The Origins of Jane Giroux

When I was a kid, back in the 80s, we played silly games. We played mercy and chase and were sure that "bloody Mary" was going to come through our mirror and get us. One of the other things I remember is about names. A way to come up with a stripper name or nickname or some such nonsense... but for some reason, maybe because the name I ended up with was a good one, it stuck. To come up with this "name" you took your mother's middle name (Jane, in my case) as the first name and the name of the first street you grew up on ( which for me, is Giroux, Drive). Hence the name Jane Giroux was born.

As a writer, names carry a lot of weight and a lot of meaning for me. My father named me. He said he wanted a name that couldn't be shortened changed or rearranged. And I will say my two-syllable name suits me.  There were times in my life, though, that I wanted a different name. I remember fondly how I swore the year I was 8 or 9 that one day I would change my name to something beautiful ...like Jennifer. For all the imagination I had, it didn't come through in names. This held through even as I became a more and more avid reader and even a writer. In grad school I wrote my first novel, with a heroine named Joanna Clark.

I've often wondered why, for all my creativity, for my ability to create people and their lives out of thin air, I can not,  for the life of me, come up with something other than common, basic, essentially boring American names for my characters. Its irritating really, since I don't have much control over it. I know, I know. I'm the writer. But I don't. I'm not that type of writer. I'm not the kind of writer that plays God. I'm not the type of writer that see some event on the news and am like, "Now, THAT's a great idea for a story!" No. Nope, not me. I am not so "lucky" as to be an idea writer. I am a writer who is haunted by characters.

Ok, before you start thinking that I'm totally off my rocker (I'm not, I promise. I have a Psych minor to prove it) let me explain. I am a voice driven writer, meaning a character must speak to me and I must get a sense of their voice and who they are before I can write a word. My characters speak through. I don't take credit in the creation of my work really, because all I am really doing is typing what "they" are telling me. I'm a conduit for these characters to speak through. I'm a medium of sorts. And let me just say this is very rare, even among writers, most writers I've come across are "idea writers, " which makes me odd. Even to them. To be the weird one of the weird folks, is quite an accomplishment.

I would have hidden this fact for the rest of my life had I not had the good fortune and blessing to take a class with Robert Olen Butler my last year at Florida State University. Bob is an amazing writer, not just because he's won the Pulitzer Prize ( he won for a collection of short stories, which is almost unheard of) but because Bob is open about and even constantly talks about his process of  "channeling people." That one class with Bob gave me more than access to one of the best writers of our times, or the best feed back about my writing I've ever had, it gave me confidence in my process. Had I not had that class with Bob, I know that when I went into my MFA program, which was fiercely competitive, filled with people more than 10-years older than me, who were writing for praise from the professors and recognition from their peers, I would have baulked. I would have caved under their pressure to totally change my characters or my story; I might have listened as they rewrote my story by "jury" in a group discussion of one of my pieces where I was not allowed to comment or protest.

More than anything else, Bob taught me to stand my ground. I have carried that lesson with me through grad school and out into the business world. But most importantly, when someone is after me to change or be someone else, just like with my characters, I think, "She wouldn't do that. That's not who Jane is."  And I smile and stand my ground.