A Tour of My Bulletin Board

I like to be organized, and having a dedicated office makes it easier. I use a bulletin board as one of my organizational tools, and where would I put it if I had to write in a coffee shop or even at my kitchen table? Yes, I also have notes and lists and research materials in binders, but I like having crucial information a glance away.

Maybe a bulletin board would work for you, too. It’s something to think about, anyway. And if you need ideas, here is a tour of mine.

The upper left-hand quadrant lists my monthly writing goals. I have three goals for August: to send my just completed manuscript out for editing, to work on the second draft of my current work-in-progress, and to send an earlier manuscript to the next round of agents. I’m currently right on track, but I might not be without the list in a prominent place to remind me.

The upper right-hand quadrant has two items. The top one is a copy of my Indiana Registered Retail Merchant Certificate, which is a sales tax registration that basically authorizes me to sell my books out of the back of my car. It reminds me that writing is a business as well as something I enjoy doing. The second item is an inspirational quote from Hebrews 12:2.

The bottom left-hand side has the outline for my current work-in-progress. I’m somewhere between a plotter and a pantster, meaning that I work from a skeletal outline and change it when circumstances warrant. My outlines are a one-line summary of each chapter and include the day of the week and the date for each one. If I get lost, I just glance up and find myself again.

The content on the bottom right-hand side changes with the manuscript. My current WIP takes place in the real town of Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1863, and I want to get the location details right. A significant portion of the story occurs in a cave built as a multi-family bomb shelter that also serves as their dwelling. Although the particular cave is fictional, the layout needs to remain the same throughout the book. So this month that lower right-hand quadrant contains a map of Vicksburg as it looked in 1863 and a diagram of the cave. When I was writing about the Great Chicago Fire, that part of the bulletin board was covered with a map of the fire’s spread. For a story that follows the seasons, I post a copy of the calendar for the relevant years. In every case, however, that portion of the bulletin board contains information that I consult frequently while writing.

Every writer has a different routine and a different way of organizing to write, so what works for me might not work for you.

But feel free to use my bulletin board ideas if they help.

The Changing Face of Political Correctness

Recently, a friend was reading Desert Jewels and asked me about the authenticity of a passage explaining that the protagonist’s Japanese American father and Caucasian mother got married in Indiana because it was illegal in Chicago. While the book is fiction, the scene is based on the real life experience of Nakaji and Eleanore Torii, who married in Crown Point, Indiana in 1930.¹  To add to that story, apparently the FBI tried to pressure Eleanore to divorce Nakaji in 1943 but she refused because he was a good provider. Although this is pure speculation, I would like to think that the real reason she refused was because she loved her husband. However, saying he was a good provider was an answer more people would likely understand or accept.

In 1930, mixed marriages were not politically correct. And during World War II, it wasn’t even politically correct to have Japanese American friends. Entire families—including many American born children—were incarcerated simply because of their blood line.

Then there are my current works-in-progress, which take place in the South before and during the Civil War. In that time and place, it was politically correct to support slavery and politically incorrect to oppose it.

These days, very few people would argue that mixed marriages are wrong and that the Japanese American incarceration and slavery were right. And it isn’t that the rightness or wrongness changed with the times, although many people who held those now outdated political beliefs did think they were morally right. Political climates and beliefs change, but right and wrong never do.

So don’t expect me to be politically correct if I don’t believe it’s right.

__________

¹ Images of America: Japanese Americans in Chicago, by Alice Murata. See pages 9, 15–18. 

The photo at the top of this post was taken by Dorothea Lange in San Francisco, California during April 1942, while she was working for the War Relocation Authority. It is in the public domain because it was taken as part of her official duties as an employee of the United States government.

Own Voices v. Other Voices: Why Not Both?

The “Own Voices” movement started as a hashtag created by Corinne Duyvis to encourage authors from diverse/marginalized groups to write about the groups they belong to—whether that be a particular race, disability, or sexual orientation—and to promote those books. That’s an admirable goal, and I’m fully behind it.

In this “politically correct” atmosphere, however, many people go farther and condemn works by voices writing outside their culture. (This is not where Corinne Duyvis takes it, as you can see from the Q&As at www.corinneduyvis.net/ownvoices/.) The restrictive view of acceptable authorship is short-sighted and, I believe, counterproductive.

First, some background. I’m about as WASP as you can get, but the protagonist of my first middle-grade book, Desert Jewels, is not. Here’s the blurb.

Twelve-year-old Emi Katayama is half Japanese, but she is all American. Then Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and she suddenly becomes the enemy.

I wrote Desert Jewels because the Japanese-American incarceration is a part of our history that often gets ignored, and I wanted to change that. I could have used a white protagonist who lives outside the camp, as Kirby Larson did very effectively in the Dear America book The Fences Between Us, but I wanted to get closer.

Research is key. Since I didn’t live through the experience, my research relied significantly on the voices of those who had. Memoirs have always been my favorite resources, and the Japanese-American incarceration generated a number of them.

No matter who writes the story, it is important to get the facts right. While the experience is primary, knowledgeable readers may stop reading if the details are wrong. And this is just as important for members of the in-group as it is for writers from outside the group. Unfortunately, I have read several books written by Japanese Americans that have gotten the facts wrong. As an example, many of these books merge the so-called “no no boys” with the draft dissenters and treat them as if they were the same group. The “no no boys” were Japanese men who answered “no” to two questions supposedly designed to test loyalty, while the draft dissenters answered yes to each question. (You can read more about the Heart Mountain dissenters in my June 2, 2014 blog post.)

The biggest problem with the restrictive view, though, is that it limits both the offerings and the audience.

First and most obvious, it limits the offerings by narrowing the number of people who write those books. I understand the very realistic concern about other voices getting it wrong, and this is where publishers can and should be gatekeepers. But some other voices get it right. And if you want people to read own voices, those must be quality works. So while I support publishers prioritizing for well-written own voices, they shouldn’t automatically discard other voices.

Second, restricting stories to own voices also limits the audience. Some people outside of a group feel that people within the group have a bone to pick, and these readers discount own voices books as biased. (It is the perception rather than the accuracy of the claim that is important here.) The best way to reach this audience is through white voices writing outside their culture and getting it as correct as possible.

So yes, publishers should be gatekeepers to ensure that all voices portray people accurately and with sensitivity. Sometimes that means giving priority to well-written and well-researched own voices.

But restricting it to those voices is short-sighted and counterproductive.

__________

Desert Jewels is available in paperback and Kindle versions from amazon.com and in paperback from Barnes and Noble.

Detecting History

Only detectives should write historical novels. I don’t mean the kind of detective with a magnifying glass or a knowledge of fingerprints. But writing historical novels requires a significant amount of research and deductive reasoning to get the history right.

In June, I dragged Roland along on a research trip. I am writing a book that takes place during the Civil War Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and I wanted to do some research at the library in the Old Court House (pictured above) and visit the battlefield. While there, I gathered information on a real girl named Lucy McRae. She never comes onstage in my book and is only mentioned briefly, but she was trapped in a literal cave-in and I want my protagonist to hear about that incident. Also, Lucy comes from the same income class as my protagonist, so they would probably live in the same part of town and attend the same school. Knowing more about Lucy helps me make my own character more authentic.

My earlier research indicated that Lucy was 10 or 11 years old, but the movie at the battleground said she was 13. When writing for a middle grade audience, that is a big difference, and I needed to determine whether she was younger or older or the same age as my twelve-year-old protagonist. This is where the detective works comes in.

The research library had copies of the 1861 city directory and the 1850 census but none of the 1860 census. The 1861 city directory and the 1850 census showed a William McRae who was a merchant. At the time, he had four sons and no daughters. Was he Lucy’s father? He could be if she was 10 or 11 in 1863 since she would not have been born when the 1850 census was taken. And it was also possible that she could have been 13 if the census was taken early in the year and she was born right afterwards. But the 1850 census listed the youngest boy as less than a year old, making it less likely that Lucy would have been born shortly after.

And was this even the right William McRae? Several sources identified Lucy’s father as the sheriff, and both the city directory and the 1850 census listed this William McRae as a merchant. So did he become the sheriff by 1863?

After returning home, I went online and found a copy of the 1860 census. It showed a William McRae who was listed as sheriff and named the same wife and sons as in the 1850 census. The 1960 census also showed a daughter, Lucy, and gave her age as eight, which is consistent with her being ten or eleven at the time of the siege. Mystery solved.

But it took some detective work.