A Year Later

This morning, I went to the grocery store. It was a simple thing to do, something I have done countless other mornings. Something I did last year, this same day. January 8^th. Last year I left the house to go to the grocery store; only, first I was stopping to meet a new friend for coffee. You know what happened next; I wrote about it here, last year. My new friend and I shared a coffee across the parking lot from the shooting. I stared out the window at the first responders as they pulled up, having no idea what had happened, at first.

After my friend and I parted ways that morning, I stopped at the grocery store, just the way I’d planned (not THE Safeway, mind you, but another store, a block away). It was such a simple thing to do, a silly thing almost. I probably should’ve gone straight home. But instead I found myself walking around the store aimlessly, piling things in my cart without really paying attention to what they were or what I needed. I paid; I drove home. I put the groceries away. My hands were shaking. I was numb. The next morning, I could not find half the things I bought at the store, things that were recorded on my receipt as paid for. I checked the car, called the store. Nothing. Half the groceries were gone. In hindsight, I suspect I might have accidentally thrown them away in my stupor rather than putting them away. Because two or three bags of groceries, couldn’t just disappear.

I thought about it this morning. It has been a year, I told myself. And that is the detail I recalled first: the missing groceries. Already, my memory of that morning has become fragmented and hazy, fogged over with shock, I guess. Then I recalled driving back to the store the next day to re-buy the things I’d lost. They were easy to reclaim; they were only things after all. Food. But other things were not so easy for me. Walking back into that grocery store again, the next day, I was suddenly afraid. Anything could happen. Any time. Any place. I felt exposed. I felt that way for weeks, possibly months, this horrible sinking feeling every time I had to leave my house to go out into the world. Worse, I’d imagine how the people closer than I had been were feeling, and I couldn’t comprehend it. I still can’t.

I didn’t write for a while last winter. It’s not that I didn’t want to, but that at first, I couldn’t. I had no words; no stories to tell that seemed worth telling. I read a lot of news, especially about the shooting and the victims, how they were doing, how they were moving on. I stared at a blank Microsoft Word document for weeks. I have always been good at writing my emotions, and so I kept pushing myself just to write something, just to make myself write through it somehow. I knew it would help me. But for a little while, I couldn’t write anything.

Last spring my words came back. Slowly, I forced myself to begin a new novel. At first, I thought I would write a novel about a shooting – because it was what I was thinking about, what I was feeling. I would do what I was good at, writing my emotions. But a few chapters in, I couldn’t do it. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe it will always be too soon?

Then I started something else. Something I’ve been wanting to write for a long time but wasn’t sure how, and then suddenly, I was. I was sure of nothing else but this. I was breathing again. I was writing again. The words were all there, and so were the emotions. -- my new character was experiencing so much of what I had, loss and grief, and also, hope.

After I began writing again, I fell into the story. I slept it, ate it dreamt, obsessed over it, and then, the fear slowly began to subside. Going to the grocery store became just going to the grocery store again.

This morning, I went to the grocery store. I wasn’t afraid anymore. But I was filled with an overwhelming sense of sadness. It has been a year. It feels like a lifetime, or maybe, only hours. My memory is already fragmented, but that doesn't mean I will ever forget.

Honored

Yesterday I attended the Arizona Library Association's (AZLA) annual conference to accept The Judy Goddard/Libraries Ltd. Award for The Life of Glass! It was such a huge honor that they chose my book this year, and the award is quite possibly the most gorgeous award I've ever seen.

Here I am accepting the award, and giving my acceptance speech!

And here I am doing a panel with the other state award winners, Amanda Noll, Jody Feldman, Me, and Jennifer Ward. That's Mary our excellent moderator on the end :)

Here we are signing books after our panel!

And here is a picture of my AMAZING LOOKING award!!

I'm so grateful to all the amazing librarians in Arizona (and everywhere!) who always support my books. It was a great day, and I felt like a rockstar! I have my award sitting on my desk, where I definitely think it will bring me good luck!!

Penn State

I have spent the past week thinking a lot about college. I keep thinking I should write something here -- and people who know I went to Penn State have been asking me and emailing me about the events unfolding and wanting to know what I think. But to tell you the truth, I haven't felt I've had the words to say anything meaningful enough. Like so many people, and I guess, PSU alumni especially, I have been glued to all the press coverage. Horrified. Outraged. Shocked. Sickened. My husband (also a PSU alum.) and I have been discussing every new detail, dissecting all of it. Trying to make some sense of any of it. Of course, we can't. How could so many adults stand by and do nothing while children were being harmed in this way, and at our college, while we were going to school there? In many ways, to both of us, I think it's all felt surreal.

I guess it's because us Penn Staters, we feel our college years were something special. We are bonded together by this knowledge of four years spent in the idyllic Happy Valley of central Pennsylvania. I am always surprised, even now living all the way across the country, how often I run into Penn State grads, and how connected I feel to them. Nearly every time I wear my Penn State sweatshirt I find a connection. More than once, a stranger has called out the infamous "We are. . . " from across the street. Not that I don't do the same -- if I spot a Nittany Lion, I'll start talking to a stranger, too. A fellow PSU grad is not a stranger, after all. When I was in graduate school, I had a professor who always confused my undergrad school and thought I'd attended Penn, not Penn State. Sure maybe Penn is ivy league, but so what? I always corrected him. We PSU grads, we are a proud bunch.

And it's not just football. For me, it's not about football at all. Sure, I went to some games when I was there, and that was fun. And yes, when we saw Joe Paterno walking through the dining commons, we'd stop talking and stare, as if we'd spotted a celebrity in our midst. But these are not the things I think or remember when I think about my time at Penn State. I think about the people: my friends and my teachers. And the place: the snow and the brick buildings, the walk-able town. I long for that place sometimes now, the feeling that somewhere an idyllic small town, where people are nice and wholesome, that that still exists. I think about taking my kids to see it, when they're older. I think about what it was like to live there for some of the most formative years of my life. And I think for me, that is what has been taken away this past week. That all the beauty and the wholesomeness, that the entire idyllic backdrop of my college years, that it was a lie. And the worst kind of lie, at that. Because Happy Valley was not a safe and idyllic place after all, was it?

But, there are still the people. And I'm not talking about Paterno or Spanier or any of the rest of them, because these are not the people I think of when I think of Penn State. I think about the friends I made. I think about the graduate students and professors who taught me a lot, and not just about English, writing, sociology, theater, and yes, even astronomy. But about life. I learned to be a reader and a thinker and a dreamer. I made friends who did the same. And when I see another PSU alum, a stranger, these are the kinds of connections I feel I share with them.

One of the first nice things I've read about Penn State this past week led me to this website where Penn State alums are banding together to raise money for abuse victims. Their goal is to raise $500,000 and already, they are more than halfway there. My guess is, they will exceed their goal. That is the kind of Penn State I remember, anyway. I am happy to see that it wasn't all a lie.

In Tragedy, a Writing Lesson

Ten years ago, when 9/11 happened, I was in graduate school. Yesterday, I was trying to remember that time, that week, and very little of it comes back to me. I know I was sad and terrified and numb, even though I was living across the country from the terror attacks and didn’t personally know anyone who’d been affected. I remember a sense of shock, the feeling that nothing would ever be the same, but I can only remember this in the vaguest sense. Was school cancelled? I was teaching, but what did I say to my students? I have no idea.

There is one odd thing I remember vividly, though. Maybe it was the day the attacks happened or the day after or later that week, but I was sitting in a fiction workshop class. It must’ve been the first one we had in this new world, because the professor, an older and slightly frightening man who I felt would never understand me or my writing (and mostly, I was right about that part), sat in front of the class and began by saying this: So let’s talk about what happened.

It seemed obvious what he was going to talk about, what everyone was talking about then. But then he said something else: “My dog died,” he confessed, “and I can’t get over it.” He went on to talk about how his dog, who’d been with him for years, had passed away over the weekend or maybe on 9/11 – that much I can’t remember now. “I know I should be sadder about 9/11 than about my dog,” he said. “So many people died. But I didn’t know any of them.” Then he added. “My dog was with me for so many years. My house is so empty without her.”

Maybe because it was a fiction writing workshop, and because he felt he was dedicated to teaching us, even when none of us were in the mood for learning, he added that there was a writing lesson in this. “It’s the smallest tragedies that are the ones worth writing about,” he told us.

At the time, it sounded all wrong to me. I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying, or why he was saying it then. I am an animal lover, but still, it felt like the wrong conversation to be having at the time. There were so many other things to say, to think about, to worry about, to mourn.

Yet, something about it has stuck with me all these years later. When I think about the days and weeks surrounding 9/11, this is one of the only things I remember with clarity. In fact, this is one of the only things I remember from two years worth of intense and soul-crushing writing workshops with clarity. Why?

The new book I’ve been working on takes place against the backdrop of an enormous historical tragedy, yet the story I am choosing to tell is a deeply singular and personal story of one woman’s loss. I’m finding the best part of writing it is in the details of this one particular woman and the people closest to her who she has lost and loved.

And I keep thinking about this one professor telling my class about how his dog died on 9/11, how it’s the smallest of tragedies that are worth writing about.

Is he right?

Starting Fresh

While it's still summer for most of you, in Arizona school has been in session for a few weeks now. It's been exhausting/hectic getting back into the swing of waking up insanely early and walking back and forth to school in the lovely Arizona August heat (oh, and a few crazy monsoon storms that decided to dump tons of rain, wind, and hail on us just as soon as I walked out of my house to go to school pick-up. Did I mention, we WALK to school here?!)

Anyway, something happened this year, that hasn't happened to me in, well, it's been so many years I honestly can't remember. My youngest child started preschool, and so for the first time, both of my kids are in school for some portion of the day most days of the week. In short: I get about three hours to myself. All to myself. Here's that thing I haven't experienced in years: quiet.

My writing career didn't really "officially" start until after I had kids (i.e. I didn't actually get a book contract with a publisher until just after kidlet two was born.) So that means my books were written in the in-between spaces. In between taking care of the kids, teaching a few classes, and just life in general. The majority of my words came during daily afternoon naptimes, at night after the kids went to bed or early mornings on the weekends. I never had a nanny or someone to watch my kids during the day, and I enjoyed the fact that writing allowed me to spend lots of time with them. But also, I learned to write quickly, to economize my time and my words, because really, I had no other choice.

Then, a few weeks ago. I walked back into my house after dropping both kids at school. Quiet. Three empty hours in the morning where I could write. In Quiet.

I sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop and a cup of coffee and opened up my current WIP. (Notice, I did not even consider that I should empty my dishwasher or clean up from breakfast. No, I just shoved the mess aside, and plunked the laptop down on the table!). Anyway, about the WIP, I'd been wavering on it for most of the summer: should I finish it or shouldn't I? Was it too small? Did it need something else? Did it have too much? After about an hour of that aforementioned quiet, I suddenly knew exactly what I needed to do with the book and where to take it. I also knew, that maybe I shouldn't do it right now, that maybe I should let it simmer in the back of my brain for a bit. There was something else I'd been thinking about writing for a while, but I didn't know much about it. The thought of writing it honestly had always felt exhausting, because I knew there would be a lot of research involved. But then, there I was again. It was quiet. And that previously insurmountable research felt like it might even be fun.

So all of us here in my household are starting fresh: my kidlets at school, my husband (a teacher) back at work. And me, with a new project ahead of me. I've been so excited about it these last few weeks, I can barely contain myself. In fact I have not been THIS excited about a project in some time. Maybe it's the quiet, the space to think, the space I now have to do something I might have once considered too much. But in any case, here's to quiet and fresh starts! How's your August shaping up?

Goodbye, Hair

A few months ago I read about Pantene Beautiful Lengths, a program where you send Pantene at least eight inches of your hair and they use it to make wigs to donate to women with cancer. I wanted to do it. Sometimes, in my life as a writer, I feel very solitary and selfish, always worried about my words and my books. I spend my days thinking about things like self-promotion and selling my next book. It’s very, me, me, me. Don’t get me wrong – I love writing. But I also think it’s important to remember that there are bigger things out there. So I made a promise to myself, I guess a New Year’s Resolution of sorts, that I was going to try, this year, to focus on a few things outside of myself, a few things that would help other people.

At first, my hair wasn’t long enough. So I decided I would let it grow. Then, my hair was long enough, and I was scared to cut it all off. So I waited. And I waited. And my split ends were starting to take on a life of their own, since, by this point, it had been months and months since I had any sort of hair cut. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to call and make an appointment to get my hair cut because then I felt like I’d be going back on a promise. A promise I’d made to myself, but still. Every morning, I found myself looking at my hair, thinking that it really, really needed to be cut. But I didn't do anything about it.

Last night, I blew my hair out straight and measured it again. And yes, it was more than long enough. I bundled it in a ponytail at the nape of my neck and asked my husband to cut the ponytail off. Just cut straight, I told him. He insisted that he could not cut straight, that he was afraid of messing it up. Just do it. I told him, handing him the scissors. Just cut straight.

He was right. He could not cut straight. A few minutes later, he handed me the most crooked lopped off ponytail ever. I imagine the people at Pantene may even start laughing when they see it, trying to imagine what I look like on the other end.

One side of my hair was about two inches shorter than the other. I told you I couldn’t do it, my husband was insisting. Yes, in his defense, he had. You should’ve let me cut it, my kindergartner said. Yes, I should have. Next time, I told him.

So I took the scissors and straightened it out the best I could. My hair is curly anyway, so it’s fine. It’s just that now, it’s really really short, just below my ears.

After this whole debacle we went out last night to a concert. I kept wondering if people were staring at my slightly crooked hair, or if people who knew me where silently critiquing my way-too-short cut. I woke up this morning, searching through my drawers for cute barrettes, and when I couldn’t find any, made a promise to myself that this will be my first errand of the day. Maybe with a headband it wouldn’t be so bad, I tried to convince myself.

I packaged up my ponytail and addressed the envelope. I thought about the woman who will get this crooked ponytail, eventually. (The Pantene site says it takes six of them to make a wig, so that will mean five other people like me will also need to do this to help one woman.) I thought about her, and how maybe all her hair has fallen out from cancer treatment. How her problems cannot be solved by cute barrettes or headbands. How she has much bigger things to worry about than crooked ends.

I showed my kids the ponytail and told them I was going to send it to help someone who was sick get a wig. Cool, my kindergartener said. Then he added, Mom, you look so beautiful with your new hair.

So it’s almost summer and my hair is really short. So what?

I will grow it back, and then I’ll do this again, I promise myself.

Only next time, I will ask someone else to cut!

For All the Teachers Who Told Me I Can

My kindergartener spent the majority of our ten-minute walk to school this morning excited about the fact that today was a Thursday, which meant today he had library class. Which meant he would get to go to the library and check out a book. Even in the early hours of the morning, he was debating which book he might choose (Flat Stanley or Geronimo Stilton or maybe something else entirely – He marveled at the possibilities.) And suddenly, there I was, reminded what it felt like to be that age, to have just learned to read entire books by oneself, and to discover the possibilities that are contained inside a library. I wondered for a brief moment, would he grow up to be like me? Would he want to be a writer? Then I had another thought: by the time he’s old enough, will that even be possible, or will schools have been decimated to the point where writing, maybe even the arts in general, cease to exist?

What brought this on for me was the news that Penn State (my undergraduate alma mater) is cutting its top-ranked MFA program. This particularly hit home for me because this feels like my school. Though I didn’t get my MFA here, my undergraduate degree was in English, with a creative writing emphasis, so I worked with the MFA faculty, and Penn State was the place where I first realized I could and would become a writer.

When you’re a writer, or I imagine in any artistic field, there will always be what feels like a million people telling you you can’t. Rejection becomes a way of life. Few and far between will be those people who tell you, you can. And most of those people in my life were teachers. There was the humanities teacher in fourth grade who assigned me to write stories every week and then told me mine were good. The ninth grade English teacher who pushed me to think harder about what stories meant. The twelfth grade English teacher who made me memorize Hamlet and (even--gasp) like Chaucer. At Penn State, there was the MFA student who taught the first real fiction writing class I ever took. He was brutally honest, to everyone, and so when he told me my stories showed promise, I took that to mean that I should keep writing. Then there was the professor who I’d go on to take several fiction writing workshops with and who would become my advisor for my undergraduate thesis (a short collection of stories). She was (and is, I’m sure) wise and kind and encouraging. She called me into her office and said things like “Jill, let’s talk about your work,” as if the stories I was writing were something worth talking about, as if my work was important. She tirelessly read my revisions, answered my questions and e-mails, and even said she was happy to write me recommendations for the 15 (yes, 15) MFA programs I applied for.

In writing this, maybe I’m making it sound like everything was easy, that people were always encouraging to me. But the truth is, I’m leaving out the vast majority, the people who told me can’t. The friends and family who told me that writing wasn’t a real/viable career. The 11^th grade English teacher who told me I couldn’t write. The non-fiction professor who once told me my writing was “boring,”(and for that matter, so was my life.). The twelve MFA programs that said, no thanks. The countless agents and then editors who would go on to sometimes nicely (sometimes not so nicely) reject my work.

But amidst all of that, I’ve somehow always able to drown out the no’s with the words of the teachers who told me I could do it. In the five years between when I wrote my first novel and sold it, the one thing that often kept me pushing forward, despite the countless rejections, were the words of a professor I worked with in graduate school, who once told me she was positive my novel would be published. She believed, and thus, I had to, too.

I sometimes wonder where I would be without all those teachers who told me I can. What I would be doing now if that 4^th grade teacher hadn’t asked me to write a story, if that MFA student hadn’t told me I showed promise, if that professor hadn’t called me into her office and talked about my writing as if it were important?

I feel a deep sadness at the thought of this being eradicated from Penn State, from the place I feel so deeply indebted to for my writing career. But even sadder, to me, is that this only caught my attention because it hits so close to home. Penn State is right now just one unfortunate example, in a sea of them lately. It feels like the new trend is to cut, cut, cut education, the arts especially. I’ve heard so much of it, that I’ve almost started to drown it out. It has become shockingly “normal.”

And so I wonder, if you start taking away those teachers who tell people like me that we can, what will we be left with in ten years? In twenty? Will there be anyone left “crazy” enough to write, or for that matter, play music, paint, take pictures, make movies? When my son is one day taking his own child to school, will he even know what a library is? I hope so.