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Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Do I Have the Right to Write this Blogpost?

The final session I attended at the Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 was called An Author's Bill of Rights by Stephanie Kallos.

The session began with a question:

Do you have the right to write about ______? What does a writer have the right to do? Do you have the right to write about a person or event or group you are not part of or did not experience?

She spoke about how writers are so often hesitant to write about things/people/events that they don't have personal identification or experience with. For example, does she, a middle aged white woman from the midwest with no immediate connection to the Jewish community, have a right to write about the Holocaust? Or to write about a child with autism? Or a transgender person?

To me, this is a super interesting question, and one that I do think the writing community needs to be having a conversation about. But I have very mixed and often negative feelings about the way the topic was handled in this session.

First, let's start with the positive. At the core, the message was to not be afraid to write what you have not directly experienced. In other words, scrap "Write what you know." I do think that this is valuable advice. It's easy to limit yourself from fear, but there is a value in overcoming that feeling and learning through writing.

However, this was not where she stopped. To set this up, you need an image of the room we were sitting in. The conference was predominantly while, middle to upper class people in their 50's. While there were younger people, they were in a minority, and there were very few under 35. The lack of people of color was distictly notable. So, we have a primarily homogenous and privladged group of people listening to this talk.

Now, here is the problem.

She essentially was telling this group of people that it is okay to write about cultures they are not part of and people they don't know and experiences they haven't had. If she had not been a woman of color, or in some other way not part of the privlidged majority, this would have felt very different. But the way she was saying this felt very wrong. She was saying "Don't let anyone stop you!  You always have the right to write about anything!"

What she was missing was an element of respect. I agree that it is not only permissable but to some extent important to write about cultures you aren't part of. With the permission of the members of the group you're writing about. Can I, a white middle class 18 year old girl from Bellingham, WA write about what it is like to be a black transgender woman in Chicago? Maybe. But not without a shit ton of research and the blessing of members of those communities. I'm not telling my story, I'm telling their story. And if they don't like it, or if they want me to change it, or if they tell me to stop altogether, it is my responsibility to listen and respect their wishes. No matter what.

I am even questioning my own right to write this blog post. I am not part of nearly any minority groups. I am coming from a place of privlage. I have a friend and co-worker who I attended this conference with who I feel is in some ways more qualified and able to write about this topic than I am. And I certainly hope that he adds his voice to this discussion. But I also feel that it is also my right to give my thoughts and to share my concerns. I'm not writing this as the end all, be all of this discussion. I'm writing this with the hope of entering a conversation that I feel like I should perhaps be on the fringes of. This is my way of showing my support but also handing this topic over to those more qualified or more involved.

Yes. We as writers should not limit ourselves based on our direct life experience. I completely agree with this. We should use writing as a tool to learn more about the world and to educate others about what we have learned. But if we take on this undertaking, we take with it a huge amount of responsibility. It is our responsibility to do as much research as we possibly can. It is our responsibility to be as accurate as we know how to be. It is our responibility to understand that if we don't feel like we can portray things accurately, it is time to set that project aside. It is our responsibility to seek out and respect the perspectives of the people we are writing about. It is our responsibility, first and foremost, to respect their wishes and thoughts. If I am writing about the queer community and a member of that community tells me my writing makes them uncomfortable and asks me to stop, it is my responsibility to stop. If they ask me to make changes, it is my responsibility to make changes. I have the right to ask, but I do not have the right to insist. If I am asked to stop, it is my responsibility as a writer and as a human being to stop. 

Don't be afraid to write. But use common sense and compassion, and know how you fit into the conversation you are joining.

That is your responsibility, not your right.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 {Day 2)

Here is my summary of Day 2 of the conference, a few days late. This post is only going to cover the first half of the day, as the final session I attended deserves a post all of its own.

The first session I went to for the day was called The Tao of Daily Writing by Susan Colleen Brown. The first part of the session involved making realistic goals. How long can you realistically write each day? How many days a week can you realistically do that? And also setting some intention for your writing. For me, I came up with the realistic goal of writing 30-45 minutes a day, 6 days a week. This is a goal I would like to exceed, but I know that this is a manageable starting place.

The rest of the session (the other 40 minutes of it) were taken up by introductions. Every person there introduced themselves, their work, and how they fit writing into their day. I was a bit disappointed by this. The first part of the session seemed like it was going in a useful direction, but I wished the introductions part hadn't taken up the entire remainder of the time.

The second session of the day was a panel entitled Hitting the Right Note: A Conversation on Creating Your Character's Voice. The authors on the panel were: David Laskin, Sam Ligon, and Stephanie Kallos.

This panel ended up being a bit all over the place, so I thought I'd just list some of the quotes and pieces of advice I jotted down, organized by who said them.

David Laskin:

"Every piece has it's own voice and rhythm, they don't have to be the same."

Journaling and freewriting in the 2nd person can help you seperate yourself from your usual writing ruts, and keep creativity high.

Writing in the 1st person and the rewriting everything into 3rd (or the other way around) can be helpful as well.

"Imprint a character you're having trouble with onto a real person you know. What would that person do or say in a given situation?"

"Any day writing in a productive day, no matter what you write."

Sam Ligon:

"Prose is musical - the voice is the song"

Your first run is instict, get into the song and voice - the craft comes later. If you can't hear it, you can't write it.

"Short and long sentences mixed creates tension."

"Write for a smart reader. Assume they are as intelligent or more intelligent than you."

Stephanie Kallos:

"Give us long thoughts with a strong, present conclusion."

To spark creativity, make lists.

After this, I went to one more session. I had to leave the conference early, and so missed the last two break out periods. But the last session I went to deserves a much longer form thought that I can add to this post. To continue reading about that, click here.



Friday, June 24, 2016

Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 {Day 1}

This year, I have had the amazing opportunity to attend the Chuckanut Writer's Conference, which is happening today and tomorrow here in Bellingham. 

Here is a quick recap of the events of today, and the sessions I went to:

First off was the keynote: The Necessary Ingredients: Intimacy and Risk by author Claire Dederer.

She talked about some of the risks we take when we write: we risk being bad, we risk being good, we risk offending people, we risk a lot of things. The main take away for me was this. To be a writer is to take risks. You can't not take risks. The important thing is how to handle those fears and concerns and how you shape them to your advantage. You are going to offend people, but likely not those you were worried about. You're going to be bad, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from it and make your next thing better. 

For the first breakout session, I went to Try Essays by David Laskin.

This was my favorite session of the day. He began by trying to define the essay. It quickly became clear that that is a very hard thing to do. Essays can be memoir, report, science based, travel stories, opinion, or really basically anything. What I was left with was this: An essay begins with a question and takes you on a journey to new places, facts, or ideas that you didn't know or hadn't thought about before. Most importantly, the thing that separates an essay from a new report is voice. An essay should always let you show through and let your voice be know. Most of the rest of his talk focused on the mechanics of selling essays.

 Tips: Write for an audience that you assume will be easily distracted and bored. You don't have much space, every word counts. You can have a topic and a thesis and they don't have to be the same thing. Pitch the topic, but write the thesis.

He also gave some suggestions of essays to read including:

"Death, the Prosperity Gospel, and Me" by Kate Bowler from The New York Times
"O-Rings" by Sarah Stewart Johnson from The Best American Science and Nature Journal 
"The Siege of Miami" by Elizabeth Kohlbert from The New Yorker

Next was the all conference session, My Secret Weapon: Or How to Cheat the Devil by Erik Larson. 

He mostly talked about his own path to becoming a successful writer, and gave some tips. Some useful things I got from this talk were:

-Physically cut up your writing and put it back together. I actually already do this, and I think it is incredibly valuable for finding a good flow in your writing.

-Quit when you're ahead: Don't binge write. Stop in the middle of a paragraph so that you have momentum the next day.

-Set guidelines with the people you let read your work. Make sure you let them know what kind of feedback you want and how you want it. This will keep feeling from being hurt.

Finally, the second breakout session, How to Interview Anyone by Bharti Kirchner 

There was so much good advice in this session. a few highlights:

-Before an interview, do pre-research so you can make sure to ask valuable and intelligent questions, and make a list of questions before you go in, to save time and to make sure you stay on track. 

-During an interview, be sure to ask open ended questions, and be careful to only ask one question at a time. Avoid "why" questions that might sound accusing. Avoid leading language, and try to speak and present yourself neutrally to ensure you don't bias your interviewee. 

-After the interview, immediately jot down thought and feelings about it: What went well? What do you wish you had asked that you didn't? What immediately struck you as useful/important? Is this someone you might want to contact again?

Those were the sessions I went to today. I'm looking forward to going back again tomorrow!