Th!nk Thoughts

(Photo by Aaron Katen / katenphotos.com)

Jana Waring is used to asking questions, not answering them. For the past six years, she’s been interviewing artists, politicians, and people of interest  (most recently, Orlando superhero Master Legend) for her website, Waringis.com. In between all that elbow-rubbing, she serves on the board of Urban Think Foundation, the group behind juvenile literacy organization, Page 15 as well as indie bookstore-cum-cultural hotspot, Urban ReThink. And did I mention that she launched an independent press in 2009 to help other local authors kick-start their careers? Jana ran Burrow Press until earlier this year, when she handed it over to her creative partner, Ryan Rivas, so she could focus on her own writing. Perfect timing too. Shortly after that, Orlando Weekly readers voted her Orlando’s Best Local Author.

Not too shabby for someone who didn’t even aspire to be a writer until her twenties. That’s when a catastrophic accident during a gymnastics and ski show left Jana paralyzed from the chest down, ending her career as a stunt gymnast and opening the door to an entirely new path. Here, in her own words, she describes where that path has taken her, and where it may lead.

I went back to school [at the University of Central Florida], not knowing what I was going to do next. I’d always liked being around people, so I got my degree in interpersonal communications. Right before I graduated, Kevin Michael, a friend that worked at Wakeboarding magazine, gave me my first interview assignment and asked me if I would be interested in doing more. From the first time I saw my name in print – pretty lucky that it was in a national publication – that was it. Five or six magazines later, I wound up Managing Editor at Wakeboarding.
I’m nosy. Doing interviews gives me a right to be politely nosy. I just really enjoy hearing people’s stories. Everyone has a story to tell, you just have to have the patience to sit back and ask for it.
When I left the magazine to get my master’s degree at Rollins, I pretty much got my ass handed to me. Mind you, I didn’t think I was hot shit or anything, but I was writing for a nationally published magazine for like three years. So I turn in my first paper, and my teacher was like, “This is so terrible, I can’t even grade it.” That was the kick in the ass I needed to get going.
I started the blog on the side, with it in mind that it could become my creative thesis project, which it was. Now, it’s very organic. There’ll be months that I don’t interview at all and then I might do a couple interviews in one week. I always do it because I really want to do it. That’s something I promise to myself.
I’m intimidated all the time. One of the interviews I didn’t realize I was so intimated by was Mayor Dyer’s. When I was sitting in the waiting room to get into his office, I saw all these people waiting to meet with him who were getting turned away. It made me realize what it took for him to spend thirty minutes of his day with me. He has a whole team of people to plan his schedule. I felt really unprepared, and was like, “Oh my god, I cannot waste this man’s time.” Waiting in that lobby made me feel intimidated, but once I got into his office, it was “game on.”
I’m really documenting a period of time. It’s been really cool to go back and read these interviews and get a feel for what was going on in our city at that time. It’s really turned into something much bigger than I thought. Much bigger than me.
People don’t realize that the writer has all that control. You can take a piece of what someone said and piece it together with something else they said, and it’s still legitimately their words. I don’t really tend to do that. I tend to keep it pretty much the way it is.
When we started Burrow Press, our intentions were just to get a couple of books under our belts, get the credibility of the city behind us, start some local events and create a literary community. Not necessarily create a literary community because it was already here, but just identify it and keep it together. I’m happy to say that we reached all those goals and intentions, and super quickly – like in a year and a half.
Ryan Rivas, who was my partner in starting it, eats, lives and breathes Burrow Press. It made me feel good to hand it over to him, and I think he’s the one to take it to the next level.
I’m ready to go back to my own writing. My boyfriend writes screenplays and we’re working on writing a TV show. It’s still super new, and it will probably not go anywhere but our bedroom, but it’s really fun and exciting, and it’s got me all jazzed up about writing again, so I’m just going to have fun with it and see where it goes.
Augusten Burroughs was the first author that I’ve ever read that made me laugh out loud. He made me realize that there was a style for me out there. He talks about really serious issues – being gay, what it’s like as a gay man, his family passing him off to a shrink – all these serious, life-changing moments, but he does it in such a funny way. And that’s always how I imagine my story being told.
I’m still too young to write my story. When you have something catastrophic happen to you, like what happened to me in my twenties, everyone always says, “You need to write your story!” But I think I need a little more life under my belt before I can talk about that seriously, and with some reflection.
I would hate for my story to be one of these big dramatic cry fests. Being in a wheelchair is a part of who I am. It’s who I am. And my life is awesome. I love it. I couldn’t ask for anything more in a lot of different ways. At the same time, if I could walk again today, I would. Let’s be real.
I never really enjoyed being called inspirational just for the fact that I’m living. When people are like “Oh, you’re such an inspiration!” I’m like, no I landed on my head and broke my neck. There’s really nothing inspirational about that. What else am I suppose to do? You deal with it or you don’t. So I never really made sense of any of that.
Besides my own writing career, being involved with Page 15 is one of the best things I have going. It’s so important to reach out to the next generation of kids and help them find the arts, because that’s all being taken away from them in schools.
There’s a lot of really talented and gifted kids out there that may never have a chance to know how talented they really are. Kids can become super jaded by the school system. Page 15 does a Young Writers Camp every year, and kids will come up to me and say, “I’m not a good writer.” And I’ll say, “How do you know that? You’re eight.” And they’ll tell me, “My teacher says I can’t spell.” So I tell them that spelling has nothing to do with the first steps of writing, and the fear of spelling shouldn’t limit their writing capabilities. Once you break through the FCAT mold they have around them, and you give them back the freedom of creativity, they shine.
The arts will always be an option. You can take all the money you want away from it, but they’re never going to die, they’re always going to happen in some form on some level because it’s like a burning fire inside of people, it’s something that they have to express.
Our city has this really raw, authentic, genuine community, a group of people in all different realms working their asses off.  There’s Tod Caviness, who does Speakeasy at Will’s Pub once a month. There’s J. Bradley’s There Will Be Words, which is once a month at Urban Rethink. I believe there’s also another reading/writing group led by Kathryn DiBernardo that meets at Urban Rethink once a month. We’ve been fortunate to host Literary Death Match, which is an international touring event, stop into town earlier this year, and they’re coming back on November 13. One thing I love about the people of Orlando is that most people already know that they’re not going to get paid or recognized for all the work they put into these events. They’re just doing it because they love it. And that’s refreshing.
If you put yourself in a creative environment, you will be creative.