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
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?
I had a similar Q... as the white biological father of four children of color, who lived con mi suegra Colombiana for longer than I spent with my own mother...decades...I kinda feel like I've enjoyed the privilege of gaining a perspective on what my wife/her immigrant mother/my third culture kids have gone through, but how do you honor vs. appropriate if you are writing from a POC perspective as a white dude? Jeanine Cummins got skewered for American Dirt. https://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/ I've seen Junot praised for writing from the female perspective, but with gender more or less accepted on a non-boolean spectrum, that's probably much safer than assuming the fictional role of a person of color. What's okay? What's not okay?
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?
understand paul (if i may) that without reading the entire text im flying without wings here but my instincts would be if youre doing all this flashback work are you perhaps starting in the wrong place and the big even perhaps should be after the first third or in the middle of the text? either way the only way to figure this all out is to actually make the mistake. i often have to go down some ridiculous rabbit hole for months only to discover it was the wrong rabbit hole. and yet the time was not wasted. just having the answer that this one path was the wrong one is valuable no matter how long it took to figure it out. but not everyone feels that way about time...
I have noticed that you frequently quote Samuel R. Delany. What else can you tell us about this writer? Did you think about him when you decided to write science fiction? Have you always been interested in this genre?
Can you talk about structures that work well for short stories? Or any specific advice for writing short stories as opposed to the novel? Or any great craft books that are short story specific? Thank you for your time!
maegan thank you for your question - ill hopefully be posting on short stories and "how i do them" in the future but to your query: there are any number of craft books out but for whatever reason ive always found that reading ten collection of short stories cover to cover is a better instructor than anything. which was what i did when i was first starting out. but i started out in a time with less distraction... so this kind of dive was easier...
Thanks very much, Junot. Funny, I'm reading Samuel R. Delaney's About Writing, and it basically says to do just that--read, read, read, and let the writer part of the mind learn from it. Says this can even help as much as actual writing, which makes me feel a bit better because I've been in a rut lately. When I get in ruts I tend to turn to craft books or read anything about writing as to not feel guilty for not writing while my brain gets over whatever is blocking it. I'll look forward to your future posts and have my nose in short stories in the meantime.
In your experience do you feel starting new projects gets easier as you grow as a writer. I'm starting my second manuscript after the first one got no interest from agents.
Strangely I feel like I have a better sense of what I am doing, but who knows, maybe this manuscript won't work.
I know your sci-fi book had to be trashed but was it any easier to write it than your earlier stuff (which is some of my favorite by a living writer fyi; Drown changed my life)?
I'm writing a book in which I tell a lot of stories from my life. These are "my" stories but of course a lot of other people appear in them, some who are still alive, some of them close to me, others not anymore. For now, in the ms, I'm using people's real names, putting off questions about the ethics of writing about real people. It's not a book of fiction, but I'm fairly upfront that I'm concerned with how events are remembered more than journalistic "fact-based" storytelling. I've been working on this book a long time, and I can never decide whether or not to use real names. Some of the subject matter is pretty intense, dealing with teenage sexuality. It's important to me to be honest, and also compassionate and sympathetic. What are your thoughts about the ethics of telling stories about real people?
Curious about the life of writing and ways to $upport it both in open time and dinero. Aka the life balance. How can non-writerly jobs and the needed paycheck positively inform the life of a scribe??
wyatt, i never had much luck or much courage - i always had to work to support my writing. i have friends who just write and can make that work but ive never been able to. part of the reason i focused on short stories at the start of my career was because the job didnt let me sustain novels the way they let me sustain short stories. now i realize i was trying to write the wrong novels.
I’ve recently launched myself into writing a piece of fantasy (Marlon James really changed what I thought the genre could be) but I’ve struggled to narrow down who my protagonist should be and what the POV should be (recently I’ve stuck to third person the most). The world building has been exhausting. Is there anything you’d advise for how to arrive to what characters would be best to utilize as the main characters and what POV would be best?
brandon thank you for asking again. im going to put this one on the back burner for a bit because when i get to this its going to be like a very long series of pieces. but i wont forget you, i promise. (and if the spirit moves me and i get started earlier... all the better)
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?
matthew, will try to answer your question from another angle in the next post. please forgive any errors and misapprehensions.
I had a similar Q... as the white biological father of four children of color, who lived con mi suegra Colombiana for longer than I spent with my own mother...decades...I kinda feel like I've enjoyed the privilege of gaining a perspective on what my wife/her immigrant mother/my third culture kids have gone through, but how do you honor vs. appropriate if you are writing from a POC perspective as a white dude? Jeanine Cummins got skewered for American Dirt. https://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/ I've seen Junot praised for writing from the female perspective, but with gender more or less accepted on a non-boolean spectrum, that's probably much safer than assuming the fictional role of a person of color. What's okay? What's not okay?
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?
understand paul (if i may) that without reading the entire text im flying without wings here but my instincts would be if youre doing all this flashback work are you perhaps starting in the wrong place and the big even perhaps should be after the first third or in the middle of the text? either way the only way to figure this all out is to actually make the mistake. i often have to go down some ridiculous rabbit hole for months only to discover it was the wrong rabbit hole. and yet the time was not wasted. just having the answer that this one path was the wrong one is valuable no matter how long it took to figure it out. but not everyone feels that way about time...
Thank you Junot. What I already knew but want to avoid; there are no shortcuts. It helps me to think of this as "play" much like picking up a guitar.
Hi Junot,
I have noticed that you frequently quote Samuel R. Delany. What else can you tell us about this writer? Did you think about him when you decided to write science fiction? Have you always been interested in this genre?
Thank you
i tried to answer part of this perceptive question in my post on samuel r. delany. please forgive me if i go on too long.
Thank you for your generous response. It means a lot to me.
Can you talk about structures that work well for short stories? Or any specific advice for writing short stories as opposed to the novel? Or any great craft books that are short story specific? Thank you for your time!
Cool, I’ll check it out.
maegan thank you for your question - ill hopefully be posting on short stories and "how i do them" in the future but to your query: there are any number of craft books out but for whatever reason ive always found that reading ten collection of short stories cover to cover is a better instructor than anything. which was what i did when i was first starting out. but i started out in a time with less distraction... so this kind of dive was easier...
Thanks very much, Junot. Funny, I'm reading Samuel R. Delaney's About Writing, and it basically says to do just that--read, read, read, and let the writer part of the mind learn from it. Says this can even help as much as actual writing, which makes me feel a bit better because I've been in a rut lately. When I get in ruts I tend to turn to craft books or read anything about writing as to not feel guilty for not writing while my brain gets over whatever is blocking it. I'll look forward to your future posts and have my nose in short stories in the meantime.
maegan, started talking about short stories in last post and even a little bit about my (non)history with craft books. hope it helps
Do you get better at drafting projects?
In your experience do you feel starting new projects gets easier as you grow as a writer. I'm starting my second manuscript after the first one got no interest from agents.
Strangely I feel like I have a better sense of what I am doing, but who knows, maybe this manuscript won't work.
I know your sci-fi book had to be trashed but was it any easier to write it than your earlier stuff (which is some of my favorite by a living writer fyi; Drown changed my life)?
honestly for me writing is always a struggle. but certainly my instincts have sharpened with time and practice.
I'm writing a book in which I tell a lot of stories from my life. These are "my" stories but of course a lot of other people appear in them, some who are still alive, some of them close to me, others not anymore. For now, in the ms, I'm using people's real names, putting off questions about the ethics of writing about real people. It's not a book of fiction, but I'm fairly upfront that I'm concerned with how events are remembered more than journalistic "fact-based" storytelling. I've been working on this book a long time, and I can never decide whether or not to use real names. Some of the subject matter is pretty intense, dealing with teenage sexuality. It's important to me to be honest, and also compassionate and sympathetic. What are your thoughts about the ethics of telling stories about real people?
Hey y’all
Curious about the life of writing and ways to $upport it both in open time and dinero. Aka the life balance. How can non-writerly jobs and the needed paycheck positively inform the life of a scribe??
Happy Saturdays !!
wyatt, i never had much luck or much courage - i always had to work to support my writing. i have friends who just write and can make that work but ive never been able to. part of the reason i focused on short stories at the start of my career was because the job didnt let me sustain novels the way they let me sustain short stories. now i realize i was trying to write the wrong novels.
Profesor,
I’ve recently launched myself into writing a piece of fantasy (Marlon James really changed what I thought the genre could be) but I’ve struggled to narrow down who my protagonist should be and what the POV should be (recently I’ve stuck to third person the most). The world building has been exhausting. Is there anything you’d advise for how to arrive to what characters would be best to utilize as the main characters and what POV would be best?
brandon thank you for asking again. im going to put this one on the back burner for a bit because when i get to this its going to be like a very long series of pieces. but i wont forget you, i promise. (and if the spirit moves me and i get started earlier... all the better)
brandon, we begin! it might take a while but hopefully this will help