, is creative. Showing up for a friend or family or a stranger is creative, as is forming a relationship. Initiating spontaneous conversation, being mindful, and macraméing pet fur are creative. Surely, if you look at your life with self-compassion, you can see your creativity.
Now, I look back on my years as a therapist, a wife, and a mother as creative. I’ve always tried to listen, to inject humor, to hold hope when someone else is feeling hopeless, to make being human less lonely. Being a reader and a writer have made me less lonely. If you read my novel, I hope you enjoy the company of my characters. Let me know!
Miriam Kuznets’ novel The Gray New Deal will be published by Flexible Press in April 2026. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Narrative, Austin Noir, The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, Ascent, The Ladies’ Home Journal, and other publications. An essay is forthcoming in Litbreak. She lives in Austin with her husband and enjoys visiting with her adult child. [email protected] miriamkuznetsauthor.com Facebook: Writer Miriam Kuznets
