{"id":1320,"date":"2021-03-10T08:16:26","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T13:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=1320"},"modified":"2021-03-10T08:16:26","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T13:16:26","slug":"better-free-say-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/10\/better-free-say-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Free, Say I"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On March 15, 2020, Raina wrote, Thanks for responding to my question, Gail! It really gave me a lot to think about, especially the part about how the difficult topics might be pushing me to write about them. I think that\u2019s a very real possibility for me, but in that case, I\u2019m running into another question\/problem: how do you know\/make sure you\u2019re writing about these difficult problems \u201ccorrectly\u201d? How do you know if you have the skills\/knowledge\/experience\/\u201dright\u201d to write about those problems? And how do you find the courage to write about difficult topics?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without going into too many details, there have definitely been books recently that tried to tackle difficult topics that, due to the way they were written\/presented were\u2026not well received by readers, to say the least. And while opinions about those specific books may vary, as well as the general atmosphere of the publishing\/book world currently, I think it\u2019s pretty evident that sometimes writing something can have serious and far-reaching consequences, and good intentions aren\u2019t enough of an excuse. I think there\u2019s a lot of sides to this issue, and I understand why different people have different stances. Maybe what\u2019s happening is good, maybe it\u2019s not, but that\u2019s an ethical discussion for another time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in this atmosphere, how do you know whether you should be writing what you\u2019re writing? And how do you get over the fear of \u201cgetting it wrong\u201d? And how can you make sure (and get over the fear of) that what you write isn\u2019t misinterpreted by others to mean something you never intended? I know sensitivity readers are becoming more common these days, but even that isn\u2019t failproof, and some issues aren\u2019t directly tied to matters of identity that can be linked to a specific sensitivity reader. I guess what I\u2019m asking is, how do you get out of your comfort zone when you feel like you don\u2019t have a safe place you can fail?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a really thorny topic, I know (sorry for the string of downer questions!) but it\u2019s something I\u2019ve been struggling with for a long time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two of you weighed in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa Mead: I know what you mean. I have an unfinished story that\u2019s sat for decades because I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m doing it justice. It\u2019s about a brilliant student wizard who\u2019s become mentally ill. He\u2019s got the power to reshape reality-but he\u2019s not perceiving reality the way most people are, so he kills somebody thinking he\u2019s helping them, and his magic is sex-linked, so if he could be made to use his power to change his sex, he\u2019d stop hallucinating\u2026I decided it was WAY too much for me to take on.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katie W.: Yes, my current WIP has a similar problem. My dragon MC faces severe prejudice and was abused as a child, but becomes a lovely dragon in spite of it and ends up a queen. And, no matter how I try to squish it, there\u2019s a part of me that\u2019s worried that people will read the story and think I\u2019m writing it from some kind of personal experience, which I am totally not. But since I, possibly the most oblivious reader in the history of books, can see it, I\u2019m worried others will too, even though it was never my intention. Like I said, 99% of me knows I\u2019m probably being paranoid, but the 1% keeps worrying.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa Mead (to Katie W.): Some people probably will think that. I guess the question is: How much would it bother you? Would a random person\u2019s incorrect thoughts hurt anybody? There\u2019s a really lovely essay in Jane Yolen\u2019s book Once Upon A Time (she said) about how once an author puts a story out into the world it becomes each reader\u2019s story, and they may find things in it that the author never intended. Sometimes in wonderful ways, too.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am absolutely with Melissa Mead (and Jane Yolen) about stories belonging to readers once the stories are out with readers. If someone jumps to the wrong conclusion about something we intended, their mistaken leap doesn\u2019t encumber us at all. Someday the writer may be interviewed about her writing and be asked if any of it is autobiographical. Then she can set the record straight forever, or she can say, mysteriously, that she leaves the matter to readers to decide!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raina, my strongest response is that you should write what you want and tell it as well as you can. Period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

End of post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was a joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several years ago I taught an undergraduate course in creative writing at a university. One of my students thought in stereotypes, which revealed themselves in his writing and even when he talked. He was blithely unaware of the offensiveness of some of what he said and wrote, even though other students were offended and said so. It got a little sad when he didn\u2019t understand why he wasn\u2019t well liked. I don\u2019t think he meant ill; he was just so un-self-reflective that he couldn\u2019t assimilate the feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us\u2013the vast majority in general and here on the blog\u2013are unlike him. We know that other people have feelings and perspectives that are different from ours. We don\u2019t want to hurt anyone. I don\u2019t think we should worry much when we write or speak. If we get it wrong, we\u2019ll be corrected and we\u2019ll learn. That\u2019s good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stakes do get higher when we\u2019re writing for publication, but we can show our work to beta readers and ask them to focus on the areas that worry us. If a literary agent is interested in our work, she\u2019ll point out any problem areas. Our editor will too. Mine alerted me to sensitivity around the word invalid<\/em> for a person with a long-lasting illness, because the spelling is the same as for the invalid<\/em> that means not valid and is pronounced differently. I was surprised, but I found another word. And I learned something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing about publishing: Timid writing doesn\u2019t stand up well, in my opinion. If publication is our goal, we should take a stand and write boldly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a confession: I read reader reviews on Goodreads. Not everyone likes my books. For example, some readers (many!) are grossed out by Ogre Enchanted<\/em> (which I\u2019m reading on Facebook at the moment, if you\u2019re interested. Reading my books there is my effort to provide comfort during the pandemic. You can find my page by typing in my name.) Okay. My sense of humor is pretty broad, excepting only meanness and stereotypes, but some people don\u2019t go for it. They have that right. My editor was untroubled, so I felt I had license to be a little outrageous. Readers have a right to dislike any or all of my books, and I have a right not to be too concerned as long as I wrote the best book I could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we don\u2019t experiment, we rob ourselves of some of the greatest values of writing: the opportunity to explore, to find out about ourselves, to discover what we can do, to see what surprising ideas we can come up with. We need freedom for that. We don\u2019t get freedom by self-censoring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course we can research an issue we\u2019re not sure how to address. Say we want our character to go mad, for example, we can research mental illness, which is a very big field, but we can narrow it down. We can read memoirs by people who suffered from the kind of mental illness that interests us. Memoirs will give us an inside look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, people who suffer from depression, for instance, don\u2019t experiences it identically. It may be worthwhile to read the voices of at least two people who\u2019ve been depressed and then use our imaginations to invent our own character with this illness. This does not mean that our depressed character has to be good. She can be our villain. The depression can be part of her evil or aside from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My historical novel, A Ceiling Made of Eggshells<\/em>, as you may remember, is told from the POV of a Jewish girl in late medieval Spain. I\u2019m Jewish but I don\u2019t represent all Jews, and I certainly don\u2019t represent medieval Jews. I\u2019m not religious, and I didn\u2019t have much of a religious education. The experience of a more orthodox Jew would be very different from mine. Mostly, I relied on my research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In children\u2019s literature, there\u2019s a move toward \u201cown voices,\u201d the telling of stories about marginalized communities by members of the communities. Following \u201cown voices,\u201d a writer wouldn\u2019t write from the POV of, say, a Vietnamese-American unless she herself was a member of that group. Here are two interesting and thoughtful links that discuss this: https:\/\/www.hbook.com\/?detailStory=christopher-myers-talks-with-roger<\/a> and https:\/\/mgbookvillage.org\/2019\/08\/09\/the-struggle-between-diversity-and-ownvoices\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we\u2019re not writing for publication, though, we can write in any voice. We can read about the war in Vietnam and imagine ourselves a Vietnamese child during the war. Without doing a very lot of research–not only about the war but also about customs, religion, daily life, etc. in Vietnam–we\u2019ll certainly get it wrong. Even with the research, we\u2019re likely to get some of it wrong, but the effort will be a wonderful exercise of sympathy in our development as a writer, and we can move some of what we learned into other stories, maybe as the basis for fantasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope the message of this post is a shout for freedom. Please write what you\u2019re drawn to, which, more than anything else, will make your writing authentic. We can\u2019t control what other people think, so let them think it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Write a version of \u201cHansel and Gretel\u201d in several voices: the witch, the mother or father who wants to lose the children, Gretel who thinks Hansel is a pest, and Hansel who craves independence. You can try this more than one way, changing which characters are sympathetic (or maybe none are).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 At a national debate your MC draws a very unpopular position to argue, a position she disagrees with: say, euthanasia for dogs who growl more than once at strangers, or, more seriously, the death penalty for children who commit certain crimes. Or a topic you choose. She argues so well she wins the debate and finds herself despised by the people she cares about and hated on social media. Write the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Read Hamlet or a synopsis. Write a modern-day version, in prose or verse. Hamlet not only seeks truth but also right action once he discovers that his mother and his uncle really did murder his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On March 15, 2020, Raina wrote, Thanks for responding to my question, Gail! It really gave me a lot to think about, especially the part about how the difficult topics might be pushing me to write about them. I think that\u2019s a very real possibility for me, but in that case, I\u2019m running into another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[329,57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1330,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions\/1330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}