Author Followings
In my last post, I mentioned that for the sake of diversity in my reading, I should put forth a greater effort to seek out minority authors and their stories. Read the past to see why this is important, in my opinion.
Yet it brings up a far less important but nonetheless interesting issue about me as a reader; I rarely seek out specific authors, for any reason.
I know. How can an author not research other authors for the philosophy, tone, biography, works and other such things when deciding what to read? Or at least remember the names of authors? (I have to admit in most cases, when i am done reading and return a book, I don’t remember the author’s name.)
Plus, how awkward it must be for me when people ask me, “what authors do you read?” Actually, I don’t get asked that exact question every day or anything, but it does come up from time to time, and when I am honest with myself, I have to say that I don’t have any “regulars” that I follow.
Maybe I should change that. I’ve pursued new fiction to read in roughly the same fashion my whole life. I go by my mood. If I’m in the mood for suspense, I browse suspense, and pick up the book that sounds the most interesting. Same with other moods and genres. I make my decisions based on stories I think I will enjoy.
Only a handful of times have I enjoyed an author’s work, and then made note to try something else by them. Each fiction is such a self-contained universe to me, that I give little though to the creator of that universe when I’m done. Even when I want to look more into an author’s work, I usually wait a while before I so do.
If someone says, “I read Grisham,” that opens a solid door in conversation. “Have you read his latest?” Or, “Me too, my favorite is…” I, however, have in the last ten years or so read books by about 30 different people, and been a repeat customer only a few times. I have to look up who wrote the book I want to mention in such a conversation much of the time.
Maybe I’m just afraid of narrowing my scope. I read slower than most people, after all, and if I commit to reading all/most of an author’s opus once I like one of their books, I could be on that authors for quite some time, depending.
That could be a good thing, though, I suppose. Or maybe it really doesn’t matter much at all. Maybe there is nothing odd or hypocritical about an author not paying much attention to other authors.
Then, as with so much, I may be overthinking all of this.
“Dude thinks I wrote Old Man and the Sea. I didn’t correct him.
Still, this year may be the year to dive back into some author’s I have enjoyed previously. I already have a long epic on my shelf written by the same person who wrote a different epic I enjoyed years ago. (I don’t read epics much.)
Do you have favorite authors that you follow, no matter what their latest is about?
Diversity in Fiction
Appropriate on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that I offer some thoughts on diversity, in this case in the fiction world.
Let me open by saying that in no way does the level of diversity in fiction these days compare with the importance of Dr. King’s mission and the Civil Rights Movement. There are plenty of issues facing minorities even today that are more urgent than the documented “whiteness” of literature, the publishing industry, Hollywood, and so on.
Still, on this day, in addition to human and civil rights of all minorities, I also ponder visibility and access and influence of same in the arts.
Yet this isn’t an academic exploration of the topic. Searching online for phrases such as “diversity in literature” or “diversity in the publishing industry” will, I have no doubt, take you to multiple reputable sources on the subject, that will demonstrate how despite progress, such arenas in this country are still disproportionately influenced by Caucasians. They can site sources and studies and everything the professor in you loves.
Rather, this post is about a question I’m posing to myself. Do I personally contribute, as an author and a reader, to a lack of diversity in fiction?
Not intentionally, of course, and I would hope you would believe that. But do I do it subconsciously?
Let’s start with my own fiction. Going over all the stories and novels I’ve completed, I’ve estimated that about 85-90% of my characters were written with no race in mind. That is to say in most cases, there is to me nothing in the world that prevents most of my characters from being seen as at least a racial minority, and in many cases a sexuality-minority. Because most of my fiction to date has not dealt specifically with issues pertaining exclusively to folks of a particular minority, I’ve not put in specific efforts to highlight race. I see my characters in my mind when I write, but that doesn’t mean a reader is expected to see them the same way. I see no reason on the surface why Matt from Flowers of Dionysus needs to be white. I certainly designed no such reasons.
The key word here being “designed.” So the question becomes if I have made Matt or any of my characters “white by default.” Do my characters speak, eat, work in ways that would somehow make them highly unlikely to be a minority? (Or at least, not a realistic one?)
In general, though I can understand the question, I still don’t think so. I don’t tend to believe in such things as “he talks like a black guy.” This is a stereotype to me that I absolutely want no parts of. Many environmental factors go into the more well known vernacular of any given person, other than their race. I will perhaps cop to the notion that most of my fiction takes place in the type of situations or settings that breed certain life or speaking styles, but I bristle at the notion that my fiction is “white.”
Fiction directed toward the specific struggles and perceptions of minorities does exist, and must exist. We need more of it, in fact. The lack of a specific demographic in most of my fiction is not my way of dismissing minority issues. Rather my particular fiction usually doesn’t address those issues, and indeed I do not think I’m qualified at this time to explore most such issues in the emotional detail and authenticity they deserve. Should I decide to write such a work in the future, much research would have to come first. (There is a difference between my intellectual understanding and awareness of an issue facing a minority, and my ability to portray it through my fictional characters with any degree of sincerity.)
My hope is that for my “color blind” characterizations, there is nothing overtly ridiculous, nothing that flies in the face of a serious minority issue, or denies it’s existence simply because I am not writing about it. I don’t feel I am guilty of this, but I would accept thoughts on the subject from readers of my fiction.
Speaking of readers, what about my life as a reader? Do I impede diversity by patronizing only Caucasian authors that write Caucasian stories for Caucasian readers?
Once again, I obviously don’t do this on purpose.
A quick overview of my Goodreads list indicates that I do read work by women quite often. (Most of my non-fiction is by women authors for some reason.) Most of the authors do seem to be Caucasian, and that may mean that on a subconscious level, I am somehow “detecting fellow whiteness” when I read about the plot of a book. I won’t dismiss the idea completely. Yet unless there’s a picture of the author on the back of a book I pick up to read, I often have no idea what they look like. I’m one of those odd people that goes all over the place chasing fiction to read. I look for keywords and concepts, tone and nature of plot. Thus far I don’t often go looking for work by a specific author. I actually don’t even read the “about the author” section of most fiction I read.
So if a Muslim woman from Africa wrote a novel that sounded appealing to me, I would pick it up.
But what about a novel about a Muslim woman from Africa?
I’ve read books with women as protagonists, as well as African-Americans, and Muslims. Again, if the plot description intrigues me, I will read, and some plot descriptions about minorities have done so. However, (and I don’t know what it may mean) a quick scan of my book list from the last several years indicates more of the protagonists in the books I read are Caucasian. Again, I suppose this could in fact be a subconscious tuning-in to “fellow whiteness.” I think I’m probably better than that, but I won’t assume my own perfection here.
I don’t think it can be ignored, however, that walking into any standard library of bookstore, one is quickly surrounded by books written by Caucasians, more so than those of minorities. One can sling a dead cat in a book store and usually hit a book by a Caucasian author. It’s an ocean in which it is quite easy to swim, and therefore the sample size to which I’ve been exposed I think would make it easier to by hooked by such books written by such authors. Greater opportunity.
The final question is, could I make the effort to intentionally seek out fiction by/about minority people? The answer is less ambiguous this time; yes.
This is not to say I avoid them now. Still, as I said, if I spend an hour looking at potential reads in a library, I am statistically more likely to happen across “Caucasian” books as part of my sampling than I am any other race. If, however, I state the intention to read more novels by minority authors, I am then certain to at least be exposed to more of them, because I am looking for them. Instead of looking for a good read, I’m looking for a good read written by or about minorities. The book I choose could still suck, but I’d be making an effort to at least not look like I’m homing in on one particular race. (Or sexuality, or class or creed or religion, and so forth.)
The overwhelmingly “white” nature of fantasy fiction makes me think I might start there, as fantasy with a more ethnic component is very slowly starting to emerge. I’ve not been a fan of fantasy that I’ve read in most cases. Perhaps that could change…
But fantasy or not, I will change some of my searching from now on. I will in fact always be “does it sound interesting?” reader first, with all other things second. I’ll probably always read more “color blind” stories like my own (?) more often than not. But on this day, and in the future, I can do better with intent.
So in the end, I will say I am probably not biased on a subconscious level when it comes to fiction, but leave open the possibility that I sometimes am, if a different view were presented. I also find myself mostly not-guilty of seeking out “white things” to read. I find myself somewhat lacking in my intentional search for minority fiction.
What about you? How’s your taste in diversity?
Duotrope
I finally joined. At least I’ll check it out for a few months.
For those who don’t know, Duotrope is a sort of searchable database for writers. With it, one can search for magazines and journals and such that most match, in tone, style and length, the sort of piece one has written. A writer can than submit their piece to that (hopefully) good match.
I’ve only joined this week, even though thousands of authors have used it for years. I’ve played around with the search engine, and so far it seems it will be useful.
It’s five dollars a month, and I admit I had put off joining the site several times over the last few years because of that. After all, I thought, isn’t Duotrope just doing what I myself could do for free? Namely, search the internet for information about places that seem to be looking for the type of work I’ve written.
The answer is, yes. There is no information, as far as I can tell, that Duotrope provides members that one couldn’t with enough time and searching find on one’s own. But for me, I decided that would take a lot of time. Possibly as much as twice the amount of time, as simply using an existing, searchable database. The time I save searching for possible matches on my own can be used to review and read excerpts from the publications I’ve found. (To see if my work really is a good match.) More time also on the actual submitting. And of course, more actual writing time.
I could grill my own steak, after all, and once in a while, I do. But I’m willing more often to pay someone to do it for me, in an establishment suited to the purpose. I feel no guilt in doing so either. They can do it better than I could anyway. Why should a search for magazine be any different? It will certainly cost less than a steak.
The site will probably be even more useful if I lightly study some genre definitions. I confess that on their search engine, there were a few genres and subgenres of fiction I had never heard of before. I have no idea what such genres entail. For all I know, some of my stuff falls into said categories.
Which brings up another issue. Unless it’s obvious, as some of my stories are, I’m not adept at determining what genre one of my pieces falls into. Not to say that they aren’t classifiable, rather that I myself don’t always know how to do so. (Though I also think a few of my stories are genre-bending.) If I find out along the way using the site that many of my stories fall into, say, “angel tear fiction,” I’ll be better able to describe it in other contexts as well. (By the way, as far as I know, “angel tear fiction” is a subgenre I completely invented just now to make a point.)
So hopefully I’ll get some good leads.
Do any of you use Duotrope? Has it helped you?
Small(er) Talk
If by now you don’t know i detest small talk, thank you for stopping by my blog and having anything at all to do with me for the very first time ever. The rest of you know what a thorn in my side it is. I highly prefer conversation of substance, even if I don’t know the person that well. Get right to it, and such.
I got to thinking the other day about another concept, though. Small(er) talk. This I could probably handle more often than small talk.
Based on my studies, (which I must rely upon on this issue, as I have almost no personal experience with it working this way) two things potentially occur with small talk:
- You have a temporary, pleasant conversation of several minutes with a stranger whom you will probably will never befriend or even see again. The reward is human contact and conversation for its own sake. (One of the most foreign concepts to my psyche I have ever encountered.)
- The small talk leads, by some mystery, to a greater interest in the other person, thus sparking the sort of substantive conversation i prefer, and the two people go on to become friends. (Very rare.)
In both cases, it’s not how I work.
But if a chat like that could be expected to be less than even the first of these choices, I may be into it slightly more often. What if, say, I could see someone wearing a shirt that I liked. What if I could ask them where they got it, and they told me, and that was the end of it all? What if I didn’t expect more commentary, the other party didn’t feel the social need to elaborate, and everyone gets something they want out of the deal?
Behold, the concept of small(er) talk.
I know, I know. This sort of thing happens all the time to many of you. That’s great. But they way I see it, it just happens to turn out that way any given time. I still think the social expectation is for small talk to last at least for the duration of both of you being in line at the market. It’s at least expected in our extroverted culture to the point of my putting in the effort to avoid talking with anyone, lest it become a conversation I don’t feel like having, or otherwise making others feel that they need to extend what they are saying in order to make it small talk.
Small(er) talk. If only there were a way to indicate that is what we were after. Take lines again, for example. What if it became a cultural norm that when in lines, all that is expected, or even all that is appropriate is small(er) talk? Or in elevators? Or anywhere? That way small talk could be saved for the cocktail parties that I and other INFJs despise so much, and yet we could give conceivably express the slightest bit of interest in a stranger when otherwise we would be avoiding eye contact at all costs.
As the ancient saying goes, dum spiro spero.
MMXVI
Happy New Year to all. I am obviously back at the blogging wheel as it were.
As I tend to do with the first post of each year, I’m just going to lay out the general plans I have for the year, a sort of accountability thing.
First I’ll say that I accomplished about 90% or so of my goals for 2015. Some did fall by the wayside, and I plan to make extra sure to work on such things this year.
For whatever reason, I came in under my goal for short story writing. If I am generous with my definitions, I might be able to claim to have accomplished half of my planned number of short stories, but in reality, I probably only wrote four certain stories out of the ten I said I would write.
True, I ended up writing a totally new, unplanned novel last year, and that makes me feel a bit better about my writing goals, but I must address last year’s seeming resistance to short story writing. Ten is again the goal by years end.
As an actor, I intended to read more plays last year than I did. Just something an actor should probably do. Doesn’t have to be new ones, as those can sometimes be difficult to obtain, as well as expensive. But plays I myself have not yet read, or seen performed somewhere. It wouldn’t hurt my playwrighting craft either.
I just barely attained my super-mega-modest quota of submitted my fiction to contests/journals last year. Even that didn’t happen until the final eight weeks or so of the year. The quota this year is equally modest by most standards, but I want to start earlier in the year. Way earlier.
“Pitching” is actually a decent umbrella term for several of my goals this year, in fact. I have a quota for submissions of my fiction, as I said. I also have a quota of freelance writing jobs to inquire about. Most ambitiously, I have a large (by my own standards very large) quota of pitching my one-man show to venues this year. It’s a free show, that I imagine most can use as a fundraiser, but it still had to be pitched to institutions. I hope to succeed better with such things this year.
And of course, I will have a new novel coming out sometime in the spring, my first mystery. I’ve want to improve drastically over the attention that my previous books have gotten.
Pitching things, especially myself, has always been a weak point in my arsenal, both in terms of mustering the energy and concentration to do so, and in regards to my success rate, as measured by acceptance on various levels. I believe in the quality of my work; it seems I’m not yet adept at getting other people to do so.
Not that I will be totally market-driven this year. In fact one of the broader goals I have for 2016 is to more openly embrace the creative process for its own sake, and to do so more often, and earlier in a project’s life.
To that end, I’d like to make some more artistically-minded friends. I have plenty of decent people in my life, some of whom are artists in their own right, but few with whom I can share my artistic struggles in conversation and experimentation. Even with the artist community, people have different chemistry from one another, and I need more people that are “on my wavelength” as it were. All artists need support from other artists, not merely happy words. My goal is to find more artists like myself, or at least those who understand and support the kind of artist I hope to be.
I’d like to find enough people to stage a reading of my original stage play sometime this year. I don’t know if there would be an audience present, or if it would just be a test reading with actors, but I’ll be working on the next revision of it this year after setting it aside for a while, and I’d like to see it come to life with people who appreciate the effort.
Plus a few other goals, the likes of which many writers and indeed many people in general make for themselves. Not resolutions, as I don’t believe in those, but concrete goals to accomplish in the next 360-odd days.
What do you want to get done in 2016?
Ty Unglebower 