I’ll do my best not to give away spoilers it you intend to pick up Mirrors Reflecting Shadows. I usually refrain from commenting on my work, as I’m more interested in hearing how others perceive it. And to one degree or another, I subscribe to death of the author. That said, Paige suggested I do a post on my piece in Mirrors Reflecting Shadows.
Everyone’s process is different. Here’s mine. At any given time I have 100 or so story ideas clanging around my skull. Only about 2-3% make the cut. A good story is like wine. It needs time to ferment. If the idea keeps haunting me, I’ll pull the trigger on it. Almost all my ideas ferment 6 months or more (usually more—sometimes years).
I don’t think this is a spoiler. The idea for my piece was to originally a kid who ran away and every Christmas called and left voice messages (for you Gen Z folks, there used to be landlines and people used to use phones to call).
If you’re even vaguely familiar with my work, you know I write tragedies. So I had the ending (I need the ending so I know how to earn it).
Then I nailed down the central theme: not being accepted for who you are. My view is the best art hits upon universal human themes. In my piece, it’s a gay kid in the 90s not accepted for his sexuality. This is a more intense form of what we’ve all experienced to one degree or another: not being accepted.
As a side note, focusing on universal human themes goes a long way in writing characters not like you. I feel confident I can write almost any character if I view that character as a human being first, and a personality second. I wager poor representation of marginalized groups is due to writing a personality first (which lends itself more easily to stereotypes).
I’m not gay. I don’t know from the inside out what it’s like to be gay. But I know what it’s like to be rejected, and to be shamed or humiliated for who I am. And I think most people can, on some level, also relate.
The piece is around 2K-3K words, but took me 3 months to write. I could write a scene here and there, but it got too painful. Painful not because I struggle with my sexuality, but because I know all to well rejection and degradation. In a way, this piece acted as a way to work through my pain (not sure it worked).
That said, pick up Mirrors Reflecting Shadows. Great anthology full of bangers that benefit The Trevor Project.
I like that: see people as human first, personality second. By this, do you also mean when you say human that they're a set of contradictions with all these little intricacies? Or what?
I'm curious what you think about this saying I heard once about writing, that a writer should only "write what they know."
I can see people getting upset about someone not being gay writing about what it's like being gay. Personally, I don't care. If it works, it works. But how would you respond to that argument?
Such a powerful story and a really great book!