Thank you to all of my readers, Nicole Cooley, Jodi Brooks, Ruby Brooks, and Miriam Novogrodsky. To my teachers at Lesley University, where I got my MFA in creative writing, Hester Kaplan, Michael Lowenthal, and Laurie Foos, for encouraging me and putting so much into my work.
To Jami Attenberg, for creating #1000wordsofsummer. Jami, I was in a low place when I started your challenge in the summer of 2018. I thought I had no future as a fiction writer. Your challenge lifted me from a bad place and got me to look at my writing differently. Do yourself a favor and follow Jami’s #1000wordsofsummer—it’s inspiring and will turn your writing around and, as Jami says, you will have 14,000 new words after two weeks. What could be bad?
Most of all I would like to thank my children, Jake and Elke. I would be nothing without you. You both have changed me and enlightened me, more than you will ever know.
And to my husband, Andy, my shining star. Thank you for your honesty, for your compassion, for your love, for being absolutely the weirdest person I know, for making me laugh even at the most inappropriate times, and for being the best and most thorough reader any writer could ever ask for. I love you.
Finally, I want to thank the young Hayley. The girl who wrote and wrote and wrote because breathing is writing and she had to write to live. Thank you for not giving up on yourself. Thank you for persisting despite the hundreds upon hundreds of rejections. Thank you for pushing through the anxiety and the fear, the depression and the loneliness. Look at you now, girl. Look at you now.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hayley Krischer is a writer and journalist. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times, where she covers women, teenage girls, celebrities, and cultural trends. Her work has also appeared in Marie Claire, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and more. She lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with her husband, two kids, one dog, and three cats.
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*Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sex Offenses and Offenders (1997).
