Chip On My Shoulder
Feb 18, 2014 
Seriously guys. Today, I just have a chip on my shoulder. Some days are like that.
Maybe I should eat more carefully.
Has this ever happened to you?
Writing from a POV Outside your Culture
I have long heard the debate of whether a writer should attempt to write from a POV outside their own culture. The question is this: Can an author who is not of a certain ethnicity, do that ethnicity justice? Can s/he give an authentic point of view?
When you consider the works of people such as Amy Tan, Maya Angelou, and Khaled Hosseini, the idea feels pretty daunting if not impossible. How can you hope to capture the heart of a culture you haven’t lived?
Yet I believe that if a writer is willing to put in the work, it’s possible. Certainly, a character is not Hispanic, Chinese, French, or Russian just because we say they are. Simply giving them an accent is not good enough either.
Writing from the POV of another culture means a whole different way of thinking about the world. To list just a few of the things we must consider:
- Beliefs concerning family/family structure
- Religion
- How the economy affects them
- Monetary systems
- Views concerning money
- Class systems/beliefs
- Measurement systems
- Common animals
- Common foods
- School systems
- Government
Honestly, the list could go on for a long time. But if we want to be authentic, we will take the time to understand how these things work within the culture we are writing from.
To give just a small example, I spent 18 months in a French Territory. I lived with girls from all over the world (France, Tahiti, Vanuatu . . .). When I was preparing to come back to the USA, a girl I knew was interested in buying my bike. She asked how much I wanted for it, and I told her $75. That amount felt like a nice even and reasonable number.
But when we got home, my French roommate shook her head. “I just don’t get you Americans. Why $75? Make it $70 or $80, that would be a nice round number. But you Americans insist on such odd amounts!”
I was flabbergasted. I had been going for a nice round number. To me, $70 or $80 felt uneven. But her comment made me think. Why did we see something so basic and seemingly simple in such a different way?
The answer? Our different monetary systems had biased our way of thinking. You see, the USA uses a 25 cent coin so my mind naturally breaks $100 into four 25’s. I do it without thinking about it. France, on the other hand, uses a 20 cent coin. My French friend naturally counts by 10’s and 20’s.
Such a simple thing that leaked from our experience into our way of thinking. This is how cultural bias is formed. Understanding such simple differences is one of the things we must do to successfully write from a POV outside our own culture.
Have you or would you ever consider writing from a POV outside your culture? If you have, what suggestions do you have for achieving an authentic voice?
Challenging Ourselves
With some challenging revisions ahead of me, I’ve been feeling a bit daunted. Then today, I read this quote:
“Find [work] that challenges you, that raises you to higher levels of performance. It may be harder, but you will grow, develop better, and contribute more good. You really have no idea yet who you are and what you can accomplish in life. You have great potential far beyond what you can imagine today.”
Finding Motivation
 |
| Middle child at 5, proud of his piano skills, and oh, so motivated. |
- Winter doldrums: Totally real thing.*** It’s cold. I’m tired. There’s less daylight, and I’m getting less vitamin D. Winter is winter, and aren’t we supposed to hibernate or something?
- Sheer laziness: Writing is work.**** Sometimes I just don’t want to work. I want to laze about and catch up on those seasons of Sherlock I’ve missed.*^5 I’m sure you understand.
- My long-term goal is messing with my head: My overall goal is to finish. But when I think of the twenty bajillion more rounds of revisions I have to face in order to reach that goal . . . well, you can see why I just want to curl up in a ball, rock back and forth, and hum Kumbaya. It’s overwhelming!
- I have kids: Yeah, this one’s pretty self-explanatory. But it never fails . . . I’m just getting in the zone when the call of the wiley one echoes through the house: “MOM! Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum! Can. You. Come. Wipe. My. Bot. Tom.” Yep, she yells it just like that. And when I go to her, she tells me that she yelled it just like that. She’s pretty proud of that little rhyme. Gosh . . . I should use that in a picture book. 😉
So I could go on.*^6 But the point is, there are plenty of excuses we can use for why we didn’t write. We need to find that one thing that keeps us going. We need to find that one song that motivates us. That one challenge that has us begging for more writing time. Because isn’t that why we started on this road in the first place?
What is your motivation?
*It may or may not have been “Part of this World” from Little Mermaid, and I may or may not have sung this song incessantly at the time. But you’ll never know for sure. 😉
**My dad’s an amazingly accomplished musician and I don’t mind bragging on him a bit.
***This is actually the reason that I doubt my ability to live in Alaska or anywhere way up North. How do you people do it?
****This it a totally true thing, too. 😉
*^5 That would refer to every season. So you can see why I really need to catch up.
*^6 Seriously. I swear I didn’t just stare at the screen for five minutes trying to come up with a fifth theory.
Writing for Middle Graders
My ten-year old got a Kindle for Christmas. I might be a tad jealous since I don’t even have one, but I guess Santa was feeling generous and understood just how much that kid loves to read. And encouraging reading? Well, it IS something I try to do.
One of my favorite things about the Kindle is watching how he chooses to spend his Amazon giftcards. At first, there were a couple of recently released books he was dying for (ones that were the latest in a series he’d been reading). The choices were easy. But with all the book suggestions from Amazon based on his buying history, he realized really fast that there were plenty of other books that cost a lot less than the $10 ones he’d been buying.
The kid’s good at math, so he figured out that he could get MORE books if he got the books in the $0.99 to $2.99 range. Unless it’s a deal, I found that this range usually means self-published. I know plenty of talented self-published authors who work really hard to make their books awesome, so I had no problem with this. But I tried to go through the reviews before buying, to vet his choices. Because let’s be honest . . . there’s self-published and then there’s self-published. Those who do it right, and those who . . . don’t.
There was one book in particular where I found quite a few less-than-complimentary reviews about the quality of the writing: ‘the characters are very one-dimensional’; ‘the plot meanders completely from where it started in the beginning’; ‘the story is very derivative’ . . . Big enough issues that were brought up in enough reviews that I strongly discouraged him from getting it. That said, I let him make the final choice (since, you know, it WAS his money).
Of course he got it. “It sounds really good, Mom!” And wouldn’t you know it, by the time he finished the book (later that day, I believe), he was RAVING about the thing. “This is my second-favorite book, ever!” And the kid reads A LOT of books.
This experience really made me stop. I’ve thought a lot about this. I mean, why do we kill ourselves to make our prose shine, when in the end, our younger readers haven’t yet learned to discern the difference between excellent and mediocre writing anyway? My son liked this book because it involved dragons (his favorite subject), it had lots of action, and it reminded him of other books he loved.
Isn’t that enough to strive for?
I have to conclude that it’s not. When I consider the power of a book–a well-written book–how can I settle for anything less than my best? And it’s not just about getting it right for the reader. The writing/revising of a book is a transcendent experience that I believe makes me better as a person. I learn to find empathy for the vilest of villains. I learn to consider ideas from all different points of view. I learn what’s important to me, and I solidify my beliefs as I spend hours and hours with my characters and their views.
I can’t help but think of J.K. Rowling. She wrote for middle grade readers, and she captured them with a fun and adventurous book. But her prose was so excellent, the ideas she tackled so relatable, that she didn’t only capture middle graders. She captured the world and caused a revolution in the world of books.
Yes, her story is rare, but isn’t that what we all strive for? To write something that leaves people (including ourselves) thinking well beyond the actual reading of it? How can we possibly hope for that if we don’t give it our all?
What do you hope to accomplish with your writing?
The Source of Inspiration
Since I actively joined the blogosphere, way back forever
ago, I’ve gotten to know a lot of other writers. One of the things I love
learning is where they draw their inspiration from.
book, The Headhunter’s Race. A Zelda commercial, and poof! idea.
Red Butterfly (S&S, 2015!!) HERE. Her sympathy for another’s plight led to a
beautiful story.
and Stephanie Meyer dreamed of vampires. Inspiration that served them well.
return to my youth. To an easier, more carefree time. I’d just turned 19 which
(for a reason completely unknown to me now) was a huge deal to me. I was a
freshman in college, living on my own, having to be totally responsible for
myself. I had no one pushing me to do what needed doing.
the jungle of our backyard ditch. Of racing off on my bicycle with my brother
to go dig in the empty lot around the corner. And I wanted it back. The book
was a joy to write, because I just relived all the wonderfully crazy moments of
my childhood. I even included the awful ones that now make me giggle: getting
trampled by the whole soccer field; getting thrown in the ditch by my sister.
the present instead of the past. Foreclosures were popping up everywhere, and I
couldn’t help wondering how kids were handling it. I needed an outlet to express myself. The two ideas morphed, and
it became my first query-able book.
was worried . . . where in the world I would find another book idea?
—
everywhere. A cold became the idea for a humorous MG. A scary dream became an idea for an MG Horror. A horrible real-life
event became an idea for a YA Contemporary. A Wedding Dinner in France became
the idea for a novel set in France. My soccer team became the idea for a work
of adult fiction. They come at me so fast, I know I’ll never actually write
many of them.
best ideas will get written because they keep on inspiring until they must be put on paper for the world to see.
Blog Tour: The Headhunters Race!
So I’ve known Kimberly Afe for a while via her blog, and I’m thrilled to be a part of her Blog Tour for The Headhunters Race which was released Jan. 3! She’s all over the blogosphere this week, and having a fabulous giveaway with a chance to win her ebook PLUS a $25 Amazon gift card and other cool prizes. Totally awesome! So if you haven’t heard of it, here’s the blurb:
Blurb:
Sixteen-year-old
Avene was sentenced to prison at thirteen for a crime she didn’t commit. Now
she has a chance to win her freedom back – if she enters the Headhunters Race.
Second prize isn’t so bad either, an upgrade to the Leisure Prison if you make
it to the finish line. To win either prize, Avene and the other prisoners must
navigate one hundred and fifty miles of dense forest, desert, and worst of all,
cannibal territory.
strangle the prisoners if they’re not back in nine days, Avene allies herself
with seventeen-year-old McCoy, another prisoner that insists on helping her at
every turn and a boy she’s trying hard not to fall for. Together they battle
nature, other prisoners, and the timed death collars to win the coveted prize.
But when Avene is tested with one deadly conflict after another, she realizes
there is more at stake than winning her freedom – first she has to
survive.
And I love her story about how she came up with the idea in the first place. I’ll let her tell it in her own words:
The Headhunters Race has a bit of a long journey. The idea was born on June 26, 2011 after a Zelda game commercial inspired me. The commercial was brilliant and I thought why can’t they make a movie that cool? And then I thought, why don’t I write a cool adventure myself!
So I brainstormed this story with my son over a dinner of spicy spaghetti a couple of nights after the idea came to me. We worked out the entire novel: the characters and their motivations, the world, and the details of the race as I frantically wrote it all down. My husband and daughter also helped me brainstorm items that I needed worked out. I then spent a little while playing around with Avene’s voice and then wrote like crazy. I finished in December of 2011. I actually started having critique partners read it in November of 2011 and began querying agents in January of 2012 after more revising. I also entered it into a few popular contests around the blogosphere in early 2012. Then I took a very long break due to life circumstances with hubby’s heart and moving. Early this year I got back into writing. I’d been thinking about self publishing for quite awhile so when querying a few more agents and a handful of publishers didn’t work out, I decided to go for it, and now, 2 1/2 years later, the book is out there! Wahoo!
Bio
two awesome kids, wife of the nicest man in the world, and her dog’s best
friend. She works by day and writes middle grade and young adult science fiction
and fantasy novels in her spare time. She lives with her family in the
beautiful Sonoran Desert.
Sites
Congratulations Kimberly! I’m really excited for you and wish all the best for you and your book. The rest of you, go forth and enter below. The last day to enter is Friday, January 10th!
Rafflecopter Giveaway
giveaway. The Giveaway includes a copy
of her eBook + the SAS Survival Handbook (2 of these to giveaway) and also
giving away a copy of her eBook + a $25 Amazon gift card – the Rafflecopter
lists all of these prize packs. 🙂 The
Survival Handbook is awesome. 🙂
Merry Christmas! Etc.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukah! Happy Kwanza! Happy Wassail (for you Princess Sofia fans)! Or whatever you might celebrate this season. Hope it’s a good one and that you make lots of happy memories. 🙂
See you next year!
A Book Exchange Booth!
Visiting the William Jewell campus for a Christmas concert, I came across this:
I’d seen pictures of ones in New York City, and was thrilled to see the idea had caught on here in a small Midwest town. If I’d had a book on hand, I’d have totally done an exchange. Still it was fun riffling through the offerings: Suzanne Collins, Janet Evanovich, Maria Schriver, John Grisham, and tons of authors I’d never heard of.
Have you ever seen one of these? And what book would you leave in a book exchange booth?
On Overcoming Criticism
So I recorded this video of my 4 y.o.:
She was very proud of it. But when I showed it to her brothers, 7 y.o. burst out laughing. “Oh! That is so embarrassing for her!”
I worried that she would get all self-conscious, but she was like a duck. The comment slid off her back as she grinned at her video on the computer screen, pride glowing from her.
And it was a flash of inspiration for me. There will always be someone out there ready to criticize. Ready to tell us we are silly (or worse) for doing what we did. For trying to write a book. For daring to think it might be good. For trying to get it published. For having published a book on that subject. Whatever.
But we have to be like my Girlie. We have to love our own work so much that it doesn’t matter what anyone else says. Let those criticisms slide off our back and move forward.* We need to be confident in ourselves.
Because guess what? When 4 y.o. asked to watch it again, 7 y.o. caught the bug. “So do I get to make one, too?”
What have you done when someone hit you with a criticism-bomb?
*To be clear, I’m not talking about critique partner or beta-reader comments that were requested. I’m talking about those un-requested, hurtful, put-downs that we can all do without.