In Which I Admit I May Only Be A Middle Grade Writer, And That's Okay

Remember my last post when I thought I had worked through my psychological turmoil and might actually be able to finish my contemporary romance? Well, all I have to say to that is, ha ha ha, joke's on me because I've added all of 3,000 words to that book since July. I love the idea of finishing that book, but I don't actually love that book. Maybe I'll finish it someday. It feels wrong to leave unfinished a project that's 25,000 words in. But I've given myself permission to do it. I just don't love writing outside the middle grade space, it turns out.

One of my friends in the #MGWaves is a writing craft nerd, and she offered to do an outline workshop with some of us. That gave me the impetus to dust off an idea I had almost a year ago. I even wrote a few chapters of that version of the idea, but I was trying to narrate it in the voice of Charles Dickens and, surprise surprise, that's actually really hard. I think I nailed the first chapter, but then when my critique group read the second chapter they wondered why Dickens wasn't narrating anymore. Could I have done more reading, gone through a million edits, and eventually gotten it right? Maybe. But in the end I found I just didn't have the ambition to attempt it.

So the Dickens inspired Christmas ghost story was tossed into the bin. But a skeleton of a winter ghost story with darkness and light, grief and joy, remained. So I gave it flesh. The ghost is now the MC's older sister. The first names have changed to match the theme. The family is much more fleshed out and much more flawed. Real wrong has been done to the vengeful ghosts.

Basically it's a whole lot better than the original idea. I still only have an outline (though a pretty detailed one thanks to my awesome friends) and character sketches, but it's something. 

And of course I made a new moodboard/aesthetic, because that's what I do. Here it is, in all its glory. Now let's see if I can actually make this thing into a completed manuscript. Whether that then makes it into a book is not up to me, as I have painfully learned, but finished manuscript is something I can control and I hope I can push past my hard feelings about querying the manuscript that would be "the one" for nearly two years now and get this story written. I think it has the potential to be something really beautiful. Maybe even better than Harbor Lightkeep. And that's saying a lot. Because I did not think I could beat a glucose alert fox.

In Which I Hope My Words Are Delicious Because I Need to Eat Them Again

Remember one of my earliest posts when I talked about creating diverse characters as a White writer and came to the conclusion that it's okay to write a POV character from a marginalized identity as long as I research it carefully? Well, if you're a fellow writer reading this and you think that's an awesome idea it is not my job to stop you, but, personally, in the 8 1/2 months since I wrote that post, I have changed my opinion.

This is thanks in large part to my interactions with my writing community, the #MGWaves, which includes writers from around the world and from a variety of ethnic and racial groups. The more they shared about how they feel when someone who cannot understand their experience tries to write from that viewpoint, the more I realized that I need to leave those stories to writers who know them intimately.

What does this mean for my writing? Well, in a practical sense, it meant a huge revision of the book formerly known as Anna Ono. The character is now Anna Otto and her fear of not fitting in in her new home comes not from being a multiethnic city girl but from being an immigrant from Sweden who is half American but never expected to actually move to America.

Now you're probably asking, well, why are you any more qualified to write that? You're not an immigrant from Sweden. That is true. I did, however, live in Sweden for a year so I have personal experience with what it feels like to adjust to a new country and fear you'll never fit in. I also still have Swedish friends and know the culture well. Ultimately, as writers we all need to decide what type of viewpoint character we feel like we can write. 

I doubt I'll ever set a book in Sweden, but I think that with a combination of my own experience, research, and talking with my Swedish friends, I could write such a story accurately, especially if the story was of an American kid who moved to Sweden. I think I would have a much harder time writing a story that takes place in another European country or writing an immigrant from another European country even though my character would be White. 

I think I can write a cisgender boy accurately as well as a cisgender girl even though I have never been a cisgender boy. But, while I might someday tackle a secondary character who is a trans girl or boy or a nonbinary child, I would not attempt to write a POV character who was not cisgender for the same reasons I have decided it is not my place to write a POV character who is a person of color.

Secondary characters are different creature from POV characters, I think. It's a fine line to tread between portraying a diverse world and not having characters outside your own ethnicity there as tokens, but I do think it's possible and desirable. Anna Otto has a friend who is half Scottish and half Mexican American. He was in the original book and I did not feel I needed to change him during the revision. 

If this book is ever published, it's possible that someone might call me out on some of my choices, even though I've tried very hard to be fair and respectful. It is not possible to please everyone. However, if I am honestly trying to portray our diverse world while simultaneously not stealing the stories of writers who were ignored for far too long, I feel like I have done my level best.

Just for fun, here's an aesthetic I created for Anna Otto. When I wrote the first version of the book last spring I didn't even know what an aesthetic was.

In Which I Introduce the Blog and Attempt to Tell You Why I Love Books

 Sometimes I wish I lived a few generations ago. I mean, yeah, there are a lot of things that are easier and better about the times we live in, but I feel like being a writer was easier in a way back then. You know, back when publishers actually read unsolicited manuscripts and authors didn't have to "build a platform." L.M. Montgomery was grateful to work at the post office so her neighbors wouldn't see how many copies of the manuscript for Anne of Green Gables she sent to publishers, but at least she didn't have to query dozens of agents before even having a chance to have a publisher look at the manuscript.

I'm not actually out to whine, however. Overall I like the century I live in (2020 has been a real bear, but thankfully that doesn't speak to our time period as a whole) and, since this is the time I ended up in, building a platform is something I have to do. Thankfully, I'm really good at writing about myself and gushing about books I like, so I may be able to make a success of this :).

I don't remember learning to read. My mom says I learned in kindergarten, which was unusual for the early 1980's since formal reading skills weren't normally taught until first grade at that time. Some people remember a particular book that hooked them on reading. I don't. As far as I remember, I eagerly read anything I could get my hands on as a child. I loved books about horses and cats in particular, but I would happily pick up my older brother's The Three Investigators books as well.

If I remember correctly, it was third grade when I discovered Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence, and, if I hadn't already loved books, those books would have fully won me over. She drew me into her world of Old Ones, Dark lords, and Welsh legends. I still dream of seeing the mountains of Wales someday thanks to her books, and I'd like to stop by Cornwall as well. Maybe I'll catch sight of the Greenwitch beneath the waves off the coast.

Sometimes I've wondered I am an introvert because I fell so deeply in love with books at such a young age or if I fell so deeply in love with books at such a young age because I'm an introvert. I suspect it's the latter. I wanted real living friends too, but I made a lot of friends within the pages of books. This was good since I wasn't, and still am not, all that great at making real live in person friends. I've become more outgoing as an adult, but by the time that had happened I'd already entered the phase of adulthood in which it's famously difficult to make new friends, so my timing wasn't that great :).

As a White, upper middle class girl without a visible disability (I have ADHD, but I didn't even know that as a child), it was really easy for me to see myself in the characters I read. Nearly all of the girls I read about didn't look radically different than I did, though some of them lived in fantasy worlds or long ago.

As a writer, one of my passions is to create characters who make kids who are less likely to be portrayed in books feel seen. Except for writing about kids with ADHD I often have to do a lot of research to make this happen and portray those characters well and with sensitivity, but I believe it's well worth my time. Once I manage to get a book published, if just one kid who has felt invisible feels seen after reading one of my books it will all have been worth it.