Belinda Nicoll (My Rite of Passage) tagged me in this challenge to answer ten questions about a work in progress.
Here are my responses. Thanks for
tagging me, Belinda!
What is the title of your WIP?
I don’t have a
title yet. I’m not done writing, and a title hasn’t made itself apparent, nor
have I concentrated on discovering one.
What is your WIP?
A book of short
stories about women and personal power.
Where did the idea for the WIP come from?
I write
non-fiction about race and culture, and I have always had a special interest in
women and power or lack of power. Once a psychic told me I am a very feminine
soul, and I believe that. I always felt very feminine. I don’t consider that a weakness but a
strength.
I am of the
generation of women who entered the workforce in large numbers in the late
1970s and early 1980s. I saw and experienced so much sexual harassment. One of
my undergraduate professor’s wrote a reference letter that said, “Dianne will
be a pretty addition to any office.” Someone in the career services department
was smart enough and progressive enough to clue me in, and I had the letter
tossed. We didn’t have a name for sexual harassment back then, but we knew it when we experienced it, and we persevered
in spite of it.
I think about the
power we own as women: the power of procreation, the power to choose what we
think is right and best for us and those we love, the power to make choices about our bodies, and the
power to make societal change. I think of feminism and what we hoped for, how
we envisioned it, and I wonder how to interpret and view the backlash I see in
a very sexualized, object-oriented culture where both women and men struggle to
define themselves and their roles. I wanted to play with all of those concepts
and see where they would take me.
What genre would your WIP fall under?
It is feminist
fiction.
Which actors would you use to play your
characters in a movie rendition?
I love movies and
actors – I could watch movies all day and not get bored. I know because I’ve done it many times.
It would be hard to choose amongst so many actors and I would be honored that
anyone of them would choose to play one of my characters. I’d like to be in on
the auditions. Maybe I could throw a few lines at them.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your
WIP?
These are stories
about women discovering their personal power and how to use that power to develop
self-love and acceptance and to negotiate their way in life and society.
Is your WIP published or represented?
No, I have
ambivalent feelings about the state of publishing, a capitalist endeavor. I think it’s become like
reality TV. It’s all about
marketing and what sells, not necessarily about the writing or the message. I
am strongly considering self-publishing. I’ve never been a joiner, and I can
feel myself pulling away, feeling uncomfortable with the whole process, not
wanting to compromise my personal ethics and values for a publishing contract,
and wanting to have control of the process. Self-publishing may be the great
equalizer for writers, but I'm not sure about that either.
How long did it take you to write?
Literally years,
because I wrote two of the stories a long, long time ago, took them out recently,
dusted them off, and revised them. The other two are new, one still very much
in the works and the other at the revision stage. I may write a fifth – a
kernel of a story is germinating. My process is very “inside my head” and then
when I am ready to write, the whole thing pours out as fast as I can type. Then
I go back, revise, build, and restructure.
What other WIPs in your genre would you
compare it to?
I hate to compare
myself or my work to anyone else or his/her work. I’m too insecure for that,
but I also think that we should not place more value on any one piece of art over
another anymore than we should place different value on individuals. Every
story is valid and has a place in the human collective. Writing ability varies,
and so do personal aesthetics and the leanings of mainstream culture, but
should those things make any one story less worthy of being told than another?
Which authors inspired you to write this
WIP?
Surprise, I love
detective, police, and mystery novels: James Kellerman, Walter Mosley, Michael
Connelly, and James Patterson are favorite authors in that genre. I enjoy very
visual and visceral writers, too. Toni Morrison comes to mind. I can read her
books over and over. I’m reading Craig Johnson’s Longmire novels right now – I
just love his characterizations, his word choices, how he is miserly with his
words, but they are so rich, and how his writing is sensual. I like how he delves
into cultural differences and how two different cultures interact, especially
when they’ve had a violent, distrustful history.
Really, I enjoy
just about every book I read, because I love being in the moment of the story,
wrapped up in it, experiencing it through another’s eyes. I enjoy the unique
way the writer has chosen to tell the story. All of the written and oral
stories I’ve heard over the years have inspired me. Stories and reading were my
ways of escaping as a child, growing up in an alcoholic, interethnic home where
there were many arguments and lots of chaos.
Tell us
anything else that might pique our interest in this project.
I think it’s time to
assess how far we’ve come in this new age of feminism. In some ways, we have
regressed, and I worry about young women. In other ways, young women demonstrate strengths I certainly
feel I never had. We have a long
way to go, though, in so many ways. We need to acknowledge that there are many
ways an individual can live a feminist life. We need to accept and embrace
those disparities that can arise due to class and cultural differences as well
as individual temperaments and personalities. We need to be inclusive rather
than exclusive. We have a long way to go, too, in the areas of access to
education, career opportunities, childcare, health care, and reproductive
rights.
I also believe a lot
of young men today are distracted and unmotivated, and maybe a part of it has
to do with the fact that feminists did not consider in a meaningful way how to
help men redefine and adapt to new roles as women changed or expanded theirs. I
don’t think we did enough to help couples navigate and build relationships as
equal partners. I don’t think we came to terms with the fact that it’s okay
that men and women are different, whether it is nature or nurture that creates
the differences, but we can still be equal. Equality does not mean being the
same, and we need to root for equality and self-actualization of all people.
There is a long
continuum of gender identification, and an individual can fall anywhere along that
continuum from very masculine to very feminine. We can work to understand and
change socially defined gender roles and embrace the complexity of gender
individuality. That way, everyone, no matter how one self
identifies, can feel comfortable instead of feeling societal
pressure to change inherent traits in order to feel “normal” and accepted by
others.
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