CORO / OFFICE HOURS!
FRIENDS! Time for another CORO / OFFICE HOURS. If you have any questions regarding building stories or building worlds or the creative life in general, please post below.
As always: I will attempt to answer 1-2 questions per CORO – in an ideal world, at least one of our questions will be related to writing / reading / creating / flourishing as a person of color. (Always good to stay in Bandung State of Mind.)
I will do my beset to be helpful and please forgive me that I can only answer a fraction of questions received and only the ones I feel qualified at the moment to weigh in on. Doesn’t mean your question doesn’t rock; it’s me that doesn’t always rock.
Ta to: please post your questions below before the end of Saturday October 28th (NYC Time) and off we go!
Nota Bene, with apologies: CORO is for pay subscribers only.
I was born to a Puerto Rican father and French Canadian mother, but then prompty adopted and raised in a white family, with a white name, in northern Idaho. I didn't even know the specifics of this heritage until I was in college (outside of being adopted, which they were always honest about).
Part of me wants to explore and connect with these cultures -- maybe dance with them in writing.
But I worry that this would be appropriative. I wasn't raised with these cultures, so I'm inherently an outsider. Even if I am also an outsider to the culture I was raised with (a queer guy who moved to Seattle and very much is no longer Mormon), at least that background is one I understand intimately and can claim some ownership of. If someone criticized me for writing stories that were too harsh on North Idaho Mormons, or delved too intimately into thorny issues very specific to it, I'd feel like, hey, I've earned the right to write about that stuff, even if I did a poor or hacky job! ... If I wanted to write about that, I could avoid this whole question.
Is there a proper way to write about cultures or backgrounds that aren't your own? Are there different rules for ones that are next-door (Puerto Rican, French Canadian), and ones that you have no personal connection to, and you're just fascinated by? Or will that endeavor always inherently be improper?
It feels like sci-fi, fantasy, and historical fiction all give an implied solution to this problem. But I'm not sure what it is, or how I would articulate it. That makes me think there's possibly a good answer that solves these issues, but it's to a different question. Perhaps the construct of the ideal audience solves it -- the correct standards are the ones set by that ideal audience, and change as that construct changes?
The struggle of where to stand. I'm 70 pages into a novel in 3rd person. There's a life altering event for the main character and the story starts shortly after. This has resulted in a lot of flashback and deep past exposition. They are things that i feel are important to show the reader in order to understand the reaction and transformation the character goes through when the big event happens.
I'm struggling between rewriting most of it to start in the past and work it's way to the event (which would then require the story go on throughout at least a few year of the character's life and feels intimidating), or sticking to my starting point and using chapters where something like sessions with a therapist allow me to shift to the past with a consistent rhythm. I'm afraid the wrong decision will take me into a downward spiral. How do you approach these decisions? Is there a smart way to test the waters of each? Do you factor in the effort, time and mental strain it will take to get it wrong?