melissajm

Thanks to Jim Hines.
I think I'm purple.

http://www.sfnovelists.com/2009/04/24/the-writer-as-martial-artist/#comment-6294

(Since it's come up elsewhere and I don't want to monopolize friends' journals.)

Let's have a moment of silence for the original "ostrich story." It's toast.

But all is not lost...

I'll be honest; all this "Writing the Other" controversy is making me hesitant to write at all! At least in my current WIP. I set it in an "Africanish" fantasy world because I wanted to have ostriches in it, so I needed a climate where they lived. Now I'm finding myself second-guessing everything for fear that someone with think I'm being racist/insensitive/ignorant/all of the above.

Of course I'm racist, and sexist, and whatever -ists apply, at least by one definition. My perceptions are all colored through the view of a white, female, Northeastern US living 40-something Special-Ed schooled bookish... Ok, this could go on until we run out of applicable adjectives. Anyway, the point is that we all have only one POV. We're obligated to realize that everyone else has a different POV. And if we don't want to hurt each other, we do our imperfect human best to understand where other people are coming from.

I write Fantasy and SF because I like the freedom to imagine worlds and populate them with all kinds of characters. I don't want to create a million paper suburbs filled with clones of me. I'm not that exciting, or that important. I want to create forests and deserts and cities and afterlives, castles and caves and homes of all kinds. I want to fill my worlds with men and women of all sizes, shapes and colors (plus imps, serpent-demons, mermaids...)

So how do I do this and say "Welcome to my made-up world. I've made it from what I am and what I know, what I've experienced and what I've learned, all reflected back in words. It's not the same as anybody else's world real or fictional, because no two people live the same life.

If my reflection of you, or your world, or parts of it is wrong because my mirror is too small or dusty with ignorance to show a true image, please don't assume I'm using a mocking funhouse mirror on purpose. Help me to clarify the image. We all know our own worlds the most intimately. But if we take "write what we know" literally, and only write about our own little corner of the universe, we defeat the whole purpose of speculative fiction.

A person's first steps into a new environment will usually be halting and imperfect. Writing is the same way. The more I think about this, the more I think that the best an author can do is to learn as much as they can about people and places similar to their made-up ones, treat their characters like real people, and remember that somebody else always has a bigger, clearer mirror and no one ever captures the whole true image.

What do you think? How can writers explore their imaginations without poking at real-world people?

I just realized why my current Work In Progress isn't progressing.
I have no idea why the Bad Guy does what he does. None. At all.
Well, that explains it...

D'oh!

ANYBODY who matches or beats the first bid can win the set of Drabbles.

http://community.livejournal.com/helpvera/10381.html

I've split my protagonist into two people, and now they're fighting with...each other? Himself? Arg!

This is NOT an easy scene to write.

A major character in my current series is named Seraph Amal. Nice guy, bit of a neat freak, likes life to be orderly...

Let's just say that M and N shouldn't be so close together on the keyboard.

I started writing “seriously” because I wanted to get into the Sword & Sorceress anthology series. (S&S.)

Than was 11 years ago. The series folded before I could submit, but when it came back last year I submitted and got a nice rejection with “Please feel free to try again if we do another volume next year.”

They did. I did.



And today I got this:


Dear Ms. Mead,

Attached is your contract for S&S 23...
Best wishes,

Elisabeth Waters

I am so happy...

I just got back from a birthday party at my sister’s house. As soon as I came in the door my six-year-old niece ran up shouting “Aunt Missy! I wrote a book!”
And it was Fantasy, too. Personally, I think “The Enchanted Land” is a cool title. ;)