The depressing truth is, all characters we write are filtered through ourselves. I’m not writing a character based on my high school English teacher, I’m writing a character based on MY interpretation of that English teacher. It can feel fake. This gets worse the less you have in common with Read more…
When I was young, my mother told me a lie. It was a big lie and she told it with remarkable consistency. She told me she was Jewish. “And since all that matters for Jews is what your mother is, that means you are Jewish, too,” she’d say. There was Read more…
“Speaks backward, Yoda does!” was a quip I first heard from a friend my freshman year of college. I can still picture her delighted face and the pleased general agreement and quote-storm her comment brought. Since then, the joke would re-appear about once a year in my life until it Read more…
Scientists have discovered that we build pathways in our minds for our fictional friends the same as for people we’ve actually met. (Article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-storytelling-animal/201206/the-power-fake-gay-and-black-friends ) So yes, you really can say Janet on the Good Place is your best friend. Your brain feels the same about her as it does Read more…
Nyla requested this one, a post on mistakes middle class writers make when writing about working class people. And oh wow. If you’ll listen to me I will talk your ear off. Though first, obviously: I can only write from my own perspective. I know what it’s like to be Read more…
I asked for blog post suggestions, willing to write about anything, and this topic was suggested by Tom Allman. When I did my Visible Women in Science Fiction Magazines project, I identified 143 unique female names, across 410 credits. I actually found that the drop off from “stars” with over Read more…
The early female writers of science fiction are at last garnering the attention they deserve, which begs the question: if women have been writing genre fiction since its birth, why is it so often thought of as a male dominated, or even exclusively male, genre? What happened? Great essays Read more…