The 777 challenge is when one author challenges others to post seven lines of text, seven lines down, on the seventh page of a work in progress. Early this morning I discovered I’d been tagged for a 777 post by my agent sister, the one and only Rachel Simon. I’m more than willing to participate and post my seven lines of text, because they turn out to be seven lines I really like.
In case you may have missed my several dozen earlier references to it here on the blog, Following Infinity is a literary-leaning contemporary middle grade novel I’m currently revising with the insightful guidance of my agent. In this scene, my main character, a thirteen-year-old girl named Molly, is attending the funeral of her younger brother, Michael.
**********
The pastor gave a sermon about Michael’s life that kind of annoyed me. You could tell he was probably reading from some pastor book like Things to Say at a Child’s Funeral and plugging in details about Michael along the way to make it sound like he knew him, like how much he liked roller coasters, or soccer, or collecting rocks. Sometimes he’d tell a funny Michael story or make a joke to break some of the tension, and everyone would laugh more than the joke deserved. I hated that. The laughter was a moment of relief, but it hurt even more when the relief passed.
Most of the crowd followed us to the cemetery when the service ended, an easy walk from the church. The afternoon sky was a deep blue, broken up by the kind of heavy clouds you see on a clear day in October.
**********
Hope you enjoyed that little sample of the manuscript. Thanks for tagging me and putting up your seven lines, Rachel! I'm really looking forward to the day I'll have all of our Team Howland titles sitting next to each other on a bookshelf in my house.
And now a brief update. If you had read my previous post about NaNoWriMo 2014, I’d outlined some plans I had coming together regarding my Following Infinity revisions, and how I planned to take advantage of all the work to be done during NaNo to help that cause. I think it’s now safe to say those plans have been shelved. In the time since I wrote that post, another project has crept to the Number One must-write spot, and it’s all the more likely that’s what I’ll be drafting in November. Which is all I will say about it now, because for all I know another pretty idea might come along between now and late at night on October 31st and I’ll change my mind yet again. Stay tuned....
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Friday, October 17, 2014
NaNoWriMo 2014
Back in 2008, a teacher friend of mine wanted to participate in National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, but didn’t want to do it alone. She knew writing was a hobby of mine and convinced me to sign up as well. If you aren’t familiar with NaNoWriMo, it’s an organized event challenging people to write a complete novel during the month of November, with the benchmark of a complete novel being a written work of at least 50,000 words. Anyone and everyone who reaches that 50K mark wins the event, even if you don’t finish telling your entire story. The point isn’t to get everything perfect and polished, but to pound your way through that first draft. My results so far:
2008: Contemporary middle grade satire - Win. Good idea overall, but it started as one story and evolved into a different one halfway through. It remains in the vault.
2009: Literary-leaning contemporary middle grade - Win. Plus it got me an agent four and a half years later, so Win x 100.
2010: Literary-leaning middle grade contemporary fantasy - Win. I still love the concept behind this one, but the manuscript is a mess. Maybe someday it will get another shot.
2011: Middle grade horror - Win. That year I actually took an older manuscript and rewrote it from the ground up, then kept working on it to the point I queried it and even had a full request before I shelved it in favor of a manuscript I was more confident about. I LOVE this one. Now that I have representation, I have serious hopes it will see someday see the light of day.
2012: Contemporary science fiction young adult - Win. This one has a great concept, but is so freaking ambitious and complex I felt I was struggling to do it justice. The first draft remains only mostly finished at about 70,000 words, most of which will have to be rewritten in order for me to ever make it into something real. But the story...ooooh, man... I’m going to have to revisit it someday.
2013: Middle grade comedy - Win. Again, first draft unfinished, but at about 68,000 words. When I finish the revisions on my current project, this one is probably next in the queue.
So that catches us up to 2014, and into an autumn that I’ll openly admit has had more than its share of time demands and stress, not to mention finding me in a place where my writing time and energy would really be best served by working on my latest round of revisions. But does that mean I’m going sit out this year and rest on my winning streak?
Not a chance.
Instead I think I found a way to both work on revisions and aim for my 50,000 word win, which is a goal I have every intention of reaching. This year’s manuscript isn’t going to be one continuous story, but something I’m going to write just for me -- a collection of short stories featuring the characters from the manuscript I'm revising, FOLLOWING INFINITY. By doing this I hope to gain deeper insights about my characters and their relationships, especially as I’m preparing to build up some currently smaller roles into more significant ones. Since the stories I’m thinking about will take place both before and after the events in the story, and possibly even concurrently or from an alternate-timeline perspective, having those added events will give me better background material to work with when I get back to actual revising. It’s been forever since I’ve tried writing short stories and I’m excited about what this could help me discover. (EDIT -- It's a week and a half later. I had a conversation with my agent since writing this post, and consequently got so fired up about a different idea I changed my project over to that. So this whole paragraph? Yeah. Ignore it.)
To any and all writers reading this (especially Twitter folk, and of course anyone else from the greatness that is Team Howland): If you're planning on participating, go ahead and add me as a writing buddy when you sign in. You’ll find me under the username Hooshea (it’s a nonsense word created by a second grader; long story). Having gone from writing in isolation and existing in online anonymity for so many years, I’m looking forward to connecting with other participants. Everyone can be a winner in this, and it never hurts to have more people in your camp! You prod me along and I'll prod you right back.
And if you're one of my non-writer Facebook friends, I'll be posting frequent word count updates during November. Supportive comments along the way are always helpful and appreciated.
Wish me luck!
2008: Contemporary middle grade satire - Win. Good idea overall, but it started as one story and evolved into a different one halfway through. It remains in the vault.
2009: Literary-leaning contemporary middle grade - Win. Plus it got me an agent four and a half years later, so Win x 100.
2010: Literary-leaning middle grade contemporary fantasy - Win. I still love the concept behind this one, but the manuscript is a mess. Maybe someday it will get another shot.
2011: Middle grade horror - Win. That year I actually took an older manuscript and rewrote it from the ground up, then kept working on it to the point I queried it and even had a full request before I shelved it in favor of a manuscript I was more confident about. I LOVE this one. Now that I have representation, I have serious hopes it will see someday see the light of day.
2012: Contemporary science fiction young adult - Win. This one has a great concept, but is so freaking ambitious and complex I felt I was struggling to do it justice. The first draft remains only mostly finished at about 70,000 words, most of which will have to be rewritten in order for me to ever make it into something real. But the story...ooooh, man... I’m going to have to revisit it someday.
2013: Middle grade comedy - Win. Again, first draft unfinished, but at about 68,000 words. When I finish the revisions on my current project, this one is probably next in the queue.
So that catches us up to 2014, and into an autumn that I’ll openly admit has had more than its share of time demands and stress, not to mention finding me in a place where my writing time and energy would really be best served by working on my latest round of revisions. But does that mean I’m going sit out this year and rest on my winning streak?
Not a chance.
Instead I think I found a way to both work on revisions and aim for my 50,000 word win, which is a goal I have every intention of reaching. This year’s manuscript isn’t going to be one continuous story, but something I’m going to write just for me -- a collection of short stories featuring the characters from the manuscript I'm revising, FOLLOWING INFINITY. By doing this I hope to gain deeper insights about my characters and their relationships, especially as I’m preparing to build up some currently smaller roles into more significant ones. Since the stories I’m thinking about will take place both before and after the events in the story, and possibly even concurrently or from an alternate-timeline perspective, having those added events will give me better background material to work with when I get back to actual revising. It’s been forever since I’ve tried writing short stories and I’m excited about what this could help me discover. (EDIT -- It's a week and a half later. I had a conversation with my agent since writing this post, and consequently got so fired up about a different idea I changed my project over to that. So this whole paragraph? Yeah. Ignore it.)
To any and all writers reading this (especially Twitter folk, and of course anyone else from the greatness that is Team Howland): If you're planning on participating, go ahead and add me as a writing buddy when you sign in. You’ll find me under the username Hooshea (it’s a nonsense word created by a second grader; long story). Having gone from writing in isolation and existing in online anonymity for so many years, I’m looking forward to connecting with other participants. Everyone can be a winner in this, and it never hurts to have more people in your camp! You prod me along and I'll prod you right back.
And if you're one of my non-writer Facebook friends, I'll be posting frequent word count updates during November. Supportive comments along the way are always helpful and appreciated.
Wish me luck!
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Writing Process Blog Tour
A few months back I was invited to be a part of the Writing Process Blog Tour. If you aren’t familiar with this, it involves different writers responding to questions about their writing process, then passing the same questions to other writers, and so on. Back then I didn’t feel I had to the time to take it on, but a few weeks ago I luckily got a second chance. This time I was tagged by Melissa Gorzelancyzk. Her debut young adult novel ARROWS will be released by Random House / Delacorte Press in January of 2016. It’s the story of Aaryn, a wayward cupid, and Karma, a dance prodigy whose destiny is derailed by the power of a single arrow. You can find out more about Melissa on her website, and can add her book at Goodreads here. Melissa and I are both lucky enough to be represented by Carrie Howland of Donadio & Olson, Inc. Whew. Lot of links to navigate through in that paragraph. Here’s a nice picture to look at as a reward:
And here are the questions Melissa handed off to me, with my answers.
-- What are you working on?
In the big picture I’ve got four projects going right now, although one is by far getting the most attention. I’m currently working on the newest revision of my middle grade novel Following Infinity. It’s the story of how a thirteen-year-old named Molly struggles to cope with the death of her younger brother Michael. She takes a cross-country road trip with her cousin and grandfather to visit the dream roller coaster her brother never had the chance to ride, which leads her to unanticipated levels of self-discovery.
-- How does your work differ from others of its genre?
I always intended the story to deal with delicate subject matter in a way that doesn’t sugar-coat how rough Molly's experience is. I want it to reflect honest feeling, even when it gets dark and emotionally brutal, which I think it's safe to say it does at points. I also think that when compared to a lot of middle grade currently out there, my story leans in a more literary direction. At least that’s what I’m aiming for.
-- Why do you write what you do?
The short answer, since I just expounded on this not long ago on the Middle Grade Minded blog: I see myself as less of a middle grade writer and more of a writer living in a middle grade world. For me it’s always been more about what story needs to be told than anything intentionally directed toward or created for a specific audience. Writing was never as much of an active choice for me as something that organically began to happen when I needed it. I write middle grade now because that’s what I see in front of me every day, and that environment is rich with stories. But that doesn’t mean middle grade is all I’m ever going to write.
-- How does your writing process work?
It can all begin with a character or a setting or a premise that intrigues me enough to keep thinking about, and when that extra bit of something interesting arrives and kicks everything to a new level, the dam bursts wide open. The sitting down and typing business most people think of as writing happens in some form on most days, but the brainstorming and development and note-taking and character inventories and speculating and organizing and assembling is almost constant, from before I start the first draft until I think I’m done revising. When I am at the keyboard, I’m usually listening to a playlist that’s been carefully constructed to reflect the tone of whatever I’m working on, and if I’m in serious flow state writing mode I’ll have the music playing from another room so I can’t interrupt myself to change songs. I’m a pretty quick and adaptive thinker, so once I have an idea of where the story will be going I can often just start working and let it roll out in front of me, sometimes following what I had planned but sometimes pulling me in the direction of new discoveries. Often I’ll stand up and pace around the house, talking to myself to outline upcoming moments or to act out dialogue exchanges between characters. Once everything in a project starts coming together and I know I’ve got something serious on my hands, that backyard part of my writer brain will always have something going on related to that work in progress.
Afterward, the revision is hard, long, tedious work. It’s reading chapters forward and backward several times over to find typos and grammar fixes that can’t be excused in the name of voice. It’s searching for how many times I’ve overused my usual writing crutches and then rewriting around them. It’s running the story through several different filters, usually one at a time, trying to find the good bits in all the unnecessary. And then doing it all again and again.
My turn to tag: I’m passing on the fun to Lara Chapman and Daniel Kenney, two of my co-conspirators from the formidable Middle Grade Minded blog. You can find out more about them on their websites below, and look forward to their process posts coming in the next week or two.
Lara Chapman
Daniel Kenney
And here are the questions Melissa handed off to me, with my answers.
-- What are you working on?
In the big picture I’ve got four projects going right now, although one is by far getting the most attention. I’m currently working on the newest revision of my middle grade novel Following Infinity. It’s the story of how a thirteen-year-old named Molly struggles to cope with the death of her younger brother Michael. She takes a cross-country road trip with her cousin and grandfather to visit the dream roller coaster her brother never had the chance to ride, which leads her to unanticipated levels of self-discovery.
-- How does your work differ from others of its genre?
I always intended the story to deal with delicate subject matter in a way that doesn’t sugar-coat how rough Molly's experience is. I want it to reflect honest feeling, even when it gets dark and emotionally brutal, which I think it's safe to say it does at points. I also think that when compared to a lot of middle grade currently out there, my story leans in a more literary direction. At least that’s what I’m aiming for.
-- Why do you write what you do?
The short answer, since I just expounded on this not long ago on the Middle Grade Minded blog: I see myself as less of a middle grade writer and more of a writer living in a middle grade world. For me it’s always been more about what story needs to be told than anything intentionally directed toward or created for a specific audience. Writing was never as much of an active choice for me as something that organically began to happen when I needed it. I write middle grade now because that’s what I see in front of me every day, and that environment is rich with stories. But that doesn’t mean middle grade is all I’m ever going to write.
-- How does your writing process work?
It can all begin with a character or a setting or a premise that intrigues me enough to keep thinking about, and when that extra bit of something interesting arrives and kicks everything to a new level, the dam bursts wide open. The sitting down and typing business most people think of as writing happens in some form on most days, but the brainstorming and development and note-taking and character inventories and speculating and organizing and assembling is almost constant, from before I start the first draft until I think I’m done revising. When I am at the keyboard, I’m usually listening to a playlist that’s been carefully constructed to reflect the tone of whatever I’m working on, and if I’m in serious flow state writing mode I’ll have the music playing from another room so I can’t interrupt myself to change songs. I’m a pretty quick and adaptive thinker, so once I have an idea of where the story will be going I can often just start working and let it roll out in front of me, sometimes following what I had planned but sometimes pulling me in the direction of new discoveries. Often I’ll stand up and pace around the house, talking to myself to outline upcoming moments or to act out dialogue exchanges between characters. Once everything in a project starts coming together and I know I’ve got something serious on my hands, that backyard part of my writer brain will always have something going on related to that work in progress.
Afterward, the revision is hard, long, tedious work. It’s reading chapters forward and backward several times over to find typos and grammar fixes that can’t be excused in the name of voice. It’s searching for how many times I’ve overused my usual writing crutches and then rewriting around them. It’s running the story through several different filters, usually one at a time, trying to find the good bits in all the unnecessary. And then doing it all again and again.
My turn to tag: I’m passing on the fun to Lara Chapman and Daniel Kenney, two of my co-conspirators from the formidable Middle Grade Minded blog. You can find out more about them on their websites below, and look forward to their process posts coming in the next week or two.
Lara Chapman
Daniel Kenney
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Decade
Just days ago I finished my first class read-aloud of the year, Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. One plot point in this book has the main character, a young girl named Opal, wanting to know more about the mother who abandoned her and her father when she was very young. In the early chapters she tells her father she wants to know ten things about her mother, “one thing for each year I’ve been alive.”
After some thought her father provides the list of ten things, many of which are referenced throughout the book, making the mother an influential presence in the story even though her character never actually appears. This caught my attention since in my own revision work right now I’m looking for new ways to give voice to an absent character: What do I need to show to make him real? How do I do it with the economy and balance that will help readers know him well enough to care, but leave them with a vague sense of loss for not knowing him better?
Opal deciding on the number ten for her ten years of life also connected with me on an entirely different level, since it was ten years ago today, October 5th, when my sister Erin died. It’s easy to encapsulate that amount of time and label it as the unit “decade” without thinking about how much time it really represents. Ten years means her death predates the Obama presidency, every version of the iPhone, Taylor Swift’s entire recording career, Hurricane Katrina, and the time before Facebook evolved into the ubiquitous thing it is now. On a more personal level, I’m slightly astonished when I think of how many people have entered my life in the past ten years, and therefore wouldn’t know much about Erin outside of things I might have mentioned at incidental moments. Some of these people have even broken through my most preciously guarded introversion barriers and are now central to my life, yet they know next to nothing about her or why her death was one of my defining events.
So today I’m going to share ten things about my sister -- one for each year that has passed since we lost her. Hopefully these ten things will make her seem more real for people who never knew her, but will also bring back memories for those who did. And all of this is to say nothing about my lesser agenda, of practicing how to make an absent character seem more relatable and present. This works nicely here, because Erin was undeniably a character.
1. She loved dogs. We’ve always been a dog family; if my count is accurate, we’ve had a total of fifteen in my lifetime. She dearly loved all of the ones she knew, and they loved her back for it. Making friends with dogs was just as important to her as making friends with people. Our cousins' dogs, neighborhood dogs, any dog she saw passing on the street -- they were all precious to her. If she had ever read Because of Winn-Dixie, she would have laughed at the times the dog Winn-Dixie smiled his way into a sneeze, since our former neighbor’s dog Annabelle had done the same thing.
2. She was a natural leader. She was the captain of her high school soccer team, and took that role very seriously. She once had to escort members of the police department and their K-9 unit through the creepy basement of our father’s drugstore when the alarm went off late at night, and was only about sixteen years old at the time. When she and Jenny both worked at the drugstore she made Jenny wear the white pharmacist’s jacket, because customers noticed the way Erin carried herself and assumed she was in charge, then would ask her for medical advice she couldn’t give. She once invited our family to a pancake breakfast event she had organized at the assisted living center where she worked, and clearly had everything running exactly as she had intended.
3. She had a big sense of humor. She had a variety of laughs that ranged from loud and brassy to an oxygen-deprived silence followed by a croaking gasp. She was her truest self when sharing late-night laughing fits with our cousins in our aunt and uncle’s kitchen. It sounds slightly off to me now when I hear them laughing like this, without her, like a song intended to be performed as four-part harmony that’s missing the one voice needed to make it perfect.
4. She loved older people. She had settled into a career as the activities director for an assisted living facility, and formed close friendships with many of the residents there. She was never patronizing but treated them with genuine dignity, respect, and warmth. When our grandmother moved out of her final house and into a senior apartment, Erin organized everything for her, making things easy for her to find in the most logical manner. She even once made the driver of a train wait until she could make sure an older woman she had just met was seated and had the walker she was using situated before the train departed.
5. She loved her nephews more than anything else in the world. She clearly would have done anything for those boys. For years she’d be greeted with wide smiles and hugs and an excited “Hi Doppy!” The nickname evolved from her constantly prompting one of the boys to repeat a nonsense word he would sometimes say while learning to talk, and him coming to associate her with it. She could always make them smile for pictures, usually by entertaining them with one of her silly and often-requested mouth noises. The oldest was the only one to visit her bedside in her final hours. He was mature enough to understand the permanence of what was happening, but too young to be emotionally equipped for it. It was the only time in his now twenty years I’ve ever seen him break down crying.
6. She was a superfan on many different levels. Once she found a new interest, it didn’t take long for her to develop an unabashed enthusiasm for it. She followed college sports at a level that didn’t make any sense to me. She had a bookshelf filled with “Star Trek: The Next Generation” novels, and even attended a convention. She had a deep knowledge of musical theater and a collection of cast recordings to go with it. She really had a thing for Thomas Kincaid paintings. She was so deeply into the “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” Christmas special that she owned a set of character ornaments and multiple holiday CDs by Burl Ives. If my phone ever rang during a commercial break of “The X-Files,” I knew when I’d pick it up I’d hear her gasp “DID YOU SEE WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!” only for her to abruptly hang up the moment the show came back on.
7. She was fiercely protective of her individuality. It had been a goal of hers to go skydiving by her 30th birthday. She invited our aunt and uncle to come along and watch from below, but didn’t tell our family about it until after it was over. I remember being struck by conversations I had with some of her friends and our cousins in the days surrounding her funeral, about important moments they shared with her that had been so completely separate from me, and I know it was the same for Jenny. It wasn’t so much that she worked at actively distancing herself from us but was intent on finding a way to define herself, which was something she had to do on her own.
8. She had a highly competitive streak. Maybe being the youngest in the family and participating in the sibling rivalry that came with that started it out, but it was always there in some form. She took the wins and losses of the teams she followed very personally. She mixed it up with our older cousins her whole life, trying to keep up with them through so many games and sports when she was little and often putting them (us) in their places when she grew up. She had side bets each year in my aunt’s football pool, leading to opportunities for good-natured knife twisting when things went her way. She played twelve years of soccer at a level of intensity that would have guaranteed the need for knee replacements if she had lived long enough, and stayed involved in the sport with some coaching long after her playing days were over.
9. She was a committed friend. When she took someone into her life, she went out of her way to make sure they realized how important they were to her. She looked for opportunities to help them or ways to include them in whatever she was doing. She was the kind of friend who would just agree to help carry boxes for someone when they were moving, but she’d volunteer to drive the truck as well.
10. She died well. Spending her last year living through her illness and facing her unavoidable death could have turned her inward and bitter, but instead it self-actualized her. She put up with more general discomfort and acute pain than any of us could ever really understand, but still managed to maintain a version of her humor throughout. Sometimes it wasn’t much more than a mask to conceal her anger and fear, but she held onto because not doing so would have been out of her nature. Knowing she was going to die allowed her to put aside the insecurities and pretense which define so many of us and instead become the best version of herself, with an awareness of everyone around her and an intent on molding a perception that would endure after she was gone.
Toward the end of Because of Winn-Dixie Opal believes her beloved dog has run off during a thunderstorm, so she makes her own mental list of ten things people should know about him. In doing so she realizes that such a list “couldn’t even begin to show somebody the real Winn-Dixie, just like a list of ten things couldn’t ever get me to know my mama.” But right before this, she tells the readers her reason for memorizing the list: “...so if I didn’t find him, I would still have some part of him to hold on to.”
Sometimes the list has to be enough because it’s all we get. Luckily though, my list doesn’t have only ten things, but ten times ten times ten things. I don’t need a box of photographs or residual pain to remind me of her, because I have that to hold on to. And as long as I do, I know I’ll be able to honor her dying wish and stay true to the words I wrote ten years ago in closing her eulogy:
My little sister is no longer here, and this has happened much sooner than it should have. But I don’t think it would be right for me to spend the rest of my time thinking about the things she was never given the chance to do or become, so I will try my best not to do that. That isn’t what she would want. Instead I’ll remember Erin for who she was, and why she was so important to the lives of so many people.
After some thought her father provides the list of ten things, many of which are referenced throughout the book, making the mother an influential presence in the story even though her character never actually appears. This caught my attention since in my own revision work right now I’m looking for new ways to give voice to an absent character: What do I need to show to make him real? How do I do it with the economy and balance that will help readers know him well enough to care, but leave them with a vague sense of loss for not knowing him better?
Opal deciding on the number ten for her ten years of life also connected with me on an entirely different level, since it was ten years ago today, October 5th, when my sister Erin died. It’s easy to encapsulate that amount of time and label it as the unit “decade” without thinking about how much time it really represents. Ten years means her death predates the Obama presidency, every version of the iPhone, Taylor Swift’s entire recording career, Hurricane Katrina, and the time before Facebook evolved into the ubiquitous thing it is now. On a more personal level, I’m slightly astonished when I think of how many people have entered my life in the past ten years, and therefore wouldn’t know much about Erin outside of things I might have mentioned at incidental moments. Some of these people have even broken through my most preciously guarded introversion barriers and are now central to my life, yet they know next to nothing about her or why her death was one of my defining events.
So today I’m going to share ten things about my sister -- one for each year that has passed since we lost her. Hopefully these ten things will make her seem more real for people who never knew her, but will also bring back memories for those who did. And all of this is to say nothing about my lesser agenda, of practicing how to make an absent character seem more relatable and present. This works nicely here, because Erin was undeniably a character.
1. She loved dogs. We’ve always been a dog family; if my count is accurate, we’ve had a total of fifteen in my lifetime. She dearly loved all of the ones she knew, and they loved her back for it. Making friends with dogs was just as important to her as making friends with people. Our cousins' dogs, neighborhood dogs, any dog she saw passing on the street -- they were all precious to her. If she had ever read Because of Winn-Dixie, she would have laughed at the times the dog Winn-Dixie smiled his way into a sneeze, since our former neighbor’s dog Annabelle had done the same thing.
2. She was a natural leader. She was the captain of her high school soccer team, and took that role very seriously. She once had to escort members of the police department and their K-9 unit through the creepy basement of our father’s drugstore when the alarm went off late at night, and was only about sixteen years old at the time. When she and Jenny both worked at the drugstore she made Jenny wear the white pharmacist’s jacket, because customers noticed the way Erin carried herself and assumed she was in charge, then would ask her for medical advice she couldn’t give. She once invited our family to a pancake breakfast event she had organized at the assisted living center where she worked, and clearly had everything running exactly as she had intended.
3. She had a big sense of humor. She had a variety of laughs that ranged from loud and brassy to an oxygen-deprived silence followed by a croaking gasp. She was her truest self when sharing late-night laughing fits with our cousins in our aunt and uncle’s kitchen. It sounds slightly off to me now when I hear them laughing like this, without her, like a song intended to be performed as four-part harmony that’s missing the one voice needed to make it perfect.
4. She loved older people. She had settled into a career as the activities director for an assisted living facility, and formed close friendships with many of the residents there. She was never patronizing but treated them with genuine dignity, respect, and warmth. When our grandmother moved out of her final house and into a senior apartment, Erin organized everything for her, making things easy for her to find in the most logical manner. She even once made the driver of a train wait until she could make sure an older woman she had just met was seated and had the walker she was using situated before the train departed.
5. She loved her nephews more than anything else in the world. She clearly would have done anything for those boys. For years she’d be greeted with wide smiles and hugs and an excited “Hi Doppy!” The nickname evolved from her constantly prompting one of the boys to repeat a nonsense word he would sometimes say while learning to talk, and him coming to associate her with it. She could always make them smile for pictures, usually by entertaining them with one of her silly and often-requested mouth noises. The oldest was the only one to visit her bedside in her final hours. He was mature enough to understand the permanence of what was happening, but too young to be emotionally equipped for it. It was the only time in his now twenty years I’ve ever seen him break down crying.
6. She was a superfan on many different levels. Once she found a new interest, it didn’t take long for her to develop an unabashed enthusiasm for it. She followed college sports at a level that didn’t make any sense to me. She had a bookshelf filled with “Star Trek: The Next Generation” novels, and even attended a convention. She had a deep knowledge of musical theater and a collection of cast recordings to go with it. She really had a thing for Thomas Kincaid paintings. She was so deeply into the “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” Christmas special that she owned a set of character ornaments and multiple holiday CDs by Burl Ives. If my phone ever rang during a commercial break of “The X-Files,” I knew when I’d pick it up I’d hear her gasp “DID YOU SEE WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!” only for her to abruptly hang up the moment the show came back on.
7. She was fiercely protective of her individuality. It had been a goal of hers to go skydiving by her 30th birthday. She invited our aunt and uncle to come along and watch from below, but didn’t tell our family about it until after it was over. I remember being struck by conversations I had with some of her friends and our cousins in the days surrounding her funeral, about important moments they shared with her that had been so completely separate from me, and I know it was the same for Jenny. It wasn’t so much that she worked at actively distancing herself from us but was intent on finding a way to define herself, which was something she had to do on her own.
8. She had a highly competitive streak. Maybe being the youngest in the family and participating in the sibling rivalry that came with that started it out, but it was always there in some form. She took the wins and losses of the teams she followed very personally. She mixed it up with our older cousins her whole life, trying to keep up with them through so many games and sports when she was little and often putting them (us) in their places when she grew up. She had side bets each year in my aunt’s football pool, leading to opportunities for good-natured knife twisting when things went her way. She played twelve years of soccer at a level of intensity that would have guaranteed the need for knee replacements if she had lived long enough, and stayed involved in the sport with some coaching long after her playing days were over.
9. She was a committed friend. When she took someone into her life, she went out of her way to make sure they realized how important they were to her. She looked for opportunities to help them or ways to include them in whatever she was doing. She was the kind of friend who would just agree to help carry boxes for someone when they were moving, but she’d volunteer to drive the truck as well.
10. She died well. Spending her last year living through her illness and facing her unavoidable death could have turned her inward and bitter, but instead it self-actualized her. She put up with more general discomfort and acute pain than any of us could ever really understand, but still managed to maintain a version of her humor throughout. Sometimes it wasn’t much more than a mask to conceal her anger and fear, but she held onto because not doing so would have been out of her nature. Knowing she was going to die allowed her to put aside the insecurities and pretense which define so many of us and instead become the best version of herself, with an awareness of everyone around her and an intent on molding a perception that would endure after she was gone.
Toward the end of Because of Winn-Dixie Opal believes her beloved dog has run off during a thunderstorm, so she makes her own mental list of ten things people should know about him. In doing so she realizes that such a list “couldn’t even begin to show somebody the real Winn-Dixie, just like a list of ten things couldn’t ever get me to know my mama.” But right before this, she tells the readers her reason for memorizing the list: “...so if I didn’t find him, I would still have some part of him to hold on to.”
Sometimes the list has to be enough because it’s all we get. Luckily though, my list doesn’t have only ten things, but ten times ten times ten things. I don’t need a box of photographs or residual pain to remind me of her, because I have that to hold on to. And as long as I do, I know I’ll be able to honor her dying wish and stay true to the words I wrote ten years ago in closing her eulogy:
My little sister is no longer here, and this has happened much sooner than it should have. But I don’t think it would be right for me to spend the rest of my time thinking about the things she was never given the chance to do or become, so I will try my best not to do that. That isn’t what she would want. Instead I’ll remember Erin for who she was, and why she was so important to the lives of so many people.
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