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More Important Than Fear, or How to Dance Like No One’s Watching

I am sitting on a plane returning to Boston from Orlando, Florida, where I have just spent the most incredible week at the national convention of the National Federation of the Blind. (Note: I wrote this Wednesday but didn’t get to post until today.) I went to the NFB convention because I was a scholarship finalist, but I went with low expectations—worse than low expectations—negative expectations. And now I’m struggling to find words to describe what a powerful and transformative experience it was for me.

 

Here’s a little background for you. I was born blind. I have aniridia glaucoma, which means I don’t have irises (so my eyes can’t adjust to light and dark and I am extremely sensitive to bright light) and that I have higher than normal pressure in my eyes. I do have some residual vision in my left eye. I can see light and dark, shapes, and colors. I used to have similar vision in my right eye until three years ago, when the pressure skyrocketed, my retina detached, I lost the vision in that eye, and I was in so much pain it had to be removed. Now it’s like there’s a big black hole where my right eye used to be (at least in terms of what I see there). I would be lying if I said it was no big deal to me when I lost the vision in my right eye, but on the whole I’ve always been very comfortable with my blindness. I’ve talked about this before, but I want to reiterate it here. Because I was blind, I had a really hard time socially in middle and high school. Among other things, I could never tell where my friends were sitting in the cafeteria and would always end up eating lunch by myself. I thought, at the time, that this was fine with me, because I could use the time to read and write. It was only when I went to college and met friends who banged on the table and yelled for me to come sit with them across crowded rooms—without me having to ask—that I realized what I’d been missing. Just as it was no big deal to me that I’m a blind person, it was no big deal to my friends, and this was fabulous. I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision to do this, but I began distancing myself from my blindness, losing touch with my blind friends back in New England, throwing myself into any activity that someone even hinted might be difficult for me, and emphatically shooting down anyone who suggested I consider writing about my experiences as a blind person. Through social media, I saw many of my blind friends become enthusiastically involved with national organizations for the blind, such as the National Federation for the Blind or the American Council of the Blind, but I didn’t understand why they would want to do that. Personally, I never posted anything about my blindness myself except to make a joke or to tell funny stories about Mopsy. That wasn’t how I wanted the world to perceive me. And then, as you all know, I went to Italy, where almost everyone saw me as blind and nothing else. It was in Italy where I realized that I wanted to go to law school and become a disabilities rights lawyer. By advocating for my own independence, I showed everyone in Assisi that a blind person could be independent. I changed minds, and at the end of my year in Italy, people were coming out of the woodwork to tell me that they knew a blind person and they were going to tell them everything I’d done. I thought, if I made such a difference just by existing, what could I do if I tried to make a difference? It was also in Italy where I decided that I wanted to see more representations of people with disabilities in fiction, and that if I wanted to see that, why shouldn’t I be the one doing the representing? Who better is there? At the same time, I was, and still am, honestly, uncomfortable with the idea that I will be perceived as a lawyer whose interested in disability rights just because I’m blind or as a writer who includes characters with disabilities because I’m blind.

 

Last March, I applied for a National Federation of the Blind scholarship. I was hesitant to apply, because I’d heard that the NFB was radical, militant even, and most of all that they are against guide dogs. Since my experiences with Mopsy in Italy were the focus of my scholarship essay, I was sure they would reject me. But my parents encouraged me to apply anyway. Law school is expensive, guys, and as my parents put it, money is money. So I applied, and I won. And I spent this past week at the national convention. As I said, I came with negative expectations. I planned to take the money and run for the hills. I planned to spend the convention making snarky tweets about what happens when three thousand blind people swarm through a hotel lobby.

 

I did make some snarky tweets, because let’s be fair, with three thousand blind people, the jokes are rife for the picking. But I very quickly found that I did not want to stand aside and joke around, and I certainly did not want to run for the hills after convention. The people in the NFB are fighting for causes I am passionate about. They recognize that our society has made tremendous progress towards equality for the blind, but they also recognize that there is still so much to be done, and they are continuing to fight for that equality. Sure, there are definitely some things I don’t agree with, but on the whole, it just makes sense, and turns out most of the things I was told before I went to convention about the NFB were exaggerations or downright wrong. NFB is not against guide dogs. The first lady is a guide dog user. NFB does not believe in complete and total independence at all times. They believe it’s important to know how to be independent and to know that you can, as a blind person, navigate the world without assistance, but it really comes down to knowing what’s best for you in your daily life. They aren’t sue-happy. Rather, they are pursuing change through means that are often the only way to force large corporations to take action. And they are not fighting with Google over the self-driving car because they don’t want blind people to be relying on a machine. They want the self-driving car, which has been hailed all around as an innovation for people with disabilities, to have an interface that will be accessible to the blind, and they want to prevent and combat laws that are already being passed requiring a licensed driver to operate a self-driving car—effectively excluding the blind from an opportunity to expand their own independence. Finally, to me, the NFB didn’t seem radical or militant. They seemed energetic and committed to always moving forward without settling for what we have.

 

At convention, I met so many amazing, intelligent people. I was mentored every day by members of the scholarship committee—writers, editors, lawyers alike. I attended meetings where I learned about exemptions in the fair labor act that allow people with disabilities to be paid substantially less than the minimum wage and the battles blind parents must fight for the right to raise their children as well as what the NFB is doing about it. I learned more about my rights as a blind student, and I screamed myself hoarse for Braille literacy, the Accessible Instructional Material in Higher Education Act (Aim High), the Marakesh Treaty to stop the worldwide book famine for the blind, and accessible fitness equipment. I learned how to navigate an unfamiliar area, like the airport or our hotel (which someone described as larger than the city of Pisa, and I’ve been to Pisa and I believe it), by asking for directions but staying independent rather than just by taking a sighted person’s arm and following them without a clue where they’re taking me. (Like I already said, there’s definitely times for sighted guide, but it’s nice to know how to do things without it.) And I took a ballroom dancing class and learned the basic steps for waltz and swing. I’m normally super self-conscious about dancing, because I can’t see what everyone else is doing and I’m afraid I’m doing it wrong. But here, no one could see what anyone was doing, so not only was our teacher—who was also blind—able to effectively describe the steps, but it really was the perfect time to dance like no one was watching.

 

The only thing I didn’t do was sleep and eat.

 

I also took a 1touch class,. 1touch is a self-defense program designed for the blind. I loved it, and I’m really interested in taking a longer, more intense class and maybe becoming an instructor myself, because I think it’s really important for the blind to be able to defend themselves. We might not want to be called vulnerable members of society, but as long as mainstream culture, and particularly predators, see us as vulnerable, we sort of have to face it that we are. In the class I took, we learned some basic ways to move away from someone who has grabbed you. I also now know how to break someone’s arm. I learned that if someone is simply being aggressively helpful (“Let me seize your arm and drag you across this street you clearly shouldn’t be crossing yourself!”), it’s better to twist free, step back, and tell them you’re all right and that they should ask first next time. On the other hand, if someone grabs you with the intention of hurting you, you want to grab them back and not let go because then you know where they are at all times and you’re in control. But all that aside, our instructor said something that really struck me, not just when applied to self-defense, but when applied to my everyday life: “Bravery is when there’s something more important than being afraid.”

 

I spent nine months in Italy absolutely terrified that I was going to be killed by a maniac with a motor vehicle, and since then, I have been unwilling to even stick a toe outside my comfort zone. It’s safe in my comfort zone. But it’s also incredibly freeing and empowering to walk through an airport independently, without sighted assistance, to find your gate and the bathroom and the food court on your own, to know where you are in the world rather than just feeling like a package that’s being delivered to who-knows-where. It was definitely outside my comfort zone—actually almost everything I did this week was outside my comfort zone—but once I did it, I found that my comfort zone grew to accommodate my new skills.

 

During his keynote address at the banquet Tuesday night, NFB president Mark Riccobono actually said that fear can be a good thing. Fear is powerful, he said, because it tells us that what we are doing is valuable. With everything wonderful comes fear. And we must use our fear to discover and push past our own limits.

 

So as I crossed the stage Tuesday night and received my scholarship award, I made a decision. Not a decision to be brave, which I’ve done before. Not a decision to push away my fears. But a decision to embrace them, to make something new of them, to turn them into strength.

 

Maybe I’ve been brainwashed, but I have decided that I want to join the NFB. (And just for the record, I don’t think I’ve been brainwashed, because there are some philosophies and methodologies I definitely disagree with, and that’s all right.) I want to be a part of this dynamic, energetic, strong organization and join their drive and commitment towards true equality for the blind, not only in the United States, but in the world. I want to dance like no one’s watching and not care if they are.

 

But first, I really, really need to get some sleep.

Summer Writing Goals

Since I’ve finished my internship at the Disabilities Rights Center as well as my grand road trip of visiting law schools and the grand tour of the northeast with Stefania and Bruno, I’m taking summer off before law school. With the exception of a trip to Florida for the National Federation of the Blind’s annual national convention this week and the changes to the Braille code I need to learn (more on both those things later), I’m staying home, playing, and writing. After this year, I won’t have another full summer off again for who knows how long. So why not?

 

On the other hand, I don’t do well with no goals or deadlines. I just sort of flop around. In fact, writing-wise at least, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been flopping around a bit for a while. In college, I was part of a writing group that met every week and shared pages from continuing stories. There was pressure—not a ton of pressure because we were pretty laid back about it—but there was pressure to keep writing on the same project and to make progress on that project, because everyone wanted to know how things turned out. It was lots of fun, but it was also great for keeping me focused. And since college, I’ve been finding that I’m missing that focus. I’ve been having a hard time staying focused long enough to actually accomplish anything—or even to feel like I’m accomplishing anything. I feel so scattered, working on so many projects.

 

Here’s the thing. I probably have been making progress on all these projects. It just doesn’t feel like it. And it’s too easy, with so many projects, to avoid any problems I’m having with any of them, because the minute I get stuck, I can switch to something else and not actually address the reason I’m stuck.

 

I think it’s probably okay to be working on multiple projects at once, but I think I would be more productive if I was at different stages in each story—the planning stage in one and the writing stage in another, for example, or writing one and revising another. But when I have three or four things going, and I’m in the beginning of writing all of them, it’s hard to feel like I’m moving forward on any of them, even if I am.

 

Complicating all of this, I’m starting law school in the fall. Everything I’ve heard about the first year of law school is that you have no time to do anything ever. I don’t know how true this is, or how true it will be for me, because I’ve always found time for writing no matter what else I’m doing. But if I’m going to get any writing done in law school, I need to be organized about it. More than that, I need to feel like I’m moving forward, or I won’t be motivated to do anything.

 

So this summer, my goal is to clean up my writing desk—figuratively speaking. Right now, I’m in the middle of four pretty major projects. By the end of the summer, I want to be done with or at a different stage in three of them.

 

The first is a set of seven linked short stories set in my Phoenix Song universe—what I’m calling the world where “Dissonance” is set. I’ve written and revised three of these stories, and I’m partway through a draft of the fourth. By the end of the summer, I want to have a rough draft of all seven.

 

Second is a fan fiction novel I’ve been working on for fun. I’ve never written fan fiction before this. I don’t have anything against fan fiction, I just have so many story ideas of my own that I never had time for it. But I had this great idea and my friends really wanted to read it, and I was sort of blocked on everything I was writing last year, so I thought I’d give it a spin. It’s been a lot of fun, but I still have a ton of my own stories that have been taking a backseat to this, and if I have limited writing time in law school, I want to use it to work on my own original stuff. So by the end of the summer, I want to have completely finished that and gotten it off my plate.

 

Next, I came up with an idea for a sequel to my upper middle grade fantasy novel—the one I’m querying agents about. Actually, if I go ahead with the sequel idea I have, it will be a trilogy. Friends who have been published have advised me that it’s not always a good idea to write a sequel for a book that hasn’t been published, because there’s no guaranteeing that a publisher will want to publish a sequel, and you will have put a whole bunch of work into something that will go nowhere when you could have been working on something else. And again, upcoming limited writing time. My novel could definitely stand on its own, but I have an idea for a sequel that I love. So I started an outline to clarify my idea and make sure it is in fact a viable story—and assuming I get that far, I’ll need to pitch the idea to people with a reasonable amount of coherency. I don’t have any intention of writing the sequel yet, but I want to finish the outline and then outline the third book by the end of the summer.

 

This leaves my memory-wiping academy novel, which I decided earlier this year that I want to expand and split into four books. The first draft, which I finished just before I graduated college, was designed as a test to see if I could write the plot of a young adult trilogy into one book. The answer is yes, I could, but the book was one hundred sixty thousand words—which is way too long if you didn’t know that—and that’s when I glossed over a lot that I wanted to explore deeper. Plus I had a lot of extra plot I left out because I started panicking about the length. And also there were a bunch of plot holes that come from being one of my first drafts. So I started on that around Christmas but didn’t get very far (because of all the other stuff I’ve been working on). This revision will be my project in law school.

 

It’s a lot to get done this summer, but I write fast, and I’m pretty sure I can accomplish most of it. But I better stop talking about it and get writing.

Puppy On a Mission

It is hot. Really hot. But this morning, I still woke up my sidekick by jumping onto her face and licking her ears. Just like I did almost exactly six years ago when we first met. My sidekick says she can’t believe I’m eight years old. I’m still the same crazy bouncy puppy I was when I was two, apparently.

 

That’s right. Today’s my birthday! I’m eight years old today. Wow!

 

And no I don’t feel any different than I did yesterday.

 

All this year, whenever I take over my sidekick’s blog, I’ve been talking about what we’re doing in the present and connecting it back to things that happened to us before she started letting me write for myself. Today, though, I want to talk about what happened to me before I met my sidekick.

 

Eight years ago, I was born at the Seeing Eye. From the beginning, they told me I was a special puppy. I wouldn’t spend my days chasing down tennis balls or cuddling up in my person’s lap. I would be trained to do all sorts of important work, because the person I would get when I was done training couldn’t see. It would be my job to guide my new person anywhere she needed to go.

 

When I was old enough to leave my mother, I went to a family in Pennsylvania. The little girl in that family took care of me and started my training. I learned to sit and stay and lie down and come when I was told. I learned to park (that’s the Seeing Eye dog word for doing my business) outside. I learned to walk nicely on a leash. I got to go all sorts of places—like school and on the boardwalk—so that when I started my real training, I wouldn’t be scared by crowds or loud noises. I don’t really remember this, but when my sidekick trained at the Seeing Eye with me, they gave her a paper that said all this. It also said that I like squeaky toys, that when I’m really happy I’ll pick up my bed and bring it to you with my tail wagging my whole butt, and that when I have a bone everybody should duck because I’m probably going to throw it (this is all still true).

 

Just after I turned one, I went back to the Seeing Eye. At the Seeing Eye, trainers work with a string of dogs for four months and then they spend another month in class training the dogs with their new people. So I trained for four months. I learned to stop at curbs and steps, to go around obstacles like poles and hanging tree branches, and not to let my person cross the street if there’s a car in front of her (that’s called intelligent disobedience). It wasn’t my job to know where I was going. My sidekick would know where we were going. It was my job to get her there safely.

 

Then my trainer went up to New Hampshire to do a juno walk with a girl who was applying for a Seeing Eye dog. A juno walk is when the blind person holds the handle of the harness, and the trainer holds the part of the harness that is usually on the dog, and the trainer measures things like how fast the person walks, how much pull they want on the harness, how tall they are, stuff like that. My trainer came back to Seeing Eye, and she told me she’d found the perfect sidekick for me. I would have to wait for her, though, because she was still in high school, and she had to finish before she could come get me. So I did four more months of training, just to make sure I wouldn’t forget anything. I turned two. And four days later, I met my sidekick.

 

We trained at Seeing Eye together for a month. Then I went home with her, and we’ve been together ever since.

 

That summer, I was guiding my sidekick into the market when we passed a little kid and their mother. Like all small children when they see me, this little kid cried, “Puppy! Mommy, look, puppyyyyyyyy!”

 

When it comes to what parents say to their kids about me, I’ve heard it all. “That puppy is helping her,” is a common one. So is, “That’s a blind puppy,” to which my sidekick always replies “I sure hope not.” But this mother said, “That puppy’s on a mission.”

 

Best response ever.

 

Because I am on a mission. My sidekick and I have been all over the world together, and it has always been my mission to keep her safe and lead her where she needs to go, whether that was getting to class on time and navigating the dining hall at Kenyon or dodging maniacs with motor vehicles in Italy. Three years ago, my mission became more important when my sidekick lost her right eye, but I stepped up to that challenge too. And now we’re off on another adventure: law school! We’re already learning our way around Cambridge and practicing the subway routes. Adventure awaits! But for now, I’m going to play with my new squeaky football. Or maybe eat a bone.

Artium Bark-alaurei

Six years ago, just after I met my sidekick, we went to Kenyon College. We spent four years there, studying mostly English literature, creative writing, and Italian, though there was some astronomy, calculus, anthropology, and even a political science class thrown in there. I participated in class too—my sidekick says I’m quite vocal with my grumbling—but only when I felt the class discussion really needed it. We played in the band—my sidekick on the clarinet, and me leading the dogophone section. We made wonderful friends, and we played Humans versus Zombees and were tributes in the Kenyon Hunger Games—actually, I just watched my sidekick do those things, because she’s crazy, while my other people gave me scratches. My sidekick and her friends also did this thing where they sat around in a circle and told stories and then talked about the stories (I didn’t really get it, but I liked listening to all the stories).

 

Then, after four years at Kenyon, we graduated. That’s what my sidekick called it, anyway. As far as I could tell, they got all of us into a big room, there was a lot of talking and sitting and standing and sitting again, and then we lined up and walked across a stage, and my sidekick and I were each given a piece of paper, and then more sitting and standing, and then we were packing up all our things and getting in the car and my sidekick was crying and I didn’j know what was going on. Also, I had to wear a robe and a stupid flat hat that kept falling in my eyes. The piece of paper was important, because both mine and my sidekick’s are now in frames. I didn’t know what was going on that day, but now I know that I received a degree from Kenyon College. “Artium Bark-alaurei,” my diploma says. My sidekick’s says something different, I guess because she’s my sidekick and she can’t bark.

 

My sidekick told me that we were off on a new adventure, but we would come back to Kenyon. Only, we didn’t. Instead, we went to Italy. Some of my people from Kenyon did come to say hi while we were there—they were studying in England that year—and then more of them came to say hi when we were back in the United States and working at the Disability Rights Center.

 

Then, last weekend, we returned to Kenyon to celebrate with a bunch of our people who were getting their Artium Bark-alaurei. I was so happy to be back and to play with all my friends again. I knew where I was going, and I knew the way to all my sidekick’s favorite places. I was sad that she wouldn’t let me go to my favorite place—the dining hall (she said it would be too crowded, and she was probably right). But we did go to all the ceremonies, and I stood and sat and covered my ears with my paws when the people behind us blasted us with their air horn without warning.

 

It was a great weekend, but I could tell that everyone was having lots of feelings—the same feelings my sidekick and I had when we left Kenyon two years ago. We even felt those feelings again, because with most of our friends off to new places, we weren’t sure when we’d be coming back ourselves. And it was sure something to walk the paths we’d walked for four years and no that in the time since we left, we have become completely different, my sidekick and I. I’ve learned, a little unfortunately, that the outside world is not as safe as Gambier, Ohio, and that not everyone likes me and wants to let me come inside with my sidekick like they’re supposed to. And my sidekick has convinced me that our talents will be put to better use defending the world from villains who don’t understand the rights of people with disabilities. (I was getting bored with Italian literature, honestly. Do you know how weird some of those books are?) Still, I could tell that my sidekick was a little sad, being back at Kenyon. She felt like she’d gone off into the world, and the world had systematically crushed all her dreams, and now she was back here, and nothing she’d wanted then had worked out the way she’d hoped.

 

But that isn’t true. Okay, there was a fair amount of dream crushing that happened, for both of us, but that isn’t why we’re going to law school. We’re going to law school because our dreams changed, and that doesn’t negate the dreams we had or even mean they’re impossible. There are still plenty of adventures to be had. And another reason why we were so moved by the graduation ceremony, we’re about to start the first: Harvard Law School, or as I see it, our training to confront evil villains and save the world. Also, I want a framed juris dog-torate degree from Harvard Law School on my office wall, right next to my Artium Bark-alaurei from Kenyon College.

America From the Italian Point of View Part Three: Farewell

When I last left you on our grand tour of the northeast, we had just returned to New Hampshire from New York City. If you’ve missed any of the posts about our trip, you can catch up here with Part One and Part Two.

 

We returned from New York very late Friday night. Stefania and Bruno only had a few days left in America. Originally, we had plans to take them to Boston and Portsmouth and the Flume—where once you could see the Old Man in the Mountain. But we were all pretty wiped out, so for the next few days, we mostly just relaxed at home. We walked around my neighborhood and downtown Concord. We played badminton and basketball—which resulted in me jamming my pinkie and having to tape my fingers together for the next three days. We pulled off a surprise birthday party for my mother, which was a lot harder than I would have thought but also a ton of fun. And of course, we played a ton of Uno. My younger brother was now home from Juilliard, and he added a new element of fun to our games. Also, he got to learn his Italian numbers and colors as well.

 

We did go out to Portsmouth for lunch one day so they could try fresh lobster, which they loved. And finally, on their last day, we went into Boston early and spent the hours before their flight left showing them my personal favorite city in the northeast. We went to Harvard Law School so they could see where I will be studying and living for the next three years. We went up to the observatory at the Prudential Center, and just like at the Top of the Rock in New York, we could see all of Boston. Finally, we walked around the waterfront and the North End, saw a couple of the monuments along the Freedom Trail, and ate some last cookies from Mike’s Pastries.

 

All in all, I think we gave them a really good trip around the northeastern United States. They saw Washington D.C. and New York and Boston. They also saw quieter places like Concord and Portsmouth New Hampshire and Gettysburg Pennsylvania. They got to try different styles of American food from different regions. And we did our best to keep it leisurely.

 

We learned a lot about each other’s cultures as well. For example, I learned that Italians eat roughly the same number of meals as hobbits. They learned how tipping in restaurants works and that you do not drink maple syrup. To correct this last bit of misinformation, we actually made them waffles one morning and showed them how to use maple syrup appropriately, then sent them home with a jug of New Hampshire maple syrup (us New Hampshirites are very proud of our syrup).

 

But more than the exchange of culture, it was so much fun for me to spend three weeks with Stefania and Bruno again. I feel like I learned more about them, and they learned more about me, than we did in the nine months I spent in Italy. This is probably because I was so much more comfortable at home than I ever was in Italy. It was because of them that I was able to complete my Fulbright, but I was still so scared in Italy that I just acted like a turtle and retreated into my shell to wait it out. But in these three weeks, I really felt like I was myself with them more than I ever was in Italy, and we had so much fun together. Already, they’re planning to come back for my law school graduation in three years, if they can. If I can pluck up the courage, I’d like to go back to Italy—not to visit Italy but to visit them. After all the time we’ve spent together, they have become part of our family.

America from the Italian Point of View Part Two: Washington D.C. and New York

I meant to write this on Saturday, but I jammed my pinkie playing basketball, and it’s a bit difficult to type with your fingers taped together. My fingers are still taped together, but I don’t want to put this off any longer. If you missed the beginning of our grand tour of northeastern America, check out last week’s post here.

 

When I left you last, my Italian host parents, Stefania and Bruno, had arrived, and we’d spent a few days in New Hampshire and then traveled to Pennsylvania to visit my aunt, whom Stefania and Bruno knew because she came with me when I first traveled to Italy at the beginning of my Fulbright year. We also introduced them to Rocket, our rambunctious black lab puppy—not so much a puppy anymore, but still crazy. We spent a rainy day relaxing, playing with the dogs, and playing game after game of Uno. My mom learned all her Italian numbers and colors, and watching Stefania and Bruno’s interactions while playing cards was eerily similar to my own grandparents.

 

The next day, we went to Washington D.C. I haven’t been to D.C. in ten years, and I barely remember it. We walked along the mall, visiting the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Vietnam Memorial, and the new World War II Memorial, which I’d never seen before. Stefania and Bruno were very interested in seeing the World War II Memorial, because they know the history from the Italian front, and they were interested to learn about the war from the American point of view. Thanks to my senior honors thesis, this is something I could discuss at length, even in Italian. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, that for them, the war happened on their soil, to their citazens, in an immediate and terrible way, but in America, the violence of the war didn’t touch civilians in the same way. America was fighting a larger war than Italy as well, because of the European and Pacific fronts, and even though the only attack on American soil was Pearl Harbor, the war was still felt at home in America, with every citizen pitching in to help with the war effort in a way that has not been seen since.

 

On our way back from Washington, we stopped in Gettysburg and had dinner at a really interesting restaurant. It was in the oldest building iin Gettysburg, constructed in 1776. We ate at a table, but other parties were eating in 1800s-style beds, and all the servers were dressed in Civil War style clothing. It was really cool for Stefania and Bruno, who knew about the Civil War and were very interested in it.

 

The next day, we left Pennsylvania and drove north to New York City, where we spent five full days. I’ve been going back and forth to New York all year, visiting law schools and seeing my brother at Juilliard, so I feel like I know the city pretty well. Until I got into Harvard, I thought it was where I would be living for the next three years. But it’s been a long time since I’ve done the touristy things in the city. We started with Time Square and Fifth Avenue and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Then we spent a whole day at the September 11 Memorial Museum. It was incredible, but also very difficult, as it should be. I don’t think anyone can go through that museum with dry eyes, and we didn’t even get through all of it. It was just so much to take in—the faces of all the victims, the recordings of phone messages from people on the planes and in the Towers telling their family they loved them, the pieces of the buildings and the planes and the charred fire trucks. It was incredible not only to see all of this but to share such an intensely American experience with Stefania and Bruno, who of course had heard about the attack on Italian news but never quite appreciated the extent of what that day did to America in the same way we did.

 

After Ground Zero, we walked along the High Line, which used to be the tracks for an elevated train along the Hudson but is now a walking path. Like the bridge over the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, we had expectations that were much different from what the reality actually was. We expected a view of the city, but instead we found ourselves dwarfed, as usual in the city, by skyscrapers on all sides. We could barely even see the Hudson. However, Stefania and Bruno really enjoyed the leisurely stroll and the chance to see all the different plants and flowers planted along the walkway. They were also fascinated byt the way old, historical buildings were right next to brand new skyscrapers all over the city. I wouldn’t have thought this would be anything of note for them, because this is in fact very similar to Italy, where history is literally layered on top of older history, but I think they were so interested because it wasn’t something they expected to find in America.

 

We spent the next day at the Statue of Liberty. We climbed the pedestal, and they were able to get audio tours in Italian, which gave me a break from translating. I told them about my own grandparents, who came to America as children from Italy, stopped at Ellis Island, and saw the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of freedom and opportunity, just like so many other immigrants.

 

Finally, on our last day in New York, we walked leisurely through Central Park and went to the top of Rockefeller Center. This was incredible, because we could see all the places we had visited all week. Stefania and Bruno were just overwhelmed with everything we’d done and seen. They’d never imagined that they would be able to come to America and see New York in person. It’s thanks to them that I could see so much of Italy last year, so I’m glad we were able to give them this chance.

America From the Italian Point of View Part One: First Impressions

Last year, when I was in Italy, my landlady and landlord, Stefania and Bruno, basically adopted me. I ate with them every day, and they took me all around Umbria. Honestly, I couldn’t have completed my Fulbright without them. So when I left last June, my family and I invited them to come to America. And this week, after months of planning, they did.

 

They’ve been here for four full days now. They have recovered from their jetlag, and we’re planning a leisurely tour of the northeast. So far, we’ve had a lot of fun.

 

We picked them up Monday night at the airport. It took over an hour for them to get through customs, while we waited on the outside and tried not to worry too much. Neither Stefania nor Bruno speak any English, and without any English, we knew it would be hard for them to navigate the airport. At the same time, we knew that other Italian travelers or the flight crew from Italy would be able to help them. Finally, they came through customs, and we set off for NH. After a light dinner, we all went to bed. I was glad to find that while my Italian is a little ragged around the edges, it is still very much alive and kicking. I did devote the last several weeks to reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in Italian, which I’m sure helped.

 

On Tuesday, we relaxed and strolled around our neighborhood, but it was a bit rainy, so we didn’t do much. It was a good day to sleep and continue to adjust to American time (Italy is six hours ahead). Things I took for granted before I spent a year in Italy—like ziplock bags, vegetable steamers, and garbage disposals—fascinated them. They were also fascinated by the chipmunk population in our backyard. I guess chipmunks are far less common in Europe, and also apparently chipmunks are cute (I know a lot of people think they’re cute, but having never seen one, I’m not so sure I can get too excited about it, especially when it sounds like they’re candle pin bowling with acorns in our attic at midnight).

 

It continued to rain on Wednesday. I had a clarinet recital, just for them, where I played the concerto I’ve been working on all year. It went really well. Then we all cooked my mom’s famous roast chicken and my up-and-coming smashed potatoes together, and then I taught Stefania and Bruno how to play Uno. Of all the games I have, it seemed the simplest to play in multiple languages. Throughout my very fractured explanation of the rules in Italian, Stefania asked question after question, but Bruno said absolutely nothing, giving me no indication of whether he understood what I was saying. I was pretty nervous about it, pretty sure I completely messed it up, but apparently I did all right, because Bruno creamed us all.

 

On Thursday, we drove from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania. It was a long, long drive, but we took the scenic route, and they enjoyed seeing the American countryside and the architecture. They’re keeping a running list of all the states we’re driving through and visiting. We spent a lot of time going over the geography with them. We stopped in Poughkeepsie New York and crossed the Hudson River on the Walkway over the Hudson. It was a bit cold and windy and still cloudy. Honestly the bridge wasn’t what we expected, given everything we’d heard about it. It was so big that it was really just like being on a road—it didn’t feel like a bridge—and the sides of the bridge were so high it was difficult to see the river over them. But it was a nice way to stretch our legs, and we found a good lunch right on the waterfront. Finally, we had the quintessential American experience: eating McDonald’s for dinner in the car. We’d planned to have dinner upon our arrival in Pennsylvania, but the walk over the Hudson took longer than expected, and we hit a bit of traffic, and we knew we didn’t want to eat dinner at ten o’clock.

 

Today is another day for relaxing. It’s still raining. We really hoped we would have escaped the rain, but at least it’s a little warmer, and the forecast is for better weather. This weekend, we’re going to visit Washington D.C. and Gettysburg. Then we’ll start back up towards New Hampshire, spending a few days in New York along the way. Once back in New Hampshire, we plan to spend a day in Boston, where I’ll show them where I’m going to school next year. We’re also planning to go to Portsmouth for lobster one evening. And based on the hours and hours we’ve spent playing Uno so far today, we’ll be doing lots of that too.

 

So far, I think it has been a great experience for them. I’m certainly having fun, and it’s really just nice to see them again and show them America, after everything they did for me in Italy.

 

The purpose of the Fulbright program is cultural exchange and understanding. I learned so much from Stefania and Bruno about Italian culture, and while I explained a lot of aspects of American culture to them, it’s one thing to have it explained to you and another to see it. We’re barely a third of the way through their trip, but I think already they’ve seen a lot of American culture. Here’s hoping the rest of the trip is as great as these first few days have been.

Decisions, Decisions

Jameyanne and Mopsy standing in front of the Harvard law school library. Jameyanne is wearing a Harvard Law School T-shirt and has her hands in the air.For most of my life, I’ve had people telling me that I should go to law school because I would make an excellent lawyer. My response was always an unequivocal no. Absolutely not. I will never go to law school. It’s the last thing I wanted to do. Ever.

 

But almost a year and a half ago, I attended a dinner held by the Umbria chapter of the International Lions Club, which turned out to be several hours of listening to people complain about how hopeless and impossible it was to get money for their guide dog school and, when dinner was finally served, attempting not to shout at these same people who applauded when I poured myself a glass of water or cut up my chicken independently. By the time I got home, it was past two in the morning, and I had school the next day. But I was so tired and angry and frustrated—not just with what had happened at the dinner but with my whole first month in Italy. And as I tried to fall asleep that night, my thoughts shifted from an angry tirade to a new idea: I could do something about this. And I started considering the unthinkable: law school.

 

As untinkable as it was, I couldn’t let the idea go, and soon it wasn’t unthinkable at all. It was something I wanted to do.

 

And so began a journey whose ending I am just now reaching. First I made everyone swear not to say “I told you so.” Then I started studying for the LSAT with my mother, first on the trains to and from Ancona and Venice in June, then on the plane back to America, then all summer. We read the Princeton Review LSAT book cover to cover twice. Then I practiced with each individual section type, and then I did entire practice tests—using real old tests I bought from the Law School Admission Council. My score steadily improved over the month of September. Finally, in October, I took the LSAT. While I waited for my scores, I created a list of nine schools I wanted to apply to.

 

At the end of October, I received my LSAT scores. They weren’t as high as I wanted—I’d been consistently scoring six to eight points higher on my practice tests. but they were still really good, and I decided, since my LSAT scores were far from the complete picture, that I would apply to all nine of the schools on my list.

 

From November through March, I received acceptance after acceptance. In the end, I was accepted to eight of the nine schools, and many of them offered me significant merit scholarships. In the end, my decision came down to Harvard and Columbia. I’d visited a couple other schools, but they didn’t have the right feel, and I’d eliminated the others because they were either too far from home—I knew I wanted to stay in the northeast—or because they just weren’t in the same league as my top choice schools, and since I’m interested in going into the federal government, I need to go to the best school I can. It’s actually common advice, to just go to the best law school you get into. I knew that both Columbia and Harvard would get me where I wanted to go, so I decided to visit both schools and leave it up to my gut.

 

This month, I attended the admitted students weekends at both schools. There were a lot of things I really liked about Columbia. I liked the neighborhood and the feel of New York City. Everyone was really nice, and it seemed like it had all the opportunities I was looking for. Then I learned that Columbia Law School doesn’t have a dining hall, and in learning that this wasn’t available, I realized how important that was to me. It’s not that I don’t want to have to cook for myself during my first year of law school—though I don’t—it’s that the lack of a dining hall—the lack of any common space—coupled with the fact that all the law students live in apartments off campus, really made the school feel like there was no sense of community. It felt like people went to school and then left and went home to their regular lives. While I was sure I could handle this and still make friends and not starve, it wasn’t the situation I was looking for.

 

So when I went to Harvard, it was with the knowledge that I wasn’t completely in love with Columbia. I felt like I would have to absolutely hate Harvard for me not to choose it, but I didn’t hate Harvard. From the moment I stepped onto the campus, I had that gut feeling that this was it, and that feeling only grew. Everyone I met was incredibly smart and friendly. Harvard has law school only dormitories and apartments, as well as its own dining hall and gym—and the food is fantastic. Everything is so close together. The mock class I attended, the real class I sat in on, and all my interactions with the professors told me I would have every opportunity I want now and some more that I don’t yet know I want. Also, I really liked Cambridge. Like really liked it. And so did Mopsy. The law school is on its own little campus inside the larger university campus, but right outside the gates is Harvard Square, and right around the block is a Mike’s Pastries (I’ve always wanted to live in the North End of Boston because of Mike’s Pastries, so this is just an added bonus).

 

And so I made my choice. I thought it would be a really difficult decision, but in fact, when it came down to it, it was pretty easy. I firmly believe that things work out the way they’re supposed to, and that your gut feeling is really important when making these kinds of decisions.

 

And so a journey I started a year and a half ago has come to its conclusion, or really, I should say it has come to another beginning. I have made my decision, and I have made it official: in the fall, Mopsy and I will be attending Harvard Law School.

What I Learned From a Twitter Pitch Slam

Last week, I participated in #DVpit, the Twitter pitch slam for diverse writers, set up by the literary agent Beth Phelan at The Bent Agency. It was one of the craziest twelve hours of my life—I literally was running the whole day on adrenaline—and it’s taken me more than a week to decompress enough to write about it coherently.

 

For those who don’t know, a Twitter pitch slam is an event where authors pitch their novel in 140 characters or less. Those 140 characters include hashtags for the name of the event (in this case #DVpit) and for the genre and category of the book. I also learned that spaces are part of that character count. Agents and editors keep an eye on the feed all day (this is why the hashtags are important: you want them to be able to find your book). If an agent or editor favorites your tweet, you’re invited to submit your project to them, with the advantage of a leg-up out of the huge pile of submissions already on their desks (the slush pile).

 

I learned all of this in the last month as I frantically attempted to write pitches for the young adult fantasy novel for which I’ve been querying agents for about two months. As can be attested by my New Year’s resolutions for the past several years, I am absolutely terrible at Twitter. Seriously, I’m the worst. But I saw an announcement for #DVpit, and I thought it couldn’t hurt to try—if nothing else it would be a crash course in how to use Twitter—and it actually went way better than I expected.

 

Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that I had a ton of help. Huge thanks to Julie Sadler, Kristen Ciccarelli, Kayla Whaley, Mark O’Brien, and Natasha Razi for their incredible critiques of my pitches, and thanks also to all my writing group friends who cheered me on all last Tuesday. I couldn’t have done it without all your support and help.

 

I believe that it’s easier to talk about how you do something or what you learned from it with examples, rather than in the abstract. So without further ado, here are the three pitches I used throughout the day.

 

  1. 13 yo Jael’s magic gets her a new family, but only if she survives the antimagic rebellion her murdered parents started. #DVPit #YA #F

 

Though a couple writers favorited this pitch, and I’m grateful for the compliment, no agents or editors favorited it. I was honestly surprised, because I’ve heard from a few editors that the bit about Jael’s parents starting the rebellion is the most compelling and unique part of my query letter. On the other hand, this is a 140 character pitch, not a 250 word letter. I’ve crammed a lot in here, and I can see how it could be confusing, and if you’re reading it quickly, how it could come off a little like gibberish. I certainly saw several pitches scrolling through the feed that made zero sense to me but probably made lots of sense to the author. Finally, there’s always the possibility that it just got buried under all the other pitches. I swear, the rate of pitches being tweeted was like one per second, which contributed a lot to how stressed I was about the whole thing.

 

2. 13 yo Jael must face her murdered parents’ past and master her magic to save her new family from the antimagic rebellion. #DVPit #YA #F

 

An editor favorited this pitch. Yay! I think what works here is that it doesn’t try to cram everything in. We know her parents are murdered and something happened in their past that is related to the antimagic rebellion, but we don’t know exactly what, so it’s intriguing. We also know that since she has magic, she’s naturally on the wrong side of the rebellion, or the right side in terms of stopping it, depending on how you look at it. Finally, I more clearly defined the stakes of the novel, why she has to master her magic and untangle her parents’ past.

 

3. 13 yo foster home survivor Jael must learn to use her magic or she’ll be taken away from the family she’s desperate to keep. #DVPit #YA #F

 

Three agents favorited this pitch. Yay! Yay! Yay! And this actually turned out to be my favorite of the pitches I used. It comes at the story from a different angle, a more emotional angle than the first two pitches. It’s not as cluttered with information that could be confusing in such a short format. But it does clearly set up stakes and introduce us to a relatable character.

 

The important aspects of a Twitter pitch come down to as much specificity as possible, without being confusing, and a sense of the stakes of the book. I learned that it’s important to use the character’s name. In my original pitches, I just said “13 yo orphan.” But readers, editors and agents too, relate to people. If I give her a name, she becomes a person. And actually, since I say that her parents have been murdered, I don’t even need to call her an orphan, since it’s implied (you can show and not tell in a Twitter pitch too, apparently).

 

You can repeat pitches, or use multiple pitches that approach the book from different angles. It’s a full-length book, so odds are there are lots of ways to approach the book in an intriguing way. My first two pitches take the same approach, while my third takes a different. I probably could have come up with one or two other approaches to my story, but writing a 140 character pitch for a 90,000 word novel is really hard guys. So I contented myself with the pitches I had and just repeated them all.

 

It’s small, but I feel like it’s important to use as few abreviations and acronyms as possible. It makes the pitch easier to read. The only abbreviation I used is “yo” for “year old,” because “year old” is a lot of characters. Also, though you probably don’t have to include the final period, I am a strong believer in correct grammar and punctuation, even on Twitter, so I did. Finally, since it was a pitch slam specifically for diverse writers, I could have included a hashtag indicating that I’m a writer with a disability, but since I don’t have any disabled characters in this particular book, I decided it would probably just confuse the issue, so I left it out.

 

There was so much advice out there on the internet, and I read a lot of it as I prepared for DVpit. I also had lots of help with my pitches, as I’ve said. I probably did a few things wrong (in fact, I’m almost certain of it, because I’m still awful at Twitter), and after all this, I can say with confidence that I’m not a huge fan of the Twitter pitch as a format for pitching your book. There’s just too much information to cram into too little space. But I got four favorites, four people whom I can submit my book to, and that awesome feeling that my novel appeals to someone. And that was way more than I expected (when I saw how many people were participating, I was positive no one would even find my pitch, let alone like it).

 

I really enjoyed #DVpit. It was great to see so many awesome stories pitched, and it was great to be a part of all that excitement. Getting more diverse voices into fiction is very important to me: We read to discover, and we can’t discover if we’re always reading books written by people with the same point of view. I really hope I get to read some of these books someday soon.

Whose Story Is It Anyway?

Welcome to my final post on writing awesome characters. If you’ve missed any of my earlier posts, I’ve talked about creating strong protagonists, antagonists, and side characters; developing your characters so they become real people to your readers; and finally killing your characters. I want to finish up with characters by discussing point of view. Point of view could be its own series of posts in and of itself (and maybe I’ll get to that later), but here I’d like to talk about it as it relates to your characters.

 

To give a very basic overview, point of view is literally the viewpoint from which you are telling the story. The most common points of view are first person and third person limited. In first person point of view, the story is told directly from the point of view of one of the characters, usually the protagonist. To describe it another way, the point of view character is telling the story as it unfolds around them. First person point of view uses the pronoun “I”: Today I went to the store and bought kumquats. Third person limited, however, is not told directly from the point of view of the character, but instead the story is told about the character, narrating their actions, thoughts, and feelings from the third person. It uses the character’s name or the pronouns “he” or “she”: Today Jameyanne went to the store and bought kumquats. You can also have third person omniscient (where the reader sees the thoughts and feelings of all the characters) and third person objective (the story is told objectively with no thoughts or feelings for anyone). Even rarer types of point of view are second person (Today you went to the store and bought kumquats) and first person plural (Today we went to the store and bought kumquats. All the kumquats.) Complicating matters even more is the idea of the narrator of the story (especially in third person scenarios) having thoughts and feelings of their own unrelated to the characters’ thoughts and feelings. You can also have multiple points of view in a story, and there are myriad ways to do that. In my small child magician novel, for example, I have three points of view: my young magician (in first person), her mother (third person), and her father (third person).

 

But I don’t want to get into the specific nitty gritty details of all these types of points of view. I’m talking about your characters and their stories, because once you have your plot and your characters, you need to decide how you’re going to tell the story. A key part of that is deciding your point of view. Who’s telling this story? And whose story is it anyway?

 

In almost all cases, your protagonist is the answer to both questions. There are other options, certainly, but there’s a good reason why this is the most common approach. If it’s your protagonist’s story, then your protagonist is the character you want the reader to connect with most, and the easiest way to get a reader to fall in love with a character is to give a direct window into the inner workings of that character’s mind.

 

But let’s not just leave it there. What if it’s not just the protagonist’s story? What if it’s many people’s stories? Or what if, as you developed all your important characters, you’ve planned out lots of character arcs, and you want to show them?

 

One option is multiple points of view, but there are dangers to that. I’d say, when there get to be more than four or five point of view characters, the story can feel confused. I felt this way, for example, when I recently read Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Angel for the first time. While I was pretty sure who the protagonist was, I couldn’t be sure it was actually her story because there were so many points of view. This isn’t to say that lots of points of view can’t be done. By the end of Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series, there are at least nine point of view characters running around, and that worked for me, but at the same time, she built up to that, adding a couple point of view characters each book. And while this works for me, it might not work for everyone.

 

Something else to be conscious of if you plan to work with multiple points of view is what the protagonist knows versus what the reader knows. Not only can it get confusing, but when other characters know important information—and the reader knows they know—but the protagonist doesn’t know, it can lead to the reader being frustrated either because the protagonist appears stupid or because the characters aren’t communicating with each other. I find this particularly true when one of the point of view characters is the villain. I get really, really annoyed when the villain goes and reveals his plans, and then I know them, but the protagonist is still angsting about not knowing what the villain is up to. A huge part of this for me comes back to the question of whose story it is. If it’s the protagonist’s story, I want to follow the protagonist along her journey, to make discoveries when she does and to feel what she is feeling, not before. Call it simplistic, but that’s the most enjoyable reading experience for me.

 

Finally, it’s crucial to consider the length of the story you’re telling. With multiple points of view, you’re implying that each POV character has a story of their own to tell, their own path through the plot. However, if you’re writing a 5000 word short story, chances are good that the scope of that story is too narrow to focus on more than one character. If you’re writing a novella or novel, on the other hand, you have more room to explore other characters’ journeys through their perspectives if you so choose.

 

I’m not saying don’t use multiple points of view—I do it myself. But there are things to be careful of when you decide to do it. If you decide not to use multiple points of view, you can still have character arcs for multiple characters. As long as your protagonist doesn’t completely live in a bubble, they’ll notice the people around them changing (they don’t even have to say anything explicitly), and your readers will notice it too. Basically, this boils down to showing the other characters’ journeys externally, as they are observed by your point of view character.

 

Point of view and character overlap in complicated ways. There are so many types of point of view to choose from, with their own advantages, disadvantages, and pitfalls to watch out for. but when I’m deciding what to use, it comes down to the two questions: Whose story is it? And who’s telling the story? And of course, why? (Sorry, that was more than two questions.) These questions are not just about the technical aspects of point of view. They are about digging into your characters and the heart of your story.