About Me

For a nonsensically random list of things about me, see below. For a more professional bio and excerpts from some of my short stories, see here.

1. I’m a fiction writer. I used to write semi-autobiographical things and call them fiction, but now I write fictional things and have come to realize they’re autobiographical. It seems to make sense.

2. My name is Nova. That’s my actual name, on my birth certificate. My mother found the name in the New Age Baby Name Book. It’s supposed to mean “chases butterflies” in Hopi, although I do like the galactic references myself.

3. However, if I could have picked a new name, it would have been something simpler, a name obviously belonging to a human being, and a female at that. I used to covet the name Jen.

4. I live in New York City. But I keep saying I might move to LA.

5. But I can’t drive.

6. So I have no clear plans to move to LA.

7. I wrote a novel in graduate school that was 500 pages long and now lives in a box at the very top of my closet, or under the couch (full disclosure: I can’t exactly recall where the most recent draft is).

8. I highly doubt that I will go back to that novel. It might just live in the box forever. And that’s okay: it was enough to have written it.

9. Instead, I’ve torn pieces out of the novel and turned them into short stories. The short stories have echoes from the novel, with similar places or characters or events, but then they change until the places and characters and events are almost unrecognizable. If a person were reading a borrowed chapter of the novel next to one of the stories they might not know they’d once been the same thing.

10. Except for a sentence here and there: I couldn’t let go of everything.

11. Most of my stories take place in upstate New York, in the mountains. They are, slowly but surely, becoming a collection. I know it’s the most impractical thing to be writing a short story collection, but—when I’m in the midst of writing them—I just don’t care.

12. The mountains of upstate New York are where I’m from more than anywhere else. Funny, because I haven’t lived there for over a decade.

13. So why do I still think of them?

14. I hated living up there. You could be snowed in. You could want chocolate and be unable to get it because all the stores had closed at 6:00. At 6:00!! You could be trapped (and not having a driver’s license left me trapped often). You could look out the window and all you’d see would be trees.

15. But I tend to change my mind about things, so maybe I’ll decide I love the mountains and I like trees and I’ll sell all my stuff and vanish up there in a cabin by a lake where I can feed the bears. Or whatever.

16. One thing I changed my mind about was marriage, and in February of 2006 I was married to my longtime love E, who is not from the mountains, but who could probably be convinced to move up there if we didn’t make it to LA first.

17. (LA because E is a filmmaker. Anti-marriage because I didn’t want to be owned.)

18. I think the most incredible thing a person could be is a filmmaker.

19. Still, I’m a writer and I can’t imagine being anything else. I’ve wanted to be a writer since the fifth grade.

20. I don’t remember what I was writing in the fifth grade, but I’m sure it was awful.

21. I wrote awful poetry in high school, that’s for sure.

22. I do not write poetry now.

23. My younger sister is a talented poet. Sometimes we write about similar things, from opposite sides of the universe. We had very different experiences, growing up.

24. I saw her being born, at home, when I was nine years old. I remember it vividly.

25. I do not want to have children.

26. I am unsure if that is somehow connected.

27. Today, my day job is with a children’s book publisher. I think it is entirely possible to not want children and still appreciate children’s books. I was a child once, after all.

28. And I was the kind of child who devoured books, who carried stacks as tall as I was home from the library, who hated dinnertime because I had to put the book aside and talk to real-live people in a real-live room.

29. I had a happy childhood, at times.

30. Adolescence does not count.

31. There are whole years of my life I wish could be blacked out from memory. Writing fiction—and recreating those years—helps black them out.

32. Sometimes I am not clear what really happened or what happened only on the page. Sometimes what is on the page feels more real than reality. I find that comforting.

33. My second novel was written about people who are nothing like me.

34. Then they turned out to be like me in surprising, shocking ways.

35. My childhood imaginary friends make cameo appearances in that novel.

36. That novel is unpublished. I don’t expect it to ever be published.

37. I’m not being negative.

38. Just honest.

39. And, no, I do not have a literary agent. Please do not ask me that question.

40. I quit a job to write that novel.

41. The job was a mistake. After seven months sending faxes (again and again because the fax was often broken) and making photocopies (I was once a master collator) and having books thrown at my head (a funny story actually), I realized I didn’t want to be there anymore. I was torn up about it, and scared. But E helped me through it. I finally gave two weeks notice.

42. I think the days spent photocopying and faxing sound more pathetic when you realize I had a master’s degree.

43. (Further proof that an MFA means little to people who aren’t writers.)

44. I wasn’t thinking clearly. If I still worked there, I might be happy.

45. But all I could think then was that I could have time to write this book.

46. Quitting a job after less than a year does not look too good on your résumé.

47. But I did it, and I dove in to writing the new novel, writing eight or more hours a day.

48. No books were thrown at my head.

49. I was definitely happy.

50. E supported me while I took two months off to write the first draft of the book. I am grateful to him for that.

51. Those days spent writing and not having to work were magical. I remember one moment in which I walked through the rain in Washington Square Park after an especially energetic day finishing a chapter I was proud of, and standing there beneath the umbrella, knowing it would end soon because my student loans were due back and I needed a job, and yet being thankful for the time I did have. Because I thought the book was good. I really and truly did.

52. So I finished the 1st draft, and before it was ready, I sent it out to agents.

53. Mistake.

54. I also got worried about our finances so I took the first job I was offered, in children’s books.

55. The rejections took some time. But when they came in they were positive, and hopeful, and nice, and yet terribly crushing, because who wants a nice pat on the back and then still the big fat no?

56. I knew I had to revise the novel. Except now I had a new full-time job, and no time outside of work to do it. I was stuck.

57. Until a miracle happened and I got in to the MacDowell Colony.

58. So I did the revision there, in the woods of New Hampshire. I felt lucky. I felt inspired. I felt scared of the dark at night, but that didn’t keep me from writing. I didn’t see bears, although I did get caught in a flock of wild turkeys that followed me up to my door, gobbling at me with menace. I spent four weeks revising the novel and came away feeling absolutely thrilled, and truly satisfied, about what I had accomplished.

59. You see, I thought I had finished the book.

60. But the agents I sent to did not agree.

61. And agents take a long time to read, many many months, more months than you would hope for, or could imagine when you’re in the panic of waiting, so many months that a year could be swallowed up and you look back and realize how long it’s been.

62. *sigh*

63. It took a long time to know for sure: the answer was still a nice, but solid, no.

64. Here I am today, and it is still no. The lost job and the sleepless nights in the pitch-dark studio and the wild turkeys and the four weeks apart from E, they didn’t fix it.

65. Yes, I felt hopeless.

66. Yes, I put that novel away—just as the other one was put away—and could not look at it, or speak of it, for a long time.

67. Now enough time has passed for me to think of it without cringing.

68. I’ve decided the novel would become another “drawer” novel. (Or “closet” novel, or “under couch” novel, since I don’t have enough drawers to fit all my socks.)

69. As an experiment, I tore out a piece from that novel and made it into a short story. It was a very minimal operation, like cutting off the tip of a pinky.

70. But the story it became is better than a whole hand. I’m happy with it. It was published in a literary journal I admire.

71. So sometimes it is a good thing to remove the tip of your own pinky, even if it hurts at first.

72. My theory on my two failed novels is this: One was too close to reality; the other was too far from it. I should find a way to meet myself in the middle.

73. And this is what I’m doing now: writing another novel.

74. Trying again.

75. What I’ve learned about myself is that I will never be able to give up.

76. I don’t have it in me.

77. I’ll keep trying forever.

78. In the meantime, there are some things that keep me from writing this novel I desperately want to write.

79. My distractions, including:

80. My day job.

81. My TV addiction.

82. My anxious stupor.

83. And, um, this blog.

84. I’ve also been writing freelance projects for children or young adults in my spare time.

85. Not that I have much “spare” time.

86. I can’t explain really how this happened—seeing as I never intended to write for young readers. I guess I was just there at my previous day job, and they found out I write, and said do you want to write this? And the first thing turned into many more things, and other editors found out I write, and now, I guess three years later, I’ve written or am in the process of writing about 17 books in total, all published under names that aren’t mine. Some of those books were for very young readers, some were about movies, some were novels for young adults—all were on assignment and none were fully imagined by me. I’m working on my fourth work-for-hire novel now*.

87. Writing fiction for money feels unreal to me. I don’t believe it’s happening. Every time I get a contract and it says SIGN HERE, I look around the room shocked, like Me? Really, you mean me?

88. This is why I keep saying yes to the work-for-hire projects, even though I should be focusing instead on my own novel, the one that would be published under my own name if I were ever able to finish it.

89. I’m just in awe that someone would publish me. And actually pay me for it.

90. From writing freelance like this, I learned discipline—from getting up early mornings to write before work, from writing on weekends, from writing through vacations and on holidays.

91. I learned what I am capable of, and it surprised me.

92. While on deadline for a freelance project, I have been able to write 10 pages a day.

93. Doesn’t that sound like I’m incredibly prolific? At that rate, I should have written 50 novels by now and be living off the residuals.

94. (Can writers live off of residuals? Like, for real?)

95. But the longer I distract myself from my real writing, the longer I will be in this limbo.

96. It must be that I’m afraid of getting hurt.

97. Again.

98. And to that I tell myself: Get hurt. Keep trying. Because rejections can be devastating, but they will not kill you.

99. One day, I don’t know when but one day, there will be the acceptance I’m waiting for. On that day I’ll look back on this list and count myself lucky for not ever giving up.

* last update 02.17.08