A Flight Attendant Drafted Her Novel on Cocktail Napkins. It Took Off.

“I did the starving artist route and had multiple survival jobs, and it was a lot of rejection and doors slammed in my face,” said Newman, who graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a degree in musical theater in 2006. While living in Sunnyside, Queens, she made ends meet by babysitting, working in restaurants and passing out fliers in Times Square.

Two years later, she was back in Phoenix, living in her parents’ house — a humbling end to a dream that took shape when she starred in a junior high school production of “Annie.”

Newman found solace in a job at Changing Hands, a bookstore in Tempe, Ariz., that she said helped her get back to her roots as a reader and a writer. “I’m always going to be a creative person,” she said. “I realized those impulses are never going away. If I’m writing and no one reads it except me, that’s a lot less scary than putting myself out there in New York in front of an entire table of casting directors who won’t even look up at me.”

“She was Torri to us then,” said Cindy Dach, the bookseller’s chief executive. “She had a passion for books and community and was a star on the floor. Some booksellers love books but they’re introverts. Torri is the best of both worlds because she can connect with people easily.” (T.J. stands for Torri Jan.)

In early 2011, Newman left to work for Virgin America. She held onto her Changing Hands staff badge and continued to help out during the holiday rush and at events at the Tempe and Phoenix locations, but she could no longer ignore the tug of wanderlust. “I grew up traveling on my mom’s passes,” Newman said. “Travel is just about my most favorite thing in the world to do, which is why I wanted a job that paid me to do it.”

There were challenges to her new role — entitled passengers, the beverage cart — but Newman believes her time in the air helped lay the groundwork for a writing career. “You become really good at reading people: Has this person had too much to drink? Is this person showing a proclivity for noncompliance?” she said. “We are in a metal tube traveling hundred of miles an hour, miles up in the sky. We’re always aware of the margin of error.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/books/tj-newman-falling.html