Writing, Art and Creator Burn-Out: A Tale of 2019

For anyone working in the creative arts, figuring out where to get inspiration and refill that so-called "artistic well" is among the most important of challenges they face. For myself, I have a number of strategies. Going for walks, talking about movies and books with my friends and, of course, watching musicals.

One musical I think about often when I'm in creative downturns, looking for renewed vigour, is Sondheim and Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George, which tells the fictionalized story of French post-impressionist George Seurat and how he came to paint his most famous work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

In the musical, everyone pictured is singing!

Throughout the play, various characters comment on George's obsession with the painting, what it means to be an artist and what art even is. There are lots of characters offering hot takes, but one has always stood out to me. 

Work is what you do for other people. Art is what you do for yourself.

I don't particularly agree. Art, I tend to think, has more to do with the content of the piece rather than the origin or expression of the creation, and yet I've often thought this quote gets at something very real. This crosses out of the realm of visual art and also applies to the art of writing.

Writing for Yourself and Other People

When starting out, most books grow from an idea the author is passionate about. In the sense of the quote from Sunday in the Park with George, this is where art is not work. It's a thing writers do for themselves; scribbling new stories with fresh, new ideas. If this was the whole writing process, then writing never would be work, but it is, and all too often, it becomes work the moment other people enter the picture.

Almost everything that you can buy published in a bookstore found its way there by way of a major publishing company and was touched not just by the author, but also an editor and probably an agent and maybe a marketing department and definitely a cover designer. And along the way, they asked the author to make (le gasp!) changes.

I got a first hand taste of this over the past year, when an agent I queried asked me to complete a revise and resubmit. Most of the changes she asked for I agreed would make the book better, so I got to work. And work it certainly was, because that level of unpacking a book is not something I would have done "for myself."

I've gone through forms of this process before, and don't get me wrong. I enjoy my work. But maybe because I spent so much of this year revising, writing felt like less fun than it usually does. All writers have their favourite parts of the writing process and mine are early on - usually idea generation, drafting and reworking the "first draft" into it's second, slightly less messy iteration. Those are such fun stages. I do them for myself.

I'm proud of the revision I did this year. I'm grateful for the eyes of other people and for the pressure I feel to make my writing something that communicates ideas more clearly and meets the needs of my audience, not just my own. But in a tough year, where the writing felt like work, I needed something to refill my creative well more than usual.

So writing was what I did for other people. Art was what I did for myself.

Children and Art

I can say with utmost confidence, I did not come into this world with extraordinary talent for visual art. I made blobs and squiggles and stick-men of the same caliber as my peers. But did I ever love doing it. Creating something and then being able to hold it up and say "look!" was reason enough to keep at it. I think most children are like this. They love putting something into the world that didn't exist before and they rarely question if their work is "quality." It's just pure art. Something they do for themselves, not other people.

The hard part is keeping kids drawing once they're old enough to compare their work to their peers and start realizing some kids are progressing faster than others. Here, my greatest talent was not in producing great art, but in being oblivious. For years, I pressed on filling massive binders full of "masterpieces" that were nothing more than weirdly proportioned renderings of my stuffed animals. Yes, I kept these and yes, I still love them.

I only chanced upon the concept of artistic "skill" in Grade 4 when I became close friends with the girl who everyone agreed was the best artist in our class. For a split second, I felt discouraged, but she loved drawing and she was my friend, so we drew together and that was that. I got comfortable being worse at something than someone else, and that kept my artistic spirit alive. I kept drawing my stuffed animals, but increasingly, I also designed original characters based on the stories I made up. I shamelessly copied the work of my older sister and her friends, who also liked drawing, learning early Picasso's lesson of "stealing like an artist." Sorry to plagiarize you, Kate.

Sometime around my late teens, it became apparent that I actually did draw better than most of my friends (though not all. I've consistently spent my life with at least one best friend who is better at art than I am. Shout out to today's model, Lean Conrad!). But getting where I am today in art was a slow process born of years upon years of both doodling and intentional practice.

Move On

Fast-forward to January of 2019, when I was starting the year in a strange place. I was job hunting, slogging through a revision of my book that wouldn't come together and living in a new city. From the outset, 2019 had a lot of difficult things working against it, and I could feel myself struggling to keep my head afloat.

I needed a survival strategy. After reading some literature online about the use of art in therapy, I decided I need to reinvest in one of my old hobbies. Art is known for having profound mental health benefits and best of all, skill has nothing to do with effectiveness! The mere act of creating and expressing oneself artistically is helpful. With that in mind, I gave it a try.

Going into this year, I felt rusty. My artistic progress has not always been linear, and I was out of practice. Some seasons of my life, I've devoted more time to art than others and I can still look at old pieces that stack up decently next to what I create now. For example, here is a baseball card sized painting of raccoons in our family cherry tree I did 10 years ago that is STILL the best raccoon related piece I've ever done.

Progress is a lie!

Or so it felt. But I needed art this year. I needed something that I could do for myself, that would bring me joy and refill my creative well when my writing was hard and burning me out.

To start, I watched a few art YouTube videos for inspiration, including a few that talked about their *~*art journey*~* and overwhelmingly, a lot of these artists mentioned how posting their work online helped them, even when their work wasn't what many people would describe as "good" yet. Just posting it helped them be accountable, made them take stock of their own progress and prompted positive feedback from family and friends who were just pleased to see them creating.

Ever since Grade 4 introduced me to friends who drew better than I did, I've been painfully aware of how flawed my own artwork is. It took a lot of nerve to start posting my work, but I figured I could use the kick-in-the-butt accountability gave me, plus whatever positive reinforcement my circle might give. So I took the dive.

First, and more important than I might have expected, I organized my supplies. I went through a Marie Kondo phase at the end of 2018 and got rid of a LOT of stuff that was otherwise overcrowding the new space I lived in. One of the discoveries I made during this was that every single one of my art supplies sparked joy and I had no interest in getting rid of a single tube of paint, but they also weren't likely to do me much good buried in a closet. Realizing this, I moved my art supplies to their own unit in my bedroom. Everyday, I wake up and they stare at me from beneath a poster of Porgs, reminding me I should be making art.

So I got out my watercolours, the most joyful of my supplies, and I made myself paint.

I started with my comfort zone. I don't draw my stuffed animals as much any more, but fan art is kind of comparable, so I painted some faces from the Umbrella Academy.

Painted early March 2019, when I really got going

I really enjoyed working on these, but I also found painting took a LOT of time and specialized supplies. You have to really set up water and your work area, and I didn't always have the space and time to do so. During my Kon-Marie purge, I whittled down my sketchbooks to the drawings I wanted to keep, plus a sketchbook I had halfheartedly started with a drawing or two the previous year. It was portable and it was there, so good enough.

The paper in that sketchbook wasn't the best, so at first I tried to stay black and white. The one time I added paints, the pages buckled like crazy. But black and white art tends to bore me a bit, in part because I'm stronger at colour theory than I am line art. I realized I was more likely to draw if I gave myself permission to colour pieces afterwards, so even though the paper could barely handle the ink, I pulled out my old prismacolour markers. Eventually, I got some pieces I was happy with.

It was a lot of fun rediscovering my markers. They don't always feel as "classy" as my watercolours do, but I love their vibrancy and I had to admit, I was probably better at using them than I was paint. I tried harder to bounce back and forth between the two, as I learned to get different effects with the different media.

Since I was job hunting, I didn't have a lot of extra cash lying around for new supplies or classes, so I focused on using what I had and studying free, online lessons. (I have so many opinions on "Art YouTube" now and what videos/content creators might be useful for a beginner like me. Let me know if you need recommendations!) Watching them prompted me to do some basic "good practice" exercises I'd neglected over the years, like swatching all my paints and markers, filling the whole page in a sketchbook and practicing body parts from different angles. As someone who uses alcohol based markers, I also quickly ran into the cult of Copic users and learned there were markers with velvety brush nibs, that let you blend and color in a way that resembles painting. I was intrigued, but too poor to consider such treasures.

My other great resource was the aforementioned best friend and better artist, Leah Conrad. A young, busy mum, Leah was excited to see me get back into art and wanted to draw together immediately. Whether she was working on commissions or something just for fun and practice, her company was always a huge blessing. She knew things. I could hold something up to her and say, "something is wrong but what?????" and she could spout off quick, helpful advice like, "the foreground and background are too similar" or "that arm should be longer" and then I could get back to work. Check her out on Instagram and enjoy a peek of some of her awesome work below!

Shooting Stars Over Mill Hill, by Leah Conrad

Leah also introduced me to the very addiction I thought I couldn't afford. As I rambled to her about the art videos I had been watching and how badly I wanted to try brush nibbed alcohol markers she casually uttered the words, "I have Copics."

Copics. The industry standard, Rolls-Royce of alcohol markers. She had a small, carefully curated set that she rarely used, and was willing to lend them to me.

Prismacolour markers are very good markers and besides which, there are far more important things than art supply quality when it comes to creating art. Still, supplies do help. Once I got used to the feel of them, I couldn't deny that they worked better than what I was used to. They blended smoother and layered gorgeously. My art took a jump up in overall quality and going back to my old markers was slightly depressing.

First Copic illustrations, from July 2019

I decided to use some coupons to buy just a small set of Copic markers of my own. I expected to spend a very long time building my Copic collection up to the same numbers as my Prismacolour markers, until salvation arrived in the form of Facebook Marketplace. Someone was selling their collection of lightly used Copics for roughly 80% off the regular retail price.

After that? I kept drawing. I took books out of the library. I practiced the exercises they suggested. I joined an art group that trades art around the world and sent in baseball card sized illustrations to new friends. As I continued to post my work online, I made more friends and saw more art that inspired me, and they were kind enough to encourage me in my art journey.

By the beginning of September, two magical things happened. First, I filled a 75 page sketch book that I'd started only six months earlier, which was far more than I'd drawn in years. Second, I had a job! The summer had been very stressful, due to the ongoing job hunt, so getting some stability was a tremendous blessing. I honestly don't know if I could have made it through the summer without art. It kept me sane and feeling like I was accomplishing something when there weren't obvious milestones to point to in my work and writing.

With that in mind, I decided I wanted to do something big and challenging in my *~*art journey*~* as a way of saying thank you to the thing that kept me going through the year. With that in mind, I geared up for my first ever Inktober.

Inktober 2019

Every year, artists around the world challenge themselves during the month of October with the task of producing more art and learning new skills. The basic form of the challenge is this:

1) To produce a new work of art each day of the month
2) Drawn in ink
3) Based on an official prompt list released each year.

There are people who fudge the rules, which is fine. Maybe they don't have time to draw every day or work digitally. Plus, there are roughly 50 billion prompt lists that pop up each year for those who don't want to use the official one. But for my first year, I played it pretty traditional. Conveniently, I wanted to practice dip pen inking, plus I'd never forced myself to generate that many drawings in a single month before. The prompt list seemed like a good source of ideas when burn-out inevitably set in, so I also committed to that.

Challenges were no stranger to me. Writers use the following month, November, as NaNoWriMo - or National Novel Writing Month. I had never successfully done NaNo, however, so I was a bit nervous going into Inktober. Still, I felt as ready as I ever could be.

I'm still processing everything I learned during the month. In an effort to try to organize some of my thoughts, here's a list.

1) It's absolutely possible! Despite some occasionally rocky days and nights that went until 3 am, I finished the challenge. My new sketchbook has one drawing for every day of October and for that alone, I am immensely proud and grateful.

2) It's absolutely possible to burn yourself out doing it! To minimize the pressure, I chose all my materials ahead of time and used the same supplies and process EVERY SINGLE DAY. I wanted to get rid of as many on-the-fly decisions as possible, so I could focus on the challenge and moving on with my life. Still, I was losing my mind a little towards the end. Consider, for instance, this image from Day 30, prompt word "Catch." It was drawn upside down and on the wrong side of the page in my sketchbook, but I did not realize it until after it was done. I also had giant, scribbly blobs by it that I hastily covered up with a digital speech bubble for my Instagram post.

What a catch.

3) It's unlikely you will get thirty-one brilliant works of art from the challenge. But you'll get something. Some days, I didn't have time or energy to throw myself at a piece for a long time. Almost everything I drew that month felt a little rushed. I couldn't return to something the next day and refine it, because it was too important that I move on to the next picture. Allowing myself to be happy with something quick and easy was an important survival strategy.

4) I generally conceptualized a piece, drew, inked and coloured all in one day. This lack of forethought meant I learned a few things about my default style. Going in, I knew I drew a lot of people and faces, but what surprised me was how often I turned to animals. These were frequently my favourite pieces and the ones I was most likely to use reference photos for.

Days 24 and 23

5) Even though I wanted to improve my inking and line art, I found my colouring with Copics probably saw the most progress. Ah well.

6) While most of the challenge passed in a flurry, there were still days when life came together and I actually made something better and stronger than my usual work. You throw enough darts, eventually one will hit the bull's eye. This stretch of drawings really sang for me.

Days 11 through 13

7) By the end, when I was finishing the challenge just so I could say that I did it, it felt like... work. And that's okay. If I was left to FOLLOW MY BLISS everywhere in life, I would never finish anything. And with that in mind, by the time I was done Inktober, I was ready to be done something else too.

Putting it Together

By the end of October, I had a very full sketchbook and no desire to draw anything for a couple of weeks while I recuperated. So what did I do instead? I finished revising my book.

I had been chipping away at that revision all year long, but going into November, I felt an extra degree of oomph pushing me. My creative well was full of fan art, Copic markers, drawing sessions with Leah, reference photos, dip pens and watercolours. Within a few weeks I was done, had notes back from Beta readers and could query my book for the first time in over a year... right on time for the holiday slowdown.

But that's okay. I might not have word back about my book, but it exists in a more refined version now, as do pages of art that helped me through it. In my own life, I do believe art can be work, and that we do it both for ourselves and for other people. Going into the new year, I don't know what project will be my main focus. I've been working on revising one book for a long time and now, it's time to find it a home with an agent or publisher. Failing that, it's probably time to write something new. I'm not certain what that will be yet. I might need to do some sketching to figure it out.

What I really learned this year was the importance of a hobby. Art might not be the thing that intervenes on your behalf, but it certainly helped me. At the Storymakers Conference this year, I heard a wonderful quote in a talk given by Josi Kilpack.

That which takes me away from writing gives me something to write about.

At the time, I thought of the things that take me away from writing against my will, like day jobs and family commitments, but now I want to advocate for the things we willingly let take us away from our artistic passions. You cannot draw water from an empty well, so find a way to fill it. Let yourself have something you "do for yourself" that doesn't feel at all like work.

As I reach a crossroads in my writing, I'm at a similar one in my art. I don't know what my next big goal will be now that Inktober is over. For Christmas, I asked for some new art supplies and am lucky enough that many of them showed up in my stocking and under the tree come Christmas morning. There's definitely some playing around and inspiration to be found there.

Still, I think the most profound gift I received was one that came from another young artist. My eight-year-old nephew spent weeks leading up to Christmas telling me how excited he was to give me the gift he picked out for me. When I opened it, I found a black, hardbound sketchbook, just like the one I used for Inktober, with one critical difference. The first page had an inscription from him.

Don't Let the muggles get you down - Ron Weasley

Isn't that what art is really all about? You can't let the muggles get you down. You fight back with colour and line and composition and the love it takes to create something. 

Looking back, I won't pretend 2019 wasn't a hard year. I knew it would be, and it was. But something good came out of it. I haven't figured out what all my illustrious goals will be for 2020, but with the right friends, attitude and hobbies, I think I'll get through it.

Happy New Year, friends! May yours be filled with beautiful art.

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad: The Meatloaf Method of Character Development

Since finishing my latest book, I've been taking some time to beef up on my craft of writing study. Due to my limited free time, I decided that what I was looking for was a quality writing podcast, that I could have on while walking home or completing routine stuff at work. All of this preamble is to say that I am now officially addicted to Writing Excuses.

Brandon, Mary, Dan and Howard are offering up some of the best advice on crafting stories available on the internet. They get an A+ for me, both for depth and accessibility. I find myself reminded of things I learned in school, but restated or filtered through new eyes.

One thing I've enjoyed has been Brandon Sanderson's theory on character. Character is arguably the most essential part of any story. Give people an engaging character to follow, and the rest of the story often writes itself. Strong characters are so essential, that the entirety of this year's Writing Excuses is going to be dedicated to the study of character. Yet, when Sanderson teaches about character, he tells his students that there're only three qualities that matter.

This sounds insane, especially coming from a guy like Sanderson, who has written dozens of books with massive casts. And in fairness, Sanderson knows he isn't covering every permutation of character with this theory. What he's covering instead is how an audience engages with a character. And if you ask me, he's bang on. You see, I can tell Writing Excuses is a brilliant podcast because it happens to align with my own pre-conceptions of how good writing works. And if you don't think I'm authoritative on this topic, then I turn you to none other than the great Loaf himself.

This is not a face you argue with

I am, of course, talking about the classic rock song, "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad." It's not quite a love song. Not quite a break-up song. It's more about a "good enough for now" that is somehow more depressing than outright ending the romance would ever be. I love the whole, glorious, bombastic thing, but for our purposes today, we're looking most closely at the iconic chorus.

I want you
I need you
But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you
Now don't be sad
'Cuz two out of three ain't bad

For a romance, this is awful. But it makes for a fantastic character and a great story, and story-telling was always what a Meatloaf song excelled at. But how do you apply it? I'll admit, that the rhyming stanzas don't necessarily expose the recipe for reader/character engagement, but with a little help from Brandon Sanderson, I think I can break it down for you.

If you want a reader to engage with your character, they need to be at least one of the following, probably two, but almost NEVER all three...

1. I Want You

One way to get a reader invested in a character is to give them a compelling desire and then to have them chase that desire. Sanderson likes to call this "pro-activity." A pro-active character will drive the plot forward by making choices of their own accord. They're easy to compel to action and rarely reluctant. It's the difference between Captain America, who desperately tries to join the army, and the Hulk, who is so afraid of his powers, he strives to be as inactive as possible. Cap is pro-active. Hulk is not. (At least in the MCU - Marvel Cinematic Universe - all these things get hazier once you factor in years of different comic book writers interpreting the characters)

Interestingly, the thing the character wants doesn't necessarily have to be terribly noble in order for the reader to engage with them. Cinderella wants to go to a ball, but man, do we care! Edmund Dantes wants revenge. Indiana Jones wants to know what's inside that temple. Derek Zoolander wants to build a center for kids who can't read good. Characters who excel at pro-activity simply try harder than everyone else. They might not be the most qualified. They might not even have the right objective. But they pursue it with passion, and that kind of gumption sucks a reader in.

But what if you're writing about a lazy slob? Someone who wants things but doesn't follow through on that? Well, if that's the case, they better...

2. I Need You

Once you know what a character wants, the next important thing is how they are going to achieve it. Some characters have the skills they need. Some don't. Sanderson would refer to this as character "competence." This is super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, who can solve any puzzle. Katniss Everdeen has a freaky ability to snipe her way through the Hunger Games. Or it's Tony Stark, weapons expert and over-the-top cool guy. Readers enjoy stories about people who are exceptional, because they're the type of people who are equipped to live through exceptional circumstances. Within the MCU, Hawkeye fills the role as the "incompetent" team member. He's fighting space aliens with a bow and arrow.

Competence is an interesting thing to measure, however, because it's situational. Tony and Sherlock are obvious examples, but what about Dolly Levi, the matchmaker who always knows exactly who to introduce someone to? In her story, that's the only measure of competence that matters. One of my favorite movies that plays with this situational aspect is Legally Blonde. Elle Woods spends the movie struggling to prove that she's just as smart as her classmates. It's not until the end of the movie, when the court room drama turns to hair care, that she reveals to everyone that brilliance can sneak up on you in the most unlikely of places.

If the pro-active characters try harder, the competent ones try better. Of course, neither of these factors suggest that the character is trying to do the RIGHT thing.

3. I Love You

There is one final way you can make a reader like your characters which is, you know, by simply making them likable. When Sanderson talks about character "likability" I don't think he's talking about if the reader likes the character. Think of it more like, would you like this character if they were a real person you had to put up with daily? Are they a half-way decent person?

Katniss, for instance, is a likable character, but not a very likable person. She's prickly and angry and unpleasant. Readers like her for her other qualities. In contrast, Samwise Gamgee blunders through much of the Lord of the Rings, but no one is better at loving their friends than Sam. It doesn't seem like a very important skill, but it rockets him in reader's hearts, because who wouldn't want a friend like Sam? For the fans of Stranger Things out there, Will Byers isn't very competent or pro-active. But he's sweet and gentle and lovable, so you keep hoping that the characters will save him. Or there's Groot, who is adorable and makes us laugh, even if he's a killer tree monster.  Or Luna Lovegood, who has us by the hearts the moment she reads her Quibbler upside-down.


But Two Out of Three Ain't Bad...

It might seem after reading this list that the answer would be to make a pro-active, competent, lovable hero and readers will be hooked on your story, right? RIGHT? Interestingly, no. There are very few characters who manage to tick all three boxes and get away with it. Classic portrayals of Superman probably come the closest to making a perfect hero interesting, but it does speak to why Supes can be such a tricky character to write.

The problem with a character who scores highly in all three categories is that it usually means they don't have room to grow, and traditionally, stories are about growth and character change. Almost any genuine character flaw will take a person down a peg in one of these categories. If they're a slob, they probably aren't very pro-active. If they're impulsive, they probably make a lot of mistakes and wreck their competence. If they're sharp tongued and emotionally detached, they damage their in-universe lovability.

Especially with main characters, you tend to need two out of three. They need enough good qualities to propel the story forward, but enough weaknesses that they have something to learn. Combine the three basic qualities into pairs, and you get three basic types of heroes.

Pro-Active/Competent: The Classic Anti-Hero
Strengths: Motivated, skilled, can and does do all the awesome things.
Weaknesses: Mean, unconcerned with others, self-interested.
Growth arc: Learning to be better/value others/sacrifices for others
Examples: Sherlock Holmes, Gregory House, Katniss Everdeen, Tony Stark, Elphaba

Competent/Likable: The Reluctant Hero
Strengths: Capable and uses their strength for good, understanding others, empathy
Weaknesses: Wishy-washy, nervous, uncertain of their place in the world, victim of circumstance
Growth arc: Taking control of own life/destiny/accepting their role
Examples: Harry Potter, The Hulk, Peter Quill, Spiderman, Eleven, Belle

Likable/Pro-Active: The Everyman Hero
Strengths: Highly motivated to save the day, seeks adventure
Weaknesses: Frequently fails, out of their depth, self-doubt
Growth arc: Becoming the hero they are in their hearts/completing their "quest"
Examples: Captain America, Elle Woods, Derek Zoolander, Mulan, Moana

Of course, some of these are characters who have been written and rewritten so many times, it's difficult to point to any portrayal as definitive. And often, a series will transition a character from one category to another. Luke Skywalker starts Star Wars as something of an unskilled Jedi, who must learn to master his abilities. Once he has, his arc becomes about sacrificing for others and whether he can save those he loves, much more in line with the first category. Similarly, Tony Stark is a better person by Iron Man 3, so much of the movie involves stripping him of his super suit, and rendering him an Everyman.

Naturally, you can argue that these categories aren't anywhere close to describing all the possible variations on character, and I would agree that they're generalizations.

Still, if Meatloaf knows that two out of three ain't bad, who are we to argue?

New Year, New Writer!

This is one of those blog posts that will probably hold more interest for me than anyone who regularly reads this blog. It calls into question why I'm posting it here, but I've come to realize that in the absence of a more traditional journal, this blog has taken the place of that for me. In fact, I've got a few pages of unpublished posts that are either too messy, too raw or too boring to make the cut as public posts, but they live on in my drafts folder as reminders of earlier ideas or thought processes. You could say I've hit that point in nerd evolution, where all my deep, personal thoughts come out as long form essays, but I digress.

Today, I want to talk about goal setting! New Years is one of my favorite holidays, even if I'm not doing anything for it. (I've got nothing but attending church planned for New Year's Eve this year. Woopwoop!) Mostly, it's because I'm a chronic goal setter, and I love that blank slate feel that a new year gives.

Further, I'm a firm believer that if you want to get anything done as a writer, you need to have some system for setting and fulfilling goals.

Making Time and Reason for Writing

When you are like me - unagented and unpublished, but striving to reach both those milestones - it can be very difficult to make time for writing, due to the absence of any external pressure to do those things. Currently, my income is not derived from my writing. Writing does not make my house any cleaner, feed my cats or fulfill my church assignments. It takes me away from my friends, and as we speak, writing this blog post is keeping me up past midnight. Whoops.

My passion for writing is my primary motivator that keeps me coming back. I love stories. I love creating. I would do some form of writing and creating no matter what in my life. But due to the other demands on my time, it's downright impossible to get anything substantial done in my writing without some coordinated effort. Those other things distract me and destroy my productivity, unless I  hit back.

To me, goals are the names we give our dreams. If I want to achieve those big picture dreams I have, like selling books and using that money to buy cat food, I need to give a name to each brush stroke of that picture. So today, I'm doing that.

Feel free to comment with some of your own New Year Resolutions! Like I said, I love this holiday, and when people tell me their goals, I feel like I'm learning what they named their little, baby dreams.

First, The Year in Review

Let's look at some of the things I achieved or learned this year! YES!

• Joined an online writing group. Got my revision game back on. All the love to you, my Oddballs.
• Attended the Storymakers Conference, where I:
• Met some of the people in my online writing group. HEY GUYS!!!
• Got my first page onto the First Impressions agent critique panel
• Pitched an agent after said panel, didn't die, and got a request for pages
• Subbed two stories to the first chapter contest
• Finally understood what is meant by Deep 3rd Person POV 
• Learned what a beat sheet is
• Wrote about insulation, and was complimented on it by Allie Condie. Guys, I may never get over this one.
• Endured the loss of Tuula Mantta and Miranda Leavitt, when they had the nerve to move away.
• Resolved to make more friends. Forced people to watch Planet Earth II with me.
• Took trips to Kelowna and Calgary, where I got to see Tuula and Miranda, keeping summer awesome. YES!
• Realized my friends were a terrible influence on my writing habits. Sat down, and finally...

The SWEET PEE timeline

• Started drafting a new manuscript, titled SWEET PEE - and yes, that's spelled correctly - for NaNoWriMo in November 2016. Got about 20,000 words in by November 9th.
• On November 9th, started a new job, which destroyed my brain and productivity. Put the manuscript on the backburner until the New Year.
• Wrote large amounts of the first draft on the bus, to and from work, due to time constraints. Learned the value of a light, small laptop.
• Resolved to make more friends in April/May. Got terribly distracted. Failed to finish last 4th of book for several months.
• Realized the deadline for the Pitch Wars writing contest was coming, and remembered that I wanted to enter. Banged out the last 4th of the first draft in the first week of August, and submitted to Pitch Wars August 4th.
• Got into Pitch Wars August 24th! Spent the next two months revising the book with the help of my amazing mentor, Lianne Oelke. Check her out here!
• Completed the polished manuscript in time for the October 31st deadline, making it almost exactly a year from sloppy, first words to query ready manuscript. Fastest turn around I've had on a manuscript to date!

And back to other lessons learned...

• Realized during revisions that there is DEFINITELY such a thing as biting off more than you can chew.
• Learned some things about comma placement and compound sentences that would likely make my poor Master's Thesis advisors weep for joy, knowing I've finally... improved. Slightly.
• Started listening to the Writing Excuses podcast.
• Bought some awesome Christmas decorations.

Whew! I honestly didn't expect the list to be that long when I started, but it's kind of nice to see the year captured like that. Of course, I'll be the first to admit that this version of events glosses over some of the angst and messiness that goes on behind the scenes, but this is New Years and it's a frickin' holiday, and I reserve the right to have a party. GO ME!!!

This Year's Goals

• Complete another first draft of a manuscript - this might not seem very ambitious in light of the turn around on my last book, but I am "between ideas" right now, and so it's hard to commit to getting something all the way past the editing stage when nothing is on the page yet. I'm between several different ideas, all appealing in different ways. We'll see where I go.
• Draft 10,000 words in January - Again, I could be more ambitious in terms of word count, but the real goal lurking here is PICK AN IDEA AND WRITE ABOUT IT!!!
• Send 100 query letters during the year - or get an agent. One can hope.
• Send 20 query letters in January - right now I'm itching to do this, so it shouldn't be too hard.
• Read more books - while I got a LOT of writing done in 2017, my reading suffered a bit. I'm trying to make up lost time right now while I'm between ideas. Still settling on a realistic yearly/monthly reading goal. 
• Attend Storymakers again and maybe a second conference/writing retreat - anything additional will depend on finances, but I am SO STOKED for Storymakers! Anyone who writes and can get to Provo, Utah in May should absolutely check it out.
• Start a Bullet Journal - guys, I am so excited about this. I've been reading up on them, and I think it could be really useful for me. I've been feeling like I want to a) do more journaling again b) start using a sketch book again and c) try and make a day planner work. But the idea of trying to do all three at once sounds insane. I like how a bullet journal can kind of grab from all three of those things at once. Like, guys! It's a journal/planner you get to DRAW IN!!! I just have to keep reminding myself that it's okay that I have terrible penmanship. I'm in it for the organizing/better documented memories/excuse to draw pictures. Pictures. Not pretty penmanship and headers. That's what I've got to focus on. Anyhow, if anyone out there uses one and has tips/spreads they use (especially any for organizing writing goals or LDS church callings) let me know!

And there you have it! My writing recap for 2017, and my writing goals for 2018. Here's hoping for another good year.

5 Excellent Pieces of Writing Advice I NEVER Follow

Writing is an intensely personal endeavor. Most people are aware of this, even if they've never written anything besides a term paper, but on the surface, it just seems to make sense. Writers are sitting at their computers (or notepads if they like to kick it Old School) and pouring their souls into their work, so of course what they produce must be personal.

And while that's true, it's really only a small part of how intensely personal and individual writing is. Writing is solitary, and as such writers rarely employ the same process for producing quality work. Of all the arts, I think writing is one of the strangest, in that the process of creating a thing can be very separate from the thing itself. In visual art and music, there tend to be some fairly discrete skills that people need to learn in order to produce a finished product; certain ways you hold a paint brush or train the vibrato of your instrument, for example. There's far less of this in writing. Sure, mastering certain skills are important, but I think it's more of a toss up whether or not a particular writer ever chooses to employ that skill.

Simply put, one writer's key to success might just "not work" for another. This makes teaching writing incredibly difficult. It's already such a subjective discipline, it can be super frustrating that so little experience actually transfers well across different writers. You almost can't learn from the mistakes of others because what were mistakes for them might be your golden ticket.

And so to that end, I've compiled a list of excellent pieces of writing advice that I don't use. There's nothing inherently wrong with the advice, and some of it might solve your writing problems. But for me, they're so useless, the opposite is often truer. And maybe that will inspire you! Either way, call this a celebration of how unique the process each writer goes through to create something is.

#5: Create a plot outline before you begin your novel. This will stop you from getting lost in the middle, where your book may die a slow, tedious, plotless death.

I've put this one at #5 because, while this is incredibly common advice, there's some acknowledgement within the writing community that it's fairly split down the middle whether your a "plotter" or a "pantser." These terms are used to refer to the two main modes of preparing to write a story - Plotters make sure they've got an outline banged out, usually in a fair degree of detail before they get started and Pantsers... well, we just wing it. The term comes from the expression "flying by the seat of your pants."

Now, it might sound like a situation where the Plotters are the harder workers and the Pantsers are just over-excited or lazy, but that's not how things typically work out. I've tried plotting books before starting them. The idea of having an outline to guide me sure sounds appealing, but this is the reality:

I have never finished a book I outlined before I started writing.

NEVER.

Those books I over outline are the ones that - for me - die in the middle. They might not be plotless, but they are lifeless and the key is usually that I've focused on the plot and structure first, rather than finding the natural voice, characters and world for my book to inhabit. Once I've spewed some pages of rough text, I might sit back and outline a few things, but I've always free-written a large chunk of my books before committing myself to any kind of structure. For me, it's how I suss out if the characters and their stories are worth investing in.

For some people, outlining saves them from the mires of their writing nightmares, but I also know people mired in outlines, who I wish I could convince to just write until they FEEL the words. It sounds airy-fairy and ridiculous, but for certain people, it really does work. Sure you will have to revise later, but you're going to have to do that anyway. Might as well have the book in front of you so you can do that.

#4: Don't tell people too much about your novel before you write it down in scene. You want the ideas to be fresh when you get going, and holding details in keeps you from losing the magic of them while you write.

I was given this advice right when I started school and luckily, knew write away this would be suicide for my writing style. You know that whole point about NOT outlining? One of the main reasons I can get away with that is because I always have a friend or two who will let me yammer at them when I need to work my way out of a plot hole. Talking things out helps my ideas to flow naturally.

As for whether or not I've taken the "zing" out by talking about it too much - I'm sure I could do that eventually, but for me, those conversations usually get me excited and make me fall more in love with my book. And that gives me energy I can channel into the writing, often improving it.

Or at least I sure hope that's the case. Because seriously guys, I don't think anyone is ever going to stop me from talking about my books, no matter how well-meaning they are.

#3: Write everyday. This keeps momentum up and how else are you going to finish that novel?

This is one of those points where I just end up staring at the person who gives this advice, holding in the desire to scream, "BUT HOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW?????"

Seriously, HOW!?!?!? How do you find time literally EVERY DAY to write something? How do you not end up with conflicts? How do you not end up with family yelling at you for bringing your laptop to a reunion? How do you ever feel like you ever have a day off? I mean, I love writing, but it's also work. I don't WANT to write every day, and I don't mean that in the way where you're just in a funk and you can't find the "magic" or whatever. I mean, I genuinely want days off where I don't have to perform the mental gymnastics of thinking about writing while I'm also busy gardening or singing or jet-skiing or whatever the heck it is I do when I'm not writing.

I've often wondered if this advice is related to multi-tasking. I'm not a very good multi-tasker. But I'm VERY good at focusing, and these limitations aren't just of the kind where I can't do one thing with one hand and another thing with the other at the same time. It's also mental. I need days that are "WORK" days and "WRITING" days and "FAMILY" days and so on and so forth. I learned years ago that Christmas vacation would always be a terrible time for writing, no matter how many hours I took off. My brain won't go there. So instead, I use that time to read, because it doesn't take as much focus. I catch up on my reading, and wait for the new year when I can become a writing hermit again, down in my hermit hole.

And yet I still finish projects. I don't have any kind of rigid work schedule, but I set my goals and I slog towards them and I get it done. Often it means breaking things up into monthly or quarterly chunks, rather than tasking myself with something specific daily, but for me, that's enough. Given enough time, I WILL get antsy and I WILL make time to write. But I find I don't function well as a human being unless I also give myself time to focus on other things.

Then again, I do see the appeal. When I do get into a writing groove, I can write pretty much every day. I live in times of boom and bust. Famine and plenty. I wish I could write every day, because holy crap! I bet I would get a ton done. But all told, I think I do okay. Generally speaking, most of those people who do write every day are speaking to a need to write at least SOMETHING, rather than pages and pages of text every day. It's how they keep the energy and the dream alive. And I can absolutely be happy for them for doing that. 

#2: End your writing day in the middle of a scene, so that when you pick up again, it's easier and you aren't starting from scratch with a new scene. Remember, keep that momentum!

This piece of advice sounds great in theory and I would LOVE to hear from someone who follows it because good heavens, it is not me. Sometimes I do end writing sessions in the middle of scenes, due to time constraints or other factors. But I hate doing it. Without fail, I fall prey to the opposite of what is SUPPOSED to happen.

Nothing kills momentum for me like opening a book I'm working on and having to pick up mid-scene. Somehow I have to get back in that headspace I was in that seemed so real a few days ago, but now just looks like squiggles on a page. The words feel meaningless and I have to read and reread them a lot before I rediscover the energy I was following through the scene. I would much rather have a fresh, new scene to start. Something that allows me to craft a nice beginning, middle and end sequence and leaves me feeling accomplished.

It can take forever for me to pick up on scenes that I stopped in the middle of. In fact, I am writing this blog post because I was drafting a scene while on the bus to work this morning and the freakin' bus got to my stop before I finished and baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! I don't want to look at that half-finished scene!!!!

But seriously. Some people swear by the purposefully half-finished scene method. Go figure.

#1: Find what works for you - whatever it is - and stick with it.

This, to me, sounds like the very best of advice. Find what works for you and do it! In fact, I lied. I DO follow this advice! I follow it all the time! In fact, I am constantly finding what works for me and sticking with it for... well... for at least a day, I guess?

I really do try to use this advice. I stick with my "new found thing that works" for as long as it keeps working but for me, eventually, it stops. Maybe it's because my life circumstances have changed. Maybe it's because that methodology has grown stale. But in my experience, it's dangerous to "find a thing that works" and then marry yourself to it, because you never know when that thing will no longer be there for you.

I used to do all my writing in the evenings, but a new job made that impossible, not because I didn't have time in the evenings, but because I was zapped for energy. So writing on the morning bus to work became the one place I could get writing done. Except sometimes, if I stay up past midnight, I'll get another new wave of energy and I'll be writing until the wee hours of the morning.

I used to ask for feedback from critique partners on my rough drafts, so I knew they were going the right direction. Now? Not so much. I plot and outline more than I used to (even if it is after some freewriting). I seesaw between times where I read a lot and write very little and times when I write a lot and never find time to read. But in school, I had the writing vs reading balance just right. Go figure.

My point is yes, find what works to you. Hold onto it as long as you can. But if it stops working, that's not the end of the world. There's more advice out there. In fact, there's advice that stands in direct opposition to that thing that used to be your motto.

If I could give one piece of advice to writers that I do think is universal, it would be this: Do whatever it takes to get your story out there. If what you do now works for you then great! Don't fix it. But if you're feeling stuck, comb the internet for ideas and try every freakin' thing until something works. Throw noodles at the wall until one sticks. Then you'll know your pasta is finally cooking the right way.
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(Pasta is a metaphor for novels. Erm... just in case you were wondering...)

World Building, Observation and Crackers

I'm eating crackers tonight. Crackers I purchased yesterday from Walmart because I'm classy like that. To be precise, I am eating Stoned Wheat Thins which I would lovingly describe as the very best boring cracker out there. They're like the big sister of soda crackers - a little wider, a little heftier and substantially more crunchy. When I want to eat some cheese or a spread but I don't have the time or resources to properly pair toppings and cracker, I shrug my shoulders and say, "well, a Stoned Wheat Thin won't taste WRONG with that" and off I go. A well-paired Triscuit might taste superior to a stoned wheat thin, but you can get a Triscuit wrong. That's a lot of pressure.

Stoned Wheat Thins also happen to be my personal favorite metaphor for perspective shifting, which I think is one of the most underrated skills when it comes to world-building.

The Pittsburgh Cracker Caper



It all comes down to a night where I was in a Giant Eagle grocery store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvannia. I had some fancy goat cheese I'd never tried before and needed a good, solid cracker to pair it with. The problem was, I wasn't confident I knew what that cheese tasted like well enough to pick out a truly sophisticated cracker. Plus, I'd already blown my wad on the cheese. (Like most MFA students, my desire to eat overpriced, fancy food was not proportional to my ability to purchase it).

But no matter. I knew that in a pinch, a box of Stoned Wheat Thins would do the trick, plus they would go fine with hummus and whatever else I picked up after the cheese was gone. I entered the cracker aisle, scanning for a nice big box only to be greeted with a wall of Triscuits and Pepperidge Farm and hundred other crackers I couldn't afford.

I honestly can't remember another time I've ever been so confused in a grocery store. Maybe the first time I went shopping in the UK and there was only one type of peanut butter on the shelf, but I expect cultural dissonance when it comes to the British. America, I figured, must have Stoned Wheat Thins, because what on earth did they do when they wanted a cheap cracker that didn't instantly dissolve under the weight of dip? You can buy massive boxes of Stoned Wheat Thins in Canada, yet in America, the very land of large boxes of carbs, there was nothing.

I scanned the Triscuit section, hoping some equivalent would appear. By now, I was deeply worried for myself and my cheese. Was I going to have to develop a taste for Melba toasts?

Luckily, this story has a happy ending. After about ten minutes of pacing the aisle, I spotted a tiny box that held a single sleeve of crackers, packaged in a box that wasn't blue, which was weird for Stoned Wheat Thins, let me tell you. I laughed, relieved as I realized that some idiot had put them in the International section, next to all the fancy Italian and French crackers.

Then I looked at the box again and saw it stamped to high-heaven with REAL CANADIAN WHEAT labels. And bam, there it was. The paradigm shift.

In America, Stoned Wheat Thins are a very fancy cracker and they are priced accordingly. It was, like, $3.50 for a sleeve of crackers but I'd just spent ten minutes looking for them and I was an MFA student, and it's always a little exciting when you over spend on food if you're an MFA student.

On Paradigms and World Building

One of the things that experience reminded me of was that Canadian things are almost always much more exotic to Americans than American things are to Canadians. The exception to this might be those American cities that hug the Canadian border, where the people are often from smaller towns than the cities just north of them in Canada and they're likely to visit and shop up there frequently. But drive just a few hours south of Canada, and the reactions to meeting a "Canadian" start piling up.

People in Washington never comment on my accent, but people in Utah and Pennsylvania absolutely do. Sometimes it's annoying, sometimes I enjoy the attention, but in the back of my mind is always this sense of wonder that they find me interesting at all. They are so ordinary to me. I'd never put their crackers in the International section.

Intellectually, I get why this is the case. We live in a globalized world where unequal distributions of wealth and power impact the rate of cultural exchange, but what catches me off guard are the small, personal ways that impacts life. Since that instance in the cracker aisle, I've had a few more of these, like when I realized I'd never seen a gas station in the States with open bins of loose, five-cent candy. Those exist at bulk food stores and a couple other small enclaves. But on the whole, kids in the US are not going to 7/11 so they  can hand select a bag of gummy frogs and coke bottles with a hard earned Toonie.

In writing, I tend to be the most impressed with world building when it documents these small moments. Any writer can tell you "the Queen sits on a throne of carbuncles" or that "the council is made up of yeomen from all the villages round about" but the ones who can capture the inner lives of different people are the ones worth paying attention to. Those are the ones that have the ability to bring you down to a character at eye level.

Here are just a couple of examples of fabulous authors who have found ways to strike that balance:

- In the first chapter of Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, the narrator is struggling to grow a proper mustache and very self-conscious about it, because he's trying to impress a girl from another culture and is convinced she'll be into good facial hair.

- Early in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior takes a few paragraphs to rhapsodize about why he loves fried chicken so much and why it's such a treat for his family, making every time chicken shows up in the rest of the book unexpectedly poignant.

- In the Oryx and Crake series by Margaret Atwood, fictitious brand names litter the pages and provide a good indicator of how off the rails society is going. Jimmy's evolving acceptance of ChickieNobs (chicken parts grown in a lab without an actual chicken. What is it with books and chicken, exactly?) is a particularly good example.

- During the scene in the second Harry Potter book where Draco first calls Hermione a Mudblood, she and Harry have no clue why Ron reacts so intensely to the insult.

Aside from being about the small details of life, the other thing all these examples have in common is that they're really well filtered through the viewpoint of the characters. They show a personal relationship to the worlds the books take place in, whether those worlds are fantastical or real. If those moments were told through someone else's eyes, they'd read completely different and perhaps wouldn't have any impact on a story at all.

Not everyone is going to relate to crackers the same way I do. I've come to accept that over the years, as I've retold my cracker tale to anyone who has the nerve to open a box of Stoned Wheat Thins around me. But it still strikes me as an example of how our world is built up of small things and even smaller moments. Switch the country a box of crackers is in, and it becomes something fancy and exotic. But even if it is sitting next to a selection of French and Italian crackers, it can still be the most boring, ordinary, glorious cracker out there to a homesick Canadian.

It all depends on whose story you're telling.

Boys VS Books: Gaston and the Book with No Pictures

A little while ago, I started a new post series centered around the problems facing boys in regards to literacy. I framed the initial discussion around Disney's Beauty and the Beast and how reading is portrayed within that movie. The movie is famous for its positive portrayal of Belle as a modern, forward thinking princess, and that portrayal is driven home through her love of books. But while Belle is constantly shown reading, the men around her all have problematic relationships with books.

If you're interested in reading the earlier discussion, you can find the previous posts in this series here:

1. Boys vs Books: A Tale as Old as Time
2. Boys vs Books: Beating Back Against Busy

Today, we're looking at one of the three male characters Belle attempts to share her love of books with. Today, we have moved on to Gaston.




First off, I love this image. It cracks me up every time. Ahem...

From the perspective of a writer, this is one of the most problematic scenes in the movie. Belle's love of books is used as shorthand to convey her intelligence and independence to the viewer, so it's little surprise that they're similarly used as a tool to show that Gaston is stupid and domineering - the perfect threat when you consider that he fancies himself her suitor.

The domineering aspects of his personality come from the way he steals the book and eventually tosses it into a mud puddle. (I'm not going to argue. This is pretty low.)

The stupid comes from this line:

"How can you read this? There's no pictures!"

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Hilarious! He thought the book should have pictures in it! What does he want? A children's book? Ridiculous!

In all honesty... the line is actually pretty funny. His reaction and his facial expression and his behavior are so oafish. It treads the line between mocking him but also making him a threatening presence. I can see why the filmmakers wrote it this way.

And yet that comment he makes about expecting a book to have pictures plays into some persistent cultural stereotypes about what books are "worthy" of praise and attention and what books are "unworthy." And wouldn't you guess it? The very books the movie is making fun of are among the books that little boys are most likely to find interesting.

I'm talking, of course, about comic books.

Words and Pictures

During my Master's program, I had an excellent professor who taught my foundation course on children's literature. He had a deep appreciation for old books, the history of the discipline, as well as an enthusiasm for what modern writers were doing now in children's literature. More than anyone, I heard him repeat the command to read, read, READ extensively within your genre if you wanted to create work of publishable quality. He also was a remarkable writer and someone whose work I continue to admire. I plan on being just like him when I grow up.

So let's say you want to teach your child to love books as much as he does. What is the foundation on which this enthusiasm for books was based? As it turns out, comics. As a kid, comics were a far more natural love for him than the books he was SUPPOSED to love. During adolescence, he wanted to be a comic book artist when he grew up, not a novelist. Hints of this still exist in his works, such as illustrated chapter titles.

Of course, for his chosen career path, he eventually had to fall in love with honest-to-goodness-pictureless books too, but the transition between an avid comic reader to a literature super fan is not as strange as it might seem on first glance.

During my research for this series of posts, I was struck by the fact that from the perspective of educators, many of the skills that fall under the umbrella of "literacy skills" are things that you can pick up from other forms of art. Skills like the ability to follow and explain a narrative, or the ability to empathize with a character. These skills can even be developed by having thoughtful discussions with your kids about the movies they watch.

But the amazing thing about comic books is that they provide a natural bridge between visual storytelling and text based storytelling. We're used to the notion that younger children use the pictures in their books to get hints at what the text might say. The same holds true with comics, but with the added bonus that the language and storylines have grown more complicated, since they're usually aimed at an older audience. Even if you have someone who has fine reading comprehension, comics might still help with reading engagement, since they provide helps for readers to visualize the world the story is describing.

And yes, an enthusiasm and passion for comics can lead to a passion for books. And vice versa. Yet you still hear things like what my professor once said when he told us, "I didn't read a lot as a kid. I mostly read comics."

Somehow, both those sentences contain the word "read" in them, because comics are a form of reading that doesn't "count." The Ontario School Board, in their work in boys literacy, notes that many boys who are labelled as poor readers often read far more than they think they do, but they don't believe what they do counts as real reading. They don't report that they frequently will read comics, instruction booklets for video games, sports magazines, web pages filled with information about baseball or animals or Minecraft or cars or whatever other hobbies they might have. Children are highly intuitive and they pick up quickly that adults don't place a lot of stock in reading those things. So is it any surprise that they don't value their own achievements in these areas?

The Price of Literary Elitism

To me, the comic book conundrum is symptomatic of larger problems that the book world has around literary elitism. Certain types of books tend to get valued more than others. Disdain for comics and magazines grows as we age to include an ever-increasing array of books. Oddly enough, it tends to smack people in the face along both gender lines. Romance is confined to a "pink ghetto" while science fiction gets treated like the quintessential "bad books for men."

I'll never forget the first writing course I ever took as a naïve undergrad student. My instructor explained the course syllabus and then had all of us introduce ourselves by name, and favorite book. It was the early 2000s, we averaged around 18 years old and you could see the side of his lip twitching as half the class announced their love for Harry Potter. Then he told us all, very flatly, "so you know, we only study literary fiction here. You won't be writing mystery, suspense, romance, science fiction or fantasy. They're all too formulaic. We want you to learn from great writers instead."

No wizards or spaceships. Both far too childish. We weren't to deal in the whiz-bang plots of thrillers, clearly intended only for the uneducated masses. And heaven help us if we wanted to write a story that existed solely to explain how people fall in love!

I can't tell you how much I wanted that writing program to work for me. I'd wanted to study writing my whole life. But sadly, I realized it wouldn't be during my undergrad, because my world of writing couldn't function if it had to be that small. (Incidentally, my main project for that class was a short story that took place during the after-life, and I got an A+ on it because my professor knew so little about speculative fiction, he never realized I'd tricked him into reading paranormal fantasy.)

Sometimes when I think back to that first undergraduate writing course I took, I'm amazed anyone reads at all. Or writes at all. There are so many people who are foaming at the mouth, eager for their chance to tell you that what you're reading is stupid. People who might not know much at all about the books that you love, but are dead certain you shouldn't waste your time on them.

Books! Books for everyone! You get a book! And you! AND YOU!!!!

I'm a firm believer that if we want to increase literacy, it doesn't happen by demanding people like very specific things. In one of my previous posts, I touched on how important it is to meet readers where they are, rather than insist they conform to your tastes. This should also mean NOT belittling what they're interested in.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that incorporating comics and other alternatives to traditional books in education is a balancing act. I'm not here to argue that comics should replace books or that literary fiction be thrown from the curriculum in favor of Harry Potter. What I hope is that they'll be treated more as allies in a common cause.

When I first read Howard's End, a classic novel from 1911, I fell in love so quickly with the text because it reminded me of Peter Pan. Plot-wise, the two books have nothing in common. One is decidedly sillier than the other. But you know what they do share? Time period. They're both Edwardian novels and I realized that part of what I liked about the books was a particular turn of phrase that was in style just before the start of the First World War. Pan prepared me to love a classic novel, and that in turn taught me to be more curious about literature from that whole time period.

The frivolous books of our childhood - the books with pictures - are often preparing and informing our taste in adult literature. And with the sophistication of many graphic novels and comics, they can continue to be an influence, worthy of engagement. It doesn't have to be an either/or.

Rethinking Belle

So like last time with the baker, let's attempt to re-imagine the scene where Gaston steals Belle's book and make it, ummm.... better?

Gaston: How can you read this? There's no pictures!
Belle: Well, there's actually a graphic novel version of The Graveyard Book too, if you're interested in seeing the story illustrated.
Gaston: Belle, that was just an excuse to start talking to you. I'd rather we talked about me now. *throws book into mud*

Look, he's the villain of the story. We can only do so much.

How Diversity (and Lin Manuel Miranda) Can Make A Story Awesome

Lin Manuel Miranda's musical IN THE HEIGHTS

Lately, there have been a lot of discussions around diversity and inclusivity in my writing community. I say lately, but really, these discussions have been going on for a long time. However, they have their moments where they boil over a little more heated, and the past few weeks, this has seemed to be the case.

This is a topic I have a lot of thoughts on, mostly because that when it comes to increasing diversity in books and in the publishing industry, I am all for it. A lot of the time, I kind of expect people to take this for granted. I'm not one to make a fuss. I'm not one who likes hurting feelings. But I am also someone who hates faulty logic, and lately, there have been some arguments AGAINST increasing diversity in books that have relied on terrible, narrow-sighted premises and that is the kind of thing that I just cannot stand for. So in the name of sense, I am saying some things.

Actually, I am saying a LOT of things. Bear with me. I have a lot of thoughts on this.

Bad Argument #1: There isn't really a lack of diverse books. I read "To Kill a Mockingbird" and that had race issues in it.

A lot of my readers are not writers and are likely unaware of the discussions writers have around diversity. But if you're someone who is concerned with social justice and media, you've probably heard of these discussions in some other venue. Maybe you watch movies and saw some of the discussion around the incredibly white Oscar nominees of the past couple years. Or maybe you like theatre and noticed that everyone is losing their minds over Lin Manuel Miranda's musical, Hamilton (we'll talk more about Miranda in a minute).

Generally, you can drag-and-drop that discussion onto books. Books, like most media, are dominated by white, heterosexual, able-bodied heroes. Oh sure, there are exceptions. There are lots of great books out there about minority characters, but this is more a symptom of there being "lots of great books" than of there being adequate exposure or opportunities for books focused on minorities.

If you need convincing at all, I compiled a list of as many books as I could think of that have been featured in some way on my blog. Most were selected for book reviews of some kind, because I think they're great books. A few came up because you can't discuss Young Adult literature without saying a few things about Harry Potter and Twilight. I think the list provides a decent litmus test of what you'll "happen" to see and read if you are not actively selecting for diversity. Below, I have highlighted all the books that definitively feature a protagonist who isn't white.

True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp – a white boy and some raccoons
Ship Breaker – a mixed race boy, possibly Latino, but it’s all pretty vague. Could be white
Divergent – a white girl
The Night Gardener – a white girl and a white boy
The Giver Quartet – three white boys and two white girls
The Hunger Games – a girl. Probably white.
Twilight – a white girl
Harry Potter – a white boy
MaddAddam Trilogy – a white girl, a white boy, a white woman and a white man
The Scorpio Races – a white girl and a white boy
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – a Native American boy
Three Men in a Boat – a white man
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – a white girl
Bone Gap – a white girl and a white boy
Stand Still. Stay Silent. – four white boys and two white girls
Wolf by Wolf – a Jewish girl who *usually* looks white
To All the Boys I've Loved Before - a half Korean girl (spoiler! This review is upcoming!!!)

I included that last one because I actually did write that review already, so it seemed part of the same, pre-post on diversity thought process of mine.

Now, racial diversity isn't the only kind of diversity you can read about, but I hope this gives some idea of why, when people seemingly go on and on and on about inclusivity, it isn't because they are going on about nothing. These are not books I stumbled into accidently. The majority are award winning and highly respected. Others are runaway blockbuster hits. Most are used as benchmarks within the discipline.

So here are some numbers:

Of the 17 books above, only 2 feature definitively non-white protagonists
If we include Nailer from Shipbreaker, that number goes up to 3
Wolf By Wolf features a religiously diverse protagonist. The count goes up to 4
Stand Still. Stay Silent. features linguistic diversity and isn't heteronormative. The count goes up to 5
Bone Gap features a protagonist with a disability. The count goes up to 6

And that's it. 6 out of 17 books feature diverse protagonists. Due to the inclusion of a couple works of classical literature, maybe the number skews a little low, but one of the advantages of being white today is that you have the past to bolster you up. We've been the heroes in the cultural narrative for a long time.

A lot of people may argue that I'm being unfair, only counting books where the protagonist belongs to a diverse group. And yes, I will grant you that it's nice that Katniss is friends with black characters and that Bella has a thing for Jacob. They help, because they show that neither Katniss nor Bella belongs to some sort of strange world where the diverse characters have all been edited away. But these are still stories that are about the experiences of people who don't grapple with issues that exclude them from the mainstream. The diverse characters are appendages to those stories, not the focus themselves.

What I'm saying is that things could be better. There could be more diverse books. I might need to more actively select FOR diversity if I want to feature it on my blog. But you'll notice something else about that list. The bottom of it - which is composed primarily of new releases - is more diverse than the top. I didn't do this intentionally, but the books I am reading and that are promoted to me are changing. Modern writers are getting better at including diversity, and a lot of the best stories today feature diverse protagonists. Which leads me to...

Bad Argument #2: If people are just trying to promote diverse books, then what will happen to "good" literature? This is like affirmative action hiring in books! I don't like it!

I think it goes without saying that books should recommend themselves on their own merits. I've picked up diverse books I haven't liked. I've also picked up books that don't feature diversity that I haven't liked. Just as there are "lots of good books" out there, there are also lots of bad books out there. And because reading is so subjective, it can be hard for us to understand why one book got published and another one didn't. And all too often, people use this as an excuse to blame diversity.

You see the same nervousness around diverse books that you do around affirmative action hiring, particularly from writers. Writers who aren't from diverse groups get antsy when they see an editor or literary agent calling for diversity. It's like a scholarship they can't apply to, and it upsets them, because they're looking for a way into the market too.

But this is the thing: For every editor there is asking for fantasy that features non-European mythology, there is another one turning down a manuscript with a diverse protagonist because there just isn't "broad enough market appeal" for it. And "market appeal" is often seen to equal white, heterosexual, able-bodied etc etc

If you want a good example of this, take a look at the way books are adapted into movies. In The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins describes Katniss as olive skinned, dark haired and dark eyed. She's racially ambiguous. But most of us don't think of her that way anymore because we've all seen her played by fair skinned, blue eyed Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence was a logical choice for making the movie more "marketable," a traditional, white beauty who was a star on the rise. Of course she did a good job, and since Katniss's race was ambiguous at best, I wouldn't say she was miscast. But can you see what I mean? When a spot is "neutral" so-called, it's usually filled by a mainstream character.

When people actively call for diverse work, it isn't because they are trying to exclude other writers, but because they're trying to make a space for work that otherwise might struggle to get into the "neutral" slot because nothing is ever neutral. Not really.

And if you find yourself "missing" these opportunities, consider for a moment whether or not your own work really is at it's very best. There might be more diverse work out there now, but there's also still plenty of stories about white people. Don't worry, I went to the book store. I checked. Our faces are still on plenty of covers. Which brings us to...

Bad Argument #3: Diversity is great and all, but not EVERY book should have to be diverse, right? Authors shouldn't feel pressured to include it if they don't want to.

If you are asking this question because you are looking for permission to write a white, able-bodied, heterosexual etc etc mainstream character as your protagonist, then I hereby give you permission. Yes, go ahead. It's your story. You can write your story about whatever you're little heart desires. Similarly, yes, you can enjoy a book about white characters without feeling guilty for liking it. There are great books out there that aren't terribly diverse.

And the reality is that even when we're looking at mainstream protagonists, there are still lots of differences between them . We all love the Avengers and how different they are from each other and yet they're all white, 30-something-year-old dudes. Give or take. (That's starting to change. Marvel is planning on releasing some movies that should broaden the line-up.)

But on the flip side, I will say this: Writers have a responsibility to represent diversity not because it is the buzz phrase du jour, but because writers have a responsibility to represent reality. And the reality is that the world is a diverse place.

If you live in Europe and North America, there was a time when reality did seem less diverse. I don't think Shakespeare had much exposure to cultures other than his own, so when he wrote reality, it was a narrow version of it. And good gosh, we should be grateful he didn't veer too far off of what he knew! *coughshylockchough*

But we don't live in that world anymore. Less than 50% of kindergarteners in America are white. Around a quarter of all Americans live with a disability at some point. If you don't see the need to feature at least SOME non-mainstream characters in your work, then you might just be ignoring reality. And yes, that is something that deserves to be called out. The "mainstream" I've mentioned so many times isn't what it used to be. It's varied in a way that it wasn't before.

There will still be exceptions. There will still be deeply fascinating, genuine books that feature little-known aspects of European history. There will still be stories about small towns in middle-America where everyone attends the same highschool and everyone looks like each other, accept for that one kid who sticks out like a sore thumb. These might be portraying reality in a time or place where it would feel a bit forced to make everyone "diverse for the sake of diversity." But even then, it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of extra research - to make sure we are portraying reality in those places and not just our assumptions about it. Even back in the olden days, there was still more immigration and mixing that went on than people often care to acknowledge.

So with all that said, I want to provide one last argument; one of my own, which I hope strikes people as a good one. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and even label it as such.

Good argument #1: Everyone benefits from diversity because it gives us more stories; stories that wouldn't be available to us otherwise.

A few years ago, I went on a trip to New York with my older sister. Being musical theatre enthusiasts, we decided to go attend a show we knew very little about, but had great buzz. It was called In The Heights and told the story of a neighborhood in northern Manhattan primarily made up of Latin American immigrants.

The musical was the first major work by Lin Manuel Miranda, who has since then achieved dizzying acclaim with his more recent work, Hamilton. But it was In The Heights that made me fall in love with Miranda and his hip-hop, rap infused musical theatre stylings. There isn't really anyone else like him on Broadway.

One of the scenes that completely fascinated me was one that involved Benny, a black cab driver who worked for a Puerto Rican ran cab company. He gets involved with his boss's daughter, Nina, and to his shock, is rebuffed by her family. Benny had always enjoyed an easy relationship with his boss. They're both minorities. They're both used to not having their dreams taken seriously, because they're from a "bad" part of Manhattan. But Benny is a cultural outsider, who speaks some Spanish, but isn't fluent. He finds himself viewed as an intruder and this understandably hurts him.

The resolution of this storyline is probably best left to the musical, but I remember this was a real wake-up call for me. I was so excited watching this, because I had literally never seen this story before. I hadn't seen it anywhere. One of the main reasons why was because, in my own life, there is literally ALWAYS a white person present. It can't be helped because guys, I AM that white person! Shocking, I know.

Miranda gave me a peep into a world of race relationships and cultural hierarchy that had very little - almost nothing, really - to do with white experience. The baggage is different. The tensions are different. The assumptions are different. As a result, the stories are different. Having a white character present for that scene would have radically altered the tone, and so I found myself very glad that there weren't any. Not because I'm inherently "uninterested" in the stories of white characters, but because sometimes they need to step out of the way and make room for other people - to make room for the stories that cannot involve them.

And that's what we stand to gain when we open up to diversity in literature. We end up able to empathize with more people and aware of worlds that are beyond our ability to observe. We have so much to gain by letting more stories be told by the people who experience them. So don't fear the future, friends. It's a place with a lot of great stories to tell.