Gulliver from the New York Public Library's collections
Yep, akin to Festivus, I invented my own national day, and it is on its eighth year: the National Chin Up for Writers Day. It originated as a response to a friend on Facebook bemoaning the seeming impossibility of achieving traditional publication, and each year I post a new take on it because it seems so important.
When you're in the rejection stage, it just feels endless. It feels like you can't refresh your email often enough. You wonder what agents are doing. You muse over whether the fact that your email account was pharmaspammed in the last few years means that your emails aren't actually making their way to agents' inboxes, because surely only something so drastic could explain why you aren't hearing back immediately with jaw-dropping interest.
In some ways, you actually deplore the arrival of Friday, because it means you have two days to live through until business hours start up again (but on the other hand, it makes Mondays something nicer than they normally are, because they become hopeful days! Cue the endless refreshing of email).
I've been there and I continue to be there, despite having six traditionally published novels under my belt from publishers like Random House and Kensington. And I too need to remind myself to keep my chin up, because it does seem harder than ever now to capture an agent's heart, mind and willingness to represent you.
Hope springs eternal, though, as I winch my chin up (I imagine a pulley system connected to my ears, something Lilliputians have hooked up to me as if I was Gulliver), and as I write this to you, dear reader, to keep your chin up, too.
It only takes one person to say yes. And in the meantime, while waiting, we can read beautiful books to learn from them, we can start a new project or turn wiser eyes on old ones, and we can even binge-watch The Haunting of Hill House while binge-eating leftover soda bread from St. Patrick's Day! Or is that just me?
Back in 2012, I designated March 19 as National Chin Up for Writers Day. Each year on
this holiday I've written an update post. This year I'm trying something new
... er, old. I've recently been introduced to the term
"evergreen" in terms of posts that are always relevant. I'm going to
recycle this evergreen post, and in 2019 I'll write a fresh one. So here we go!
I originally wrote this post as an email to a Facebook acquaintance, who was clearly getting depressed about his inability to find a traditional publisher for his novel, but as it lengthened I thought it'd be worth posting here. I remember those dark days myself very clearly, and my heart goes out to anyone in this situation--because getting a novel published isn’t just something that would be cool for us; it’s something that validates how we see ourselves.
I remember that before traditional publication, if I met someone new and identified myself as a writer, they’d invariably ask, “So have you published anything?” and I'd have to embark on the Road to Apologia, why this is, and how hard I've tried, and I came close with that one agent, and I attended that conference and had a nice talk with that publisher, and how I keep trying and I…
Yes, it sucks.
So I’m appointing today National Keep Your Chin Up Day for Writers. I have a few thoughts to share that hopefully will serve as a bit of a pep talk.
1. Nearly every published writer I know (myself included) had about six novels under the bed when they finally got that offer. Count up your own manuscripts: two? Three? You may need to keep churning them out, because with each novel your craft improves. Writing is mysterious, and I do believe in innate talent, but as with everything single thing in this life, we get better with practice. So keep practicing.
It occurs to me that this bit of cheer may backfire, that a writer may say, “I can’t keep doing this to myself! I just finished my third book, and that’s IT. You’re telling me I have to write three more?!” Someone who really cares about their career will nod philosophically and take the long view that it’s worth it to keep working, keep improving, and finally get a publication contract for a book that’s your best effort.
And after all, you can’t force a book to sell. You can revise based on editorial feedback, you can try again; you can try multiple times! But at some point, you have to cut your losses and start the next project. Soon, the joy of creating a new world within your novel will ease your feelings of feeling frantic about the previous book. And with what you learned from the new novel, you may wish to launch another revision on the old. But at least you’ll have another fresher, better book to try to publish.
2. Joining a writers group really helps with the emotions of being unpublished. Kvetching together, sharing the anticipations as queries go out, consoling each other when rejections happen, cheering each other on to try again: that’s something that non-writers can’t really offer. They don’t “get” what’s so important about being published.
The other thing about joining a writers group is that suddenly the idea of being a writer becomes more real.
It’s one thing to type away in your home, but when you’re sharing your work with other writers, equally serious about their craft as you, your idea of yourself as an author gains more weight, validity. It will seem more possible that you can do this successfully.
I heartily recommend finding a real-person writers group, but online works too.
3. Keep reading books you love. It’s not escapism, it’s not a reason not to write. It’s research--because every single sentence you imbibe resides in you. The more you read, the more those different ways of constructing a sentence moil around in your head. You give your brain more options. You are tutoring yourself subconsciously.
4. “It only takes one person to say yes.” I’m sure you’ve heard that dozens of times, but it’s so true in the publishing industry. It doesn’t matter that 50 agents sent you form rejections, if one says, “I love it!” Your onus is to find the person most likely to say yes. Like I said in #3, keep reading…and when you find a book that’s similar to yours in tone or aesthetic, look at the Acknowledgments section to see if the author thanked their agent. That’s a good person to send a query to.
Another good tactic is to subscribe to Publishers Marketplace (you can do it for $20 for one month, jam through the archives, and cancel, if money is an issue): you can see what’s selling right now to editors, and which agents are doing that selling.
See an agent’s name several times, linked with books that are similar to yours? That’s another good person to target.
You can also look through those thick tomes of agent directories (or better yet, www.agentquery.com), but that doesn’t give you a feel for what the agent likes. Just knowing they represent historical fiction, for instance, doesn’t necessarily mean that they like books set in Colonial America. Look at the agent’s website and rifle through their client list. Can you get a sense of the agent’s personality through the books he/she has chosen to represent?
Keep your chin up. There’s a part of this process you can control, and you should: the rest of it is out of your hands. The best thing you can do is move to the next project, and let the current novel marinate. Mark your calendar for six months from now, and re-read it.
Is that chin in the air yet? Higher! Like Cora in Downton Abbey, let me see that plastic surgery scar! I offer you an e-hug and a rueful e-smile, because I’ve been there. Believe me, I’ve really, really been there… and I hope the Gods of Publishing will soon smile on you and your novel.
If you'd
like to read the previous years' posts on Keep Your Chin Up Day: Second year Third year
We were sent this beautiful book The Timekeeper by
grandparents. Believe it or not, it was written and illustrated by a 13 year
old. It's part of a series that used to exist called the National Written and
Illustrated By awards for kids. It used to exist 1985-1998, releasing three
books a year based one age category, and occasionally one or two "gold
awards." It went defunct for about a decade. It rebranded in 2006 and
released a few books, and then went silent again. Too bad, because it looks such
a great program.
The back of The Timekeeper has a tiled display of all the
book covers and all the authors. I had a jolt when I realized I actually
recognized one of the names: Dav Pilkey, the author of the fabulous Captain
Underpants series.
He won in 1986 when he was 19 for his book World War One.
I just looked at his website and he has 62 books in print.
We should all have such a prolific career, launched at such an early age!
Fun fact: He was born Dave but his nametag from when he
worked at Pizza Hut omitted the final E, so he kept it that way for his author
name.
Returning to The Timekeeper, author Anna Riphahn
tragically died only three years after her book was published. She died in a
highway accident. When you read through the book, you see what expressive
paintings she created, and you take a big inhale thinking of everything she
might've been capable of.
Look at the laborious pottery border--each page has a gorgeous border a la Jan Brett
From this
History Guy video in the Topeka Capital-Journal, we learn that she tried
first in 1991 with a book and won Third Place. The next year, she tried with a
different book and won Second Place. Her third book was the charm, winning
first place and publication.
Perseverance. I love it.
Anna's photo from the back of the book
Thank you so much for tracking down and sending us this book, Earl!
This post is for Loren, in my heart today. I took these pictures in February 2017, and can't wait to return to do an official tour with you someday soon.
We have this picture book Martin's Big Words and it’s in our rotation year
round. It’s so hard to talk about what King fought for without being
honest about what he fought against, and it’s so hard to introduce
children to the hateful reality of racism. Yet it must be done.
I remember in Francine Prose’s introduction to her book
about Anne Frank, she talked about her loss of innocence: the first time she
saw a photograph of Holocaust victims and understood that people had been
murdered for who they were.
I’d love for my kids to remain in a blissful state where
they don’t know about the ugliness in other people’s hearts, but we’re raising
them to be good citizens who will stick up for others and do the right thing.
I'm white, and I can imagine that discussion must be a
hundredfold harder for black families. How do you tell your child, "There
are people in this world who think we are inferior because of the color of our
skin?" It just seems incomprehensible.
This selection from King's "Letter from a Birmingham
Jail" has long raised tears in my eyes and made me bewilderingly angry:
"...when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your
speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she
can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on
television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown
is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning
to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her
personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when
you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: 'Daddy,
why do white people treat colored people so mean?' "
Have you too found it hard to talk about racism with young
kids?
I remember once taking a picture book out of the library about slavery and then not wanting to explain to my kids what a slave was. I tried to frame it in terms of, "You're not going to believe it, but this crazy thing once happened in our country..." but then honor and duty compelled me to say, "...and guess what? There are still some people who have this hatred..."
Our local library is really good about ordering diverse picture books, books with people of color on the cover, books about people around the world.
I particularly like this "My Family" series, which features people of diverse ethnicities and sexualities: http://bit.ly/2mDRVmT
It's about a boy with a camera who features a different kid at school in the newspaper each week, so he goes home with that kid and learns what that kid's life is like. The books are written by Claudia Harrington and illustrated by Zoe Persico.
Another great series were photograph books set in Ethiopia, such as New Shoes for Helen, which is about a girl who needs shoes for her aunt's wedding and where they go to try to find the perfect pair. And Deron Goes to Nursery School, which is self-explanatory. The author/photographer is Ifeoma Onyefulu.
Today and every day, let's honor a great man who was doing
such good work to connect all people, and whose life was cut short. Can you
imagine what he might've further accomplished had he lived?
Today was one of those days that felt drowned on one
edge, burned to char on the other.
It started with returning a rental car and going to get my
real car back from the garage, with a little attendant drama because why should
these things ever just go easily? A friend came over to help me with a project
and our “bad car-ma” continued when we heard her car alarm going on and ran
outside to see a neighbor had run into her parked car. I felt so guilty having
asked her to come see me and therefore sideways responsible for the accident,
which added onto her already-heavy burdens.
I then spent hours battling a new software platform rolled
out by my school, which thanks to an administrative snafu, I had not been
granted access to until a few days ago although I accepted the class back in
November. It’s an online class, so students were panicking and emailing fretful
messages.
The terrier we are dogsitting had waken me at 3 a.m. and
then again at 7 a.m. with gruff little barks. Reacting to deer or turkeys in
the yard? We won’t know in this lifetime unless there is a real-life Dr.
Doolittle.
I’ve had a kid sick home all week and struggled with
balancing deadlines and sitting on the sofa with her.
Somehow with all this going on, I managed to remain unaware of
the ballistic missile alert in Hawaii that probably changed some people’s lives
even though it was issued in error. My stomach feels sick thinking of those who
thought they might be ending their lives within moments.
And so when I finally settled down into social media after
my friend had left and the kids were in bed, I couldn’t believe it when I saw
that Traci Foust had died.
How is that possible? Young, funny, beautiful, sweet, edgy
Traci is not with us anymore. And I realized because of the perceived “dramas”
of the last few days in my life, I had scrolled past her posts about being sick
without even clicking on a damn emoticon, let alone taking the ten seconds it
would’ve taken to write a nice comment offering some small comfort.
Traci’s last post on her page was two days ago, when she
told her friends, “Im being admitted into the ICU with double bacterial
pneumonia.” She had Lupus and being weakened by the pneumonia, coming down with
the flu on top of it was too much for her body. I scrolled down her feed and
saw that not long ago, she was vowing to definitely get the flu shot next year
(she procrastinated this year). Given its limited effectiveness, I don’t know if the
flu shot would’ve saved her, but it sucks to think it might have.
I really liked Traci and she made me laugh out loud many
times on her feed. I never met her in real life. Traci friended me years ago
with a compliment about my novel which she had just read, and we shared
writerly PMs. She is the author of a memoir Nowhere Near Normal, which I
feel like an asshole for never having read and talked to her about when she was
so generous with me about my writing.
Because I knew her memoir was about mental health, when I
saw the first posts from others about her death, I thought for a moment she had
committed suicide. With some digging, I learned it was plain old stupid flu and
pneumonia. So unfair, and so wrong. Traci, I wish I had read your book while
you were still alive, and I wish you were here to write many more.
So the small and big day, wet and burned day, draws to a
close with regrets and tears.
Not surprisingly, I'm late with my resolution. It's January 8 and I just
realized my resolve echoes what my body has been doing naturally:
seeking out more experiences in nature.
I've been waking before the rest of my family and trying to watch the sun rise. I've gone for long walks, sometimes while it's still dark out. I've paused and listened to the birds in their fervent insisting. How often do I stand and listen to the birds, watch a cloud? I used to be so much more in touch with nature as a kid. I used to lie down on the grass and watch the sky.
Several times in the last few weeks, we've gone to the lake and blissed out on water, trees, rocks. I've noticed my kids are so much happier when we're out there. I wish I could throw every device and screen into the lake and give them back the sky.
I love plants and flowers and never intend to do them harm, but alas have some penchant for spelling their demises. Cacti, which apparently are very difficult to murder, have lapsed and sagged under my attentions. Ficus have browned. Spider plants have woven their own webby cauls and collapsed. However!
I have had good luck recently. I have not one but TWO success tales underway.
Tale the First. This narrative involves an orchid that was (!!!) $5.99 at my grocery store, and I figured even if it died within days, it would be the same as purchasing a low-cost bouquet. But I brought it home thinking, "If only I could keep it alive..." I googled how, and learned that the orchid requires, get this, "benign neglect." That is so up my alley! I calendared two week increments to soak it in boiled-then-cooled water, then ignore it. I faced it by the eastern window as the internet directed.
It has thrived. It actually opened up two blooms. I was incredulous. It has also lost two of its existing blooms, but I am given to understand that may be natural? At any rate, the losses have equaled out the gains and I feel pretty proud of my orchidal accomplishment.
Tale the Second. The same grocery store was offering bulbs in boxes for 25 cents. I figured at these bargain basement prices, the bulbs were already dead, but what the heck. So I planted the dinner plate dahlia in a cracked white cereal bowl and watered it casually when I was in the kitchen and thinking about it. In disbelief, I have watched a green shoot emerge from the brown woody stem, and get bigger each day. I did that. Me.
I'm scared to transfer it outside, especially given our 100-plus temps this summer, but eventually I will usher my fledgling to the real dirt outside. Wouldn't it be wild if it worked, and I actually grew those blooms that are the size of dinner plates? I would faint.
Two pleas today, and both cancer-related. Yeah, the C word, the thing that makes us enraged because we're helpless and don't know how to fight it.
Well, here's two meaningful ways to help.
Anyone who's read my blog over the years knows about Jennifer L. Kranz, the sweet, cute six year old who died of DIPG a mere 3.5 months after diagnosis. Her parents created the groundswell Fluttering movement, in which people purchase a Fluttering kit of lawn-ornament dragonflies and commit to moving the dragonflies yard to yard throughout September, with official Unravel paperwork that requests a donation to the nonprofit foundation in return for selecting where the dragonflies go next. Today there is a flash sale of the Fluttering kits. Fluttering is a good thing to do with your own kids--talk to them about how to use our bodies to help others, that the daily task of moving the dragonflies is raising money to help researchers figure out kids' cancer. You can Flutter in the name of someone you know who is fighting now or in memory of someone. It's a meaningful, intense, beautiful thing to do. Purchase your Fluttering kit here.
And here's a silly video from Jennifer's mom explaining the "flash" part of the sale.
The other way to help: my friend Nanea Hoffman is the founder of the popular and wildly-clever blog Sweatpants & Coffee. She was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She has created the "Anxiety Blob" to squeeze at moments when the world seems too much. These blobs are for sale now here. Also, subscribe to the blog and follow her caffeinated story!
Yes, March 19 is upon us again...after the Ides and after the Irishness...it's Chin Up for Writers Day!
Because we writers are a special breed of self-doubting and turmoiled creatures, we need a day on which we examine our chins, winch them up and attempt to keep them up. Because our nature is to explore the very essence of why we're human, we become sensitive when our soul-baring (what is writing if not taking off your brain's clothes?) doesn't bring the attention, acclaim or financial rewards it might. We are turning on tiny lights in far-off forests and sometimes no one sees but the tin-foil fox. I think I ripped off Mandelstam in that sentence.
I had another book in the Y.A. series release and tomorrow is the big launch party at a wonderful independent bookstore.
C'est mon roman.
My chin should be firmly horizontal. It is. I've worked hard for this day and I think the book is pretty kick-ass and fun and should make any visit to Paris or Versailles way more interesting (mental note: get Versailles gift shop to carry it). And yet... the chin drifts. It drifts because I'm introspective and writerly and while I usually get along well in the world (and I think I even successfully carry off an attitude of general optimism and glass-half-fullism), there are days where I belong in a garrett cursing the few stars I can see from its window.
Let me make a quick phone call to the plastic surgeon about this drifting chin issue.
Back! They were of no help.
I've found the best tactic is to move forward. I recently reached up above my desk to check off a major project on my to-do list taped to the wall, and I'm happy that now I can hit the next project. Chin up, head down, always moving.
Until next year, fellow writers! I will know you by the proudly erect jawlines.
With a heavy heart, I see child witches are in the news again. It was wretched when the vulnerable elderly or mentally ill were accused in medieval times, but there is a particular evil associated with accusing children of witchcraft.
(They were accused in the medieval period as well, but not to the degree that we find today in African nations.)
My husband told me this morning at the breakfast table.
"Something happened today that's going to upset you."
"Something in world news?"
"Yes. And it will affect you personally. Should I tell you?"
"I don't know." I was thinking about getting the kids off to school and I didn't want to sink into a whirlpool of grief until they were dressed and out the door.
"It's going to ruin your day," he said. "But you'll hear about it other ways."
"Okay," I said. "Tell me."
"David Bowie died."
I let loose with an expletive and immediately hid my face. Crash, crash. No. Not him.
He had cancer for 18 months, my husband told me, and somehow the world didn't know as he put together Lazarus. Interesting name, that. I went to Facebook briefly and saw that I had posted a lot about Bowie recently (was someone releasing a lot to bolster his sense of his impact on the world before he left...I had interpreted it as just publicity around Blackstar), and with one revolving gif that showed all his different identities, I had titled it "Always and forever." As I knew somehow.
I'm forever grateful to Amy Carpenter for introducing me to David Bowie with a mixed tape back in the '80s. He was then popular for Let's Dance, but she gave me the wierder 1970s stuff that opened strange doors that I'd never close again. I loved David Bowie's music, his mutability, his creativity, his vocal idiosyncrasies. His work was filled with emotion and I responded to that.
I'm also forever grateful to my college boyfriend who orchestrated our going to a Bowie concert in Stuttgart, Germany. We were there visiting his brother in Ansbach (we were both on junior year abroad), and we heard on the radio that Bowie was playing in Stuttgart, not too far away. We had Interrail passes which gave us unlimited travel on the railway systems of Europe since we were considered temporary European residents for attending college for a year there, so we said goodbye to his brother and sister-in-law and hopped a train for Stuttgart. We headed for the concert hall there, bought scalped tickets outside, and proceeded in.
It was an amazing show. It was BEYOND AMAZING. It was the Sound + Vision tour, and I'm forever grateful that if I only got to see Bowie perform live one time, it was when he was playing the songs of the '70s that I loved. Sound + Vision was almost like a "greatest hits" tour. And I personally love the song Sound and Vision and what it says about the creative process. He was one of the first to play with video footage and there was a giant three-story David Bowie that accompanied the real man on the stage, interacting with him in clever and sometimes mindblowing ways, bending down to talk with him and the like. It was extraordinary and so freaking cool.
We spend so much on the scalped tickets that we didn't have enough money for a place to stay afterwards (and I think we didn't return to Ansbach because it would be so late at night and we didn't want to wake them--they had a small daughter too. Man, that girl is probably in her early thirties now...whoa...). So, instead we rode the trains for the rest of the night, picking a destination at the end of the line, trying to sleep as best we could, then deboarding and randomly picking the next train going the furthest away, all with that tired exhilaration that comes from watching a great concert, strains of music still in your ears.
We were doing just what he said, "driving like demons from station to station."
I'm sad to have to say goodbye to a musical hero that has filled (and will continue to fill) my life with so much pleasure and ...well, feelings. You can't just have his music on as a background; it's impossible not to dance to it or sing along and wish that you could tell him personally how much his words and music meant to you. I now have to erase one fantasy off my list, the backyard BBQ where we sing Under Pressure together. I guess that means I need to get moving on my other fantasies.
Ain't there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?
Yes, David: all of yours.
Last month, I had the intense pleasure of a phone interview for Oakland Magazine with Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera, the director and producer of Pixar's Inside Out (they both have Oakland/Piedmont ties). I found the movie to be an extraordinary, moving film far deeper than what children might be able to garner from it. Its target audience basically is parents, a thesis which Docter and Rivera agreed to. Yet don't let that stop you from bringing your kids; there's enough there to entertain and amuse as young as five years old.
Due to the article wordcount I wasn't able to include all the great things they told me. I'll add one here. Jonas Rivera said that his favorite part of the movie is a short scene where Joy doesn't want Riley to go to sleep and they put on their favorite song and "she skates along with her. It's an impossible relationship; it's the only time they're on screen together." Riley doesn't even know Joy exists...it's a poignant thought that the single most important aspect of her young personality is unknown to her.
I watched a special media showing before the official release date with friend and fellow historical novelist Erin McCabe, and boy, were we both sniffling, as was the entire audience. Friends who cry together stay together, right? I watched again later with my family, and noticed more the second time. For instance, I had noted that Joy has blue hair, but it didn't really register until the second viewing. Joy must always be tinged with sadness, because the remembrance of joy is the remembrance of something we once experienced and can't ever again in the same way. Which reminds me, I really need to read Proust sometime.
My article begins, "Pixar’s magic: making the events on the big screen somehow related to
our small, foible-filled lives. And this year’s offering Inside Out
proves that enchanted formula works again, but this time to a degree
that leaves audience members in tears of reflection." Read the full text at Oakland Magazine's website.
. . . .
P.S. I previously interviewed Brave's filmmakers and got to visit the much-vaunted Pixar campus in Emeryville, California. Read that post here.
P.P.S. One more tidbit. I felt the film may revolutionize how people think about thinking. For instance, if we have concrete ways of thinking about emotions, it might be easier to say, "I'll let Joy take the helm and push Anger aside." I asked Docter and Rivera if they intended that, as a bit of self-help for viewers, and they pshawed me. "No, we're just trying to entertain." Sure.:)
Today is the Big Day of Giving, where we focus on charities and make donations. I'm going to donate to 916 Ink, a group that helps Sacramento-area teens become published writers. But there's another nonprofit I donate to each month on the 12th, in memory of Jennifer L. Kranz, a six-year-old who died on the 12th (of February 2014). Would you be willing to donate $12 each month on the 12th to fund pediatric cancer research? Visit the GiveUs12 link.
I have two things to share in this post. One is an op-ed I wrote after having an epiphany about cancer: that it's not forever, not incurable, not the monster that will forever rule our fears. A cure is coming, so long as we can fund innovation.
Speaking of innovation, I'm delighted to share a video by the Kranz family, explaining about their nonprofit Unravel, founded in memory of their daughter to keep other families from going through that incredible tragedy. Let's watch that first.
There is progress coming; there is. Here is my piece that originally ran at the wonderful, big-hearted blog Sweatpants & Coffee.
Handing Cancer its Termination Notice
by Erika Mailman
Cancer's
never going away, is it? It's the Grim Reaper large as Godzilla, with not one
but two scythes, and really sharp incisors inside that skeletal jaw.
For
many years—since I watched a friend in her early forties twist and moan in the
pain of cervical cancer until it won—I’d considered cancer the beast that was
omnipotent, and all we could do was bow our heads and hope it passed by those
we cared about.
But
recently I’ve been buoyed up by optimism. I foresee an end to cancer. I’m
taking a lesson from history and am officially and ironically handing cancer
its termination notice.
What
spurs this confidence? Let me backtrack.
I
teach English at a community college in Sacramento. In a chapter of our
textbook titled "Homonyms and Commonly Confused Words," I learned the
difference between sympathy and empathy. Basically, as my students and I
understood it, sympathy involves a mild feeling of distress, while empathy
entails actually crying.
I
spent a lot of time being empathetic in 2014. I capped off each night by
looking at the blog written by Libby Kranz about her daughter's
breathtakingly-quick—less than four months—decline and death from a tumor in
her brainstem. Jennifer Kranz was six; the one-year anniversary of her death is
next week, Feb. 12.
She
and my daughter were in the same playgroup of a mom's group in Gilroy,
California, and thus the news hit home in a way nothing else ever has. I sank
to my knees night after night, not just crying, but sobbing,
hyperventilating, in rockgut despair for my friend's loss.
Each
morning I showered away the ravages of the previous evening’s grief, and met my
students with a smile. Along with the grammar text, I assigned them a novel, Year
of Wonders by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks. This book is about
the Bubonic Plague and is set in medieval Eyam, England, a village remarkable
for the fact its residents quarantined themselves to avoid spreading the
plague. They were sympathetic (if not empathetic) to the imagined plight of
neighboring villages should they bring the "plague seeds" with them
as they fled.
The
Black Death, as the Bubonic Plague was called, swept over Europe, Asia and the
Middle East, a pandemic that lasted for hundreds of years (mainly 1300s-1600s).
Statistics vary, but it is said that a full third of the Middle East and
Europe's population died from the plague.
Brooks's
novel describes the buboes (dark, swollen lymph nodes from which
"bubonic" derives) that would appear in people's groins, armpits,
necks: the first sign of a fast ride to death that would involve high fever,
vomiting of blood, and coagulating blood in fingers and toes, leaving them
gothically, repugnantly blackened as if by fire. Deaths were so rampant that
soon mass burials took place so corpses could be speedily dispatched;
periodically, modern-day construction crews come across these pits.
Since
the medieval world was awash in fleas (puce--French for "flea"--was a
favorite clothing color at Versailles, to provide camouflage for the ubiquitous
pest) and fleas carried the plague from rodent to human with their bites, the
disease spread with alarming rapidity. Fleas famously can leap over a foot away
and can continue living in bedding and clothing (in Brooks's novel, a tailor's
shipment of cloth from London is to blame for the plague reaching Eyam), so
short of completely contaminating a home, there would be no way to stop the
miniature agents of disease--even if it had been known they were responsible.
The
Black Death inspired terror for hundreds of years--now imagine telling
someone in the 1300s that a simple vaccine would make mention of the plague
shrug-worthy. And that even once contracted, the disease could be stopped by
antibiotics if caught early on. They might not have been able to believe it.
Plague had been too terrible, too sweeping, too much part of their lives.
And
that's how we think about cancer.
We've
spent decades feeling helpless about cancer's wretched march through the cells
of those we love. Words like "metastasized" and "stage
four" bring dread to our stomachs; these are words we have no armor for.
When we hear about "the cure," there's a certain incredulity that
there ever will be one. Cancer is so powerful. But I'm heartened by the analogy
that we can eradicate cancer like we did the plague.
There
will be a breakthrough. Today, for the most part, only third world
countries suffer plague outbreaks, like Madagascar very recently. I'm honestly
not concerned about buboes; they don't come up on my maternal radar too much,
although 600 years ago my English ancestors probably worried about them
constantly, with good reason.
I’m
picturing the near future, a day when people marvel that cancer ran so long
unchecked…when they pity us for our “Dark Ages” disease. That day is coming.
Cancer researchers make strides daily, like Dr. Olson, who has developed “tumor
paint” to make it easier for surgeons to excise diseased tissue while leaving
good tissue intact, as well as working on anti-cancer compounds, optides. These
optides improve the wretched process of chemotherapy which targets healthy and
cancerous cells alike—the optides only attack the bad cells.
Jennifer
Kranz’s parents have squeezed metaphoric lemons in desperation and grief to
pummel them into pulp and lemonade. Their nonprofit organization Unravel
promises to “unravel” pediatric cancer through fundraising to support
researchers who are eager and innovative and only lack funding. Unravel monies
recently permitted Dr. Olsen to hire not one but two interns. Being part of
such a tangible step forward towards a cure makes me sleep better at night,
although my eyes still burn with empathetic tears when I think about Jennifer,
forever lost.
To
read Libby's blog or to contribute to Unravel, her pediatric cancer awareness
and fundraising nonprofit, visit http://unravelpediatriccancer.org.
The other day, I met up with Libby Kranz during a trip we took to Gilroy. Libby is the mom of Jennifer, a six-year-old who died of DIPG February 12 this year. We met at a park. At one point, during respective kid tussling, she started talking to a woman a short distance away. I concluded it was a friend she had run into.
It wasn't. Libby came back, bristling with energy. The woman was a stranger, and Libby had just approached her--a cold call of sorts--to tell her about Jennifer.
She was being brave.
No one wants to walk up to strangers and tell them about a cancer that gives a 9 month life expectancy from diagnosis (Libby's daughter got a third of that time), tell them how only one cent of every dollar donated to the American Cancer Society goes to pediatric cancer, and tell them how the federal government funded pediatric research back in 2008 but then somehow the money has been held up ...
Nothing is going to help Libby's daughter. But something fierce, powerful and brave is going to save other people's daughters and sons. It's Libby, and the awareness she is raising for this devastating monster cancer that steals children. She was talking that day about business cards being printed up, so when she went to talk to people, she'd have a card to hand them. She is focused. She is committed. She is brave.
It's hard to talk about, and hard to think about. Libby admitted on her blog that before her daughter was diagnosed, she too would change the channel when the St. Jude's commercials came on. But the fact is, cancer is only easy to ignore if you don't know someone affected by it--and these days, that sliver of the population is getting smaller and smaller.
What can you do? Read and share Libby's blog. Contribute to the fund at Stanford University where Jennifer's cells are being studied--she had a very aggressive form of DIPG and thus her cells may contain valuable information to unlock this disease. If you feel proactive and want to physically get out there to help the world's children, consider "fluttering" . . . a genius plan of Libby's to both bring awareness to the cause and raise funds.
Being brave isn't just about doing things that scare you. Sometimes it's about stepping up the plate and helping when you can.
I may be the only one observing the National Keep Your Chin Up Day for Writers, but I'm delighted it is now Year Three.
This day is meant to bolster and fortify anyone who is feeling in the doldrums about the process of writing and publishing. There is joy in writing, but not much joy in writing query letters, trying to attract an agent's attention and stacking up the list of rejections. All writers go through this. We all despair...we all wonder if we are talented or just fooling ourselves. We can receive that one rejection that feels like a blow to the gut because we were sure that editor or agent was the one: they were artistically and aesthetically aligned and we knew they were going to love our work. Except they didn't.
I reiterate: we all go through it. We all self-question and face the glowing computer screen at 3 a.m. thinking, "What am I doing?"
But if we are steadfast and believe in ourselves, we will listen to that little voice that says, "I can do this. I'm a voracious reader. I know how to craft a story because I've read a million stories. I am an astute observer of human nature, and I know dialogue, and I can put together a lovely, visual scene and say something interesting about the world I inhabit."
That's all it is.
Writing is a celebration of being human, so we have to find the celebration in it. We love people. We love their stories, their quirks, their secret shames. We love their dazzling, unlikely triumphs. We like their new haircut and hearing them sing in the shower and we like seeing them at the end of the day, tired and ready to shut off the stimulus, to start the whole thing all over again tomorrow. So we write. We tell everyone else about those people, because they're important. Our characters are significant; they help us understand the world.
I've been teaching a literature survey at our local community college, and as a class we've come to realize most of literature is...well, sad. It's rare to find the poem that exults (which is why I love Walt Whitman so dearly). Most poems acknowledge the brevity of our lives and the rarity of finding someone to share them meaningfully. Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss! I think that's true, but it's only one side of the story.
I challenge anyone who comes to this post today in the doldrums, to write a scene or a poem that uplifts. Craft an interaction that leaves the participants exhilarated. You may discard it; it may never see screentime in your novel or your collection of poems--but give it a try. You may find that your own mood also lifts.
And keep in mind that it only takes one to say yes: one agent will represent your work someday, and one editor will acquire it. Keep the faith.
Keep your chin up.
If you'd like to read the previous years' posts on Keep Your Chin Up Day: Last year First year
A number of years ago, I found my husband lying on the floor next to our child's bed in his blue scrubs. He hadn't bothered to get a pillow or a blanket. He was in a fetal position, a sky-colored shrimp. When he awoke, I asked him if she had had a nightmare, since I hadn't heard her calling out, and he said no. There had been a child at the hospital where he worked who hadn't made it. Coming home from a late shift, he had gone in to make sure his child was all right. He stayed all night, watching her, grateful for her careless, graceful, magnificent ability to breathe.
When I started reading the Love4JLK blog, written by Libby about her daughter Jennifer's cancer diagnosis, I felt that same compulsion. What was once a nightly ritual--the checking of the children, that most exalted and beautiful of parental rights, our reward for whatever struggles we endured during the day, or whatever struggles we endured to bring the children to the earth--became more. I slept on the floor. I brought them into our bed. I clung to them. And I wished in a sense that I could do the same for Libby, post a guard for her and keep breath in the lungs. Now that her daughter has died, I continue the metaphorical desire to be the watch dog, to snarl at the dark. But metaphors don't mean much when children have died.
So I am turning my back on that and looking for pragmatic answers. Real things, that can be done in real life. Nothing will bring Jennifer back, but in a very real sense, some of these may keep another child, a child of the future whose diagnosis is written in her cells, with us, safe in her bed.
1. Read Libby's blog and share it widely in social media. You never know what may arise, when some powerful person reads her blog. It may be a Congressman or Congresswoman who rises up out of ire and grief to help fund pediatric cancer research. It may be a wealthy person who can, with one click of the mouse, completely fulfill the goal of the Jennifer Kranz Research Fund. Speaking of which....
2. Consider a donation to the Jennifer Kranz Research Fund. $30,000 of the $100,000 goal has been met thus far. What is the fund? It's research at Lucile Packard (Stanford University) where researchers are studying the literal tumors from Jennifer's body. She had a particularly aggressive form of DIPG, and her tumors may yield valuable information about this cancer.
3. Share widely this short youtube video in which Libby requests that the already-allotted cancer funding in the U.S. be more fairly distributed. It is shocking to learn that only 4 percent of cancer funding goes to pediatric cancer--and kids are more than 4% of the population. http://youtu.be/0CLYthNe1k4
4. Tweet the video to your representative. Almost all of them have Twitter accounts.
5. Write your representative. I hope to soon post a sample letter you can cut and paste, print out, put in an envelope and mail out. Five minutes and 40 cents.
6. Be gentle. Our time here is too short, even when not cut short.
My friend’s daughter died last Wednesday, Feb. 12. She was
only six years old. She died of an incredibly-aggressive brain tumor called
DIPG. I have been awash in feelings –actually, I’ve been awash since October of
2013 when Jennifer Lynn Kranz was first diagnosed and given the life expectancy
of six to nine months, and her mom first began blogging.
Jennifer only got three and a half months after diagnosis.
At one point, her mom Libby linked to the blog of a mom who
had already lost her child. That woman wrote about how she couldn’t read novels
anymore, that they required her to mentally leave her world, and she couldn’t
bear to leave the world in which her child had once lived.
That made me worry that that was true of all parents who
lost children—because Libby loves to read. She is a member of the Book Club I
loved dearly until I had to move out of town. I loved hearing Libby’s take on
the books we read and always learned something from her perspective. And it turns
out she is an incredible author, from her stripped-raw words on the blog about her deep love for Jennifer and
her bewilderment at the situation they had been placed in.
In the last three and a half months, I have taken solace in
reading. I have traveled, as I always do when I read, to stalk other
landscapes, eat in other people’s homes, sleep on their pillows, fight their
fights, kiss their lips. I’m fervently grateful for books. They have been my
escape route.
I typically do a seasonal book recommendation, but this time
I’d like to recommend books that truly transported me. These weren’t all the
books I read recently; they’re all the books I loved recently.
In no particular order:
1. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen
Joy Fowler.
In this book that probes how we interact with animals and
feel about our own animal selves, the main character reflects back on a life in
which she was raised alongside a chimpanzee. Ostensibly a scientific experiment
to see if/how the chimp could learn language and communicate with humans, the
concept also involves how the human learned from the chimp and what unexpected
effects arose. I’m not doing the plot justice, but I also want to avoid plot
spoilers. I found this absolutely graceful, kind and thought-provoking.
2. Don’t Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon.
Disclosure: Michelle and I were in the same writers group
eons ago, but that connection is not why she shows up on this list. I
absolutely loved her young adult novel about a girl who wakes up in the middle
of some sort of malevolent experiment being done on her, and she must escape,
figure out what she has become entangled in, and assist others. It’s fast-paced
and plotted so well. The character is really likeable and you ache for
her disrupted childhood.
3. The Archived by Victoria Schwab.
I picked this out for its incredible cover, but fell in love
with what was inside. In this young adult novel, a girl helps usher confused,
newly-dead to their next destination, the Archives. I will say that although
the Archives are essentially libraries (some of my favorite places in the
world), they are bleak –and this may not be a comforting book for anyone
thinking concretely about life after death. But the story is touching and
incredibly well-told nonetheless.
4. The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips.
I loved this novel so much I assigned it to my community
college English students. Its conceit is that Arthur (Phillips) has come into
possession of a lost Shakespearean quarto and the novel is really his
introduction to Random House’s publication of this play. He tries to--at
length-- convince the reader that the work is a forgery, and the book
culminates in the play itself. I’m surprised this book didn’t get more
buzz/acclaim (it’s already in paperback): I really consider it Pulitzer
material.
I feel like there’s a fifth book I’m forgetting.
Forgetting is a good thing. We read to forget.
Jennifer’s mom asked us—the community of the web, as well as
those she knows personally—to share, tweet and link to the following
video. It’s only one minute long and although she addresses President Obama
directly, it isn’t a political video. It’s a video in which she asks that the
funding for cancer be more fairly distributed—not that more funding be
allocated, but that children get more than four percent of the already-allocated
funding.
Were you aware that pediatric cancer only gets four percent
of cancer funding in this country? I’m not sure what precise percentage of the
population children actually represent, but it’s around 24 percent. And
pediatric cancer is so dramatically unfair: these kids haven’t had a chance to
live their lives.
We know as much about DIPG as we did 30 years ago. If
research had been tunneling along for the last three decades, Jennifer might be
alive today.
Libby filmed this video Feb. 1—less than two weeks later,
her daughter had died. Please share, tweet and link to it. Let’s get the
money and the advocacy rolling, so the next child with DIPG may survive.
Twitter: #love4jlk
Facebook: Love4JLK
Web: www.love4jlk.org
And if you would like to donate directly to the Jennifer
Kranz Research Fund, click here.
. . . . .
Next day:
I remembered the fifth--and I feel awful for forgetting it because it honestly was my favorite of the bunch. In fact, I had just finished the book at night and had been intending to email the author a long, glorious, happy, praise-filled message in the morning, but the next day was the day Jennifer died.
The book was Illuminations by Mary Sharratt. I previously ran a Q&A with Mary in November, but I hadn't had a chance to read the book. When I did read it, I found that every page brought beauty. The novel tells the story of Hildegard von Bingen, a young medieval woman who was walled up into a cell of the church as an Anchoress--actually, she was a girl at the time, and it was not her choice. She went into the Anchorage with Jutta, an older girl who felt called by God to remove herself (and Hildegard) from the secular world. As Illuminations progresses, we learn the reason for Jutta's life-changing choice, and we see how Hildegard makes the most of her life in seclusion. She fights and advocates, both for herself and for other girls destined for the Anchorage, such that she becomes a world-renowned visionary and author/composer whose work endures to this day.
Sharratt's writing is so drenched with beauty, and she makes something .... well, illumined out of the stark life Hildegard lived. I felt that I lived Hildegard's life with her, and can so very visually see the confines of the cell, the small courtyard they were allowed, the slitted window through which they could see the monks at prayer in the monastery. I felt the book was actually quite cinematic, which is quite the feat for a book whose "footprint" is so small. I'd love to see this on the big screen in the hands of someone like Cary Fukunaga.
I sincerely loved this book and felt something I rarely feel...pending sadness as I approached the end. I didn't want it to end, and that's an emotion I don't feel usually while reading. I like to read to the end, find out, and move on. With this book, I wanted to linger. I saw from the old Q&A linked to above, that Mary had to delete 40,000 words of the originally much-longer manuscript. How I wish we could have a "director's cut" and see those deleted but doubtlessly valuable scenes.
Pediatric cancer...such a horrible combination of words. It's easy enough to shudder and then turn your attention elsewhere, until you know the child involved. And then you can't stop thinking about it and being angry and in despair and knowing lives are being inextricably changed somewhere in the world. You may be lucky and be unscathed, but you can support those who are facing the hardest reality there is.
Jennifer Kranz is six years old, fighting a DIPG tumor, and things are progressing quickly. Wildly quickly. Her dad is going to stop working so he can spend the last time possible with her. Can you please help in two ways?
1. If it is possibly financially for you--even for a very small token amount--think about how tip jars slowly fill and make employees happy at the end of the shift--it doesn't have to be a huge donation--please give something to this family to help the dad stay home with his family for these last precious moments together. www.love4jlk.org.
2. Use social media and share the JONES out of this video. It of Jennifer's mom Libby asking President Obama to change the division of funds for cancer research. She's not asking for more funding--she's just asking for the pie to be more fairly divided. Because--can you believe this? Pediatric cancer only gets four percent of cancer research funds in this country. Four percent. Four percent goes to the most devastating kind of cancer there is. Share the video on Facebook, put it on your blog, tweet it and retweet it and make it go viral. The Kranz Family knows their fight is ending soon, but they want other families to have a better outcome.
