Saturday did not begin auspiciously. The Nebula Awards hotel
is in downtown San Jose, which is not noteworthy for the adequacy of its public
parking. After visiting one full public lot after another and having various
adventures which left the paint of my car considerably worse for wear, I
surrendered to the inevitability of having to pay a significant fraction of the
national debt in order to leave my car somewhere. However, with the sympathetic
reception of my tale of aggravation, I determined to leave that particular
episode safely ensconced in the past…at least until I have to get my car out of
hock.
As a consequence, I caught only the last part of the SFWA
Business Meeting, and I wouldn’t have been able to report on what transpired
anyway, it being SFWA-Sekrit. However, during the discussion of pirate
websites, a couple of points arose that bear repeating and are nonspecific
enough that nobody is going to track me down for indiscretion. If your
traditionally-published books appear on a pirate site, notify your publisher,
who are, after all, adversely financially affected and often have the legal
departments, etc., to deal with it. Also, some of these sites do not actually
sell pirated copies of books – they are scams for collecting credit card
numbers. This latter notion boggles the mind with its likelihood.
Fast forward through lunch and various conversations to the
panel on Writing For Young Adults (with Leah Bobet, Sarah Beth Durst, Steven
Gould, and E.C. Myers). Herewith my notes:
Don’t be boring (especially for kids). Write well if the
subject matter is difficult, and make sure every element is there for a reason.
This advice strikes me as being rue for all fiction.
E.C. and Steven were asked if they got any push-back for
being male YA authors; the common perception is that YA assumes a female
protagonist in the same way science fiction has in the past assumed a male
protagonist. Writers have been told there is “no market for boy books with
romance,” at which the audience snickered.
Regarding how much information to convey, kids are used to
gaps in understanding and trust that eventually these gaps will be filled in.
This seems to be one of the differences between YA and adult fiction, as adults
already have an accumulation of knowledge and are less tolerant of the
unexplained. “Expository burden” is the accumulation of unexplained material
that the reader has to “carry’ through the book; before you load more on, resolve
some by Making it Clear.
If your book has something controversial, make sure it’s not
in the first few pages of the book, since these are the ones parents are apt to
scrutinize to determine whether their child may buy/read the book.
Categories (like the division between YA and adult lit)
change over time.
One of the challenges in YA is “getting the parents out of
the way” in order to give the kid protagonists agency. Healthy, intact families
are rare and hence, present both difficulties and rewards.
Notes on Writing The Other (with Saladin Ahmed, Aliette de
Bodard, Ken Liu, and Kim Stanley Robinson): Use primary sources whenever
possible; be aware of the “thickness of filter” and immediacy that are often
lacking in secondary sources. However, secondary sources can be valuable for
providing context and explanation (i.e., of elements assumed/implied in primary
sources).
If you’re writing about a literate (or oral but later
recorded) culture, seek out poetry and memoirs as especially powerful
portrayals. Find “a voice that’s not your own.”
Why is writing the other valuable – for the author? For the
reader? Ken Liu pointed out that an outsider’s perspective can illuminate that
of an insider, provided the power imbalances are not too great. Saladin Ahmed
commented on the power of stories to counteract prevailing (hateful) stereotypes
on an individual-reader, if not a broad societal level.
Aliette de Bodard discussed the dilemma of how much
information to include. Overload leads to confusion vs “watering down a culture
and selling it for parts.”
There is a tropism toward the fantastic and a desire for,
not fear of, the other.
Ken Liu mentioned that class distinctions are important in
the US but are not treated the same as race, religion, sexual orientation,
etc. Related to the commonly held belief
that we are an upwardly-mobile society?
Age is an “otherness,” not only from other people but from
ourselves.
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