Posts on writing

For those who haven't heard this by some other means, here's the latest news in my personal (and heretofore uneventful) publishing career: my first novel—working title Starting From Here—has been picked up by Marshall Cavendish! It's a contemporary, realistic young adult novel about girls, dogs, trucks, and moving on. I'm very excited. Mark your calendars for Spring 2012!

Jackson Pearce, young adult author and creator of "Imaginary Writing Process" (among other YouTube videos), is at it again. This time she's outdone herself with a hilarious music video—with truly fabulous dancing—about that bane of authors everywhere: writer's block.

As my friend M. put it, if this is what Jackson Pearce does when she's got writer's block, at least she's putting her time to good use!

(Via Abby the Librarian.)

I've never been a big fan of her music, but after reading this interview with Melissa Etheridge at AfterEllen.com, I've got a whole new level of respect for the woman. What she says about being true to yourself, making/selling art, and staying true to yourself while making/selling art is so brilliantly spot-on that I found myself cheering.

There are lots of gems, but this is one quote I particularly liked:

...I really have been on a journey of identity, of self-love, I suppose. Knowing that I'm no good for anybody else unless I'm true to myself, and love myself and truly know that I'm in this reality, I'm in this world to figure things out for myself—not to be something else for somebody else.

Here's another, on the question of whether an artist must be unhappy to be successful:

No. I think they do their best unhappy work when they're unhappy.... I think the hardest job is to mirror and reflect what is inside of them to the universe and we're mirrors of society.... I think your goal is to be happy. To think you have to be unhappy to be a successful artist, that's just suicide.

Check it out.

I was thinking yesterday of how nothing in life is wasted—none of our wandering, none of our pain. It is, as a wise person (though I can't remember who) once told me, "all grist." Or maybe that's just how writers and other artistic sorts (and bloggers!) console themselves with the hard stuff in life. "At least this experience will be good for a story/song/poem/painting or two..."

At bedtime I happened to read this poem, which seemed perfect for that line of thought:
 

Alchemy

I lift my heart as spring lifts up
     A yellow daisy to the rain;
My heart will be a lovely cup
     Altho' it holds but pain.

For I shall learn from flower and leaf
     That color every drop they hold,
To change the lifeless wine of grief
     To living gold.

—Sara Teasdale, 1915
 

At Chasing Ray, Colleen has a fascinating post (and subsequent discussion in the comments) about writing diversity. She invited a number of YA/children's authors of varying cultural groups to share their views on writing the Other. Should it be done? Under what circumstances? It's a long but worthwhile read for the diverse stances and insights—diverse enough that I will not attempt to summarize them here. Check it out for yourself.

This particular comment from Doret of The Happy Nappy Bookseller particularly grabbed me:

It's not enough for an author to put African American or Black in front of the characters name. I need more. And I am sorry I can't tell you what it is, because there is no write by numbers create a Black characters guide because we are not all the same. But still I expect a White writers to make me believe in the Black characters they've created. If I don't I consider those characters Barbie Black. Under all the color of Black Barbie, she still has the facial characteristics of White Barbie.

It's an interesting and fuzzy question, this issue of getting the Other "right." In our society, we are so very fond of boxes in which to put people. On some dimensions, I'm in the privileged box (Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage), in others the oppressed (female, queer). As a WASP reader, I readily admit that I don't know when authors (of whatever ethnic group) get a non-WASP experience "wrong." As a WASP writer, how could I expect not to get it "wrong" myself?

Because I know what Doret means. As a female reader, I have read books by men with female protagonists that just don't feel "right." Sometimes I can articulate the reasons, sometimes I can't. For example, I recently read Magic and Misery, by Peter Mareno, whose narrator is a teen girl. She quickly enters into a sexual relationship with her boyfriend, but there's virtually no discussion of emotional impact. It's just something she does. How can she not be thinking about this? I kept asking myself—really asking, How could any girl not be thinking about this? Meanwhile, I never could articulate what felt "wrong" about the female protagonist of Edward Bloor's Taken, except that she struck me as sounding too much like the male protagonists of Tangerine and London Calling.

Likewise, as a queer reader, I've read queer teen fiction by apparently straight authors that doesn't feel "right." There's one book in particular whose reliance on stereotypes, even jokingly, made me cringe upon reading it: The Bermudez Triangle, by Maureen Johnson. I hesitate to mention it because it was written by a bestselling author, and I think that kind of exposure is so important in normalizing queerness for teen readers. And it wasn't a bad book; it just struck me as inauthentic. It left me wondering, Why are we getting this when we could have more books by authors who have actually lived a queer experience?

(I would like to throw in here that Ellen Wittlinger is one apparently straight author who, for my money, consistently gets it "right." I don't know how she does it, but she's proof that it can be done!)

This is where it gets dicey, however. Unlike ethnicity or cultural heritage, ability differences, or even biological sex (intersex, genderqueer, and transgender persons being potential exceptions), sexual orientation is fluid and frequently invisible. That's why I used the word "apparently" above. I know Maureen Johnson isn't Chinese-American. I know she's not deaf. I'm pretty sure she's not Muslim. But how am I to know that she isn't actually bisexual? Maybe, because she's apparently straight, I'm wrongly projecting my assumption of Otherness onto The Bermudez Triangle and, as a result, sensing inauthenticity.

How do you define authenticity, anyway? It's as nebulous as Doret says in the same comment: "I can't explain was right is, like the always popluar adult industry, I just know it when I see it." Yet we agree that there's no one "white experience" or "black experience" or "female experience." I know darn well my experiences as a queer woman aren't universal, so is it possible that a story and characters I find inauthentic would ring perfectly true to another queer woman? Honestly, I do think it's possible. I am, at the very least, willing to entertain the idea that it is possible.

I have far too many thoughts and questions about this stuff to squash into one humble blog post, but I'd like to conclude with this: both readers and writers need to understand that "writing the Other" is not a balanced, two-way street. We are all immersed in the dominant culture(s) of our time and place. In America right now, that means European-American, Christian, male, straight, able-bodied, affluent... It's far easier for a member of an oppressed group to write a story of privileged characters than vice versa. It's easier for women to write authentic boy characters than men to write authentic girl characters, for non-whites to write white characters than vice versa, for queer authors to write straight characters, and so on, and so forth.

Does that mean I don't think privileged (in whatever way) authors should "write the Other"? No. But I do think that we need to recognize that privilege blinds us. You can't know what you don't know. I believe it's essential that books be vetted by individuals of the oppressed group represented—preferably multiple individuals, whose diverse experiences can help authors identify inauthenticity and stereotyping that privileged readers would not recognize.

ETA, 7/15/09:
On Facebook, someone commented on this post, "I wish you would rethink your use of the 'The Other' to describe people who are not of the dominant culture." Just in case there's any further confusion, I'll clarify: in this post, I'm not using "Other" to describe people of the nondominant culture; I'm using it to describe any Other -- anyone who is of a group one does not belong to. As I try to explain at the end of my post, it's easier to write the Other when the Other *is* the dominant culture, because we're all immersed in it, whereas it's more difficult to write the Other when the Other is an oppressed group whose challenges we have not experienced. But while I'm focusing on the latter (because that's when authors are more likely to get things "wrong"), I'm not saying some people are Other and some aren't. We're all Other to each other on many dimensions.

At Writer's First Aid: A Medicine Chest of Hope, Kristi Holl offers strategies for Writing Through Storms and Writing After Major Losses. The former focuses on strategies for developing a writing routine in spite of everyday stress, the latter on for getting back on track after a trauma, whether personal or professional. (Via Cynsations.)

On the SLJ blog, author Mitali Perkins has a must-read article, "Straight Talk on Race: Challenging the Stereotypes in Kids' Books." Whether you're a librarian, teacher, parent, or simply reader—but especially if you're a writer—do yourself and the rest of the world a favor by checking it out. Whatever your ethnicity or culture, it's always worth examining our personal assumptions about race and those communicated in children's literature.

This week at Through the Tollbooth, the fine writers of Vermont College are blogging about the very difficult task of actually finishing a novel. That's finish writing, not reading (though depending on the book, that's pretty hard, too, sometimes). I haven't seen anything earth-shattering so far, but I enjoy reading different writers' strategies for getting things done. And it's nice to be reminded that, for mere mortals like I, writing a book is freakin' hard.

Over at Crowe's Nest, author Vanessa Joy Ziff has a lengthy but worthwhile article about improving your writing through close attention to sound and syntax. She takes you through passages from published works and explains what works and what doesn't.

I'm a big fan of spare prose. Among my favorite writers, for sheer prose, are Truman Capote, Roald Dahl, Peter Beagle, and Sylvia Plath, because I feel that not a word is wasted. (Though, unfortunately, they're not immune to pretension. I think it was in a preface to one of Capote's books that he likened his own writing to a clear, crisp mountain stream. Come on.)

In my own writing, I have more trouble with big-picture stuff like figuring out what happens next than writing style. None the less, Ziff's article is a good reminder on the importance of pulling poetry out of prose to fully engage the reader.

If, you know, you care about that kind of "literary" thing. If you're writing bestselling potboilers, you can probably skip it and go count your money instead.

At the recent TED conference, Elizabeth Gilbert—author of the international best seller Eat Pray Love—delivered a talk called "A Different Way to Think About Creative Genius." In it, she considers why art (of whatever discipline) is such an emotionally painful pursuit and how we can deal with that.

The talk is nearly twenty minutes long, but I highly recommend spending those twenty minutes to listen, enjoy, and perhaps be inspired. There's no transcript available, but here's a snippet to whet your appetite, on how Western ideas of creativity and genius have changed over time:

[In Ancient Rome] people believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons… They believed that a genius was this sort of magical, divine entity who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist’s studio, kind of like Dobby the House Elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work…

And everyone knew that this was how it functioned, so the ancient artist was protected from certain things like, for example, too much narcissism. If your work was brilliant—couldn’t take all the credit for it. Everyone knew you had this disembodied genius who had helped you. If your work bombed—not entirely your fault. Everyone knew your genius was kind of lame…

And then the Renaissance came, and everything changed.

(Thanks to Joe for cluing me in!)

A few articles I've enjoyed in the past few days...

• You know children's book authors often get dissed by those who haven't cracked a children's book in twenty years? Author Daphne Grab describes the audience response when, at a recent event, a former teacher asked if she planned to “progress” to writing adult books. It's wonderful.
• Little Willow at Bildungsroman asks a number of contemporary YA authors what inspires their writing. Their responses make for a fun and interesting read.
• Cory Doctorow describes his approach to disciplined writing in the "Age of Distraction". As with any writing advice, your own mileage may vary. Composing in a bare-bones text editor would drive me crazy, but I'm with him on disabling all word processing spelling, grammar, etc., tools. Thanks, MS Word, but I'll write in fragments if I please! (Via Megan Amoss)
• Peter at Collecting Children's Books shares the dark and tragic tale of Charles and Mary Lamb, brother and sister children's authors from the 19th century.
  

  In 1796, Mary "worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery by attention to needlework by day and to her mother at night" attacked the family maid, her father, and murdered her mother with a table knife. (Some accounts say it was a fork.)

  Truly gothic. It makes me thankful for my relatively drama-free life.

If I were one to make New Year's resolutions, I'd be a week behind. As it is, I'm one to make any-time-of-year resolutions, with certain restrictions:

• I won't make outcome-based resolutions ("I will lose weight"—a commonly made and almost as commonly broken New Year's resolution), only behavioral ones ("I will bike several times per week").
• I cut myself a lot of slack. ("If I bike five times per week, that's great. But if the weather's bad or my knees flare up, less is okay.")
• Whenever possible, they should be things I can enact immediately. ("The bike's sitting there. I can use it today!")
• I won't make resolutions based on "I shoulds," only "I needs" or "I wants." ("I feel better about myself, mentally and physically, when I exercise! I want to do that more often.")
• I won't make lists of resolutions. If I enact a resolution right away, there's no reason to write it down. And if it's important to me, I won't forget it.

I made a personal resolution, in December of 2005, to write at least one page in my notebook every day—something strictly behavioral and within my control. If I missed a day, I forgave myself but got back on the wagon immediately. I made the resolution not because of any external pressure but rather because I was unhappy with my lack of writing routine and lack of follow-through in my writing projects. I didn't wait for January 1 to arrive; I started right away. A year later, I had a novel manuscript to send out.

In the two years since, I've signed with an agent and finished another novel (not to mention worked on a lot of projects that will probably go nowhere). Finding a publisher, at this point, is largely out of my control. If there's any writing resolution to be made, it's to continue writing one page a day in that notebook of mine. Some days I can do much, much more. But even at my most uninspired, most depressed, and most busy times, I know I can write one notebook page. It's my anchor.

I really enjoyed Carol Grannick's column in this winter's Prairie Wind, "New Year’s Resolutions, Optimistically." She has many great things to say about making positive resolutions and coping with the emotions that accompany life's changes.

I appreciate Carol's talk of "normalizing" one's journey and feelings. This isn't a term I was familiar with, but I very much like the idea and know it's something I would like to work on. I tend to be very hard on myself in a lot of ways, force issues into black-and-white when they're not, and assign positive/negative values to my emotions. Carol says:

Moving forward is always full of obstacles and detours. Greet those obstacles and detours gently, with curiousity for the information they hold.

and:

Feelings are simply clues to your internal movement as a human being. You may have lots of different feelings as you move toward your goals. They are not good or bad. Greet them with interest (literally: “This is interesting. I am feeling ______”) instead of judgment, and they will come and go more easily.

Based on my own criteria, I can't resolve "to feel better about myself" (that's an outcome), but I'm resolving to change the way I approach obstacles and bad feelings. And I'm enacting it immediately. So mote it be.

This is interesting. I am feeling hopeful.