Who's running the show?

Sometimes my strong, joyful characters tell me things I don't want to hear

Hi friends,

A quick reminder of where to find me this Saturday. If you’re in or near Ithaca, I’d love see you:

Joint reading / conversation with Richard Mirabella, author of Brother & Sister Enter the Forest
Spring Writes Literary Festival
This Saturday, May 13, 5:15–6:45 p.m.
The Downstairs, Ithaca, NY

This week I’ve been having more fun than usual working on my new novel. The three main characters who narrate it are coming to life and they have lots of things to tell me. I’ve never written a book from multiple points of view before, so I’ve been more comfortable drafting in my notebook, where I don’t feel like I’m writing but instead getting to know them, letting them talk to me in their voices, share their secrets, histories, and desires.

I’m amazed at how much has come out, how much story I have to tell about them. But I admit this approach has also had its challenges. I love each of these women deeply. I created them to celebrate the power of queer, transgender, and feminist strength and solidarity. But they keep wanting to tell me about bad things that have happened to them.

Stories of trauma have an important place in the literary conversation, and I’m proud of the ones I’ve written, which tend to be about sexual violence and trauma or queer violence and trauma. But when I came up with the idea for this book, I was excited to leave those kinds of stories behind in favor of telling joyful ones — which can be a radical act when you’re part of a marginalized community.

Here’s the thing. I know some writers like to let their characters take off in their own directions and some prefer to retain control. Many of us probably fall somewhere in between. I have no problem with letting my characters run the show — but only if they’re being true to how I’ve created them. If they go too rogue and I lose too much control, it often means I don’t have a strong enough idea to sustain a whole story.

Whenever these characters in my new novel start to reveal anything difficult to me, I worry it’s a betrayal of the book I’m trying to write. I’ve been attempting to wrestle them back into pure joyfulness. But they keep quietly pushing.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve slowly come to accept that they aren’t actually going rogue. They’re just reminding me that life isn’t always as clean as we want it to be. They’re demonstrating versions of strength and joy that come from overcoming trauma and violence. When they get kicked, they rise up quickly and kick back. When someone threatens one of them, he threatens all of them. They’re still showing up as strong and joyful women, but they’re also human. They have their challenges and faults, and as their stories take shape, I can see that it’s only making them stronger.

Coincidentally, yesterday I read Matt Bell’s wonderful new issue of his newsletter, “No Failure, Only Practice,” on imagining a future of mutual aid. This part practically leapt out at me:

In the novel I’m writing now, I’ve been thinking more and more about how to tell stories of community, mutual aid, and other ways people move toward each other in times of crisis, instead of being put into constant winner-takes-all conflict.

The world of my novel-in-progress is a fraught, difficult place that—by design—requires individuals to act in community and collaboration in order to survive. Or, if characters can for a time survive on their own, they can’t fully thrive in such isolation. It’s only by coming together with others that the problems of this book’s particular scenario might be solved.

The same is true for my three — and possibly four — women who come from different backgrounds, classes, and levels of privilege and power. Part of what makes them so interesting to me is seeing how they overcome their suspicions of one another in addition to dealing with their own challenges and traumas, so that they can fight more effectively, together, for a world in which all women no longer have to fight so hard. That’s a compelling picture of strength and joy.

So. Now I’m letting them have their way, trusting that the story I want to tell is in their struggles as well as their victories — and that allowing them their full humanity is the best way to crack it wide open.

What are you discovering this week? About your characters? Your writing process? I hope it’s fueling you to keep writing forward.

Yours,

Jen