Write Every Day: Final Tally

One to go out on. This one because when I was a young child, I hated spending the night at my grandparents in my mom's old room because the trains going by kept me awake. The tracks were long gone by then.....


Here's the final tally. Head over to sakana17 for March's challenge and good luck!


( previous days under here )

Day Twenty- Nine china_shop; sylvanwitch ; sanguinity ; lferion; cornerofmadness; badly_knitted; yasaman ; silveradept; ysilme; sierranovembr; alexcat deifire; alexseanchai; auroracloud;

Today's writing fueld by Keith Urban

March's Bingo

For allbingo

Veggie Burgers	Milk & Sugar	Herbal tea	Black Tea	Matcha
TV Dinner	Cooking Classes	Woo Woo	The Dark and Stormy	Cooking for Someone
Hurricane	The Wild Card	FREE SPACE	Sweat & Tears	Smoked & Salted
Cider	Bloody Mary	Morse Code	Paid Vacation Days	Lemonade
Pickles	Zombie	No Reservation	Irish Coffee	Donut Shop

getyourwordsout Yahtzee prompts


No Reservations - under cover and over the top

Peppery - Family Comes First

Street scene - Perks of the Bounty

Sour/pickle - the salty taste of brine

zombie - alone in a crowd

casino - a battle lost

Writerly Ways

So finally the one I've been meaning to write for weeks and even now it's very cursory. It's not a surprise to anyone who has been reading my blog for a while, I've been half paralyzed writing wise by the conundrum of everyone wants you to write diversely (and I agree) but then there's the whole cultural appropriation issue, leading to a catch-22.

This past few weeks has seen all the uproar about American Dirt (and more about that here). Which was followed by Barnes & Noble releasing classic literature with all the cover art being African characters for Black History month, not sure how anyone thought this was a good idea especially when all they needed to do was promote actual PoC characters and authors.

Amid all the ugly (and there was plenty, on both side) I saw some things that really made things a bit better for me from authors of color who wanted to help and maybe it's a bit better that I waited because some of the ugly was enough to stop me cold. The realization came that I wanted to have diverse characters but NOT to tell stories that weren't my stories to tell.

I can easily have cops/monster hunters/my normal types of characters who are something other than me with a bit of good research. On the other hand, telling any immigrant story other than Italian set in the beginning of the 20th century, is NOT my story to tell. I can't control the publishing world. I can't make it easier for PoC or LGBT authors to publish. I can certainly buy their books (and I do) to show that there IS interest in them.

What I want is to have diverse characters in a story that's very most likely not about any one ethnic/religious/sexual orientation because those aren't stories I've ever been interested in writing.

And to that end I have several good articles on better ways to do this.

How to Unlearn Everything When it comes to writing the “other,” what questions are we not asking?

There is No Secret to Writing About People Who Do Not Look Like You

Who Gets to Write What?

Writing Characters Who Aren’t Like You

Cultural Appropriation for the Worried Writer: some practical advice

When you’re exposed to seeing someone else’s journey, it can provide hope, cause empathy, and evoke thought and conversation, which leads to change

I think I'll save my other links on general writing for another day.