Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

I didn't think I had the spoons to handle writing thoughts this weekend either until a couple of threads on my Popsugar Challenge. One of the challenges is own voices which I've talked about already and they're also doing Asian/Pacific Islander reads (for own voices) this month (as they did with African American authors earlier in the year).

So here we go. First comes the accusations that reading these authors once a year isn't enough. This I put in the category of you can't make everyone happy and people are going to bitch about everything because we've become a society offended by everything (sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not). My thought is WTF do YOU know about what I read. If you must know I read Asian authors all year (yeah it's mostly manga but still). I'm reading an African author right now even though it's not African heritage month. Shock, people actually do that without hectoring. (And to be fair, if the author's name isn't obviously ethnic I might never know what their ethnicity is because I'm so uninterested in author's lives I barely even flip to the back of the book to look at the bio and blurb. I read Octavia Butler for years, not knowing her ethnicity, though I will admit the publishers back then DID go to lengths to hide it).


But what REALLY bothered me were the people debating if the books they were reading for the various ethnic reads counted because they were depicting these people (in the case I saw today first, Korean) as you know...people. The stories weren't about their struggles being not-white. My first thought was my god do you even realize how stupid and racist you actually sound?

Let me be clear not every own voice author wants to tell own voice stories but if they did there is no ONE way of being something. Not every LGBT story is one of rejection and hate. Not every African American story starts in some ghetto. Not every Mexican American story is about coyotes slipping them past the border. Hell we have plenty enough coming out/getting rejected stories or conversion therapy stories, to the point I've seen many LGBT authors begging for people to write OTHER types of these stories. They want to see positive stories.

Not everyone's story is the same. Two of my dear friends from medical school both did start life in predominately low income Black areas (Philly and Baltimore), both are now successful doctors with kids of their own. Their children's stories are pretty far removed from their mothers and yet apparently if someone were to write a story about their children there'd be someone (several someones from what I've seen) about how unrealistic the story is or worrying it's a cheat.

Sigh. And this is another reason sometimes I feel paralyzed when writing someone who is outside of my own experience because there's a sizeable, vocal chunk of people who think a) they're defending these various groups and b) think there is only one way to be part of the group.


Enough of that. Here are some links

From Betty - The Game of the Name Man naming can be hard and sometimes it can jerk you out of a story if a character has a strange name or in many cases, the only 'normal' name in a sea of fantasy names

Handling Backstory in Dialogue in Your Opening Pages

Critique: 8 Quick Tips for Show, Don’t Tell

How to Plot With the Three-Act Structure

The Final Edit

Understanding Character Representation seems appropriate for this post

Power of the Pen This one is very powerful (and makes me rethink the entire post in a way)

What comes next…how I avoid writer’s block

The Art of Juggling Multiple Writing Projects

The Best Time to Write

Tumbling Down: When Chronic Illness Meets Writing

Writing Tips: How (And Why) To Treat Your Setting Like A Character I'm big on trying this

Know Your Villains

How Novelists Can Say More with Less

Emotion vs. Feeling: How to Evoke More From Readers

Planning Your Story’s Opening Passages