All Fired Up

In which I tell you about my recent bite out of the Big Apple.

I’d been planning to visit New York. My sister might’ve been the first to suggest it last summer during our annual family beach vacation, but it’d been on my mind for at least as long as I’d had a book deal. There's a lot to like about New York, and I'd been to Manhattan a few times before, and this time I had professional reasons to do so: I'd get to meet my agent and my editor in person.

My point is that it's entirely possible to voluntarily plan a fun trip and yet not be that excited about it.

To be clear, there was plenty to be excited about: I'd be spending time with my sister, we'd see a couple of Broadway shows, and I would finally get to share a meal with two people who had done so much to bring How to Dance into the world. It's just that all of this would be happening in a city that isn't exactly made for a person with a disability. I've visited New York City five times now, and I have wonderful memories to show for it, but I also have a lot of memories of being conveyed: helped into the back of an Uber or a taxi, or pushed down uneven sidewalks in my wheelchair, or, on one memorable occasion, carried down a flight of steps in my wheelchair so I could witness the greatness that was a show tunes piano bar. I was really looking forward to a lot of my time in the city; I just assumed that I would have to give up a lot of my autonomy in the bargain.

I assumed incorrectly.

I could go into detail about each part of the trip, how my time at the airport went flawlessly, and each of my Uber drivers were very helpful, and my sister is the perfect traveling companion for any sort of adventure. Maybe I will write about all of those things at some point, and gush about all I was able to see and experience. For now, though, I want to say one of the major reasons that my trip to New York was so wonderful was that my sister and I got to decide what my experience would be. If I felt up to walking a few blocks, I could do that, and I could catch a bus or call an Uber if I wanted—I wasn't being conveyed so much as I was blazing my own path. I swear I could feel it, too: I wasn't swept away by the energy of the city so much as I was swept up in it. I was part of something. Moving somewhere. And by the time I was looking out the window of a plane back to Ohio, I was excited about what my path would look like from here on out.

I have my sister to thank for that feeling, for helping me be a part of so many wonderful experiences in the span of five days. I have my agent and my editor to thank, because talking to them reminded me that writing and publishing a book is something to be celebrated, something that can truly change the world. And I have a Broadway show to thank for that feeling, too. We were able to see a Saturday matinee of a Sondheim show called Merrily We Roll Along, and the last song of the show is called “Our Time”, in which Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Medez sing about the potential of the future. My time in New York reminded me that in spite of all the challenges of life with a disability, or even life in general, we have the chance to make our mark—and we only have so much time to work with.

I plan to go back to New York, hopefully soon, but in the meantime, I have to decide what to do with all of my recently invigorated creativity. Fortunately, November starts tomorrow—and November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. I've never tried to write an entire book in a month, but this seems like the perfect month to try—and if nothing else, I think it would do me good to make my way through a first draft without worrying as much about each individual sentence. Belief in yourself is crucially important for a writer, of course, but sometimes I think there's an even more fundamental step involved: giving yourself permission to try, and to see what happens. So I will.

That means I won't be posting regular newsletters here in the month of November (I know, I know—I wasn't following the most regular posting schedule to begin with). If there's news to share about the book, you'll absolutely hear about it here, whether it's November or not. But the bulk of my energy and my writing is going to be focused on getting my next story to the page, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I hope that in these days to come you can believe in your own ability to blaze a path, because I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when you do.