Report from Clarion 3

Nalo Hopkinson was our instructor this week. Out of all our instructors, Nalo is the one closest in age, energy, and outlook to my experience. I think we all felt comfortable with her. She is a Clarion grad and spoke about the uncommon diversity of our class (three black women, three asian women, four jewish men). Of course that diversity (for the women at least) was majorly influenced by the instructors: four women (Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Connie Willis, Ellen Datlow), two of them black (Octavia and Nalo). Nalo herself made a personal commitment to having diversity be present in the student body by e-mailing everyone she could think of and encouraging them to get people of color to apply to Clarion West. Of the six people of color, Nalo was previously in touch with five of us.

Nalo took the opportunity to discuss a few important topics that we took as touchpoints and ran with. During our Sunday night session, Nalo talked about filling out your plot by asking what is your second story? She has found having a second story 1. makes your story more profound, 2. lets you play with resolution (you can solve the conflict in one story arc and leave the conclusion hanging in the second, and still have a satisfying read), and 3. gives both the writer and the reader a more textured experience. Nalo keeps a file of random ideas and when she's writing a story, after cementing her plot, she flips through her ideas to find a second story (not always, sometimes, for a myriad of readings, your story would be more powerful with one story arc).

I used this second story concept to flesh out the story I was writing for the week. I had plotted the story out, but I was stuck thinking "that's all?" After our Sunday meeting, I flipped through my notebook of past writing exercises and found a character that could offer a second plot. Nalo's suggestion of a second story was exactly the element I needed to get my story to a satisfactory heft. But I still wasn't excited about my story. I had the story, but I didn't have the sensation of it. I didn't have the feel of the world I wanted to paint. I went moping around to my classmates. One told me to do an idea map. Put a word in a circle and map out associations from there until I hit upon an image that lights me up. Sounded like a good idea, but I went around to mope some more. I told one person one of my plot elements. Oh, they said, I have a book with a similar plot element in it, here, read this chapter. I read it and it was perfect, but the protagonist in the book was a male, my main character was female (as most of my main characters are). "What if," I sat there thinking after I read the chapter, "what if my main character is male?" So I went down the hall to proclaim this to some of the participants. "I think my main character is male," I said triumphantly. They smiled. And I sat down to write. But, but, but, I started thinking, do males have this particular illness that my main character has? I got up and went down the hall again. This time in the other direction. "Hey guys," I asked, "do men cut themselves?" Yeah, they assured me, even though cutting is more common in women, men definitely do it. O.k., I said. And returned to write. The only way I could trick myself into being interested in the character, was to embrace the challenge of writing it from a man's point of view. Then I used my second story arc's main character as a first person point of view, too. And well, it worked.

Other things Nalo discussed with us: her relationship with her agent and how we want to go about choosing an agent (made me stop and shoot off an e-mail to the woman I'm considering working with, asking her a WHOLE BUNCH of questions), writing sex scenes (how and why include sex, especially in sci fi, a field that has customarily shunned sex scenes), and writing race into your work [she gave us a copy of an article by Nisi Shawl entitled "Transracial Writing for the Sincere," which talks about racial representation in science fiction (the article appeared in Issue 29 of Speculations and is also on Nisi Shawl's website).

Our big race flare up was last week and Bradley Denton handled it superbly. His being white and coming down powerfully and perceptively on the side of accepting and understanding the context, causes and intention of black writing that might "get white folk's back up" was awe inspiring and instructive. Yet he shies away from writing race into his work. He says since moving to Texas he has become closer and closer to both African American and Mexican American communities, but before now he would not have presumed the knowledge to write from another race's perspective. (For a reaction to that perspective, find Nisi Shawl's article.)

In the work thus far, we've had black people dumped into stories without any cultural references or history referred to them; we've had "exotic" black characters; we've had tribal peoples with traditions drawn from South Pacific and Native American cultures, but they have blue eyes; and we've had the European voyeur/traveler jumping into rich cultural experiences without really interacting with them or remaining on the surface. We've also had stories respectfully nuanced with Mexican culture, drawing positively from Chinese and Native American cultures, and powerfully utilizing mythology of Hindu, Haitian, Norse, Greek, and Dogon peoples. But very few, if any (I actually can't remember any right now), deal with race head on. And those that do, don't deal with actual race relations.

It is Nalo's take that race is about power. You don't have two races without power flowing in one direction or another. She encourages us to write about race and really think about all the implications that ripple from a character's race. And use those implications as rich opportunities for character building. She encourages us to avoid racial pitfalls by, after assigning a character a different skin color and physical characteristics, going further to write about the character's culture (religion, job, class, background, passion).

Nalo urged us to make sure our diversity is diverse (racially: how many races exist in your future world? How many cultures? If you use certain cultural artifacts, don't tokenize them. Explain/describe how your character interacts with it. Once you mark out a culture, you still need to specify how your character interacts with his/her culture: is s/he loyal to her cultural norms? Is s/he outside the norms? Also sexually: there's more than just gay or straight. There's bisexuality, there's polygamy (in many different directions for men and women), there's imagined worlds where three people are needed to procreate (O. Butler's Xenogenesis series). Your sexual mores are not your character's mores. (Use the mating rituals of animals to imagine new ways aliens can have sex and reproduce: hermaphroditic snails, flying maters such as dragonflies, homosexual energetic squirrels.)

And finally, the news you've all been waiting for.... (drum roll, please). Yes, my character did arc. I did not clearly delineate the transformation point, but my character clearly arced.

WOO-HOOOO!

We're tired, but our work is noticeably getting stronger. Nalo mentioned that she didn't find too many cliché's and stereotypes in our work as a whole. I think that speaks for the power and advanced-ness of our group. We have some great writers and some wildly imaginative minds here. More than improving my writing, I'm here to improve my craft. Elements I never considered (shifts in point-of-view, lack of character arcs, lack of story resolution) have been holding down my writing in intangible ways. I often make it to the final round for competitions and fellowships and then don't hit the top. Not because my writing isn't strong (and yeah, prizes are often awarded arbitrarily), but it's possible that I'm not winning because there are hidden weights that I am technically unaware of allowing/causing folks to vacillate when reviewing my work. Hopefully, after leaving here my work will be technically more powerful and folks will read it and be blown away and not know why.

LOVE AND BLESSINGS.

kis.