by Jen Knox
Angst. A hard-hitting,
Midwestern mixture of anxiety and unfocused resentment kicked off my journey
toward Planet Write. I was a high school dropout with unrealistic ideas about
what the world owed me. I’d had a hardscrabble journey to adulthood, and a lot
to say about it, but I had yet to make my way to a writing life.
Angst propelled me. I
knew things needed to change, but the future was blurry. After getting my GED, to
help with job prospects, I applied for financial aid and enrolled at Columbus
State Community College. Next thing I knew, I was back in classes, self-conscious
about being a few years older than most of my contemporaries. The high school I
had spent many days avoiding was known for teaching survival skills, not sentence
structure, so I began in remedial English.
Somewhere along the
line, college began to click for me. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed writing narrative
essays, especially for classes that weren’t English. I loved the credibility of
being a writer who knew a lot about subject X or Y. I spent hours writing
entire essays that weren’t on the syllabus. Taking every sociology and psychology
class I could, I began writing fictional case studies – getting into the minds
of those I wanted to understand. I really kicked off my writing life in those psychology
classes, exploring the research and theories of Erikson, Freud (Anna and
Sigmund), Jung, Maslow, and Pavlov. Mental illness became the mainstay of my
creative writing for many years after.
Those first few years
of college were long. I worked full-time in factories, clubs, restaurants, and
gas stations. I took classes as I was able to pay for books, general fees, and
transportation. I had to time things with the bus line for a few years, which
wasn’t ideal, but I got through, and I wrote most of my essays on the bus or
during breaks at work.
When I was accepted
into Otterbein University, I began to take writing seriously. I met a few
instructors who opened new worlds for me. Dr. Shannon Lakanen urged me to
explore my personal experiences in creative nonfiction, and, before I knew it,
I couldn’t shut up about myself. I studied Joan Didion, Michel de Montaigne,
William Hazlitt, and Phillip Lopate. I learned that when I wrote true stories,
even traumatic stories, they lost their emotional grip on me. Writing allowed
me to reframe reality.
I was lucky enough to
study with Phillip Lopate personally after Otterbein because, at the urging of
a few professors, I applied to a single grad school and, go figure, got in. I
remember getting the acceptance letter and thinking, Shit! I can’t really do this.
Bennington was tough
for me, but I was so grateful to be there that I absorbed everything it had to
offer. I didn’t take a single breath in Vermont for granted. Although I
continued to study creative nonfiction, I realized that the fundamental benefit
of writing transcends genre and form.
Once a graduate left
to find sustainable work (after years of working and school, working alone
feels rather strange), I found time to write but no structure and no audience,
so I wrote what I wanted when I could, and I continued to read everything I
could get ahold of. I also began to share work, mostly in online journals and
small press publications. I had a voice.
I currently direct a
program that connects writers to community settings around San Antonio. The
writers, who are published and stellar instructors, bring their passion and
expertise to young people, adults, the elderly, the incarcerated, and the
homeless in order to show them that their voices matter. So many people do not
understand how valuable their stories are.
I remember my angst
vividly. It was my companion. I had been through quite a bit in my formative
years that made me fear the world; and fear is a place from which we either
make bad decisions loudly or hole up and hide. I hid.
It was writing, in all
its “otherworldliness,” that freed me. I attempt to pay this forward with my
work, both as an educator and a person who connects those who know the value of
writing with those who are yet to discover the power of words. It is my belief
that Planet Write should be about inclusion, and that it will only be made
stronger with the addition of voices that have been silenced due to lack of
access or time. So many people live every day just trying to get by.
Writing, for me, is
necessary, urgent, and sometimes it feels more real than reality itself. I
recently published a book with Rain Mountain Press, After the Gazebo, and I am beginning to shop a new collection of
eco-centered fiction. I am also finishing a very strange novella, To Shake His Hand.
My journey as a writer
has just begun. It is only within the last few years that I’ve truly tapped into
the authentic, creative voice. Writing equips me to deal with the messy stuff
of life, and it has become a bridge to opportunities I could have never
imagined existed. I suppose if I were to summarize what drives my writing life
today in a word, it’d be gratitude.
Lottery Days
by Jen Knox
You told me not to
play with matches that summer, so I palmed a corner-store lighter. The serrated
metal tickled and warmed as it rolled against my thumb. The flame reached for
the tip of your blue Crayon, and globs of wax fell on my thigh. I pressed the
warmth, eager to melt the whole thing, but you knocked the lighter from my
hands. You wanted to color the sky, you said, and I wouldn’t ruin your chance.
(Excerpt from “Lottery Days,” which appears in Literary Orphans)
_________________________________________
Jen Knox directs Gemini Ink's Writers-in-Communities Program in San
Antonio. She is the author of After
the Gazebo (Rain Mountain Press, 2015), and her
short work can be found in The Adirondack Review, Chicago Tribune's Printers
Row, Chicago Quarterly Review, Istanbul Review, Literary Orphans, Room Magazine
and The Saturday Evening Post. Find Jen here: www.jenknox.com
