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Last January I applied for a new teaching job. I’d been teaching middle school in the same small school for fifteen years, and I was ready for a change and a new challenge. After fifteen years in the same small community school where both of my daughters were students, just applying felt like a huge leap. I have always been someone who lacks confidence, who can raise self-doubt to an art form. In parent teacher conferences, teachers would say I “lacked confidence in my own abilities,” words I’ve written myself on the progress reports of countless students, aware of the echo of time and my own hypocrisy. Leaving the small nurturing community that had held me safe for my early adulthood felt terrifying. But I applied for the job and moved ahead with the process.
          And then COVID hit.
          Suddenly I was finishing out the school year from home, trying to learn how to teach online while also overseeing the homeschooling of my 7 and 11-year-old. I was learning new technology for the first time—Zoom, Google Hangouts, Google Classroom, Loom, Padlet. Oh, the sweet innocence of never having been on Zoom before and learning to create breakout rooms! It was a strange and disorienting time.
            The application process for the new job continued. I submitted lesson plans. I had an interview—on Zoom, in my basement, wearing a nice top and jewelry paired with leggings (why not?). I got a job offer. I wondered about the wisdom of accepting it—would there be enough money in the budget? Would I get laid off before I started? Why was I walking away from stability at such an unstable time? Yet a voice inside urged me on, and I decided to take the risk and accept the job. I told my colleagues I wouldn’t be returning in September through phone calls and Zooms, and I mourned the end of one chapter of my life as I got ready to begin another. 
            The summer was spent preparing for my new job and the school year began fully remote. I got used to spending an entire day seated at my desk, staring at the computer screen, trying to connect with students and often feeling as if I was the only one in the room. Slowly, through the tiny squares of Zoom, in breakout rooms and in the chat, I got to know my students. When some students began coming into the building and into the classroom, I got used to teaching online while wearing a mask. Then we transitioned to a hybrid model, where some were in the building while others were at home. I learned to teach in a mask, online and in person, using a laptop, a desktop, a smartboard and a headset. The windows were open, the desks were spaced six feet apart, I had to teach from my desk so as not to get too close to anyone, and we needed to build in extra time to sanitize before and after class. 
            For the teachers out there, nothing I’m describing is surprising.  This is a year where we all feel like first-year teachers and new hires. It’s a year where we all lack confidence in our own abilities, a year where we’ve gotten used to feeling unprepared while realizing that there’s really not much you can do to prepare for a pandemic. It’s a year where flexibility and the willingness to wade into unfamiliar situations is paramount. Yet it also feels as if this year there’s a little more gentleness and forgiveness , an unspoken understanding between us and the students, an acknowledgment that this is HARD and we’re all doing the best we can and some days will work better than others. It’s a year of trying new things, making mistakes, and chugging along. Every day I doubt myself. And every day I dust myself off and come back the next morning. And every teacher I know is doing exactly the same thing.
            When I think about a future without COVID, naturally I also think about teaching without COVID. The freedom of teaching and learning without a mask, of teaching only “in real life” with the students in front of me. The ability to walk around my classroom without worry, to crouch beside a student’s desk to look at a piece of writing, to organize the tables into a circle for a class discussion. It all sounds so gloriously nostalgic and simple with my rose-colored glasses, even while I know that teaching is rarely simple and there were plenty of hard days in the classroom before COVID. Yet my hope is that the lessons from this year—of taking risks despite the fear—the inevitability—of failure, of the flexibility and enormous dose of patience and humility that this year has required, and the importance of being gentle and understanding with each other while we roll up our sleeves and do what needs to be done—my hope is that these will last long after the masks, finally, come off.
             

We’re a little less than a week into our plastic-free month and I find myself waffling between two general states of mind: “Wait, do I really need this? Can I make it myself?” and “Screw this, this is ridiculous!” It turns out living without plastic is a lot more difficult than I realized. While I’m surrounded by plastic all day long, I never really noticed how much of my life comes packaged in it until I tried to do without it. 
 
Once I recruited my family to attempt a plastic-free month, we needed to prepare. I started following zero-waste Instagrammers and Facebook pages where I found inspiring ideas, as well as some really beautiful feeds that gave me the same thrill as I get when flipping through a cooking or design magazine. 
 
Full disclosure: I’m a teacher and on vacation for a few more weeks, so I have the time to dedicate to this kind of a project. But I wondered how sustainable this would be once I went back to work. Day one involved a trip to my local grocery store with equal parts excitement and trepidation. I normally do my weekly grocery shopping at Stop and Shop, however, Cronig’s Market, one of the locally owned stores, has a large bulk section that I was going to need. Luckily many others who shop at Cronig’s are way more advanced in this plastic-free endeavor, so the store is already set up with a weigh station at the front door. I brought my own Pyrex containers and at the deli, they cheerfully filled them up with my sliced turkey and cheese. I also purchased a set of 12-ounce mason jars and several muslin sacks for future use. I’m already in the habit of not using many plastic bags when filling my cart with produce, but I took it to a new level, and my fruits and veggies rolled around free. Yet even in a store that has many environmentally conscious shoppers, I was still shocked by how many items had at least some plastic in them. I spent a ridiculous amount on a small container of farmhouse mayonnaise and organic ketchup because they were the only options packaged in glass rather than plastic. I had to skip some items regularly on my shopping list like sandwich bread, yogurt, hummus, and crackers and instead tried out new brands and purchased ingredients to make some staples myself. While my shopping bill was lower than I expected and close to my typical weekly average, I also left unsure what exactly we were eating that week.
 
Luckily, I enjoy cooking, so part of this adventure was about trying out new recipes and shopping in different stores. Later in the week I bought milk at Morning Glory Farm in returnable glass bottles, something I didn’t even know was an option (though they have a plastic cap). I made my own yogurt (yum, and surprisingly easy), corn tortilla wraps and microwave potato chips (delicious), bread, hummus, and crackers (all good), and toothpaste (yes, toothpaste. Thumbs down from my family, so I broke down a bought a package of Colgate after my daughters begged me.) I used apple cider vinegar in place of conditioner, which worked surprisingly well and didn’t leave me smelling like a Greek salad, as I’d feared. A few lows from this week: battling August traffic in Martha’s Vineyard in order to hit multiple grocery stores, breaking down and buying feta and blue cheese in plastic in plastic, getting the apple cider vinegar in my eyes while conditioning my hair (ouch), using the toothpaste that no one wanted as a facial scrub instead then panicking that my skin would break out because of the peppermint oil. 
 
This project started out as research for a novel, but it’s turned into something else. Everyone in my household is newly aware of all of the plastic in our lives, something I’ve never paid much attention to before. I’m learning about the health risks linked to plastic use, in addition to its impact on the environment. While I’m amazed by some of the people I’ve discovered who manage to fit their monthly or yearly waste into a single jar, I can’t imagine we’ll make it that far. I’ve had to remind myself multiple times that while eliminating plastic is the goal, it’s okay if I can’t do it 100%. Reduction is also a reasonable and worthy goal, better than burning out and scrapping the endeavor altogether. Once the month ends, I think we’ll come away with some long- term changes and new habits—though probably not a new toothpaste.
 
Next up, attempting plastic-free during the busiest week of the summer on Martha’s Vineyard and while having houseguests and hosting dinner parties. 

 
Most writers will tell you that they research. This is obviously true of nonfiction writers, but it’s also true of novelists. For This Bright Beauty, I learned about bipolar disorder and being a twin. For another (unpublished) manuscript, I researched the opioid epidemic.  My current work in progress centers around two women and their families who move to a rural community in Massachusetts. One of the families is living off the grid, in a house without electricity or running water and they’re working to be entirely self-sufficient and zero waste. 

Last year my family started composting for the first time, and I began paying more attention to what went into my trash and recycling bins. I started buying a few items in glass rather than plastic, freezing leftover fruit rather than chucking it, and using paper sandwich bags, parchment or wax paper rather than plastic bags, plastic wrap, and aluminum foil. Last Christmas, as Amazon boxes with their excess of cardboard and plastic packaging were delivered to my door on a daily basis for the month of December, I felt a kind of sick guilt about how much ended up in my trash and recycling, not to mention the feeling that somehow, we’d lost sight of the meaning of the holiday.

All of this is to say that recently I’ve been thinking about my family’s carbon footprint. However, I also live on an island where many goods are either expensive or difficult to find, so I frequently shop online. I’ve become an Amazon Prime addict and impulse buyer, craving the one minute thrill of adding items to my cart and clicking buy before I can question whether I really need the item. Living on an island means I shop infrequently and regularly go to my local consignment store for new clothes. Yet when I go off-island, I become a frenzied maniac, stockpiling food from Trader Joe’s and hitting every TJ Max, Target, and Old Navy in sight, as if I live hundreds of miles from civilization rather than a 45 boat-ride from the mainland. When I get my coffee to go, I try to forgo the plastic straw and lid, but I often forget to bring my own mug. I rarely shop at farms, I don’t buy much organic, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I usually lean toward convenience and cost over what is quality or ethically prepared. I’m no prairie girl. Who am I to write about a family being self-sufficient?

The more I wrote, the more questions I had. How do you host a dinner party without using a single piece of plastic? How much time does it actually take to make from scratch all those items that are suddenly off limits because of the packaging? Can a milk carton be composted? What exactly happens to my recyclables? What steps would we need to take to minimize the amount of daily waste we created? How expensive would it be? How time consuming? I realized that in order to write authentically about my characters’ experience living zero waste, I needed to do some research. And some of that research needed to be more than what I could find in a book or online. Part of it needed to be first hand.

            So, with the (mostly enthusiastic) support of my family, we decided to do our version of a zero-waste month. Unlike my characters, I’m not living without electricity or running water. We’re not using a compostable outhouse. I have no well from which to haul my water and no woodstove to use as an oven. I don’t even have a garden, other than the half-dead basil plant from Stop and Shop whose leaves have grown small and yellow. We’re attempting a very mild version of zero waste. More specifically, we’re attempting a month without (or with minimal) plastic. Difficult? Probably. Impossible? Stay tuned.

My whole life, I have been a reader. Some of my strongest memories revolve around books—reading Roald Dahl’s The BFG the week I had the chicken pox, my sixth-grade obsession with the characters inThe Outsiders, the shocking thrill of reading VC Andrews’ Flowers in the Atticas a teenager. My love of reading continued into college and then adulthood. By now it’s as much a part of my daily routine as brushing my teeth or drinking coffee each morning. 

However, this past year I found myself in a reading glut. For the first time in my life, I was having a hard time finding the same pleasure from books that I’ve always taken for granted. Part of this had to do publishing my own novels. Reading had always been my hobby, but suddenly it was my work as well. I was reading more advance review copies, and while there is a certain thrill in reading a book before it’s been released and then putting your endorsement upon it, it’s also a little like being assigned a book for class—even if I love it, I’d still prefer to choose my own titles. Additionally, I was cramming too many things into the day—a full time job and family life, writing, and now the business side of writing which included promotion and connecting with readers and writers. By the time I had a chance to read, I was impatient and lacking the focus to stay with a book. Instead of lingering over literature, I was skimming, rushed, unwilling to expend the effort required of a heavier novel. Because of this, I gravitated toward women’s fiction and domestic thrillers, a genre I both enjoy and write. Yet I realized that reading too many books in the same niche market led to me growing bored with reading for the first time in my life. 
 
Summer has always been a time when I can spend more time with books, and I entered July with anxiety over my “problem.” How to recapture my love of reading—something that was not only important to my career (as both a writer and teacher) but also vital to my enjoyment of life? 
 
Having recently acquired my first Kindle, I decided I needed to mix up my reading choices. Since it was summer and I had time to read more than twenty minutes a day, I would try a few books that required a little more effort on my part and that were different in style and genre than what I usually gravitate toward. I started with Tangerineby Christine Monahan, a novel that isn’t that far from the genre that I’d been reading recently except it takes place in Tangier during the 1950s and the distant setting is integral to the plot. I read this one while in Edinburgh on vacation with my husband and tore through it in just a few days. Buoyed by my success, I next tackled My Absolute Darlingby Gabriel Tallent, a novel I’d been intrigued by but hadn’t picked up because of its dark subject matter and exquisite prose that, while beautiful, often required a dictionary. This was one of the most devastating and riveting books I’ve read in recent years, one that left my head spinning and made me wish I had a book club to talk about it with later. Then I read Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan, a historical fiction novel set in New York City during World War Two. 
 
At the same time, I’ve been listening to Ann Patchett’s collection of essays, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, read by Patchett herself. I’m new to audio books and have loved listening to this thoughtful and honest meditation on writing, friendship, career, and marriage, as one of my favorite authors reflects upon the course of her life as a writer. The experiment continued and now I’ve moved on to YA titles and books on teaching as I get ready to start the school year. 
 
Turns out, a little variety in my books and more time to devote to them was all I needed. One month and nine books and counting later, I am happily reading again.
 
As I head into the end of August and gear up for September, I hope I don’t slip into my old book malaise, but even if I do, I’m soothed by the thought that all I need to revive my first love is a little variety and patience. 
 
 
My Summer Reading List so far:

Fiction
Tangerine by Christine Monahan
My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez (YA)
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
American Street by Ibi Zoboi

Nonfiction:
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller
Moving Forward with Literature Circles by Jeni Pollack Day, Dixie Lee Spiegel, Janet McLellan, and Valerie B. Brown
 
On my list:
Rebound by Kwame Alexander (YA)
You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld (short stories)
The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon
Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott
Recommendations welcome!
 

Writer Orly Konig and I became friends last year through'17 Scribes, an online group of debut writers. Orly and I also share a fabulous agent and have had a chance to learn the ropes of this crazy publishing business together over the past year and a half. Her first book, The Distance Home released last spring. Her next novel, Carousel Beach, comes out May 8. Read on to learn more about Orly and her books.

1.      Tell us a little about yourself. 
Oh my, you started with the hardest question first. :-) 

I’m an escapee from the corporate world who whole-heartedly embraced the troll-writing life. I work while my son is at school and then fit in additional work around his crazy schedule (we spend a lot of time at climbing gyms). Anyone who follows me on social media knows that I’m a coffee-aholic and am borderline crazy-cat lady. Okay, crazy-animal lady because if it was up to me, I’d have a large property with goats and horses and donkeys and llamas and lots of dogs.

2.      Your first book, The Distance Home, came out last spring. Your next book, Carousel Beach, comes out this May. Prior to your first book, was publishing something you’d been pursuing a long time?

I’m a late bloomer to writing, well, to fiction at least. I never had much of a desire to write fiction and the one creative writing class I took in grad school was not a glowing success (the professor told me that wasn’t my strength and I should stick to journalism). Fast forward many years and a long stretch in corporate communications, and I was bored doing pretty much the same thing over and over. When I mentioned to my husband that I needed a new creative outlet and was considering going back for my PhD, he suggested I take a shot at writing again — fiction, essays, whatever. I did. I loved it. Turns out it was a dormant strength. :-) 

The Distance Home was actually my fourth completed manuscript and the third that I actively queried. Interestingly enough, Carousel Beach was written — and queried — before The Distance Home but never quite hit the mark. I think it was about 7 years from the first manuscript draft to the one that got picked up.


3.      Tell us about your latest book.

Here’s the official blurb for the book: A cryptic letter on her grandmother’s grave and a mysterious inscription on a carousel horse leads artist Maya Brice to Hank Hauser, the ninety-year-old carver of the beloved carousel she has been hired to restore in time for its Fourth of July reopening in her Delaware beach town. Hank suffers from Alzheimer’s, but on his “better” days, Maya is enthralled by the stories of his career. On his “off” days, he mistakes her for her grandmother—his secret first love.
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While stripping chipped layers of paint from the old horse and peeling layers of fragmented memories from the old man, Maya untangles the intertwined secrets of love, heartbreak, and misunderstandings between three generations of strong willed women.

4.      How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?

The biggest change has been learning how to manage my time and creative energy between writing and marketing and shifting between multiple stories. Writing and marketing require such different efforts that it’s sometimes hard to move between them. When I get into writing mode, it’s hard for me to switch gears and even harder to let go of the characters that are fresh and fun.
And with multiple projects on the move, it can get tricky remembering what characters belong to what story. In one of the first interviews I did for The Distance Home, I was asked about one particular character and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember who that was or how they fit in the book because my brain was filing through the cast of characters in my WIP instead.

5.     When you’re stuck, what helps to get the ideas and words flowing?

Walking away and doing something that’s not writing related helps. I crochet a lot when I’m working on a project. There’s something about busy fingers that allows my brain to noodle story ideas. I’ll also get on the treadmill or spin bike and think about the next scene or scenes. And, I’m hopelessly stuck, I futz around with house stuff — write a paragraph, change the laundry load; delete two pages, scrub the toilets.

6.       Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?

I know I shouldn’t, but I do look. Honestly, I cringe at all of them. Obviously it’s easier to read the good ones but even those feel like they belong to someone else. I don’t let the bad ones get to me though. I’m pretty good about shrugging it off. I know my books aren’t for everyone and that’s okay.  

7.        What’s on your tbr pile right now? Have you read anything recently that you loved?

Oh my goodness, what isn’t on my TBR pile right now. I read a lot of ARCs for fellow authors so those take priority but, of course, I still buy a billion books. And since I’m not a speed reader, it takes me time to get through a book. I read mostly at night before going to bed and I’m usually so tired that I fall asleep pretty quickly. I try to make Fridays reading days but that doesn’t always work. 

I’ve read a few fabulous books lately. This Bright Beauty absolutely blew me away, then promptly sent me into a panic of “I’ll never be this good.” :-) I also loved Heather Webb’s The Phantom’s Apprentice. And I recently finished Learning to Stay by Erin Celello.

8.            Anything else you want to tell us about yourself or your writing?

Writing is my therapy. It’s my way of sorting through emotions, fears, frustrations. Through my characters I can say or do things I wouldn’t dream of actually doing. I can give a character a profession or hobby that fascinates me. When I write, I’m in control and that’s not always the case in real life. No wonder then that I get itchy when I’m not writing. :-)

To  connect with Orly, you can find her here:

Website: www.orlykonig.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OrlyKonigAuthor/
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/orlykonig/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/orlykonigauthor/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/OrlyKonig
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OrlyKonig