Something unusual happened in Alabama Friday afternoon. A woman committed mass murder.
That's the opening of a piece I wrote late last night for The Daily Beast. It's their lead story right now.
I am really tired now, because I spent a good chunk of the night writing it. I heard about it at the 24 Hour Fitness around 7:30 p.m., whenKari Rene Hall, a photojournalist with the Orange County Register called my iPhone in the middle of my seated reverse-grip military presses on the smith machine. (I use the phone as an iPod while I work out.)
Kari is a colleague from The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, so I figured her team would write em pathetically, and I was eager to help.
She wanted to know if a woman had ever perpetrated a school shooting before. Yes, I said, but rarely.
I called my wonderful volunteer researcher in Kentucky to find the long list we'd compiled and email it to my phone. The reporter said the woman had killed only faculty, which immediately made me guess it might actually be more of a workplace shooting. Maybe, maybe not. Was she a grad student, I asked. The reporter didn't know. She turned out to be a professor herself.
I was intrigued. Lots of interesting aspects to this case. Lots of ways to address all the myths most of us have about the "profile" of the typical shooter. (Which is nearly all complete nonsense: except that they are nearly always male, which is nearly always true, but not this time.)
I kept lifting, and thinking. Between sets, I'd scramble over to the front desk, reach over the counter to where I know they store the stack of pink message pads which have blank backsides, grabbed one of those and a pen and scribbled down thoughts.
They tend to look surprised when I rush up and do that, but they are also kind of used to me. They start to say, "Can I help y. . ." and then they appear to think, Oh, their wierd guy who frantically needs to scribble things again.
I do my bestcomposing on walks, bike rides and lat pulldown machines.
My gym pants had no pockets, so I fold them twice the long way and then tuck them into my waistband, half inside, half out, with my shirt hanging down to cover them, except when I stretch. Then it might look odd, I'm not sure.
I got home with a stack, and a lot of data to go digging for. It was after 10 on the east coast, so I emailed a couple editors I've worked for. One was still up and wanted it.
A bit past midnight I had the piece, sent it off tried to go to sleep and thought about all the stuff I left out. I sent an update, got five hours of sleep, and by the time I got up for my nightly pee-break, there was an edit waiting for me, with questions.
It took and hour and a half to satisfy myself with the rewrites, and then my body didn't want to go back to sleep.
So the story is up, and I'm happy with it, but I would really appreciate it if my body would turn itself off for awhile. Not going to happen. My brain does not believe in naps. It's hard enough to make it shut up at night.
I hope you like the piece.
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Comments
Willie, I address the tenure in the piece. Be careful to assume too much about that (see the piece for why).
I was thinking of the exception while reading it...I remember Brenda Spencer in San Diego very well -- and of course her reason for killing her school mates was immortalized in the Boomtown Rats song, "I Don't Like Mondays."
Having worked in HR for many years, I tend to see these as workplace shootings, not school shootings, too. It was always our greatest fear to have an employee come after us in the HR dept due to something like this, especially as we went thru many rounds of layoffs. And then there were always those odd employees who got fired for cause who really scared you.
This is getting stranger:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/professor_accus.html
I would not jump to conclusions, but man.
She has a look in her eyes that is very unsettling.
Alleged Ala. killer was suspect in attempted bombing of Harvard professor
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/ala_slay_suspec.html?s_campaign=8315
i'm glad the bits on my process were interesting to some people. i wasn't sure what i was even going to write when i sat down here, and that just spilled out.
in terms of the writing life, the web is an interesting place for a freelancer these days. it's almost impossible to make a living that way anymore, and the web has destroyed a staggering number of writing/journo jobs, so that it's almost impossible to make it as a freelance writer on any platform now. but . . .
the upside is that there are a lot of different kinds of sites, that look for things of different length. i only had about 600-800 words of material last night, which in the old days would have been too little to contribute anywhere professionally. now it's not.
Just saying she's unique because she's a woman doesn't begin to describe her. The Boston Globe, as usual, glosses over details that don't agree with its world view.
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1232943
Police have become like the media: transcribers instead of researchers.
Okay, the old canard: why are these fools able to so easily obtain firearms?
And WTF is going on? As Moore showed us, there are more guns per capita in Canada yet we far outpace Canadians in these wacko shoot-em-up scenarios, as well as "everyday" type murders (if there is such a thing). So the (a) solution is not just as easy as gun control.
BTW, that 16-year old in 1979 said she shot up the school "because I don't like Mondays".
Maybe we need to look at ourselves as a culture. It's not tv or books or movies. Those are available all over the world. I don't know what it is but there is something in our mindset that, for the most emotionally unstable of us seems to lead to mass carnage.
yikes. There's the motive for why denying her tenure would trigger such incredible violence.
In other words, I think the pathology behind the two kinds of shootings may be very different. The first may be more of a typical criminal mentality, in which the shootings are done for revenge, the second more of a sociopathic mentality, with the shootings done for deeper psychological or delusional reasons.
As shocked as everyone seems whenever there’s a mass shooting I rarely hear anything that suggests any possibility for this unfortunate American recurring theme ever changing.
There are crazy people in every country. No one knows who they are until they strike. Yes, they can even be middle aged women and mothers to children. But we in the US have so many more casualties because guns are available—everywhere. A crazy person without a gun can only do so much with household objects.
Yet no matter what happens, the shock lasts for a day and no one dares speak the obvious truth. No other western country has our rates of gunshot casualties because no other country allows guns to be sold as if they’re toys.
Rated and appreciated
Nice job on the Daily Beast piece, too.
I needed the support right now. I think I just started getting panicky about my paperback release. It kept seeming like forever away--annoyingly long to wait--and then today I heard myself tell someone it comes out in two weeks and my pulse doubled in the next 30 seconds. Haha. I'm more or less serious.
Suddenly I feel like there were a million things I should have done and this puppy is about to launch without me. The other thing is that with the hardcover release, I expected anxiety but this time it didn't occur to me that it would repeat. Dumbass. How hard was that to foresee?
Anyway, I'm nervous as hell suddenly, and I came home and read these and it makes me feel like I have a safety net. Thanks.
Really liked your description of the creative process - you made me feel less like a crazy person for all the weird stuff I do when the moments when fleeting inspiration strikes!