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"What is Audience?" featuring Naseem Jamnia - Episode 7- Season One - The Write Way of Life
41 Plays17 days ago
In this week's episode, Karis chatted with author Naseem Jamnia, where they talked about “audience” – how to choose your audience, define your audience, and most importantly, how to write for your audience.
Find Naseem Jamnia online.
Check out Naseem’s books.
Follow the podcast on Instagram or on our website.
Follow Karis on Instagram.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this episode of The Right Way of Life. I'm your host, A.D. Joletta, and unfortunately my co-host, Karis Rogerson, is out sick today, so it's just going to be me doing this intro, which means it's going to be very short.
00:00:26
Speaker
um I've already tried to redo this intro like five separate times, and all I have to say is that we're talking about audience today and reading our author's um bio. And well, turns out I am adrift without Karis to lead the way and to ask me questions.
00:00:43
Speaker
ah So
Introduction of Nassim Jamnia and Their Work
00:00:45
Speaker
without further ado, then, um we're going to go straight into the bio and who our guest is Markowitz award-winning Nassim Jenya, they, them, writes speculative fiction for adults, teens, and kids. A Persian Chicagoan, former neuroscientist, and current educator and pro-library activist, Nassim currently lives outside Reno, Nevada with their husband and four furried creatures.
00:01:07
Speaker
The Glade, out May 27, 2025.
00:01:10
Speaker
Spoiler alert, that's this month, people, is their middle grade debut. um All right, so we are here today with the incredible Nassim Jamnia, who is an author of a wide range of age category books. Their debut adult novella came out, The Bruising of Kila.
00:01:30
Speaker
Gorgeous book, gorgeous edition from Rainbow Crate as well. um Look it up. And they soon have a middle grade coming out, the Glade.
00:01:42
Speaker
Fun fact, you can catch the cover reveal on my
Understanding Audience in Writing
00:01:45
Speaker
Instagram. You should do that and then you should follow Nassim. But we're here to talk about audience, which is one of the, in my opinion, maybe like I was feeling a little like it was more ephemeral, like craft topics, right? Like it's not like character or plot, which...
00:02:00
Speaker
feel very concrete and like set in stone audience is like who are you writing for like yeah who knows like everyone you know you start writing and you're like who am i writing for i'm writing for everyone ah the world is my audience uh and then you realize you kind of have to pick someone yeah your book is um is not going to be great if you're trying to appeal to everyone tbh yes Yes. So you do have to think about the audience. And I think that there is a lot of different ways to consider audience a lot of different audiences and like facets of it. But my first question is just Nassim could you define audience how would you define audience to either a new writer or a non writer.
00:02:42
Speaker
That's a great question. um By the way, first of all, thanks so much for having me. I love doing podcasts and I'm so excited that you have started one. too. So I think audience can be defined in a few different ways depending on, well, it depends.
00:02:55
Speaker
So one way to think about audience is your ideal reader. So who is the person that above all else you are writing for? And that might be a specific person. it might be you.
00:03:06
Speaker
It might be a specific person in your life. It might be um a set of characteristics like, oh, you know, like I am writing for queer Gen Xers, for example. um Or it can be kind of like a, like varied. So, and I tend to also believe that um your ideal reader is going to depend on the project,
Impact of Age Categories in Storytelling
00:03:25
Speaker
right? That's not always going to be the be the same thing. So,
00:03:28
Speaker
um A lot of times I'm writing for um queer Iranian Americans tends to be or queer members of the Iranian diaspora. But I'm also writing towards like queer millennials and Gen gen Zers because I'm you know kind of engaging in in and that broader community and like you know queer trans people of color. So there's kind of these these different areas.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah. um Then there's of course the kind of the the general audience of the book, right? Are you writing, what is the age category in which you are writing? But I think that age category is a little bit less useful to think about when you're making writing decisions as opposed to who the ideal reader is for the book. especially because the ideal reader is going to necessarily include some of that age category because you're writing toward them, right? So like if I'm writing for my 10-year-old self, I'm writing a very different book than if I'm writing for my 33-year-old self, right?
00:04:21
Speaker
so Fair. i That's so interesting that you said that because i I'm a real stickler for like age category in the sense that ah specifically when it comes to kid lit, I am
Crafting with Audience Expectations and Cultural Background
00:04:35
Speaker
mildly militant to like a bad degree that like if you're writing for kids, you should know that you're writing for kids. Totally.
00:04:41
Speaker
agree with that. But i do see what you mean by like your ideal reader, right? Like if I'm writing a book about a 16 year old witch, I'm not necessarily going to be like my ideal reader is a 40 year old, you know, suburban mom, that would be a little weird for me and for the 40 year old mom.
00:04:58
Speaker
um Like if I'm writing about a 16 year old, like that should be my ideal reader. Unless it's... Go ahead. a 16 year old in an adult novel, which is a thing that can happen. Right. Yeah. And you're kind of doing different, different choices for that. I do think it's useful. And indeed um you should be reading in the age category, you're writing it.
00:05:19
Speaker
You know, it's, it's, it's a huge pet peeve of mine when someone's like, I'm going to write YA. I'm like okay, well, have you read any YA that's been published in the last 10 or 15 years? Ideally more recently than that? I'm like, okay, well,
00:05:30
Speaker
Good luck. Or not. Maybe you should first engage with that because age categories, they're useful. you know ah in in many In many respects, sure, they're marketing categories, but they also have come with them a set of expectations, which is something that I'm sure we're going to be talking about um and you know in in a few minutes. But you know it's when you're when you're marketing a book that is young adult or middle grade or chapter book,
00:05:58
Speaker
there's you know when people are picking that up they're expecting to see some things um so you should absolutely be aware of those and you should absolutely when you're when you're writing um you know if you're writing a middle grade you're writing a middle grade you know but that being said um on i think on the the more granular level thinking more specifically about who you're writing to you're writing for can be useful gotcha so it's kind of like the uh the the principle of like be as specific as possible, right? Because you can say I'm writing in middle grade, but who within the middle grade category? Because that's still, you know, ages, age 12, right?
00:06:36
Speaker
massive right and the diversity within that category. yeah and developmentally too, right? I mean, the concerns of an eight, nine, 10 year old are very different than the concerns of an 11, 12, 13 year old. um And then there's, you know, the the unfortunate ages 13 to 15 gap that readers fall through, um which really, ah really sucks. It's like a publishing black hole that...
00:06:58
Speaker
um Yeah, I mean, this it and i mean i actually, i think this is very similar. This is a slight tangent, but I swear it's related. um the The young adult, new adult, adult conversation, right? Because like you can have all, you know, in in many different ways, all those can be concerned with, for example, issues of identity.
Defining and Reaching the Audience
00:07:15
Speaker
But the way that 16, 17, 18 year old is thinking about identity is very different than 1920-21 is very different from 25-26 um that is perhaps a rant for later or perhaps a rant for another day i have a lot of feelings on that no publishing no offense to publishing and the the big dudes in charge but like they really shot themselves in the foot when they shut down new adult and made it like The history of New Adult as a category being that, like, it was a thing for briefly and then it sort of... Everyone was like, oh, New Adult is just...
00:07:54
Speaker
smutty college books yeah and they just were like, we're not doing this anymore. And it's like, well, there's, you could have done so much with that. Yeah. And don't get me started on YA now including college. That also really irritates me. But again, perhaps a separate conversation.
00:08:10
Speaker
Listen, we are talking audience. I mean, this is a time for rants and raves and and discussions, but no pressure. Yeah. We can come back to it when relevant. I'll put it that way since I know there's question there's like an actual structure here. Yeah, supposedly.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, so we have defined audience. I think my next question was how does – we kind of touched on this, but let's get a little more specific. Like how does an understanding of your book's audience, whether that's age category, genre, the cultural audience, the –
00:08:45
Speaker
Oh, God, the ideal reader. um How does that affect the actual writing process? This is a great question. I'm really glad that you brought up cultural because that is that's another thing with audience, actually, I didn't mention, but there's a whole bunch to talk about that.
00:08:58
Speaker
um So I think one key is like on the linguistic level, right? What kind of words are you using? Because um you know that's like that's like the kind of nitty gritty, probably more of of a later concern, especially in revisions. But it does impact your approach, right? Because you want your language to be accessible to whatever age group that you're writing. And I think that's particularly important for middle grade readers not and for for younger readers than that, not because we're trying to talk down to our readers.
00:09:28
Speaker
there's There's an important difference between making sure it's accessible and talking down to. Kids do not like being, no but well, first of all, nobody likes being talked down to. Kids especially hate it and they can clock it immediately.
00:09:40
Speaker
um Kids are very good at at noticing them calling and they don't like that. So the point for like linguistic is isn't that, but more, you know, like, is this a word that can be familiar to that age group, um which can be tricky, especially if if you have precocious readers. Certainly when yeah I was younger, I was very precocious. I read widely.
00:09:58
Speaker
i also had the problem of I
Cultural Craft in Writing
00:10:00
Speaker
had context clues to understand what a word was, but never actually looked it up. know what the word was, which is a problem I still have. but I do that. I'm like, there's so many words where I'm like, if someone asked me to define this word, I'd be like, I don't, it it's it just, it is.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah, it just, yeah, exactly. um So certainly, you know, when I was working on the Glade, there were several times that I'm like, is this a word that my main character would know? And and she happens to be very precocious and she's very science minded. So some stuff I i thought I could get away with, but some stuff was like, you know, was thinking about, here's here's an example. I was thinking about the word anxiety.
00:10:33
Speaker
Because as a kid, there's like, you know, like, I feel anxious or like, I feel anxious about this thing or nervousness. Like, you might kind of know that. But I wanted to, I thought, and i was like, I don't think I remember at that age thinking of anxiety as anxiety, as a diagnosis, as a clinical term, as an understanding of when you have anxiety, not just I feel anxious.
00:10:52
Speaker
And so I was having that back and forth with my editor and kind of ultimately decided that that's basic basically my main character says, like, i I knew you could be anxious. I did not know that you could have anxiety. um Because she does. she's She has, know, very strong generalized anxiety.
00:11:08
Speaker
So yeah that actually leads me to my next point, which is also how you're approaching the topics. in in i i was recently teaching in a fellowship through an organization called Roots, Wounds, Words, which I love, highly recommend them. all check them out.
00:11:22
Speaker
um And I had several students in my cohort who were interested in writing Kid Lit. And so they were kind of asking, like, you know, how how do you approach these differently? and And I said, well, you can take the same story and you approach it three different ways on age categories. So um I'll use the example I gave my student because i was I was drawing from her perspective.
Handling Sensitive Topics in Narratives
00:11:40
Speaker
So she is South Asian descent from South Africa. Like her grandfather had come to South Africa,
00:11:46
Speaker
um i'm I'm not sure if it was from Sri Lanka or or India, I think from a region India, but had had come to South Africa, that's where she had been born and raised. um And so she was, you know, in to with like a lot of her stories were kind of around that experience, very specific experience. And one thing that she was interested in is kind of what the story that she was working on was about a refugee camp and a girl that was in this camp and kind of straddling these multiple worlds that were defined by ethnicity and by class.
00:12:15
Speaker
And so I said, you can have a story of a refugee girl in a refugee camp and you can tell it three different ways. It can be the same story, but you can tell it three different ways depending on age categories.
00:12:26
Speaker
So in middle grade, that we often are concerned with where do I belong in my community? How do i you know, like what is my role kind of within this larger scope that I am? Who are my people?
00:12:38
Speaker
So in a middle grade story, following a refugee girl might be her um figuring out what she can do within her camp to, you know, something that she enjoys doing, something that she wants to enjoy doing, maybe, you know, depending on what her feelings are about it.
00:12:50
Speaker
um In a YA, it's much more concerned with who am I? what do I want? How do I become a person in this world? And so in that one, it might be that she's um really frustrated that she's in the refugee camp. Or she loves it. And yet there's this outside world that now she's like, oh, I can see there's an outside world.
00:13:07
Speaker
want want to understand if I can go into this outside world. it And then in adults, you can kind of do both or you can kind of do neither. You can kind of do all sorts of things. Right. The nice thing with adults is that ah kind of and in in many ways, anything, anything can go. Yeah.
00:13:21
Speaker
So you can tell, again, like this the same story in three different ways, but the concerns are very different. And this is where knowing the age group and reading in that age group can be useful, right? Because if you read a bunch of YA and you see the way that issues of identity are being tackled, you have an understanding of how you can tackle issues of identity.
00:13:37
Speaker
Can you write a YA without doing that? Sure, in theory. um you know but but kind of like if if Obviously, yes, you can, but whether or not the conversation between china writes you know between writing something and then trying to get it published or is actually a different conversation. um And a lot of times you kind of sacrifice stuff that you maybe have that you wrote that in order for it to get published, which again, maybe a separate conversation.
00:14:04
Speaker
um i lost the thread did i um yeah we were talking about how same story different age category totally different framing type of story written etc right yeah other craft choices um and then there's there's a larger conversation to be had about cultural craft um which is kind of my something that I'm thinking about throughout this whole thing. So so Matthew Salaces argues in Craft in the Real World, which is one of my favorite, favorite books.
00:14:34
Speaker
It's terrific. um That craft is cultural. He says craft is a set of expectations. And I think this is true as particular. This is true of all craft choices, but this is true of audience as well. I mentioned earlier, you know, when you're saying you're writing a middle grade or a chapter book or, and or you know, or why or what have you, um people are expecting something when they pick that up.
00:14:55
Speaker
That expectation shouldn't necessarily drive your writing decisions, but you
Balancing Realism and Sensitivity for Young Readers
00:15:00
Speaker
should be aware of them. Because if you're aware of them, then you can make deliberate choices whether to write toward them or write away from them or to subvert them or what have you.
00:15:07
Speaker
um Awareness is kind of a ah key to a lot a lot of this, being being be asking questions and and being aware. The problem with expectations is that they are cultural. So in the US, even within the US, there's like a, you know, there's a set of like, what do I expect when I pick up a YA book?
00:15:25
Speaker
But depending on your background, depending on the background of the author, your further expectations um may may be different, right? We have so many different cultural groups within the United States that if you you know If if you if like a Black American picks up a YA that I have written, they will be coming from it necessarily from whatever cultural background that they have you know that they're coming from as a Black person um versus the background which I wrote, which is as a child of Iranian immigrants.
00:15:56
Speaker
Both of us are people of color. We have very different experiences of being people of color and what that means for our for our personal lives. um And this the it's particularly important to understand this for authors who are marginalized, um whether that's marginalized by race or ethnicity or by gender or by sexuality or disability or class or or what have you, because how you move through the world is going to come through in your writing, no matter what. That's just, even if you don't think it is, it absolutely is.
00:16:26
Speaker
Yeah, the complication comes that that is also true of your readers. That's also true of the gatekeepers, which is ah again, kind of a a side conversation, but I could rant about publishing for a lot of days, hours, years.
00:16:39
Speaker
um And again, the point is not so that you are writing to those expectations specifically or trying to change your your voice or your work in order to meet them, but ah knowing them can help you make those choices. And sometimes those expectations are nebulous, right?
00:16:57
Speaker
um It's not necessarily like a white reader is coming into my work being like, I'm a white reader and I'm reading this book. You know, it's it's not it's not quite like... that. um it's I think expectations are something that you don't even realize you have until you butt up against something else.
00:17:13
Speaker
It's things like, as an example, um i I have interviewed a lot of authors over the years for various things. And when I talk to authors specifically, BIPOC authors, one thing that they often bring up is, you know, I didn't see myself in these books growing up and it took xyz book for me to see myself as a black girl as a um southeast asian person etc like as an immigrant yeah and that is an expectation that because of their upbringing and what and i always saw myself in books because i'm a white american like
00:17:50
Speaker
all the books I was reading as a kid were about white Americans. So it never, I come to books expecting to see myself. And these authors maybe come to books not expecting to see themselves. And our experience is going to be different because of, and so then, you know, when I don't see myself, it's like, okay, that's new. I have to like,
00:18:10
Speaker
reframe the images I have in my mind i have to reframe how i'm thinking about it I have to open my mind and be willing yeah to read about someone else and I think that's one of my favorite things about reading is that I do get to learn about other people and not even just learn but like experience life the way other people get to yeah but i'm yeah I'm nodding, which obviously listeners can't see. i'm i'm nodding nodding profusely because that's that's absolutely the case. It's so funny that I, because I obviously did not see myself in books growing up. I didn't see myself until I read Persepolis in college. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:43
Speaker
And although that being said, I did somewhat see myself in the Alana books because Tamara Pierce has, because we we we stand a queen who who grows with the times.
00:18:53
Speaker
um She has come out and, written oh God, at this point, I think it was like a decade ago, but she was like you know if I had had this language in the eighties, Alana would be genderqueer. And I was yes, we like the non-binary, we knew. But yeah, you know, a long time,
00:19:07
Speaker
but ah you know for a long time it was kind of a given for me that I wouldn't see people of color. And it's to the point that I missed coded clues that were coding that someone was a person of color. And not to bring Queen Turf into this conversation, but I i missed that Cho Chang was supposed to be a person of color.
00:19:27
Speaker
I missed that Pavarti Patil was supposed to be a person of color. I just assume I mean I don't think that's all on you I think possibly the writing didn't do it to be fair the only race that was ever called out was Dean Thomas the black boy right do you think the book itself had something to do with people missing things but yeah absolutely but it's kind of like in red like I think it was until like I saw the movies that was like oh like Patel not white name you know like British name sure because colonization not white name um And when I would write stuff, a lot of times there was a default whiteness in my characters. Now, granted, when I was younger, yeah I was one of those people that started writing when I was a kid.
00:20:08
Speaker
I usually wrote like my friends and myself into the stories and by the nature of growing up in Chicago proper, i had lots of friends of color. um and And, or those, even the white friends I had tended to be children of immigrants.
00:20:22
Speaker
So kind of by nature, my my world was like a little bit more kind of diverse than maybe I, or inclusive than I was doing purposefully. But certainly as time went on, i definitely was writing stories, not even thinking about, not thinking about race granted partially because I was not socially conscious, but also because why would I think about that? Of course, everyone's white in these stories.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah. And the thing that is harmful, unfortunately, is when not everybody, I mean, I think you're great you're a great example of this. Like when you were like, oh, I'm not seeing myself centered. Let me reframe kind of my expectations.
00:20:58
Speaker
Most people feel very defensive at that, right? Like, oh, why am I, if I've always been centered, why am I suddenly not centered? um It's the the adage of, you know, some people say, I'm going to totally butcher whatever If you're used to being like,
00:21:14
Speaker
not ah above equality feels like oppression. Yes. That one. that's That's exactly. I didn't get the first half, but I got the second half. Right.
00:21:25
Speaker
It's exactly that. It's like if you are always used to seeing yourself, it feels like you've lost something when suddenly you don't. um which is tragic because, you know, when you when you're not used to seeing yourself, you're kind of used to not getting to see that.
00:21:39
Speaker
And it's and it's a tragedy. And I think but i was where I was going with this, the thing that is harmful is when um if someone doesn't see themselves, that one, they're not engaging or two, they go out and they lash out.
00:21:51
Speaker
And this is something that we, you know, ah we see in publishing happening because publishing is built, publishing, the U.S. publishing system, which, you know, drives worldwide publishing, is built, like, on a white supremacist capitalist system where the people, as you go higher and higher up, are going to resemble a certain demographic.
00:22:08
Speaker
And, of course, higher and higher up, they also are going to resemble even more of a certain demographic, right? Like, just how white men. Yeah. um And that drives publishing decisions, right? That's why we have the, like, we have our Black Book for the Year sort of conversations, which are...
00:22:22
Speaker
They're often way more coded than that. a You know, but um ah not, this is not to get too far afield, but um I have had, I've had a lot, several projects out on submission for so for several years now. And one of them is YA story. It's set in Chicago, like 2015-ish. I don't specifically name it, but I don't talk about the Orange Menace in it. So it's supposed to be that. But it's about um this book gay Iranian American kid who's growing up in Chicago, whose brother dies in a train accident and then is there and then accused for being a terrorist who blew up the train because he was visibly Muslim.
00:23:02
Speaker
and the And I had an editor, she very much loved it. She was like totally on board. She's an editor of color, a young kind of associate editor just starting to acquire. um and She had some problems colleagues who are on board and then she took it to other editors editors and they said they could not connect to the emotional beats.
00:23:20
Speaker
You know, and my response was, oh, you couldn't connect to the emotional beats of a gay Iranian, and you know, child of Iranian immigrant teen growing up in ah in an inner city who just lost their brother. Hmm.
00:23:31
Speaker
I wonder about that. um My response to that is like, I don't care what you can connect to. Just... Shut up and buy the book. Okay. Yeah, but this is this is what this is kind of where hate it's, yeah, it's not totally an audience question, but it is an audience question because the audience in this case is people who are acquiring.
00:23:50
Speaker
um And they too are coming with a certain set of expectations. And of course, as writers, we can't know what's going to happen in that acquisition room, right? there There's so many steps it takes before a book is finished.
00:24:01
Speaker
offered on and any one of those steps it can be axed and often is and of course in the last particularly in the last year has been really tough for all writers to be on submission and like you know not not to preach the choir i know i know you also have your frustrations on it but i have talked to people who are like award-winning authors who haven't been able to sell stuff and it and you know there's again and probably publishing has its problem but part of it is kind of the this ah the the audience which is receiving those works have a certain set of expectations of what's going to sell I think this is bringing up to me at least like the great point of like you can you can do the craft perfectly perfectly on in quotes like you can think about your audience you can craft a book that will resonate with your ideal reader but your first audience is the gatekeepers and
00:24:50
Speaker
oh and I just yeah I need them to open their minds a little bit like no offense don't kick me out of publishing but like It's frustrating. I mean, some offense actually. Yeah, it's okay. I will. I give all the offense. um Yeah. But it it is frustrating, especially because the numbers don't back it.
00:25:09
Speaker
Right. Like we have, I think, I think when Black Panther came out, this was such a, such a telling moment that it like broke the box offices because of yeah course people were starving for a story like that. yeah this kind of under This kind of thought of like, oh, well, ah you know, any sort of non-cis-het, white, abled, you know, neurotypical story is not going to sell um is wild because, yes, it absolutely will.
00:25:35
Speaker
and Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say not just with the intended audience, right? like Absolutely. So a lot of white people enjoyed um Black Panther. A lot of people of color who aren't Black. like it Just because a story is...
00:25:51
Speaker
um has an ideal reader, an ideal audience, doesn't mean that it can't actually have a broad reach. Absolutely. Absolutely. And when it doesn't, you know, like, were the marketing dollars there? Because going to tell you, no.
00:26:04
Speaker
Just like, ah but absolutely not. um You know, was the marketing effort there? No, it wasn't there. I mean, you know, like but i I can say with 100% confidence. Sure, sometimes books flop for whatever reason. They put all the time and energy and whatever into it. and they still don't hit the list, which is rigged anyway, or they still don't, you know, like indie booksellers are still not pushing them or or what what happens. Sure, that happens, but more often than not, if it doesn't have the the enthusiasm and support in-house that manifests into action, then it's not going to go anywhere.
00:26:36
Speaker
I was reading an article on Publishers Weekly. It came out last February because I'm approximately 10 months behind on my articles. I'm doing really great, actually. um But it was about how the US and the UK are sort of like cross pollinating juggernauts.
00:26:52
Speaker
And what stood out to me was a marketing person being like, yeah, for this book, we had weekly marketing meetings talking about how to like position it And I was like, ah So when whoever it was, was like, we don't know how to make a bestseller. Like, you're lying. You just, you put the time, you put the money behind it, you can do it. And they said it outright in this Publisher's Weekly article. and yeah that much There's so much about whether something will move the needle or not. We usually talk about that particularly in terms of like authors on social media.
00:27:24
Speaker
um because But now like nowadays authors are expected to do so much more of their own marketing. um and And granted, part of that is because like publish publishing professionals that are actually like on the boots on the ground, like editors, kind of marketing people, they tend to be overpaid and underworked, right?
00:27:40
Speaker
Sorry. No. Underpaid and overworked. The exact opposite of what I just said. underpaid and overworked. But it's very obvious when someone is getting the money um and it's certain tends to be a certain books that they're like, oh, well, this is going to sell because it's just like every other book um that has sold before where actually, well, maybe if you went with the thing that is not like every other book and did the same exact effort, you actually might see a return on investment.
00:28:08
Speaker
Which is, again, this is kind of like ah side conversation to audience because in terms of making craft choices, you can't you can't you can't work with that. I mean, there's like yeah the... the and And this is something i I have to keep telling myself too is the frustration of having so many projects on sub that aren't getting picked up is like I can't...
00:28:27
Speaker
write something trying to answer this. These are large systemic problems. But I do think you should go into this industry with your eyes wide open. I do think you should be aware that this is a possibility.
00:28:38
Speaker
And for many of us, particularly marginalized writers, a probability. um But it's not an impossibility, right? It's not an impossibility that someone will buy your book. It's not an impossibility that it'll get in front of the right readers.
00:28:50
Speaker
So when you're writing it, it's not about catering to the audience that is that are the gatekeepers, but it is about knowing them. And it is about kind of making, um you know, true I think rather than making maybe individual choices on the page or with a part with a particular project, I think it's more about knowing which projects to work on when.
00:29:09
Speaker
Kind of choosing your battles. Yeah. Yeah. um One last thing about that and then I will move on to another audience question. But I was, um i don't know if I should say who said it, but an author um was sharing about marketing and publishing and she has amazing ideas for how to reach the audiences that maybe publishing isn't reaching right now. Yeah.
00:29:34
Speaker
um
00:29:37
Speaker
Oh, God. Like, audiences, schools that are not well-funded. And, um like, she basically was like, they're positioning my book, which is Latinx story about, you know, Mexican teens in front of a bunch of white readers when they could be reaching...
00:29:56
Speaker
a whole different audience yeah that might actually be more inclined to pick up the book. yeah And just listening to her talk was like, a we like publishing needs to get way more creative um and just like expand their thinking. but Absolutely. I mean, I think just just as i give a like a have a whole kind of craft talk on inclusive world building and stuff like that, just as it's a failure of imagination for many writers when they – Oh man, this is a whole other conversation, but briefly, if you're, one of my biggest pet peeves in um and so and secondary world fantasy, so fantasy that's made on a world that's not our own, which is a genre in which I write in, um is when that world is basically a reproduction of our own or reproduces the same oppressions of our own because it's a failure of imagination to create something better.
00:30:43
Speaker
And it's the same with publishing, right? It's a failure of imagination to say, what can we do to reach reach that target audience, to reach the ideal reader, right? If I'm writing, you know, if if I am a Mexican-American author writing toward Mexican-American teens, why shouldn't my book be put in front of the Mexican-American teens who will read it Right.
00:31:03
Speaker
And so many, and this is particularly in, um, in inner city schools that are underfunded. A lot of times they're, they, the, the kids in there are reluctant readers because they've never seen themselves in books because the books they're reading have not been written towards them because the British canon is not useful for a 15 year old general. I mean, you know, granted, like i i have an English degree. i i like love the British canon growing up and like, you know, there's there's a lot of there's stuff there.
00:31:31
Speaker
But that being said, the goal is get people reading in age where child and teen literacy is very low in the United States,
00:31:42
Speaker
yeah Maybe we should think about what they're actually reading and give them things they might be more inclined to read. But in order to do that, publishing would have to do a major overhaul. And of course, again, if our marketing team is over overworked and underpaid, not the other way around, um they're going to rely on the same methods they've always done. they Yeah, they don't have time to like run a focus group or...
00:32:04
Speaker
explore the city. I don't know. Exactly, right. Like, oh, we have a list of these 10 schools we've always worked with. I don't have time to sit down and find a list of 50 other schools that might be actually a better fit.
00:32:16
Speaker
You know, it's, it again, these are like systemic problems that as writers is part is very frustrating because what do we what do we do about that, right? yeah Yeah, it's a lot of it's lot of work um to overcome. And I do think I am an eternal optimist ah against my better wishes. Honestly, most of the time I just like got that little like tiny bit of hope that just refuses to go away. So i'm like, it's gonna get better. It'll be really hard.
00:32:41
Speaker
And we'll have to work really hard. And ah some people are going to be mad about it. And by some people, I do mean the people who are currently in power. But I do think we can get to a better place.
00:32:52
Speaker
And don't tell me if we can't because that's going to make me sad. To your credit, though, I mean, the books that have come out, especially in Young Adult in the past decade, are markedly different from the first decade that YA existed, like the 2018 range, right? I mean, the fact that you can walk into a Barnes & Noble and get a dozen queer YA books, a dozen books written by Black authors for YA audiences, I mean, that's that's remarkable.
00:33:19
Speaker
Right. Even though then the Lee and Lo surveys come out and you're like, wow, cool. We have more talking animals and black characters in books. Love this. um But the fact that there are this many, that is a victory. It's hard one and it's frustrating when you then compare it to the broader scope.
00:33:35
Speaker
But, you know, it is remarkable to me that I can... walk into my local indie and i will find at least one or two ya books that use the word non-binary right like a term that didn't even exist in the common lexicon until 2014 and i i will say mean especially for kidlit we need diverse books change the game absolutely gotta give them props every single time that i can because i love what they do yeah And I also think, you know, now own voices isn't used as much. It was originally created by an autistic author who was talking about, but you know, autistic books written by autistic authors.
00:34:12
Speaker
but And it' so it's not' not as useful a term because people are going towards more specific things of representation. Yes. But when it was out and when it first came out and was useful and, you know, went back when writing Twitter existed... but That was also very useful, right? Because there was a wave of kind of like, oh, people are are owning the stories in which they're telling. and And suddenly, like people who are not telling from that ah kind of authentic background, they I mean, they could lie, right? Like the Rachel Dozier's of the word world exist.
00:34:40
Speaker
But we hope overwhelmingly that um that they don't. I mean, I've got to credit the Own Voices movement because when I, do you remember the binders on Facebook? Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure that's how we met. I'm pretty that's how we met. Yeah.
00:34:54
Speaker
But I was in a binder and I was like, man, I did a journal. This is really embarrassing and I can't believe I'm going to share this. because It's like, Karis, you were so full of it. back in 2015 oh i was too late i was i did a project for my journalism program at nyu where i got to visit my angelou's home and like do a story on it because they were selling it and i was like this is rad i should write i a white woman from south carolina who was raised in italy i'm gonna write a book about a a middle grade book about a black girl who lives in my angelou's home and i went to the vendors and i was like do and immediately they were like girl don't like no
00:35:29
Speaker
check yourself and I was like oh that's embarrassing I cannot believe this happened thank you so much for telling me not to do it because then I didn't do it yeah in your defense though like I remember also 2015 was a so yeah we we met through Facebook through those writers groups like about 2015 that was yeah was basically you know I think that was around the time that that we met yeah um And, you know, i was i was also like very early in my social justice journey. I had only recently come out as non-binary. I hadn't yet come out as trans. I was still, that I didn't still resonate with, because at the time I understood trans to be binary trans.
00:36:05
Speaker
um And, um you know, I was still like very kind of new and understanding my own space, like my own place as a person of color, because I'm a light-skinned person of color, because I i mask everywhere still. And, you know, so if you don't see my facial features, I can obviously, I can pass.
00:36:21
Speaker
um And then the moment you see my facial features are like, well, you're ambiguously ethnic. So, you know, I'm still, I still have that kind of privilege though. Right. and And this was something that at the time, yeah, I was still trying to learn. A lot of times we do, we were like, oh, well I have a diversity.
00:36:35
Speaker
um Let me try to tell a story that has more diversities. And then you're like, wait minute. And i think I think it is okay for writers to make missteps. I think the problem comes when you try to publish those things, right? And then you really have to think about, like there like i said, there's a difference between writing and and publishing. but yeah This is kind of getting a field of of the audience question, but yeah.
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, now this, I mean, this has been a great conversation. I've been having a blast. Me too. I'm just like, I'm cognizant. I'm like, maybe someone wants to ask about something about audience. Let's go back to something about audience. Let me find one of the questions in my document. um So I did have a question that was specifically like,
00:37:16
Speaker
you've written specifically you yeah Nassim have written and published or are publishing both adult and middle grade and you have y a how do your stories change depending on the category like maybe not just the writing because we have talked about like word choice and the linguistics of it but like how does your conceptualization of the world that you're writing change yeah that is a really that's a great question um I hate to say that my my adult work is a little bit more complex, but it's not in the sense in the sense of world building. So write I write speculative fiction.
00:37:50
Speaker
um My debut, The Bruising of Killua, is a secondary world fantasy. I would not have written that world for a like a YA or middle grade audience. Part of it is because in that world, I was exploring issues of colonialism and migration and um It's not... and And issues of class that kind of come along with that, but really kind of about issues of migration that I would have approached very differently for a younger audience, not because younger audiences shouldn't see the complexities of those issues, but because... don't want to say shielding them, right? it's It's unkind to try to shield kids from the reality of the world, but there is a way to bring kids into the reality of of the world kindly.
00:38:30
Speaker
I mean, it's like you wouldn't... and This is the only example I can think of, so forgive me. You wouldn't have the sex talk with your two-year-old. You would understand that that's not...
00:38:42
Speaker
a topic for them for many reasons. yeah But partly because they wouldn't understand what you're talking about. And, you know, if you're trying to have a sex talk, you're having a talk very differently with like your 11, 12 year old versus your 17, 18 year old, right? Oh, God, yes.
00:38:56
Speaker
You know, for, so yeah, I actually, you know, two year old may be an extreme example. But yeah, I think that that is that is a good example. yeah You know, like if I had written a lot of a lot of people misclassified Bruising Killua as young adults because it's friendly for younger readers. If you don't mind um the medical gore and the fact that the protagonist is a 30 year old caregiver doctor who is incredibly burnt out and it's a book about millennial exhaustion. I mean, like, yeah.
00:39:22
Speaker
um But you know two of the main characters are teens and they're struggling with issues of identity and they're also struggling with issues of being migrants in a hostile city. um Were I to approach the bruising of Kilwa and have written it from one of their perspectives and wanting to make it wide I might not have, for example. So there's there's a scene halfway through the book where one of the major characters um experiences anti-migrant violence, physically experiences anti-migrant violence.
00:39:48
Speaker
um I would approach that scene very differently for teens. if i If I was going to include that scene, which I think it it is fair game to include that kind of scene for teens. The... it the vi i So there's not like, I was very conscious with that scene of like how much anti-migrant violence I was going to put on the page.
00:40:09
Speaker
So you don't, you don't see like any punches thrown or anything like that. You, I i actually did not, I originally had written out some dialogue and then I removed that instead of having kind of like this like slurry, whatever dialogue.
00:40:20
Speaker
Yeah. But the, you know, I think I, that scene might have been more of a blur than it is. I think because for me, the purpose of having a scene like that for teens is to ask, depending on who the point of view character is is what does it feel like to have gone through this? And, and you know, like if I, am you know,
00:40:40
Speaker
um If I am a migrant and i have I'm experiencing physical anti-migrant violence um as a teen, I would want to then ask questions of like, how does it now feel that I have experienced that? How do I feel? How am I doing?
00:40:51
Speaker
um If it was a character that was watching that, experiencing that, it's kind of a similar question of like, I just watched someone I really care about go through this thing. um How do I now feel? In Kilwa, it's, you know, the the protagonist, again, is like 30, is kind of frozen when actually they come to the scene. um And it's their, like, like a little 14-year-old ward that actually, like, does something about it because they are conscious of all of the social ramifications that might happen.
00:41:19
Speaker
right Because as a 30 year old, you realize, oh, I can't go get, oh you know they're not really police, but they're kind of police. That's another conversation. But I can't go get the police here. right um What does it mean to get these other kids in trouble?
00:41:32
Speaker
Because the other people the people who are perpetrating are other kids. What does it mean to get them in trouble? What does it mean to bring in, a like you know the main character happens to be a doctor, but if they were, i'm like to bring in a healthcare professional who may have navigate the kind of complexities.
00:41:48
Speaker
These are things that when you're 14, 15, 16, 17, you're not thinking about that, right? Yeah, that's fair that's a great point. um So, you know, so so and so that's a hypothetical question.
00:41:59
Speaker
To be, like, more specific of, like, things, that choices that I have made, well, um huh yeah, I mean, part of it is exactly that of, is it really partially depends on your point of view character or characters, right? um Because even in...
00:42:16
Speaker
Even in an adult book, if you have if your point of view character is like ah you know a 17, 18 year old 15 year old or whatever, you're still going to approach that differently um and in ah and an adult book because you're thinking about the kind of topics at hand.
00:42:29
Speaker
So part of it is point of view and part of it is voice. You have to think about that. um What is, excuse me, what are these characters noticing? Because, um ah man, voice is so much easier to talk about when you can have your fully flesh, like whatever characters. But if I have, um you know, like,
00:42:47
Speaker
and if i So so my my character who is 16 year old in Chicago, like being ah you know and ah an Iranian American teen, um he is actually not as fully aware of the social forces at work and you know kind of in the United States. He has a kind of like, he's not able to articulate them sort of thing where he's just like, yes, I see that like we are being treated differently. like Like I am Brown, that you are white, that you are black and we are being treated, you know what have you.
00:43:16
Speaker
um but doesn't appreciate, for example, that like how he might be clocked and viewed by an authority figure is very different from how like a black friend might be, which I think is is true for a lot of teens of color who are non-black, where we might be kind of a like even kind of vaguely aware, but not really appreciate kind of the like the really stark differences.
00:43:38
Speaker
um Yeah, it occurs to me that nuance is something that you gain with life experience. but Yeah, the ability to see things in more myriad shades of gray rather than just in extremes. And maybe that's just me. But like, as I have grown older, i have begun to see more nuance in everything.
00:43:59
Speaker
I agree with that actually too, with my own experience. um I also have a lot more sympathy and empathy for points of view that I did not 10 years ago, even like even harmful ones.
00:44:10
Speaker
um And I think that's, which is which is normal. If you only have 16 years of experience on this earth, you have a very different perspective than if you have 30 years of experience on this earth than if you have 50 years, right, et ceterat cetera, et cetera.
00:44:23
Speaker
um Let me think. I'm trying to think of another example. So like it's the gap is a little bit closer with the middle grade YA conversation, which makes sense because they're both kid lit. um And I'm thinking about the way i approached mental health in in my YA versus the way i that I did in in middle grade, because I did I do talk about mental health and in the book. That's that's a part of it.
00:44:46
Speaker
um And a lot of it has to do with the language ah available to the kid. and And we talked about that a little bit earlier, but kind of like when I hear the word anxiety, I'm not thinking diagnosis, right? Diagnosis was actually the exact word I was thinking in the middle grade. i'm like, would she know the word diagnosis?
00:45:02
Speaker
um And I fudged it because she's like a budding botanist. And so I'm like, maybe she's not as into the medical side of things, but conceivably maybe she read this somewhere because she knows a lot about plants and like a kind kind of into science in general.
00:45:16
Speaker
um yeah But, you know, like her ah best friend in the book, um her best friend's mother is in like inpatient psychiatric care and has been for several years.
00:45:27
Speaker
And the way that the main character understands that is very distant. You know, it's kind of like, oh, I know my best friend doesn't have it like lives with aunt and uncle and mom's not around.
00:45:38
Speaker
And I know that that can be rough. That's kind of like the extent of her understanding of it. And her best friend kind of like walks through, it's kind of like, I, you know, like miss, they miss their mother, but they also haven't really had a mother in that relationship. Right.
00:45:54
Speaker
um And, you know, like, why is it the best for me? Because I was hired to write this book. And so like some, some choices were were made, were were made for me, but if, if, In Shang, you know, if, if granted, is like he's the one going through all the the mental health stuff, but it's a different conversation with someone who's 16 or 17. Like, oh, your parent is hospitalized.
00:46:14
Speaker
Like the level of, gee, that sucks is on a different level because they're just that much a little bit older, right? For like 11, 12 year old is kind of like, wow, that must be hard. And then they, and like even the most empathetic loving 12 year old is only gonna kind of understand so much of like how much that must hurt if they haven't experienced it.
00:46:34
Speaker
And I think by 16, you're going through just enough teenage angst unless you have a major anxiety and depression, me, um that, you know, that that kind of like, you can kind of almost spiral into like, oh my God, what if I was in that hospital? In a way that I think that maybe when you're a little younger, you might not go quite there.
00:46:53
Speaker
um So yeah, a lot of it, and it's hard to put ourselves in the shoes of what was it like when we were that age, because I have not been 11 in over 20 years. I don't remember, I remember the feelings though. And so I really, when I was writing, I really tried to draw on that.
00:47:07
Speaker
I remembered very intensely the feelings I felt at 11, 12, and the feelings I felt at like 16, 17, and the depth of pain in different kinds of pain. But like my, you know, my depression started manifesting around that age, around 11, 12.
00:47:22
Speaker
um And I use, I remember very distinctly using the word depressing hatred at some point. Like I had this dialogue with myself with my depression that's what I had called it, but I still didn't actualize like depression is a diagnosis.
00:47:34
Speaker
um And I wouldn't get that diagnosis for many years later, but ah even then but when I became a teen, it even that my, really I didn't call it that anymore as a teen. I was, I'm doing self-harm stuff. Like I'm, you know, like I am alone in the world and I'm emo and you know, what have you. um And I think it's important when you're when you're writing for these audiences that um you haven't been in a long time to remember that the depths of emotions are real.
00:48:02
Speaker
yeah as an adult, it's so easy for us to dismiss it because we have so many more years of experience to be like, honey, you're going to be fine. But in that moment, when you're that age, you don't know that everything's going to be fine. You haven't experienced everything being fine.
00:48:15
Speaker
I have just been rereading a bunch of poems that I wrote in my senior year of high school because of the project that I'm doing with them. And as I was reading them, I was like, oh, oh, wait, these are one, they're putting me right back in that place. Yeah. And two, I'm just, it's like visceral, like remembering like the day before my 18th birthday, my friend and I had a fight and I was like, it's over. We're never speaking again. Yeah. I'm still friends with her.
00:48:39
Speaker
Yeah. 14 years later. Just like the one person from high school that I still talk to regularly. So like, but in that moment, it was like the world has ended. yeah And being able to go back and remember that can be really helpful when you're writing Kid Lit. Yeah, definitely. I think for Kid Lit, the, like I said before, to like not talking down. And part of that is honoring the fact that when you only have that many experiences, everything is the end of the world because you don't have the experience that tell you that everything is going to be fine. Yeah.
00:49:10
Speaker
um Yeah. You maybe have never had a friendship breakup and survived and like healed from it. Right. Yeah. Or, you know, like you've, you know, in my case, I remember I had a lot of codependent relationships for a long, long, long time.
00:49:23
Speaker
um And it wasn't until my like mid twenties that I started like kind of having more healthy friendships. But I thought that was the norm, you know, like when when and when your childhood is the only thing you've ever known, you think it's the norm. Right. Everything. Nothing is weird to you because you're like, this is just my what my kid, my childhood is. Right. I mean, if you're you know, like I remember feeling, you know, I was like spoke a different language at home. I have ah you know like a classically autistic brother and I, you know, like knew that was different. And i I had like all sorts of things I like I knew I was different growing up.
00:49:54
Speaker
But I did not appreciate the depth to which my childhood was, quote unquote, abnormal or atypical. I should say atypical, not abnormal. um Because it was mine.
00:50:06
Speaker
yeah you know It's just your reality. it' just your reality. And I think it's important to know like that that for when you're writing for adults, you can play with that idea because you have the perspective of time and you have the gift of um knowing how other people have moved through the world, depending on how old your protagonist is, right? Depending on what your protagonist's worldview is, what their experiences have been.
00:50:27
Speaker
But when you are writing from the perspective of a kid or a teen, you have to remember that's all they know. Even though they have, obviously they have friends, you know, well, assumedly they have friends or whatever who have different family situations, of course. But even that it's like, well, this is my friend's family situation. I mean, they don't conceptualize kind of like, what does it mean that,
00:50:45
Speaker
you know, like I am growing up in a, like, if you know, in a church, which is basically what I basically grew up in a church, um like building physically in the home, and whatever it's a whole thing, um you know, versus like, I, you know, mike my friend over here lives with their grandparents versus like, oh, my friend over here, like their parents are divorced. Divorce I think is is the easy one, right? Most kids grow up and they have a friend who has a parent um who has divorced parents or they themselves have divorced parents.
00:51:12
Speaker
You don't realize that that is not, you know, like, quote unquote, typical, again, like, what is typicality um um until later.
00:51:23
Speaker
And that's something that actually i I in the Glade I thought about because each of the the four main characters all have like, quote unquote, a typical families. um The main character's family, her dad's an immigrant. Her mom is white American.
00:51:37
Speaker
Her best friend lives with their aunt and uncle because mom is hospitalized. Dad died overseas when she was when they were a baby. um The two kids that they meet at the camp that they become good friends with, one of them has divorced parents and has been living with grandma because dad has been traveling for work.
00:51:53
Speaker
um And the other one is one of like six kids in an immigrant family um and is one of the younger ones. So, you know, like... These are typical for kids because that's what that's what you know, right? And of course, like I'm sure statistically can be like, this is how many families have this many kids. This is how many families are divorced, especially like divorced, right? Like i many, many, many, many people have are you know have divorced parents.
00:52:17
Speaker
But that it's not really until you're older that you can kind of put those experiences in a context. for For the kids in the Glade, that's just their context. That's it. Even though they can appreciate that the the others have different contexts.
00:52:31
Speaker
And I'm thinking of the the role of media in contextualizing, right? Like if I'm thinking of sitcoms, right? Like the classic family sitcom, yeah the white family, the mom, the dad, the two or three kids, right? yeah yeah If that's what you're seeing and you come from a family of six or a divorced family or whatever, and the more stories that we have that show quote unquote atypical, the more people will realize that it's not atypical at all. It is just atypical.
00:53:01
Speaker
their story and not someone else's. I do have a question that I wanted to ask specifically about talking about hard topics in any, for any audience. How do you approach sort of like audience care, right? Like um I thought of this when you were talking about the scene in the scene in Kilwell with the migrant violence, because I had a scene in my YA where there's an assault and There's also scenes that I had where one of my characters experiences racism, and I was very careful to not write out any specific terms or even, like, messages. It was just, like, a very, like...
00:53:40
Speaker
There is racism because that's what happens at this school. But I was aware that one, because of who I am, not ever having been a victim of racism and to offer audience care, I didn't want to like traumatize potential um readers who might share that character's identity.
00:53:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. This is a really great question. I think um the question you always have to ask yourself whenever you're doing any sort of violence is what is the purpose of this violence? And I think it's, you know, like your mileage may vary depending on what what you're writing you know what you're writing. I'm not going to tell like, um you know, like ah like a Latinx author who wants to show kind of like what's happening at the border that they should or shouldn't include certain amounts of violence, right? It it depends on, again, like who who your audience is, what the purpose of this violence is.
00:54:27
Speaker
um But i think I think the purpose is is a big thing because if the purpose is really, for well for one thing, like violence, trauma should never just be a plot device, right? This is something that um that you can pick up any sort of myriad of like old, certainly I'm sure it happens in books that are published now, but we have a lot more of these conversations of kind of like, what is trauma doing in the book? So many times trauma is a vehicle, um especially sexual violence and sexual trauma. That tends to be a vehicle to have this traumatized character.
00:54:59
Speaker
If you think of your characters more as human and less as characters, I think that can be a helpful but for for to guide what choices that you make. Because if i you know if this is a friend telling me a story, um I'm going to have a different set of expectations for...
00:55:14
Speaker
for whatever happened as opposed to like, well, I made this character up. Of course you made the character up, right? Of course this is like all in your head until it's on the page or what have you. um But trauma is one of those things that one is defined on an individual basis, right? Something that is traumatic to one person may not be to another.
00:55:33
Speaker
um Two, impacts people in all sorts of different ways. And that is So that that does mean that for some people, they just never deal with their trauma.
00:55:45
Speaker
But that manifests another way, right? They might be ah physically violent. They might be um emotionally or or verbally violent, right? They might not be a good employee. I don't know. My conversation about labor, employee, like whatever. But like, you know, they might have like, quote unquote, a poor work ethic.
00:56:01
Speaker
um They might, ah you know, use substances, right? same you know like Or someone who doesn't can't process their violence might or process their trauma um might do a lot of gardening.
00:56:14
Speaker
da be like they They put all of their feelings into the earth because they can't, because as a a you know a famous trauma scientist has said, the body keeps the score. um yeah you you know So any sort of violence that happens to a character, any sort of traumatic thing has to have consequences.
00:56:32
Speaker
And those consequences don't have to be plot relevant. And in fact, I mean, it almost shouldn't be plot following. They should be character relevant, right? um If this character has gone through this particular trauma,
00:56:45
Speaker
what is it, how does it change them? And that change might not come for a while, right? It might be one of those things again, that they like repress and the change comes like way, way later, but the repression is still doing something right.
00:56:59
Speaker
um And especially when it's trauma that's happening to kids and teens, they react very differently than trauma that's happening to adults because they internalize it um and oftentimes can't label it as trauma. They don't know. And it's this is is particularly true of like kids.
00:57:17
Speaker
They don't know that it's a trauma. They think that's just life. um But, you know, they might act out in school. They might not do their homework. They might have a difficulty having friends or keeping friends.
00:57:29
Speaker
um They might say mean things to friends. Teens, like, you know, whether or not they they start hanging out with a different crowd, um they might start isolating. They might throw themselves into a totally like new club that you're like, what is even what?
00:57:46
Speaker
They might spend hours and hours and hours at the library because they don't want to go home. Mm-hmm. So and when we're approaching these topics, we have to remember that one, like people don't respond to violence and trauma rationally. um They respond and we have to honor that. And especially again, for kids and teens, they're not going to have the language to intellectualize it, even if they're already in therapy, which at 15 I was because I didn't quote unquote have balance in my life. Thanks dad. um Actually it was like the best thing he could have ever done for me was sticking in therapy at 15, but like,
00:58:20
Speaker
And even then, when I was in therapy at 15, I wasn't actually talking about my trauma. you know My very first therapy session, I was like, I like tacos and churros. And my therapist rolled with me. He was very good therapist.
00:58:32
Speaker
And then kind of over the years, I like mostly it was at the time, it was like me trying to process having a rough relationship with my dad because we had the typical parent teen relationship where we were screaming at each other. Here's this you know this brown immigrant Muslim man who is just like, you have to be home when the sun goes down. And here's me being like, I'm hanging out with my chemistry teacher. Like, what is the big deal?
00:58:50
Speaker
um you know and it really wasn't until like like I think of the last session I had with him that I even broached issues of like self esteem you know so like Sometimes for kids and teens, if you have something like therapy in it, you might have to fudge it a little. Like for for my YA, he does go into therapy because his life is falling apart after the death of his brother.
00:59:13
Speaker
And his parents are like, we can't, we don't know what to do with you. Like we we do not have the training. You clearly need help. Your brother was killed very violently. You clearly need help. And his response is, yeah, y'all need help too. And they were like, we're not talking about us.
00:59:26
Speaker
yeah You know, which is also very true of a lot of brown immigrant families. It's just like, we're not talking about us right now. Like, don't talk about the parent. We're talking about you. And so in therapy, you know, like I did fudge it a little because it's fiction and because I wanted to show a therapy space that was affirming that he did.
00:59:43
Speaker
And he doesn't process stuff right away. It's not like he goes in right away and it's just like, so my brother was killed, you know, right? It's like takes time. Right. um But I wanted to show kind of like a model. This is what healthy, ah health therapist relationship would be. This is what therapy can look like for you in your healing journey. So sometimes we make choices like that.
01:00:00
Speaker
Sometimes we say we we recognize that we are creating a situation in writing and we want to make sure that kids are taking something away from this that affirms them. um You know, like in, in,
01:00:11
Speaker
I don't, Pina in the Glade, the main character, she has anxiety. She very clearly has anxiety. I mean, it's like right away. And and the the question of like anxiety as a diagnosis thing. happy there's There's like, in the first chapter, she mentions having read a book.
01:00:25
Speaker
The book, by the way, is the clackety fun, fun. It's not named in there, but I loved the Blight Harbor trilogy. They're really brilliant books. The main character there experienced panic attacks. Mm-hmm.
01:00:36
Speaker
And so Pina goes, you know, this main character experiences something called panic attacks, which I don't feel, but also I can relate to some of the stuff she says. And so I asked mom if she could read it to see whether or not we I have anxiety.
01:00:48
Speaker
Mom hasn't read it yet. And then in the epilogue, there is a line that says mom and I are now having conversations about both of us having anxiety. And what I wanted to do there was show one show like books are powerful, books are important because sometimes you pick something up in a book that you would never have language for otherwise. And so we are writing books.
01:01:08
Speaker
and when we're writing for kids and teens, we should be aware of that. And we can make choices that can affirm them and that can give them language that they are not going to have. um And they can also be bridges because Pina gives book to mom. Mom eventually reads it and goes, ah, daughter is trying to communicate with me.
01:01:24
Speaker
Obviously not everyone is going to have a home life in which they can have those conversations with their parents. But sometimes I've heard about, oh gosh, I wish I knew someone who told me this. Someone in Authors Against Book Ban was talking about how they they had heard a story of a kid who had left their their queer book out on the on the kitchen table, hoping to have a conversation with their parents about being queer.
01:01:45
Speaker
because they weren't they felt like like could they could do that, right? I mean, this this is the power of books, right? The power to give us language that we don't necessarily have um to explore things that we don't necessarily know how to explore.
01:01:57
Speaker
And so when we're writing for kids and teens, we can do that for them. Yes, we want it to be we wanted to be real to them, right? We don't we don't want to put, I'm not going to get tell have Pina start talking about comorbidities. Like that's not what's going to happen.
01:02:08
Speaker
um What I can do is her saying, oh, I feel like I'm going to be sick because i'm I'm so worried about X, Y, and Z thing. and My mind is spiraling and X, Y, and Z things. And now my sentence structures are getting longer and more run down and I have fewer commas.
01:02:22
Speaker
This is one like line level thing you can do, for example, um because I'm panicking and I'm freaking out. um And then kind of by the end, you know, the the the epilogue of the Glade, Pina is talking about kind of like, we're not always going to be okay. Like, I really thought a lot about like, how am I going to talk about the trauma that they just went through in this book? Because there's traumatic things that happen um in the course of the Glade, particularly the Pina's best friend.
01:02:50
Speaker
And in the epilogue, I wanted to acknowledge that like this happened, this has impacts and things are not always going to be OK, but they can be. um And I think it's important for kids to know, things are not always going to be OK.
01:03:04
Speaker
i think you know We're not going to look at bullshit around, right? Like particularly if you come from a marginalized background of any kind, you already know this in your bones. I don't need to tell you that sometimes things are not OK, but you can be OK.
01:03:18
Speaker
You can find safe spaces and safe people and you can get out of whatever the situation is. And it might take a while and it might you know it might not be a linear, in fact, it's not going to be a linear path.
01:03:32
Speaker
um In fact, you might still wake up with nightmares in several years when you were an adult. Like you think you fully healed and then one day there's the nightmare. Exactly. ah I was just talking about that with someone today, actually. Yeah.
01:03:47
Speaker
yeah That's, you know, a lot of adults need to hear that. And I think kids need to hear it all the more because, again, they don't have the the luxury of time to be able to contextualize their experiences.
01:03:59
Speaker
I think you saying that reminded me, not to speak of my own unpublished books, but it reminded me of Allie Mae, which was... I loved Allie Mae. I like, oh my god, I loved it. I'm like still waiting for you to... I'd be so curious. i'm I'm going to rewrite it someday and it's going to be better. but i and i imagine if it's going to be a queer like a queer coming out for her, that would yeah it oh that would be very funny. I'm going to make it, she doesn't get the guy because...
01:04:24
Speaker
she she's girl gets honest I love that. But the point of that book ah initially was that I needed, I needed a story where someone doesn't have a romantic love and they are okay. yeah yeah And so that's how the original ending of that book is like, I think the literal last words are like, I'm going to be okay, which like is a little on the nose, but the whole point of it was like to show that like things cannot work out. Things can be hard. Your dreams may not come true.
01:04:48
Speaker
you can be okay through that. Absolutely. So, wow, look at me doing something and without even realizing it. Yeah, and I know, right? It is, and it's, I mean, sometimes, yeah I think you're totally right, like, we sometimes need to to hear the things that we then write about. um And I swear, this is this is related to audience, right? Because sometimes your audience is you, but also, like, yes particularly when you're writing for kids and teens, yeah.
01:05:17
Speaker
you know, like you, you have the luxury of being an adult. I mean, I know there are some really, I haven't seen them as much, but for a few years there, there were some real precocious 19 year olds who are publishing in YA. And I was like, I'm going to scream.
01:05:29
Speaker
ah But you know, the, ah we have the luxury of time and we have the luxury of um at this point, having a fully, fully developed brain i know hits. You gotta be ah post, post the years of 25 to 27 or to be able to claim that luxury. But yeah,
01:05:47
Speaker
There's no reason why we can't deploy that for our kids and teens because, yeah you know, like what did you need to hear at that age? You know? I needed to hear that women could also be gay.
01:06:01
Speaker
um Because I didn't know that. Fun fact. um Yeah, I mean, if someone had told me that like, hey, you don't have to be a boy or a girl. and like yeah my understanding of my gender hit by the time I was seven. And I was like, I'm not a girl, i'm not a boy.
01:06:14
Speaker
um i knew a trans man when I was a kid, you know? And like, my kind of understanding was was nebulous where i was like, oh, like I noticed, like they weren't finding and I noticed that. And I was just like, oh, and like misgendered them. I was corrected. Then I was like oh okay.
01:06:27
Speaker
That was kind of it. You know, that was my awareness. But so, you know, some it's often it is related to issues of identity, but sometimes it's also a matter of like, you don't deserve this. You deserve to be cared for. You deserve to be loved.
01:06:43
Speaker
um And that's the beauty of books that we can give that gift to our younger readers. And we can give them gifts to our adult readers too. You know? A lot of middle-aged people still need to hear that because so many people make it through life never hearing, you deserve to be treated well. Yeah.
01:06:59
Speaker
If they hear it first from a book. Like...
01:07:03
Speaker
yeah I'm glad the book was there for them. Yeah. I think that's a a lot of, you know, there there was a whole, there was lots of articles about like adults are the readers of YA and like, when do we do YA for teens?
01:07:14
Speaker
But I think a lot of reason why a lot of adults picked up YA is because YA was giving them those messages and those affirmations in a way that other books weren't. In adult books, we're able to be callous. um We don't always have to be though.
01:07:27
Speaker
You know, or if we are, you know, like the idea is not to be disingenuous. Like if you're writing a book for adult readers and you want, you want the message of like, you deserve to be cared for, or like you don't deserve to be harmed, you know, like adult, I don't know how good adults are as calling bullshit. They call a different kind of bullshit than kids do.
01:07:47
Speaker
Yeah. But, you know, there's a way to have the conversation of you deserve not to be harmed that is adult to adult as opposed to adult to child um and it's just as important to have those i mean you know like how have your callous book if that's you know like be intentional it's kind of my my big takeaway for and any any writing choice you make should be intentional challenge your assumptions ask questions and be intentional you'll be good um and don't get complacent i guess that's that's another one but
01:08:19
Speaker
I love that. Those are great, concise tips. Let's go. You know, am, i am i how do I say this without swearing? I'm incredibly verbose.
01:08:29
Speaker
um So those those are my takeaways. Bullets, concise bullets. um So I do want to be aware that we don't keep you here for like the whole day because I mean, I would. We could definitely talk for hours and I'm sure by now your listeners going to like, okay, can we wrap it up? No, they'll be fine.
01:08:48
Speaker
Final question. It's very important. Oh boy. I hope you can tell from my talk that it's not. um So you're familiar with the concept of a hear me out perhaps like hear me out. Okay. So who is your book villain?
01:09:02
Speaker
Hear me out.
01:09:05
Speaker
As in the person, like, as in like a, like a killmonger. Like they are the villain in the book, but maybe they had a point about one or two things. I definitely have those. Or like they're the antagonist. my God. I definitely had those. um And now I've promptly forgotten every book I've ever read. I will say Valentina definitely falls into that category.
01:09:26
Speaker
i was going to say. I'm pulling up the story graph. Yeah. to like briefly, but cause I'm like, I, I, there's gotta be someone that I can like get on my high horse about. um Of course now i this is, you know, all the books have no villains.
01:09:41
Speaker
You know, like when you go, when you, when like, when you get lucky enough to like have interviews and stuff and people like ask you, you know, ask me questions. Yeah. I'm going start emailing people this question ahead of time. People are, they're just like, Oh, so what do you recommend? Who are your influences? like, I've never read a book in my life.
01:09:57
Speaker
um don't don't talk to me so that's how i'm with movies and tv shows could not name a single one off the top of my head dang i'm like looking through this and i was like oh but all those like kind of the point was that they were they were justified and they were not um Well that works, that counts. I'm pulling up my like last year and it's like five-story reads and shows like The Weight of Blood by Tiffany d Jackson, which is so good.
01:10:23
Speaker
um Maddie had a point, man. like Leave Maddie alone. That poor girl was so abused. ah Leave her alone. i will die for her. Or like Godly Heathens is on there. it's just like Yeah, Jem is messy as hell. um Also ah justified.
01:10:42
Speaker
um I think, actually, okay, i this, man, i'm i'm gonna I'm gonna get off this call and be like, oh, I should have said that person. um In The White Guy Dies First, which is an anthology that Terry edited that I have a short story in, the the whole premise, so if you couldn't tell from from the title, the premise, so it's a YA BIPOC horror anthology where the white guy dies first because traditionally black characters are killed off um like right away.
01:11:09
Speaker
So this, you know, in each of the short stories, everyone was justified. You know, there's like none of those stories where you're like, oh man, like dang, did that character need to die? Like, yes, that character needed to die as horrifically as they did.
01:11:24
Speaker
um Yes, that that that is that is the case. So I guess I'll just like plug myself. um I'm gonna, man, I'm, I'm going to, in like 10 minutes, I'm going to be like, oh, I should have said this character. But I will i will stop with that because everyone is justified in that book.
01:11:41
Speaker
but I... I need to get that book because I'm trying to like, first of all, I haven't bought it because I'm afraid of horror. Some of them, oh like my god, some of those stories are legitimately terrifying. So fair. Great.
01:11:55
Speaker
I was like, I'm going to try and ease into horror. Maybe short stories are a good idea. Some them are Edgemon's story. Maybe I'll start with like a middle grade horror. Yeah, the latest I think fairly friendly. It's pretty spooky. But yeah, like A.G. Edgemon's story in that, oh man, that story messed me up.
01:12:13
Speaker
It's so good. And Tiffany D.
Reflections on Craft and Cultural Influence
01:12:16
Speaker
Jackson's story also was really good. well yeah That makes sense. yeah Awesome. Alright.
01:12:24
Speaker
um Is there anything else that you can think that you would like to say? Like a final soapbox? you would like to be um ah I think I have said what I wanted to, but I will reiterate that craft is cultural.
01:12:37
Speaker
Your understanding of good craft depends on the culture in which you come from. And also all every sort of media that you have ever consumed helps build that because craft is about expectations. um Use it wisely because people will wield it against you and you can wield it against people.
01:12:51
Speaker
As a writer, the best thing we can do is um Challenge our assumptions, not be complacent, ask questions, have other people challenge our assumptions um because the more we do things with intentionality, the better our work will become.
01:13:06
Speaker
And do crafts analyses. like Like, what does that even mean? um Reading and analyzing books for craft will make you a better writer. it will help you in the long run.
Promotion of Educational Resources
01:13:21
Speaker
But that's like a personal plug because I have a little email, um an email course that teaches you actually how to read for craft.
01:13:29
Speaker
So that's my. You should all sign up for Nassim's newsletter because I do and I like it every time. So follow them on socials.
01:13:39
Speaker
We'll put it in the show notes. I haven't been able to say that yet in this podcast. I don't know if we have show notes, but we're going to put stuff in them. I'm sure Addy will figure it out.