Because I have a few books in progress, both on the reading and writing side, and that tends to make me feel overwhelmed and shut down without a clear focus, here's my update on both projects. Particularly since I owe some authors some reviews, and those are just as delayed as the revisions on my main #WIP, here's a glimpse into some of my thoughts and where I am in my writing process (and how I took on more than one book project at a time. But hey, juggling multiple projects is what I have to do at work, so it is a matter of keeping them organised. Hopefully sharing these thoughts will help me do this.
First reading:
I was really excited to pick up Raybearer last month after finishing up the Daevabad Chronicles. The creativity in Raybearer went beyond the usual mythology of the djinn, but I was not clear how the two were connected. I HAVE finished a review on Goodreads you can check out.
After picking up Raybearer, I found out that Twin Paradox had been released by Wachter, you can see my blog post about that, and want to build that reciprocal relationship with him since he has offered to provide feedback when my second draft is finished. Even though it is outside of the literary space I am in, or focusing on reading. I felt overwhelmed having that thrown on my tbr pile, since I still need to finish Crown of Coin and Whispers. I also wanted to review Her Name is Murder before the sequel his this fall, and I feel tragically behind there.
That was one reason I just binged reading Raybearer, to get something off my plate. I need to commit to finishing the next book to get that pile down, but I do not plan to add to that pile any time soon. Particularly since I am juggling finally finding a good writing support group and want to be engaged in providing quality critique feedback on chapters submitted to workshops where I am involved - and receiving critical support on my revisions. That is taking a higher priority for me at the moment than published books hitting the market, because I have been searching since March for the right standard of feedback on my own writing, and it has been a big breakthrough for me to find some really sharp writers in an online workshop format.
I have made progress on Twin Paradox and am into Chapter Two. I have sent thoughts and feedback to Wachter on the opening. I felt that the second chapter was stronger than the first, and hooked us with character engagement better. There are also themes about his characters focusing predominantly on white men that I have raised with him, because I would like to see him challenge himself more in his future writing. He choses great minds from world history and heritage, and one woman, one Asian man, and one black man are among them. It did cause me to ask him to push himself to challenge his worldview when he looked around did he only see contributions of white men? I think given the cultural time we are in, this will add a lot of value to his creations, and contributions. He chose MLK Jr., and then a lot of white men, and I asked what about Ghandi? Mandela? What about Black Women who have not had their contributions recognized? It is important to start celebrating a culture that has contributions from many types of people if we want to start seeing the future value diversity can contribute ahead, in my view.
Writing:
Because the chapter workshops happen only a few times each month, and because I am fairly systematic in working through the layers I need to polish and addressing each issue where I need solutions, my revisions were delayed without this input, but are now moving forward at the pace that they can. Unless I find a critique partner who is available weekly to work with me on each issue in the order they are the focus, I cannot move faster on these revisions.
There was a chapter in Wachter's book about one of the main characters who has seen an event which may or may not be a hallucination, and trying to come to grips with that is part of his journey. This spring I had posed the idae of writing a book based on my experience in the hospital for a week on hallucinagenic drugs - and these chapters from Twin Paradox put me in that space to launch off on this project.
Having written several thousand words, the storytelling was suffering from not having decisions made about how to structure this story within a story. I have a workshop next weekedn where I intend to present the first chapter and overview to discuss this decision so I can move forward writing this further. However, it has been great outlet for creativity while feeling stalled with my revisions.
I will say it. This summer has not been a super positive constructive time in the online Writing Community. The amount of gatekeeping that is going on about issues of writing about women, POC, and LGBT characters seems to involve a lot of arguments and attacking other wtiers. I wrote about this early on in my blog at the start of the summer following a debate that had been online in the spring about a writing conference with a male panel talking about writing strong women characters, and it being a nightmare. Recently I tuned in to a chat with the author of a Gentleman in Moscow, who is not Russian or a woman - his first novel is about a workingclass woman in 1930s New York. Someone asked him about how he writes characters that are not himself, and he said forcing himself to be in the shoes of characters with a different world and different worldview helps him realize things about the world, and observe things he would never see from his vantage point. This is what we should be asking of all creatives to push themselves in this way. However, the inspiration writers draw from for their stories can be varied, and should not be monitored. The effort and focus should not be on dictating who should write what, but working with writers to push them how they reprsesent those groups and characters that do not re-enforce problematic thinking. We should seek to point out issues in society and how we can make improvements in our writing, and ask of each other to get better at recognizing our blindspots so our writing can really shine and contribute to envisioning a better world.
The community at large should seek this constructive focus as opposed to "you can't write about X, Y or Z." The LGBT question is particularly offensive because someone's sexual identity is by definition the business of no one. A good example is from a workshop of my first chapters, where someone said I had made a reference that drew him into cultural references because I had not filled in those details. He said that was where as a writer you get into tokenization territory, and the prompts he gave me to consider how to build out the details to avoid this was exactly what I needed to hear. Tokenization and fetishizing are the things we should be discussing in beta reads and manuscript critiques, because no matter who the author is, these are errors in writing that CAN BE FIXED. We all grow when we talk about this process rather than shutting it down.
This topic is what launched my new project that was unplanned, but feels very easy to write and feels like it is easy to get into a rhythm, as opposed to the two projects that need to be workshopped and where I need support. When I look at the adult fiction options available to read, I still do not see adult fiction about relationships between two women, particularly where it is ONLY about their relationship, and not one of their relationships to a man or a family who is opposed to some choices about which gender her relationship should be with. I do not know why this is the only focus of memoirs and fiction. In YA, we are starting just to see books about same gender relationships, but I do not understand why this escapes the creativity or quality of writing to be published in the adult sphere.
We want to see characters and content that show that people are not just one thing - whether it is POC or women or LGBT. We want to see more depth and diversity not only in how these characters are written but in a world where they just all interact on a normal basis. Meaning the question is not constantly in their face about whether they are defined purely by one thing about them, or their only character arc is figuring out who they are. I do not see books with characters that do this which I would want to read.
So I sat down and in 20 minutes started to sketch out a story about a relationship between two adult, professional women. This book actually is much less complex than my other projects where I have world building or story within a story structures to build. This story could be outlined in more traditional planner style of creative process. Within an hour, I had built out some of that and within three hours written the first scene. Because there are no obstacles or questions about how to write this story, characters, or world, this book is fairly easy for me to write. This story starts with an "inciting incident" and includes a lot of flashbacks, so I still have questions about pacing and beats. However, I am sure many of those things can be figured out in the beta and revision process. Unfortunately, since it is not speculative fiction, I cannot rely on my current high quality writing support group for those answers like I can with my other projects. However, I think it will be less complicated to find readers or members of the community who have an easier time providing feedback.
That's the current status of the things on my plate - and this is just the writing world. In my business world, I am struggling with a new project, finalizing participation and partnership for a conference where I will be speaking. Life is not easy. The issues regarding how people are behaving in ways that foster negativity and bitterness and bad behavior toward other members of the creative community are not helpful for any of us during these trying times. These are not good coping mechanisms, and I post frequently on ways to help make resiliency and mental health priorities - because I need to focus on these things too.
This book, will probably take place in Midtown Atlanta between two caucasian women who are former athletes and in the professional sector, moving into management. However, their lives, at least not that of the main character, is not segregated or confined in the LGBT community for her relationships, because she has a circle of straight friends who are supportive of whoever she dates, and handle her relationships with either gender based on standards for healthy dating and relationship practices and boundaries. Her circle is also not segregated racially, and two of her closest friends are a black man and a black woman, the latter represents the stable relationship model in the story. This book will address the topic of straight and LGBT community trying to make the main character "pick teams" or defining for her who she is allowed to be attracted to.