Often, when traveling and speaking about my books, I tell anecdotes from my own life and explore how they relate to the fictions I create or to my journey to become a writer. That’s meant a lot of time rummaging through my teenaged years, holding shards of my past up to the light, and seeing what colors they throw and what shadows they cast.
And one anecdote that always gets a reaction is the story of how I, as a teen, briefly, became a champion skeet shooter.
No one ever expects that as part of my biography, as a left-wing mid-Atlantic gay Jewish children’s book author.
As an aside, I have a new middle grade novel out on 2/13! You should order a copy or ten!
“You should write that story”, they always told me .
“Huh,” I’d always say. “Maybe I will.”
But I didn’t.
In truth, I was afraid to.
Because a funny anecdote about being a closeted gay Jewish teen at the gun club is one thing, but digging deep into my psychological past, into my teenaged memories and delusions, into my complicated relationship with my sexuality, with masculinity, with my parents and my prep school, with mid-1990s homophobia, and most of all, with that gun…well, I didn’t feel ready.
I couldn’t go there.
Aside from the angst of writing about myself and my family so directly, so openly, without the robots, talking yaks, dragons or big historical events I tend to include in my novels for young readers, there was the topic I was reluctant to touch: guns.
How could I write about guns, today, in this America?
The last time I shot a gun was before Columbine, and Sandy Hook, and Parkland, and Pulse. It was before Uvalde, and Allen Texas, and Las Vegas. Before the Tree of Life Synagogue, and the AME Church, and the countless quotidian massacres that political leaders have shrugged off and thoughts-and-prayersed into meaninglessness. Guns have beome the leading cause of death among young people in America. More than car accidents, more than cancer.
Back in the mid 90s, cars and cancer were still in the lead for the ways young people’s bodies got broken. When I went to gun shows, they were…dare I say…fun?
Normal people went to these shows; normal people liked guns as a hobby. An expensive, threatening, and rather toxic hobby, but hardly an entire identity, except among a few weirdos and survivalist types. People liked guns—I liked guns— because they were fun. You pulled the trigger and something exploded. I wasn’t a hunter, but I saw the point of that too. The whole Man vs Nature trope made some sense to me, even if I didn’t engage in it myself.
Now, though, owning guns has become a marker of identity, an in-group signifier, and a fearful one at that, as this harrowing editorial by Christine Emba explores. Gun ownership and access has always been a messed-up part of our culture, but now gun ownership has become a fault line in American life, and the idea of writing a book that would thrust me onto that treacherous line was not very appealing. I’ve already been targeted for writing a non-binary dragon riding middle schooler. I didn’t need trolls on the internet yelling” bUt MaH gUnS mAkE mE a ‘MuRiCaN! dOn’T tReAD oN mE!”
No thank you.
I used to shoot. I don’t anymore. I was FINE to leave it at that.
Then there was a shooting incident outside my 4 year old’s school, fifty yards from her PreK classroom.
She went on lockdown. A week later, there was a lockdown drill to teach the 4 year olds what to do if it happened again. Then a lockdown because of a false alarm. Then another drill. My little kiddo was frightened with every alarm, every endless, silent lockdown with her finger painted stained preK friends and their teachers. The school handled it well and contextualized the drills in ways the young ones could handle, but still…
I might’ve been done with guns a long time ago, but they were not done with me.
So I thought again about when I was a teenager, and about my gun, about my mental health, about being a parent, and the hopes and fears I have. I thought about all the things my parents did for me, about the hopes and fears they had.
And I thought about the current attacks on queer people on the streets, in our schools, and in the Halls of Congress that bring me right back to my teen years in the ‘90s.
The thing is, I loved my gun. I was good with it and it taught me responsibility. It helped me bond with my dad. It healed us, in ways neither of us could articulate having been broken. It was a wonderful thing. It was also nearly a tragic one.
Guns are very good at one thing, and for a frightened teen, that one thing can be terrifying to have close at hand.
That’s the story I hadn’t told before and the story I realized I needed to tell. The story that nearly cost me all my stories that came after.
My story was about much more than winning some skeet shooting tournament while singing songs from Les Mis to myself (which I did!). I had a relationship with my gun that was beautiful and messy and complicated and dangerous. Just like America’s relationship with its guns.
I finally wanted to tell it.
But I still didn’t know how to tell it.
Then I read Kate Beaton’s amazing graphic memoir, DUCKS, and talked to some comics creators and brilliant YA thinkers…and the way to tell my story cracked wide open.
Alexander Chee, author of How To Write an Autobiographical Novel and Edinburgh once said, "As writers, we're always looking for the form that makes a piece of writing possible.”
Sequential art—comics—I realized, was the form I’d been looking for. I was going to write a graphic memoir.
I just had no no idea how to do it.
For the first time in a long time, I was a beginner. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know, and after writing over 30 books, my ignorance thrilled me.
I was ready to begin.
More soon as I take you along for the ride of writing and publishing my first YA Graphic Memoir…
I’m curious what you’ve begun that’s give you the thrill of feeling like a beginner?
New hobby? New career? New school? Let me know in the comments!
I’m always excited to hear about thrilling beginnings, even (and especially) the new starts that scare you a little.
I remember that! I cannot wait to see this thing!
Looking forward to this!