maggienotmegan

With the New Year of course comes the cliched New Year's resolution post!



This year, my resolution is to write more, even daily. Blogging, noveling, short-story and poem-ing, you name it. So hopefully there will be more posts here for folks to not read!


Wish me luck, and if you know me, feel free to poke me if I don't seem to have written in a while.

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“The Word of God”
Catherine Faber

From desert cliff and mountaintop we trace the wide design,
Strike-slip fault and overthrust and syn and anticline…
We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found;
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground.
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.

There are those who name the stars, who watch the sky by night,
Seeking out the darkest place, to better see the light.
Long ago, when torture broke the remnant of his will,
Galileo recanted, but the Earth is moving still
High above the mountaintops, where only distance bars,
The truth has left its footprints in the dust between the stars.
We may watch and study or may shudder and deny,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the sky.

By stem and root and branch we trace, by feather, fang and fur,
How the living things that are descend from things that were.
The moss, the kelp, the zebrafish, the very mice and flies,
These tiny, humble, wordless things — how shall they tell us lies?
We are kin to beasts; no other answer can we bring.
The truth has left its fingerprints on every living thing.
Remember, should you have to choose between them in the strife,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote life.

And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
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 SHARED DIVE NOT SHOWING UP? 

ANSWER: MAP IT

MAPPING IT:  ROLL FOR SUCCESS

MAGGIE ROLLS:  20

MAPPING IS A SUCCESS.

#nailedit
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So, in the last few years, it's slowly hit home that my white privilege affects my writing as much (perhaps even moreso) than it does other aspects of my life. This would seem to be only common sense, but I have never claimed to have a high WIS score, okay?

Posts such as [Unknown LJ tag]'s "I Didn't Dream of Dragons" made me realize that (with some notable exceptions, mostly from books published in the last ten years or so) my favorite books were all about white people. Communities such as racebending drove home the fact that my favorite TV shows (and even just TV shows I occasionally watched) were all about white people.

They were also all about heterosexual, monogamous, vanilla, cisgendered people (again, with some notable exceptions), with mainly male heroes.

As a pansexual woman, I realized that I wasn't represented fairly early on, although it still took me till my late teens to really notice, and even longer for it to sink in. Now I watch my favorite TV shows, and I still enjoy them, but there's always that edge of "Wow, all the women in this show DIE" or "Would it kill you to have a queer character?" or so, so often, "THERE IS NO GENDER BINARY STOP ENFORCING IT JERKWADS."

For years, I have written (at least internally, on my mental story-harddrive) interesting female characters, three-dimensional queer characters. I have characters that I know inside and out that are pansexual, asexual, and everything in between.

I have no genderqueer or transgender characters.

I have no characters of color.

In fact, I have very few characters that don't represent myself and the people I grew up with. My characters represent the white, liberal, upper-middle-class geeks of the world.

And don't get me wrong - I strongly believe geeks need more representation, especially female and queer geeks, because dude. We're not just single straight white guys. Not by a long shot.

But you know what? That's not good enough. It's not good enough for characters of color and non-cisgendered characters to merely exist in my stories. (seanan_mcguire has a great post on why, focusing on the need for front-and-center queer characters.)

It's an easy conclusion, really, that I should include more characters of different backgrounds than mine - that I should represent the experiences of people of color, of non-cisgendered people, of non-Christian (or atheist) people.

It's a hard conclusion, too, because it's terrifying. Wouldn't it be worse to try and do it WRONG? And the effort involved in trying to do it right - sometimes it's all I can do to write a basically-me character.

A lot of folks have written up some excellent explanations for why I ought to write characters of color despite this fear. (And I think the reasoning holds true for any kind of character that significantly differs from the white, christian, heterosexual, cisgendered norm.) matociquala 's theory on "Writing the Other Without Being a Dick," as zie puts it, is to first of all stop thinking of them as the "Other." Quit dividing the world into "us and them." Again, something that seems like common sense, and simple enough, although zie also points out that simple does not necessarily mean easy. As zie says later,

if I am writing a character who has a personal background that is not bog-standard, there is going to be some twelve year old kid out there who is going to find that character, and it's going to be the only character like them they have ever seen, and if I screw it up then I am, essentially, tossing sand in the eyes of that kid.

So how do I write without tossing sand?  I research.  I get people whose experiences I'm trying to represent to read what I've written and tell me when I've been a dumbass or a dick.

And yes, it's going to take me extra work, extra effort.  But it's worth it.  

I'm having a hard time right now, taking the novel I started several years ago and revising the story to no longer be about a group of white nerdy kids.  It's particularly difficult because these are characters I created so very long ago, and changing them feels terrible.  I want Shan to stay Shan, but at the same time, I know Fatina is a more compelling character, one much more desperately needed, and one that will make my story better.

TL;DR:  Thank you, Internet.  Even though you've made my life a whole lot harder now that I know I have privilege and need to check it, I wouldn't have it any other way.  (Even if I sometimes want the damn cookie I by no means deserve, because honestly, who doesn't want cookies?)



Further Reading Material:
rydra_wong  "Writing Characters of Color (Now with 10% Less White Liberal Anxiety!)"

Writing characters of colour is not fundamentally any different from writing any other characters: it’s the same process of trying to extrapolate creatively from canon in an interesting and hopefully plausible way.

Admitting ignorance is one thing; jumping from “I don’t feel that as a white person I can ever fully understand the African-American experience” to “therefore I cannot ever write Aiden Ford, because I will get it wrong and the Scary Black People will hurt me" is another.

And for the UR DOIN' IT WRONG category, shweta_narayan 's helpful "Tough Guide to Fantasyland's Exotic Locales"

The Evil Empire (EE) lies to the South and/or East of Fantasyland proper, generally on the Other Continent; its inhabitants are Natives. Tourists will see amazing amounts of Squalor right beside displays of Massive Wealth here, and Terrible Oppression co-existing with Great Decadence. The laws will all be very harsh, but there will be such Corruption that the rich are never subject to them (unless they personally anger the Tyrant). Tourists must be given opportunities to marvel at these contradictions, because one never sees this sort of thing in Fantasyland proper, where Average Folk are contented unless under the Dark Lord, Massive Wealth and Elaborate Courtly Rituals are sources of National Pride rather than signs of Oppression, and sophistication signals Progress rather than Moral Decay.

In related topics, see: Whitewashing, as talked about on Racialicious using the example of the recent (ridiculous and racist) Hunger Games controversy.

How is it, when Rue is so clearly described that fans insist they believed her to be white? White people are considered the norm in society; the default person. It’s as simple as when you hear the words “All-American”, I can say with certainty that you are not picturing a minority person of color. This is white privilege.

I’m a longtime Hunger Games fan and have followed many conversations on the internet concerning the casting of the film. Whenever the conversation comes to Rue there is always (1) person who is surprised to find out Rue is black and (2) another person who is upset that Rue is black. Upset as if they have been tricked or as if something has been stolen from them. Upset as if they now have to reevaluate how they feel about Rue–a character many fans love dearly because of her incredible courage. “OMG, THERE IS A BLACK PERSON IN MY BOOK!?”

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 Just terrible at keeping up with my blog.  Granted, I have in practice about one regular reader (by which I mean myself), but it's not as though I can attract followers without content, after all.

ANYWAY.  Since I last posted, my life has gone through some changes, mainly for the better.  I quit my waiting tables job for the very reasonable reason IMHO that I spent the majority of my time there experiencing passive suicidal ideation.  I like being friendly to people, and I don't mind working hard - I can say with confidence that I am an amazing waitress - but without stimulation, my brain atrophies and starts to DIE.  

I managed to finish my resume in a matter of two hours (...and a year, since I started writing it LAST JUNE) and applied to a job with a local non-profit.  My mother found me the listing, actually, and she and my dad were a great help.  [Unknown LJ tag] kicked my butt on my resume, making me cut it down from a verbose four pages to the recommended one, and then my parents helped me polish it up, as well as helping with my cover letter.  Since my dad sometimes has to hire people, he gave me some common interview questions to prepare for, and since I GOT THE JOB, I'm going to choose to believe that I knocked the interview out of the park.

I'm really excited about this job.  I had my first day of training yesterday, and train again later today.  After that, the training wheels come off and away I go!

I'm the Holiday Program Assistant, which means I'm going to be in charge of mostly the administrative side of the program.  (It's all about providing food and gifts for needy families during the holidays, which is lovely, although not as useful as year-round help.  #shamelessplugfornonprofits) It's very similar in a lot of ways to the internship I had last year, so I'm pretty confident in my abilities, and excited to be doing such work again.  (Last year, I fell a little bit in love with Excel, and Mail Merge BLEW MY MIND.)

I also have lately been getting writing inspiration, which I hadn't for quite a while.  Now, I still have problems with the discipline needed to actually write shit down, but I'm getting better at it.  I love writing, and - even if this sounds arrogant - think I have the talent to make it as a writer.  I'm not sure I have all the skills yet, and I KNOW I don't have the discipline yet, and those are in some ways more important than talent.  One of my goals for the year is to get in the habit of writing every day.  Another is to take a writing class...although I'd really in some ways prefer a plotting class.  I'm great with coming up with characters and a plot, but I get lost when it comes to things like "well, what IS this conspiracy, anyway?" and "so...about that murder they're investigating.  whodunnit?" 

I'm also looking into graduate studies.  I miss school, yo.  While I would love to get my MFA in Creative Writing, it's really not at all practical, and anything I learned there I could probably teach myself through practice.  So instead, I am looking into the field of emergency preparedness!  I have always said I wished they made computer games or something where some terrible catastrophe happened, like an epidemic, and you had to figure out how to deal with it - quarantines? the creation of and DISTRIBUTION of vaccines? how to spin the press coverage so as to avoid a panic? etc.

[Unknown LJ tag]  pointed out that there are actually jobs like that, which sort of blew my mind, because sometimes I just don't think about things.  So I'm trying to research Public Health/Emergency Preparedness programs, to make sure this is something I'd want to do before I commit to such a costly venture.

It's time for me to get going to training, so now I must take my leave, gentle reader.  Wish me luck!
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