Jack A. Ori Interview Published on: 23, Jun 2020

My childhood was probably a pretty typical middle-class childhood, except for one thing: I was transgender. I didn’t know as a kid that there was a word for what I felt or how to explain it, and I thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t seem to remember that I was a girl.

I am the middle of three kids and my mom’s best friend has three kids around our ages, so when I was little it was like being one of six kids. I wasn’t born quite early enough to be one of those kids who played outside all day and just had to be home before dark, but my younger sister and I did ride our bikes outside, play on the swings in the backyard, and throw a frisbee around in the front yard, and most of my friends also had swing sets in their yards. I also read a LOT and made up imaginative games, either on my own or with my best friend. Some weekends we went upstate to visit family or they came here. (My dad is a twin and very close with his brother.)

There are a few things I miss about childhood even though it was also a very difficult time for me — from fourth grade onward, it was hard for me to make friends because boys didn’t want to be friends with a “girl” and girls thought I was weird and not enough like them to want to be friends with me.

For one thing, I miss the children’s television of that era. My guilty pleasure is watching Mister Rogers on Youtube as well as Bloodhound Gang segments from 3-2-1 Contact (when I can find them), and I sometimes also watch Square One TV. It saddens me that these shows are no longer broadcast. I would LOVE to share them with my nieces and nephew but they aren’t on TV anymore.

I also miss being able to eat junk food with abandon. Not that we ate junk all the time as kids — in fact, my mom was very health conscious — but we did eat ice cream sandwiches, cakes at birthday parties, and candy once in a while (and donuts to signify the end of Passover every year!). I’m pre-diabetic now and have to watch my sugar intake and there are so many things I miss.

I also miss visits with my grandparents, who have all passed away at this point. It is so strange, too, how once my siblings and I were the younger generation and now my parents are in my grandparents’ role and my sister’s kids are almost 10.

I remember teaching myself to read when I was four! I had asked my mom to read me this book called The Giant Jam Sandwich and she was busy making dinner and said she would read to me when she was done. She put on Mister Rogers for me to pass the time and when it was over she STILL wasn’t ready. I picked up the book and started reading it myself.

As for writing, I wanted to be a writer ever since I read the Little House on the Prairie series, which my mom gave me when I was six because I was obsessed with the TV show. I planned to write autobiographical fiction when I grew up like Laura Ingalls Wilder did and every time I got in trouble I would think to myself that I was going to leave this part out when I wrote it. I also was a poet at a young age and wrote rhyming poems on a notepad, which I’m pleased to see that one of my nieces does sometimes now.

When I was a teenager, I was searching for answers that nobody seemed to be able to give me. I was depressed, lonely, and anxious. I didn’t know that some of that had to do with being transgender or with having undiagnosed autism (I am on the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum, what was formerly known as Aspergers’ Syndrome), but in any case there seemed to be no place for me to turn. I did have one teacher who offered to be a shoulder to cry on, but she didn’t know what to do and after a while told me I was leaning on her too much. So I wanted other young people to at least have stories to turn to when they are looking for their own answers.

One of the things that can help is to seek support. That’s one of the main lessons Hannah learns in Reinventing Hannah: throughout the novel she gradually discovers who she can and can’t trust to help her through the aftermath of what’s happened to her. There is also no shame in seeing a counselor or therapist if you aren’t able to deal with things adequately on your own, and it’s important to have one or two close friends you can communicate honestly with about things.

I also think it’s helpful to think about what your higher purpose is — not necessarily in a religious sense, but in the sense of what you want to do with your life and what mark you want to make on the world. Often, people who have been through something difficult find a renewed sense of purpose in helping prevent similar problems, whether that means being a mentor to a younger person, joining a group of people united for a common purpose, or even engaging in political activism to change laws or get people elected who will create serious change.

Finally, it’s important to stay grateful for the good things in your life. It’s also important to be easy on yourself and to know that it’s okay to have bad days or to feel bad sometimes. There’s such an emphasis in our society on “getting over it” and “staying positive,” but neither of these is helpful for people who are dealing with serious issues. Whatever happened is a big deal and it’s okay to feel sad, angry, or scared — rather than trying to force yourself through these feelings, take the time you need to process them.

Hannah is who I would have been if I had not been transgender. In high school, I was very shy and quiet and secretly longed to be part of things and to dare to defy my parents’ expectations for me.

I gave her the friends that I didn’t have, including a love interest that was similar to someone I had a crush on all through high school and didn’t have the guts to pursue at the time.

Mama’s Illness was especially challenging to write because it was from the point of view of a six-year-old. I wanted to make it realistic but also relatable to a young adult/adult audience.

I also challenged myself to write it via the VSS365 prompt game on Twitter. This is a daily prompt that uses the hashtag #VSS365 and a word of the day — the idea is to write a story in one tweet using the chosen word. So I wrote one tiny little bit of Mama’s Illness every day for about three months. It was hard to write so slowly and challenging to fit in the required words. (I took some of them out in editing because they didn’t fit the voice.)

Technically, I’d been researching this for years, though not officially. I have a BA in psychology and at the I wrote it, I had been studying self-help books and learning what techniques worked and didn’t work in my own life for at least 10 years. I now have a Masters both in Mental Health Counseling and in social work, but I was first applying to the MA program at the New School when I wrote this book.

That’s one of the most challenging parts of life coaching. It’s important to have boundaries so that you aren’t spending all day with one client (which isn’t good for either of you) but you also want to be there for them. I provide support via text, email, and social media chat, though in general I am not available after 9 PM. (If it’s an emergency the person should be calling a therapist or other person trained to deal with life-threatening emergencies.)

A life coach is somebody who is on your side and pushing you to go a little further than you think you can go so you can reach your goals. It’s kind of like how athletes need a coach to pump them up, offer direction, and help them win their game, only life coaches help you with your general life goals rather than with athletics.

I think it’s important to have a life coach because we all need support and we all have things we want to do that we think we aren’t capable of. A life coach is that person who encourages you to keep going when you want to quit so you don’t fall just short of your goal.

It’s important to note that life coaching is not therapy. Therapists help people overcome specific mental health issues and are trained to help people through suicidal ideation and to help people who are having difficulty functioning to function better. You CAN work with a life coach in addition to a therapist, but life coaching is not meant for healing from mental illness or trauma.

If you are interested in life coaching, you can contact me on my website! There are also lots of coaching organizations out there, like the International Federation of Coaches or websites like noomii.com that offer directories of life coaches.

I’m kind of weird in that I love editing (most writers I know hate it!) But I get great satisfaction out of molding what I already wrote into the story I want to tell.

I also tend to be a long writer. My first draft of Reinventing Hannah was twice as long as it needed to be. There were a number of scenes I hated to see go that had to be replaced with summary because they weren’t vital and I didn’t have room for them.

Don’t let anyone talk you out of your dreams! People often say that “writers don’t make money” or that you should “focus on something more realistic.” But it’s easier than ever to make money as a writer in the digital world. Writing and marketing novels takes a lot of time and effort, but you can find freelance gigs to support yourself with while you’re working on the bigger goal. Also, if you don’t try, you won’t know how well you might do. So even if you have to write part-time while working at another job, that’s better than never writing a word because you might not make a living at it.

The roughest part of the lockdown is anxiety about getting sick! I find myself constantly monitoring my health to make sure I don’t have symptoms.

I post regularly on social media and network with other writers and readers that way, as well as reading a lot of my fellow authors’ works.

I want to write more books (of course). Reinventing Hannah is set in the fictional Long Island suburb of Cedarwood, and I plan to have a sort of informal series of books set in that town.

I currently have plans for a sequel to Reinventing Hannah as well as another book set in Cedarwood about a thirteen-year-old girl with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder who is struggling to belong in her new school after her father’s death forces the family to move, but those are currently on the back burner while I am writing a prequel set two years earlier, Now or Never, about the older sister of one of my characters who is surprised to find herself attracted to a new girl in her classes, is trying to protect her little brother from the effects of their parents’ constant fighting, and is dealing with her childhood coming to an end as she begins her final year of high school and prepares for whatever comes next.

Reviews are so important. I often leave reviews on other authors’ books, though I try not to leave negative reviews. Those don’t help anybody and there is a lot of negativity in the world as it is.

Love it when people take the time to review my books. It’s exciting to see what they think, especially when my work has impacted them the way I hoped. I have had complete strangers post reviews saying that my books empowered them or helped them in some way and that makes me feel so good, because that’s what I want to do most with my writing.

I think it was March or April. My writer friend Jennifer Gordon (check her books out btw!) told me she had an account and suggested I look into it. I did and was impressed with how much promotional stuff you get for a low price so I signed up right away.