Month: October 2019

Critiquing, Diversity

What does a sensitivity reader do?

Bruce Byfield

I first heard of sensitivity readers a couple of years ago. Like many writers, the concept of someone examining my depiction of other cultures and genders intrigued and alarmed me at the same time. In theory, I liked the idea, but what if I failed to measure up? What if I was unintentionally racist or sexist? Then I had the chance to play a sensitivity reader myself, and saw what a difference a sensitivity reader could make.

The writer I agreed to help was writing Lone Ranger fan-fiction. Her goal was to update the Lone Ranger for modern times — deliberately ignoring the disastrous Johnny Depp movie — and she had already added a few scenes in support of her goal. For example, at one point, the story has a scene in which Tonto explains to the Lone Ranger that the law is not on the sides of non-whites. However, she was not sure she had done enough to realize her goal, so she asked for help.

From the first, I was painfully aware of how unprepared I was for the role. I am of Cornish and English descent, and my knowledge of First Nations is specifically centered on the tribes of British Columbia, from whom I buy art and whom I support with a scholarship at the Freda Diesing School of Northwest art. From the first, I made clear that I had no experience of the Apache or Comanches, the tribes mentioned in the story.

All the same I brought two qualifications to the reading. First, I knew that research is one of the keys to depicting other cultures as human. Second, while the local cultures have no cultural relation to the Apache and Comanches, most First Nations share a common history of oppression by the dominant European-based culture in North America, a history full of broken faith and lies on the settlers’ side, and suspicion and of mistrust on the First Nations side. Only the details differ.

Doing the reading

After doing some research, I was able to make a few concrete suggestions. To start with, while acknowledging the violence of Apache raids, I suggested that it should also be mentioned that settlers committed their own share of atrocities against the Apaches.

However, most of my suggestions centered on Tonto. “Comanche” is not what members of his nation called themselves — that would be “Numinu” or something spelled similarly. More importantly, based on the ethnology of Tonto’s tribe, I could suggest some possible traits and habit that go beyond the stolid “faithful Indian companion” of TV and film. For example, he might tend to give older man respect, because the old men governed his tribe. He would almost certainly have knowledge and interest in the buffalo, whom his people relied upon. Probably, he would use a travois to carry his goods. All these are simple points, but even they start to flesh out the character.

What really matters, though, is that the mythos makes Tonto an orphan. Could that mean that he had never gone through the standard initiation for Comanche men, killing a buffalo on his own and going on a vision-quest? If so, that would explain his position as an outsider. He could be expected to feel himself lacking, and a stranger to the culture of his birth. Such feelings would also find their counterparts in the Lone Ranger, which would explain their friendships. Both would feel themselves exiled from their own cultures, and strangers in each other’s. Basically, they would be mirror images of each other.

The Revision

I sent these comments to the author, emphasizing that these comments were basic and she should do more research herself. Several months passed before I saw the revised story.

Unfortunately, she did not seem to have done the additional research I suggested, which I am sure would have improved her story still further. But she had listened to most of my comments, and I found the results interesting.

The simple mention of settler atrocities made mention of Apache raids more ambiguous. Even more interestingly, when added to her habit of giving Tonto more of a voice, my comments had helped to transform Tonto from a supporting character to something of a shared lead. In places, he schooled the Lone Ranger, even correcting his views. He came across clearly as a lonely man, rather than a figure of stoicism. For the first time, he became interesting. Much more than I would have imagined possible, he had become a character in his own right, no longer simply part of the background to the Lone Ranger’s story.

Could I have said more? Undoubtedly. But I was new to sensitivity reading, and working for free. All the same, it was gratifying to see the results of my comments. From the story as well the author’s comments, I had played a part in helping her goals.

Sensitivity reading, like any critique, is probably what you make it. Still, judging from this experience, I am convinced that it can be a useful exercise so long as a writer is willing to listen. Although I think I avoided any major mistakes, I believe that, the next time I attempt to do a sensitivity reading, I can do a better job.

Diversity, Uncategorized

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t?

thelocaldialect

If you’ve ever been in an online writing community discussing diversity, likely you’ve seen the phrase “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” once or twice (or twenty times) in various discussions over the past few years. The usual complaint, mostly from white writers, is something along the lines of “I’m expected to write diverse characters, but when I do, I’m accused of appropriation or tokenism! What’s a writer to do?”

If you argue with these people, they will have sad stories about how they were attacked online when they revealed their intention to write a story set in feudal Japan, or how the Black sidekick in their story was called a token character (the Black sidekick didn’t even die first, she died second, so what was the problem?!). They’ll tell you that they were directed by agents to make their stories more diverse OR ELSE but they have no idea how to do this while still avoiding criticism because, you guessed it, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

While the “damned if they don’t” portion of the phrase is certainly debatable, there are many in the publishing industry who believe that increased diversity in fiction is a good and positive thing. The diversity reflected in the books published today reflect the diversity of the world we live in, and writing diversity opens up greater opportunities for marginalized people to see themselves represented in the books they read. So, even if writers who do not write diversity are not exactly “damned,” writing diversity is certainly encouraged. Although I certainly take issue with the idea that this diversity is somehow forced of required of writers, I do agree that publishing is better off for having (at least partially) embraced the idea of representation for all.

So what about the “damned if they do?” Are authors who, having given into the inevitability of being “forced” to write diverse books then persecuted for not doing it correctly? Perhaps, a better question is: if writers approach the very idea of writing diversity from the perspective of having been “forced” to do something they never wanted to do in the first place, what are the chances that they’ll do their diverse characters justice? In fact, if someone approaches writing diverse worlds and populating them with diverse characters with willingness and an open mind, then writing diversity well isn’t really all that difficult.

I could write entire essays on how to avoid cultural appropriation, tokenism, and bad representation, but before a writer can tackle any of these (very important) questions, the writer must first must make sure that the attempt at writing marginalized groups is made in good faith. If the writer is only grudgingly including a few marginalized characters in order to ward off the haters, then the accusation of tokenism is sure to follow because your diverse characters are by nature just that — tokens. If you want to avoid being accused of writing token characters, don’t treat your characters as items on a checklist that you tick off in order to avoid criticism.

Likewise, while avoiding cultural appropriation can be tricky, at the heart of the matter is a very simple principle: respect. The writer must show true respect for the cultures and people they choose to represent. Once more, someone who believes they have been “forced” or “damned” to write diversity is unlikely to treat their subjects with the respect they deserve. These might be the writers who believe that being anime fans gives them the freedom and expertise needed to write about Japan, or who writes about First Nations cultures with only the barest knowledge imparted by the mainstream culture, not bothering to do in-depth research. These writers might defensively say “it’s all fiction anyhow, why do I have to be accurate?” There are complicated and interesting answers to those questions that have to do with colonialism and power dynamics, but the simple answer has to do with respect. If you respect another culture, you attempt to it justice.

A big part of the problem lies in the assumption that a writer, white or otherwise, must always produce something that is above criticism, and that all criticism must be avoided. Instead seeing criticism as an opportunity for growth, a chance to do better next time, the criticism is seen as a condemnation. The recipient of this criticism becomes bitter in a way that does not seem to happen with other types of criticism. If I criticize a writer’s plot or characterization, a writer may thank me and make necessary adjustments, but if I criticize the same writer’s depiction of marginalized groups, the bad-faith writer will take this as further evidence of “damned if you do damned if you don’t.”

In defense of the criticism-wary writers, their apprehension is somewhat understandable in a world where Twitter outrage often takes on a life of it’s own and a stray insensitive or unthoughtful remark can undo years of goodwill. Whether or not this is particularly likely to happen to any given writer is a topic for another day, but many writers seem to take the mere possibility of such a thing as a good excuse not to even try. In fact, often in the face of social-media outrage, good faith acceptance of criticism can go a long way towards dousing even the hottest flames.

It seems to me that the “damned if you do,” is often a direct result of taking the “damned if you don’t” approach to writing diversity. If writers approach writing diversity as an opportunity to make their work more dynamic, realistic, and frankly, interesting, instead of approaching it as a task or a chore, they’re more likely to approach it with the sensitivity and respect necessary to write diversity well. The writer writing in good faith, who is willing to accept criticism for the mistakes they make and who vows to listen and do better next time truly has nothing to fear.

General Writing

Wannabe Writers

Bruce Byfield

Few people would dream of becoming a painter or a musician without lessons and practice. Yet wannabes writers, the dilettantes who dream of becoming writers as opposed to those who are working to improve their skill, do so all the time. You can find thousands in Facebook groups, as well as an entire industry to support them in their daydreams, ranging from hybrid and vanity publishers and conferences to freelancers who design and animate covers and even sketch characters or produce lead figurines. Some of these aspiring writers will eventually self-publish, yet only a handful will ever write anything worth reading, and almost always for the same reason: a lack of the basics required for their chosen art.

Many, in fact, lack so much as a basic knowledge of grammar. I am not talking here of the crude prescriptive concept of grammar taught by inadequate teachers (although even that is frequently lacking), but of descriptive grammar that recognizes the multiple alternatives of the English language depending on the class and region of the speakers. Nor am I condemning the courageous adventurers who write English as a second language; I am confident that I could not do half as well as many of them. I am simply pointing out the obvious fact that grammar is a writer’s basic tool. Unless your sense of the multiplicities of grammar has become instinctual, you are not prepared to be a writer, any more than musician who has to watch their fingering can be more than accidentally competent. At best, thanks to both the grammar snobs and the lack of preparation, you are likely to be haunted by a sense of inadequacy, hoping vaguely to find hard and fast rules that simply don’t exist.

Nor do many have any sense of the history of literature. That is especially true in fantasy, in which the knowledge of wannabes rarely extends beyond the last five years or so of publishing in their genres. So far as they have any context, often it tends to be other forms of storytelling, such as film, gaming, or graphic novels — all of which are admirable in themselves, but can teach only a fraction of what a writer needs to know. You may not like the books in the canons of academia or genre, but they are important to an aspiring writer because they are shortcuts to learning. The canons show what has been done, which means that you do not need to experiment for yourself.

Besides, the classics can be fun. And yes, that includes the ones you dislike — sometimes nothing can be as entertaining as pinpointing why a work repels you. If you are not a reader, why would you care to be a writer in the first place?

Sadly,with countless wannabes, the answer is disheartening. They are not in love with words, living for the joy when they put together words in just the right way, a way that nobody has ever done before. They want success and fame without making the effort. In Facebook groups, they are forever asking for help naming a character, plotting their stories, and generally asking someone else to do their thinking for them. A few go so far as to look for a cheap ghost writer, who can do the first draft for them, which they hope to edit into a fortune.

These queries would not be so depressing if they contained any indication that the asker had made some effort themselves first. Even posting a poll would show some effort. Instead, though, the queries are asked of strangers and easily satisfied, suggesting that what is wanted is a shortcut, rather than the sounding board that might be asked of a trusted critiquing partner.

Accompanying this unwillingness to work is usually an overwhelming sense of ambition. Wannabes regularly boast of writing several thousand words per day, and while I haven’t seen most of these results, I have a suspicion that the results are low-quality, because they claim these results day after day — a level of production that is almost impossible to sustain by accomplished writers. If they are writing fantasy, they have already plotted a series of a dozen novels or more. Some actually claim to have written such a series, although samples are not forthcoming.

However, in contrast to these extremes of ambition, the wannabes seem strangely short of things they want to say. They are surprised by suggestions that they observe people, or make notes of how people talk. Instead, they borrow from the little they have read, calling their borrowings tropes — as though renaming can hide a cliché. Nothing is truly original anyway, they reassure themselves, absolving themselves of any responsibility to come up with something new. If, as happened recently in one Facebook group, a wannabe wants some sort of monster to inhabit the beaches, they turn to the D&D monster manual for inspiration. Instead of creating a character of their own, they use an elf or dwarf, whose characters are already delineated by their species. The inevitable results are a copy of a copy of a copy, at best with a small twist or two that is not enough to hide the essential blandness. At times, more effort seems put into the social interaction of NaNoWriMo than in the everyday effort of putting publishable words on the page.

Not everyone, of course, intends to write literature. Nor is there anything wrong with writing a genre novel with clean and competent hands, or a piece of fan-fiction as a learning exercise. In fact, both genre and fan-fiction novels can be sometimes be respected as decent pieces of craft, and, sometimes as art.

However, the combination of a lack of preparedness, an unwillingness to put in the effort, and imitative ambition makes the writing of most wannabes depressing. When their works are finished at all, over-earnestness and a lack of humor or perspective generally sabotage them beyond any hope of redemption or success. I can only hope that the wannabes enjoy their hobby, because for the majority, that is all their writing can reasonably be expected to be.

Diversity, General Writing, Marketing, Publishing, Uncategorized

Lies Writers Tell Themselves: Forced Diversity

thelocaldialect

When it comes to diversity, there’s a lot of misinformation floating around in writerly circles. Much of this misinformation takes the form of reactionary strawmen, creating scenarios that make victims out of the (usually white) writers who are resistant to recent changes in the publishing industry and thus the status quo. These writers feel threatened by an increased awareness of the need for diversity.

One of the biggest strawmen is the idea of so-called “forced diversity,” the idea that publishers now refuse to publish manuscripts that are not sufficiently diverse, that editors are asking writers to re-write manuscripts to change the race or sexuality of a character, that agents who specifically request diverse or #ownvoices stories are rejecting everything else. When this argument comes up, righteous indignation usually follows, with grumblings about the author’s artistic vision, censorship, and lots of “how dare they tell me what to write.” Hand-wringing about cancel culture and the perils of being a white writer are usually not far behind, the sense of being “damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” being a major theme.

Here is something that is a fact: for as long as the publishing industry has existed, it has been dominated by white voices. While there have been amazing books written by marginalized voices over the years, publishing itself is a an industry that is predominated by upper middle class white people. A 2015 Publishers Weekly study showed that the industry itself is 79% white, and the editorial departments were 82% white. With publishing so overwhelmingly white, it is hard to take any claims of white victimhood particularly seriously. A look at the current New York Times bestseller list reveals 9 out of 10 books on the adult fiction book list were written by white authors and feature white protagonists. Does it really look like diversity is being forced upon authors who have no interest in writing diversity? Hardly. The idea that the white author is somehow at a disadvantage seems more a case of sour grapes, a ready-made excuse for the endless stream of rejection letters, than any reflection of the actual state of the publishing industry.

That all said, it is true that there has been some effort on behalf of publishing to become more diverse. Agents frequently include diverse books and the #ownvoices hashtag in their wish-lists. Certain segments of the industry are more diverse than others — YA, for instance, on the same New York Times Bestseller list, had 7 out of 10 white authors on the list, and of those there were stories featuring other types of marginalization — namely sexuality and disability. Still though, white authors are in no danger of being pushed aside, still occupying a full 70% of the bestseller list.

The argument about non-marginalized writers being forced to alter their vision to suit the demands of diversity crazy editors and agents also fails to hold up to any close scrutiny. Although this little bit of urban myth seems to get passed around writer circles, I’ve heard no first-hand accounts of an author directly being told “we’ll publish your book if you make the main character Black” or “I’ll accept you as a client if you make the romance gay.” What seems more likely is that authors have heard, perhaps from beta-readers, perhaps from critique partners, and perhaps even from agents, that their book lacks diversity and might be improved if more diversity was added. This isn’t forced diversity, this is a suggestion for improvement.

It has always amused me that artistic integrity and the sacred vision of the author suddenly becomes so much more important when suggestions are made about diversity than anything else. If an editor suggests that a character is unrealistic as portrayed, and that perhaps the author might give that character a different job, or a different socio-economic background, most writers will not take offense. But suggest that a character should be another race or a different sexual orientation (because after all, diversity adds realism to our fictional worlds, reflecting the world in which we live), and authors suddenly are very concerned about their artistic integrity. The former, it seems, is an acceptable example of the editor giving corrections, whereas the latter is an example of an editor trying to control the author.

Authors, understand this: if someone suggests your book would be improved by the addition of diversity, they are not trying to challenge your authorial vision. They’re not trying to force diversity on you. The person who suggests this — beta reader, critique partner, editor, agent — is telling you that your work does not reflect the world we live in. In the real world, people are not all white, all heterosexual, all cis-gendered. In real life, there’s a guy with a wheelchair buying cereal at the supermarket, there’s a woman wearing a hijab working at the bank, there’s a teacher named Chang at your high school and lesbian couple dropping their son off at daycare. For too long publishing has reflected a warped vision of the real world, and if now it seeks to self-correct, this is not an attack on the non-marginalized writer, but a long overdue chance for the industry to ensure that all readers will see themselves reflected in the books they read.

Because at the heart of the matter is this — diversity and representation matters, and it matters more than the hurt feelings or the righteous indignation of non-marginalized writers, and not just for lofty reasons either. Publishing is, first and foremost, a business, and marginalized individuals are customers too. At the end of the day, the writer may indeed write according to their own “artistic vision” but the publisher too will purchase what sells. If diversity, right now, is selling, then it is a reflection of a demand on the part of a significant segment of the population to see themselves represented in what they read.

If diversity is forced, then it is forced by the readers themselves, and ultimately, publishing is an industry that serves the needs of the reader, rather than the ego of the writer.

General Writing

What Writers Can’t Learn from Dungeons and Dragons

Bruce Byfield

“If you’ve played a character, you are ten steps further towards being a writer than anyone else. You’ve made a character, you have a backstory, and you’ve engaged in narrative, just playing a character in a game. If you’ve DMed, you’re like thirty steps farther towards being a writer of a novel or a story; you’re an active storyteller.”
-Patrick Rothfuss

Like many writers, I went through a period of Dungeon Mastering. For almost two years, I spent every Friday evening masterminding a story for half a dozen friends, setting up a backdrop against which they could play out their fantasies and work through their real-life relationships with each other. Not surprisingly, when I started to write, I began with some of the characters and maps I produced for gaming. Some of that material survives to this day, mutated out of recognition from its origins.

But did Dungeons and Dragons and its ilk make me a better writer? Or give me transferable practice? Unlike countless of writers like Patrick Rothfuss, I would have to say it didn’t. The differences between gaming and writing are simply too great for one to influence the other.

Yeah, both games and fiction involve storytelling. However, like movies or graphic novels, they are different media for storytelling. Each media has its own advantages and restrictions, and moving from one to the other is a form of translation, in which some things are lost and some things are gained. Writing and gaming are no different.

To start with, D&D is an oral form of storytelling. As you might expect, oral stories are geared to the speed at which human ears can comprehend. This speed is much slower than when reading. To remain comprehensible, oral stories develop more slowly than written ones. Typically, too, they involve a lot of repetition. In Homer, that repetition consists largely of metrical phrases like “rosy-fingered dawn” or “Achilles, fleet of foot,” and patterns of action, while in D&D, it takes the form of meta-actions like rolling for initiative and damage done. In fact, being free-form, D&D has a lot of repetition that has no place on the page. Unlike in writing, there is no room for pacing, or a departure from chronological order.

Moreover, D&D is group storytelling, whereas a writer is generally on their own. A gaming session has more in common with improv theater than writing. DMs are closer to a writer than the other players, yet even they provide no more than a framework for the others to develop. That framework must provide space for the other players to improvise, and for the effect of chance. A skilled DM may try to take alternative storylines into account, but more than one has had to cancel the rest of the session or work on the fly when characters do something unforeseen. Writing, in comparison, has so little room for randomness or alternative storylines that examples are hard to find. I have heard that Phillip K. Dick used the I Ching to develop the story of The Man in the High Castle, but, if he did, no sign is visible on the page.

Still another important difference is that gaming requires much more material than the average piece of fiction. For a once a week session, DMs generally have to spend several hours a week in preparation — and I know more than one student whose DMing placed them on academic probation. To lighten the burden, DMs have endless sources of reference material, but often the result is a lack of originality. What matters is an entertaining session, not originality. By contrast, while clichés abound in fiction, too, to many readers’ apparent satisfaction, originality is prized, no matter how small.

However, the main difference is that D&D tends more to story, and writing to plot. Except with the most thoughtful DMs, D&D tends to be episodic. A main quest may exist, but the point is to stage an engaging session. Only rarely is a session complete in itself, with self-contained goals that advance the main quest while being complete in itself, like the best of TV series. More often, a session consists of events that are linked only by chronological order and that contain a large amount of randomness.

By contrast, with rare exceptions like Jack Kerourac’s On the Road, fiction is plotted. The first event causes the second, beginning a chain of cause and effect that only ends in the climax and resolution. This structure is extremely artificial, and less true to life than a gaming session, but is too well-established to be often challenged.

Really, I can barely begin to list all the writing skills you won’t learn by gaming: flashbacks, internal monologues, elegant prose, and much more besides. About all that gaming and fiction have in common is a love of the fantastic. Other elements of their storytelling do not translate. In fact, to assume any closer connection is an easy way to get lost when writing. I sometimes wonder how many of the beginning writers on Internet forums who are always asking for help with plotting are gamers who feel lost developing stories on their own, who feel lost telling stories by themselves. In the end, no matter how much they squirm, writers must rely on themselves. If they want inspiration to learn from, they are far more likely to learn from other books than from games — or from other forms of storytelling.

Uncategorized

My 9 Year Old Writes Fanfic

thelocaldialect

My nine year old daughter, Annika, has sat beside me many evenings and watched me typing away at my computer. At first, she would simply watch. Later, as she became more curious about what her mother was up to, she started to ask questions — what are you writing? What are your characters’ names? What’s happening in your story now? Finally, she brought her iPad over to me and asked if I could put a “writing program” on it. I gave her Google docs and handed it back, and she announced that she was going to write with me. So now, not every day, but occasionally, when I start writing, Annika will come and sit beside me, and she’ll write as well.

What does a 9 year old write, you might ask? Well, my nine year old writes fan-fiction. In particular, she writes fan-fiction for the series Warriors, which is about sentient cats and the battles between different cat clans, and the similar series Wings of Fire, which is about sentient dragons. She has her own OCs (original characters, for the uninitiated), she’s involved in the fan group on the app Amino, where she posts her stories for likes and feedback, and she also draws fan art.

Myself, I’ve never written fanfiction, not technically. True, my first attempt at a novel was practically Star Trek fanfiction, but the universe was ultimately not the Star Trek universe. When I was nine I didn’t know anything of fandom, but I also wrote stories based upon one of my favorite topics — in my case, ancient Egypt. In fact, I wrote an entire play in five acts based upon the lives of the pharaohs and their queens.  So it didn’t surprise me that my daughter would write about her favorites — the cats and dragons that populate the novels she reads.

Some writers look down on fan-fiction, and I’m sure there are some author moms who would encourage their children to write original fiction instead of fan-fiction. However, I’m not one of them. Although I’m not a fanfic writer myself, I am an English teacher. I work every day with teenagers, many of whom are reluctant to write anything at all, and many of them are incredibly intimidated by the idea of writing creatively. “I can’t think of what to write about,” they say. My daughter, at nine years old, already has made writing a habit and a hobby. Although currently she’s writing fanfiction, I have no doubt that with age and maturity, she’ll be able to transfer the skills she picked up with her fan-fiction writing to original works.

Fan-fiction, to me, is like a pair of training wheels for a young writer. Because the intimidating business of creating a world and characters to populate that world is already taken care of, the writer is free to imagine scenarios, to work on plotting and pacing, dialogue and description, which are harder, more technical skills to master than worldbuilding or character creation. Later, once a young writer has accumulated more experience and has seen more of their own world, world creation will come easier. This young writer, who has already mastered the basics of the craft, will be in a great position to create entirely original works.

I’m proud of my daughter’s fanfiction and I brag about it often. Of course I hope that one day she will begin to write her own original fiction, but for now, it is enough for me that she treats writing as a pastime, rather than a chore to be dreaded. A child who has discovered the pleasure found in the written word will keep that pleasure in her heart for a lifetime. Whether that pleasure comes from fan-fiction, comics, or original fiction, is unimportant, what’s important is the joy itself.

Diversity

Diversity: The Strange Case of James Tiptree, Jr.

Bruce Byfield

Whenever someone insists that no one can can write a culture or gender not their own, my mind strays to James Tiptree, Jr. Tiptree’s story used to be well-known in science fiction and fantasy, but recently I’ve become aware that younger readers and writers have never heard it, so it seems worth repeating.

Tiptree emerged in the late Sixties as a star of the New Wave — that loose group of emerging writers intent on experimentation and introducing mainstream sensibilities to science fiction. Primarily a short story writer, Tiptree came seemingly out of nowhere and quickly gained a reputation for brilliant, original writing. The titles alone were a lesson in writing: “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” “Love Is the Plan, the Plan is Death,” “With Delicate Mad Hands,” and countless others that instantly lure you into reading.

At the same time, Tiptree remained a mystery. Tiptree never attended conventions, and from broad hints, the science fiction community understood that the name on the stories was a pseudonym for someone in the counter-intelligence community. Gardner Dozois wrote:

No one […] has, to my knowledge, ever met Tiptree, ever seen him, ever talked with him on the phone. No one knows where he lives, what he looks like, what he does for a living. […] He volunteers no information about his personal life, and politely refuses to answer questions about it. […] Most SF people […] are wild to know who Tiptree “really” is.

Some fans began to try to track Tiptree down. All sorts of speculation abounded.

Meanwhile, Tiptree’s reputation continued to grow. In Again, Dangerous Visions, Harlan Ellison enthused that, “[Kate] Wilhelm is the woman to beat this year, but Tiptree is the man,” and the implication that the male writer was the more important one in no way lessened the compliment to Tiptree.

Robert Silverberg, Tiptree’s editor and correspondent, imagined “Tip” as “a man of 50 or 55, I guess, possibly unmarried, fond of outdoor life, restless in his everyday existence, a man who has seen much of the world and understands it well.” Hearing one fan theory that Tiptree might be a woman, Silverberg declared the idea “absurd, for there is something inelectably masculine about Tiptree’s writing. In fact, Silverberg declared Tiptree more masculine a writer than Hemingway. Similarly, Joanna Russ, another correspondent, wrote that, although obviously a feminist, Tiptree had ideas that “no woman could even think, or understand, let alone assent to.”

You can probably see it coming: in 1976, fannish detective work revealed that Tiptree was not a man. As Tiptree wrote to Ursula K. Le Guin, “The thing is, I am a 61-year-old woman named Alice Sheldon — nickname Alli – solitary by nature but married for 37 years to a very nice man considerably older, who doesn’t read my stuff but is glad I like writing.” For a decade, a woman had passed herself off as a man, deceiving virtually everyone. She never slipped, and what revealed her secret was not her prose.

The Secrets of Tradecraft

When Tiptree’s story is told today, it is often with ridicule for the men who declare her male (but rarely Russ). And there is humor, of course, in over-confident pronouncements being debunked. However, in all fairness, the assumption was not completely unfounded. Although the field was opening up, science fiction in 1967-1977 was still largely written by and for men. By statistics alone, the assumption seemed reasonable.

Even more importantly, all that Sheldon had lied about was her sex. She really had led the adventurous life she claimed. She had lived in masculine company and she knew how men in the company of men talked to each other, and how they envisioned women. The men in her stories are forever eyeing woman and sizing them up. In stories like “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” Sheldon mimics to precision a macho man imagining a woman:

“Sitting up in the bed is the darlingest girl child you’ve EVER seen. She quivers –porno for angels. She sticks both her little arms straight up, flips her hair, looks around full of sleepy pazazz. Then she can’t resist rubbing her hands down her minibreasts and belly.”

At the time, it would have been easy to miss the sense of mockery.

The same combination of mockery and realism appears in “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” when a drugged manly man finds that the world below him is entirely female:

“Gawd…” Bud’s hand clasps his dropping penis, jiggles it absently until it stiffens. “Two million hot little cunts down there waiting for old Buddy. The last man on earth…”

By contrast, the constant feminist perspective is more muted — more a matter of theme and plot and the occasional comment.

The truth is, Sheldon enjoyed playing a role successfully, passing as one of the boys. She was so secure in her double identity that she even started releasing stories as Racoona Sheldon, a pen name that was identified with Tiptree almost immediately (It could have been an effort to mislead with a partial admission). And what are story titles like “The Women Men Don’t See” if not private jokes that nobody except her understood? Sheldon worked hard to maintain her male identity, and used her knowledge of a spy’s tradecraft to maintain it.

Aftermath

Sheldon continued to write for another decade after her unmasking, meeting many of her correspondents, and adding to her reputation before her suicide alongside her husband in 1987.

She was not the first woman to begin a writing career under a male pseudonym. The Bronte sisters originally wrote under male names, and George Elliot was the name assumed by Mary Anne Evans. In science fiction, C. L. Moore was not known as a woman initially, either. But none maintained the deception with the success that Alice Sheldon did. Her success shows that, contrary to common assumptions, identifying personal details about the author from their stories is unreliable.

Of course writers can depict other genders or cultures. For obvious reasons, woman do so more often men, but I also remember how F. M. Busby was thought a woman because of his sympathetic women characters and his use of initials (Ironically, with no intent to deceive, but because he was Francis Marion Busby). Writing a gender or culture not your own takes motivation and knowledge, but unquestionably it can be done.

And who can be surprised? If writing is not about empathy, what is its point?

 

Uncategorized

The Poetry of Names

thelocaldialect

Naming our characters can be one of the best parts of writing fantasy, or even contemporary fiction. Many writers choose their characters’ names with as much love and care as they would give to choosing their own children’s names. Poring over baby name sites, foreign language dictionaries, studying mythologies and genealogies, they finally arrive at the perfect name, or so they think. The reality is, there is one aspect of naming that is often forgotten by writers, particularly white English speaking writers, and that aspect is cultural naming conventions.

Recently a friend, knowing that I’m a Chinese speaker who has more or less married into the culture, asked me for some feedback about a name she’d chosen for a Beijing-based Chinese character in her upcoming urban fantasy. The name struck me as a bit odd, and I asked my friend how she’d chosen it. She went on to explain that the name was the name of a Chinese goddess, and that she’d chosen it because of the characteristics the goddess embodied. This was nice idea, but, as it turned out, an entirely inappropriate approach to Chinese names.


I explained to my friend that while in English speaking naming culture we certainly name people after gods, goddesses, mythical characters, folk heroes and the like, in China it was just not done. Whereas in the English speaking world you can name a child Diana, Athena, Barrack, or even Arya, in China it is not socially acceptable name your child Wukong after the Monkey King, Guanyin after the goddess of mercy, or Zedong after Chairman Mao. Chinese cultural naming conventions dictate parents sholudn’t even name children after family members (especially dead family members), much less easily recognizable mythical figure.

Naming conventions are deeply rooted in our cultures, and ways that sometimes it is hard even for the culture’s natives to understand or articulate. While the English-speaking world may have relatively flexible naming practices compared to some cultures, there are still rules aplenty. Many of my former students unknowingly blundered their way into unfortunate English names by through mistaken assumptions about naming conventions. My favorite example is the name Yan 燕 in Chinese. I’ve had to take several students aside and quietly tell them that “Swallow” is not really the best choice for an English name. And yet, it is a ridiculously easy mistake to make — we have perfectly acceptable bird-based names in English, names like Robin, Paloma, Wren, and Lark, so why not Swallow? Perhaps the number one naming convention of the English speaking world? Don’t set your child up for a lifetime of name-based taunts. Forever conscious of all of the terrible ways a simple name can be transformed into something filthy, Americans recognize the horrible potential of the name Swallow almost immediately.

For some cultures, however, names are more serious business. I asked my critique partner, Bruce, who is heavily involved in the promotion and growth of First Nations artists in his region, about the naming practices of the northern First Nations such as the Haida and the Tsimshian, who are native to British Colombia. He explained that for the Haida, there are different kinds of names — use names, hereditary names, and bestowed names. There are pools of names that should only be used within a family, and adoptees would be given names outside of this pool of names. Some names are only used with certain titles, and some names are titles. Use names, or the names used to refer to a person on a daily basis, are never said out loud once the owner of the name has died. Needless to say, the naming conventions of the Haida are complex, and it would be incredibly easy for someone whose research only went as far as a cursory Google search to make offensive mistakes when naming characters.
When we chose my daughter’s name, my husband lamented the fact that we could not name her Wang Cuiqiao 王翠翘. We were stuck with the character Cui 翠 because it was her generational name, and there aren’t many original options that go with Cui 翠. Wang Cuiqiao, he said, was really a very nice name, but there was just one problem — Wang Cuiqiao was the name of a famous Ming Dynasty prostitute. Now, I have more than a passing familiarity with Chinese history, but this, I would not have known. Imagine if I’d been going through characters to match Cui on my own and hand stumbled upon this character Qiao? Luckily my husband was in charge of Chinese names and he ultimately chose the very lovely character shi 诗 to go with her name, so my daughter is called Wang Cuishi 王翠诗, an unusual but not outlandish name.

And as for my friend, the one with the Chinese character in her urban fantasy? I turned to my husband as well, and told him what sort of feeling my friend wanted to evoke with the character’s name, and he came up with something pretty great — something unique, a bit unconventional, but still socially acceptable.

W.H. Auden once said, “Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.” Sometimes, it isn’t enough to be familiar with a culture or to speak a language. I lived in China for fifteen years and speak the language fluently, but when naming Chinese characters I always defer to a native speaker (usually my husband). The would-be-Swallows were competent English speakers after all, and me being a more than competent Chinese speaker is not enough for me to be able to wield the subtle cultural and historical knowledge required to choose perfect Chinese names. Writers should, equally, use caution when naming characters outside of their own culture. No matter how much of an expert you consider yourself to be, or how much research you’ve done, names are tricky. They’re tricker than the language itself, carrying with them an entire cultural history that often goes back beyond living memory. At the most basic level, names are the most visible representations of the culture itself, and as such, the writer has an absolute obligation to get them right.

 

General Writing

Why I Sit Out NaNoWriMo

Bruce Byfield

National Novel Writing Month (familarly known as NaNoWriMo) is not my least favorite sign of autumn. That would have to be the endless cold rain — no, the omnipresent pumpkin spice pastries and lattes. Still, as everyone online starts talking about their plans for the event, I feel like someone who has no interest in sports but is trapped in a city gripped by playoff fever. I just don’t see the point. In fact, NaNoWriMo seems to perpetuate ideas about writing that seem to me likely to be harmful.

Admittedly, the event starts off with a grating abbreviation. “NaNoWriMo” has a sharp staccato that always makes me think of Newspeak in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Worse, it sounds like cute Newspeak, which is an oxymoron if I ever saw one. It makes me think of jackboots and the rats in Room 101.

Still, I could forget the cloying abbreviation, except for other irritants. To start with, the 50,000 word goal seems designed to be possible within a month, not because it leaves participants with anything useful. Either it leaves them with a novella, a length that is hard to sell to either publishers or readers, or with a fragment of a novel to be finished in the future. Both seem meager rewards for putting the rest of your life on hold for a month.

More importantly, like so many wannabe writers do, the guidelines emphasize quantity over quality. At first, 50,000 words may sound impressive — but do those words sing like the poetry of John Keats, or plod like the prose of Dan Brown? If those 50,000 words take five drafts to become acceptable, or a third of those words are eventually deleted, the accomplishment is not so impressive. A serious risk exists that you will only waste your time to make the word count and end up little that’s worth keeping.

Yes, I know that conventional wisdom has it that a rough draft’s quality doesn’t matter. However, there are people like me who need to put the rough draft into close approximation of the final form before moving on. Personally, if I ignored this need, I would increasingly start feeling like a swarm of bees had taken up residence in my skull. As I pressed on to my arbitrary goal, I would only feel more annoyed. Moreover, almost the entire end result would fall prey to the ravages of the Delete key. I can consistently knock off a publishable 1500 word article in a couple of hours, having written over two thousand over the last two decades, but my fiction oozes out more slowly. I like to think that I save time in the long run by needing fewer drafts to make fiction presentable, but the point is, NaNoWriMo is set up with the assumption that we all have the same writing habits. We don’t.

If NaNoWriMo wanted participants to end up with a useful manuscript, its goal would be something like the first three chapters of a novel. A goal like that would still be challenging, but it would be far less than 50,000 words, which would give writers a chance to produce their best work. But I know that’s not likely to happen. Whenever I raise the points I make here, the result is another classic example of one of Orwell’s concepts: double speak. “Of course I know that the number of words is not a reliable counter of progress,” is the typical response. “Do you think I’m stupid?” Yet sometimes the indignation has barely faded before the same person happily chirps, “I did 3000 words today!” and preens themselves on their progress anyway. So I doubt that many would agree with me.

The true point of NaNoWriMo, I think, is to turn the private act of writing into a social one. When not rushing to meet their daily word count, people can compare results with other participants. They can watch videos online, or, depending where they live, go to an event where they can get a much-needed boost of encouragement. Most of the timewhen I hear participants talk about NaNoWriMo, what enthuses them is the camaradery, the sense of shared hardship and of facing the same challenges as those around them. For some, that may be enough for them to take part in NaNoWriMo year after year. However, I have critiquing partners, so I generally don’t have to look for writing-centered socialization. I have it year round. I look at the circus surrounding NaNoWriMo, and I wonder what it all has to do with writing.

Besides, who has time to start NaNoWriMo with a reasonable chance of finishing? I’m not a student taking a semester off, or retired and looking for ways to fill my day. Nor do I live with anyone who could support me for a month, or who might agree to do my share of the cooking or the laundry for four weeks. The best I can do is limp along the same as always, slipping in a few hours of writing when I can. My normal output for a month is far below NaNoWriMo’s goal, but I will keep far more of it.

For these reasons, I’m going to pass on NaNoWriMo, the same as every year. All that NaNoWriMo can do is help me ready my Scrooge act so that I’ve perfected it by Christmas.