It seems like a good time to share one of my favorite characters of all time. She stole my heart almost eight years ago and holds it still. Go meet her at my new page.
Aidan’s waiting.
Loving Life, Loving the Story
A friend of mine from high school came to visit me recently for a weekend. She is a wonderfully thoughtful person and an incredible artist, whose name you will all know someday from her work and I will get to say, “I knew her when.” Over the course of the weekend, we spoke about everything from jobs to family to writing to religion and all the stuff in between, catching up from when we’d last seen each other (actually only a month before), recounting the little moments of our lives rom when we’d graduated high school together till now.
One of the things she told me about was a line from a play that she’d seen that had struck and stayed with her and now has struck and stayed with me. I do not know the play’s name, and I am definitely misquoting the line – it’s my memory of what she said from her memory of the play. But this is the line that struck me:
“It’s not your job to love your job. It’s not your job to love your spouse. It’s not your job to love your children or your friends or your family. Your only job is to love your life.”
Initially, this felt like semantics to me. How could I love my life without loving my family or my friends or my job? What does it mean that my job is only to love the whole of my life and not the parts of my life? But on further consideration, I realized this idea of only having to love your life gives you the space to not love everything and to actively choose what to love.
I think we all would love to love our day-to-day jobs, but this idea says it is okay if you don’t. It’s not your job to love your job. It’s your job to do it, but that doesn’t mean you have to love it.
I struggled more with the concept of not having to love your family, but that’s probably because I do love my family, I’m lucky to be a member of a lovable and loving family, so of course I love them. But I know there are many people who aren’t as lucky, so being told that it’s not your job to always love them, or love them at all, could very easily release the burden and pressure of being forced to feel love for people who may not be lovable.
There is an allowance to not have everything be perfect and pristine.
This also means that when you do love something, like your job, or your family, or whatever it is that you love, it’s an active choice, not a given. You are free to give your love to whatever or whomever you so choose, no one but yourself telling you to do so.
There is freedom in this concept.
Your only job is to love your life. Love the life you are leading, love the life you are striving for.
If you only love parts of your life, then when those parts start breaking down or going through rough patches, what will happen to you? What if everything falls apart at once, because the world and life is messy and icky like that? What will you be left with, if all you love is parts and not the whole?
But consider the inverse – if you love the whole (and, because you love the whole, you are more likely to love many of the parts of your life that make it up), then when some of the parts break down, the whole will still be there to sustain you. Sure, you hate your job today, but you love the life you’re living. Sure, you had a fight with your friend, but you love the life you’re building for yourself.
While I think this is a concept to consider periodically in your life, checking in to take to stock of where you are and truly asking if you love it, I feel like this is a concept that can also be applied to writing.
Your only job with writing is to love the story you are telling. You don’t have to love the process. You don’t have the love the characters. You don’t have to the love the sentence structures. You don’t have to love the words you use.
Should you love all of these things? Yes, it makes it so much easier to write and a more enjoyable time if you do. But what if you don’t? Or what if you don’t love them all the time? It’s all right. That’s not your job. Your job is to just love the story you are telling, the overarching whole that you are striving for.
No amount of great characters and perfect sentences and lovely word choices and minutes spent typing will make up for a story you are tired of and can’t stand to tell. Because there are days when everything breaks down. You can’t get the words to come, the sentences are horrible, the characters are messy, and it looks like there is no end in sight. But if I love the story I am telling, I can push through those bad days, weeks even, holding on for the story that, because I love it.
It’s a gift to love all the parts of your life and all the parts of your story. But that’s not your job, it’s not what you have to do. Your job, the only thing you must do, is to love your life and the story you are telling.
A Perfect Writing Recipe: Finding Out How You Write Best
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I started my first novel the summer after sixth grade. I was twelve years old. By the time summer ended, I was roughly halfway through the book. I think I wrote one chapter during seventh grade, if that. I don’t recall really touching it while I was in school. But during the summer after seventh grade, I finished it. I was thirteen and I had finished a real, full-length novel. The following summer was the first agent attempt, but that’s a different story.
Once I was finished working on my first book, I went back to write another. My head was teeming with ideas, as only a teenage mind can, and so when I had an idea that felt formed enough to get started, I would sit down to write and…nothing. Absolutely nothing. I wrote a page, maybe two, three if I was really lucky. But I couldn’t really get off the ground. I was a plane with fuel but no ignition. And then a new story idea would come around and I would try with that one. Wash, rinse, repeat, no luck.
I have distinct memories of worrying whether the novel I had written in middle school would be the one and only novel I would ever write. How could I have really peaked at age thirteen? I knew I wanted to be a writer. How could I be a writer if I didn’t write? I am sure I was a joy to be around during these moments, something my parents could attest to.
Then the summer after freshman year of high school came and I attended a summer writing program for a week at Sarah Lawrence College. I was part of Group 5, a bunch of teenagers from all around the country (despite being in NYC Tri-State area, we had someone from California and Michigan). I remember having so much fun with them for the week and laughing like never before. We stayed in touch after the program, which was a blessing to me, because that October, one of them asked if anyone was participating in NaNoWriMo.
NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is the challenge to anyone insane enough (raises hand proudly in the air) to write 50,000 words in the thirty days of November. It’s a free “competition,” run by the National Novel Writing Month charity, which promotes literacy and writing. I say “competition” because you are only competing against yourself. If you write the 50,000 words, you’ve won. So has your neighbor, your best friend, your frenemie, and that stranger on the other side of the world, as long as they each wrote the 50,000 words. Winners do get prizes, generally in the form of eternal bragging rights and discounts on writing software and other writing materials.
I decided to try this my sophomore year of high school. And what do you know, I wrote a novel in November (during which my computer had to be fixed, a nightmare on its own and again a different story). I had actually written another novel. I remember being so excited and relieved at the same time. Because here was a system that got me to commit to a story and write it.
Since that November, I have figured out that I write best under the following conditions: with a deadline and accountability.
Deadlines for me are when there is a hard stop for when something is due. The NaNoWriMo deadline has gotten me to write whole chunks, if not entire novels in the thirty days. Even if I have completed NaNo, but not finished the book, I have had enough written to keep going. Other deadlines, like my thesis deadline, have similarly helped to get me to sit down and write.
Accountability for me is when someone else is expecting work from me. I told my thesis advisor I work well with deadlines. He said, prove it, I want a chapter at the end of every week. He got a chapter at the end of every week and I went home for winter break of my senior year with a complete first draft of my thesis novella. I have now enlisted my sister to pose as a similar accountability enforcer. She gets to call me every weekend and demand that I send her what I have written the past week. Woe to me if I have nothing to send to her.
I sometimes wonder what advice I would give writers just starting and it’s this: find out how you write best. What conditions will get you to write? Is it a deadline? Is it writing a little bit every day? Is it prompts? Is it having someone holding you accountable? Is it a writing group? Try out different things until you figure out whatever it is that gets you sit down and put words on paper.
This also goes for the environment in which you write. Do you write at home? At a local coffee shop? In an office? At the library? Do you write with other people around? Do you write where no one can see you? Do you play music? Do you write in silence? Do you have a special playlist for each project? Do you have snacks at hand? Do you have your favorite tea steeping by your computer? Do you have a special sweater you need to wear? A blanket on your lap? A stuffed animal you get to cuddle or strangle depending on how the writing is going?
For the life of me, I don’t know how I wrote my first novel, how a story sustained me for over a year to completion. All I can say is that I was in love with it, so I wrote it. But sometimes you fall out of love with your stories or even if you love them, life gets in the way. What do you do then?
Knowing how you write best is a great set of tools to fall back on. It won’t always work. Sometimes the tricks just are not clicking, and you need to try something new. I recently started writing in ice cream parlors, because I wasn’t being productive at home anymore. My writing and my stomach are very happy. It’s much easier to try something new if you already know what’s old.
Ultimately, love of the story and the art will carry most writers across the finish line. Up until that last sprint though, when the end and victory is in sight, every writer could use the perfect recipe to keep us going.
I Wrote a Novel. Yay! Now What? One Writer’s Querying Experience, Perhaps with Some Tricks to Help Another
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How do I get published? I wrote this novel. Now what? What do I do next?
These are the common questions I hear from friends and writers alike. And the general answer is: querying. I first tried to get a literary agent the summer after seventh grade. (I was a really ambitious and somewhat silly fourteen-year-old.) Over several years, I went through the literary agent search on three different projects. One project had three different rounds of query letters. It wasn’t until the fifth attempt at the query process, on the third project I’d sent out, when I was twenty-three, that I finally signed with my agent.
Having gone through this process in several iterations, I thought it might be worth sharing my experience and the advice I have received over the years that truly helped me get my agent. Hopefully it will help someone else out there find theirs.
- Write the Novel
This seems obvious, but you still need to write and finish the novel. It has to be complete. Non-fiction can sell on proposal, I believe, and I’ve heard established authors sell novels to publishers on proposal, but for first time authors of fiction, the book has to be done. This means this is not the first draft of the book, it has been edited and revised many times over and should have been read by someone (or many someones) else. Writers go page blind. We stop seeing our own errors. We need outside critique to see what’s working and what’s not. We need fresh eyes. When you’re ready to query, the manuscript needs to be publish ready, so no typos, no plot-holes, no unintended loose ends.
That’s not to say it won’t get edited once you sign with a literary agent or with a publisher, but you need to have it as close to finished as you could possibly make it on your own.
- Be Ready
This is about your own mental space. Your work is going to be rejected. It’s inevitable. Is it possible your first query letter will be accepted by an agent? Absolutely. Likely? Not really. So you need to be ready for your novel, your baby that you love so much, to be rejected over and over and over again.
And the rejections are going to hurt, sometimes a bit, sometimes a lot. There were days the rejections just rolled off of me and I trudged along just fine, and there were days when I burst into tears, crying on the phone with my mother, why didn’t they like my book? (Something my mother really appreciated, I’m sure.)
So how do you know if you’re mentally ready? Ask yourself if being told “no” will make you stop writing. If being rejected will make you give up on your work and yourself as a writer, don’t query yet. Spend more time with yourself before opening up to those inevitable rejections. You have something worth saying and nothing should stop you from doing that, especially being rejected.
So if getting rejected will not make you quit, on your writing or on yourself, then you are ready for this.
- Lists, Lists, Research, and More Lists
Keeping a list was the best way for me to organize all the information I was gathering about literary agents. Who was accepting queries, who was interested in my genre, what they wanted to see, and how they wanted to see it. When I was ready to send out my query letters, this list became invaluable.
There are many ways to find out which literary agents are out there. There are websites like Query Tracker* and Publishers Marketplace that can help you get started. I personally never used these websites directly – I didn’t want to pay for them. This meant more work for me, but such is life sometimes. I generated my list of agents through Google searches. I used terms like “literary agent,” “literary agency,” and then those words in combination with the genre I was working in. Nonfiction agents aren’t interested in fiction works. One agent who takes fiction may not like YA fantasy, and so on. When names started to repeat, I knew I was closing in on everyone on the scene.
I also looked at the acknowledgement sections of some of my favorite books, particularly the ones that were in the genre I was writing. Most authors give a shout-out to their agent. Find those names and look them up. Clearly, they’ve had some success if one of their clients’ books is in your hands.
When I found a new name, I added it to my list and then dug deeper. Was this person open for submission was a column on my list. What genres they represented – a column. How they wanted to be contacted – some have specific emails, some have forms – a column. What they wanted to see – just the query letter, the first chapter, the first five pages (not to be confused with the first chapter), ten pages, three chapters, and so on – another column. How long it generally took them to respond – a column. For every possible bit of useful information related to the agent, there was a column on my spreadsheet.
Some agencies ask you to query one person from their agency and that’s it. If it’s not the right fit for that agent, they will pass it on to their colleague. Make sure you are picking the best available agent in that agency. Some agencies ask you to query one person at a time from their agency. So if the first agent passes, you can then query another agent at the same agency. Find out all the possible available agents and then pick which one you’ll query first, generally the one you think you have the best chances.
From this list, I was able to narrow down the agents most likely to be interested in my work. I still queried every possible person, even the longshots, but I knew who those longshots were and whom I had better chances with.
- The Query Letter Itself
Looking back now, I know my first query letters were garbage. I was fourteen, what can you really expect? The success of my query letters I have to lay at the feet of one of my professors in college, who graciously reviewed a query of mine and told me everything I was doing wrong and how to do it better, which turned out to be just right. Before speaking with my professor, I got more form letter rejections than ever. Afterwards, I got rejections that were more personalized. They were still rejections, but someone had sat up to take notice of my query and my work – a huge step forward for me. So thank you, Bret Johnston, I owe you one. Here’s the advice he gave me:
A. The Hook
The first paragraph of your query should mirror the back jacket of a book, the teaser
trailer of the plot of your book. You want to give the agent a sense of what your book is without giving everything away. Tease them just enough to read the pages you are providing with interest and hopefully leave them wanting more.
This should be no more than one paragraph and medium in length, at the longest. The shorter this is, the more space you have for the rest of your query.
B. The Nuts and Bolts
The next couple of paragraphs is where you talk about the nuts and bolts of your
work. How long is it, in pages and words, what genre is it, what kind of audience would it appeal to (if you like X and Y, you’ll like this), what kind of books are its competitors. This is where you show the agent that you know your work, your genre, and the market. Some markets are constantly changing. Do your research. What is selling now and why and how does your book fit into that picture? Agents want to represent books that will sell. No one will be a better advocate for your book than you. Prove to the agent that you know the market and how to sell your book in it.
C. The Bio
This one is all about you. Who you are, what you do, why you are the best person
to have written this book. If you’ve taken any classes, mention them and who taught them. If you’ve published anywhere, definitely mention that.
It’s definitely not the be all and end all if you don’t have any credits to your name. When I met with my professor, he encouraged me to include my age in my bio. I was worried it would turn agents off, knowing how young I was (19 at the time), but it gave agents something to notice and to know about me. A young writer has their whole career ahead of them, which might work in your favor. An older writer has their whole life’s experience to work in their favor. It just depends on how you spin it.
The query letter should be no more than a page long. This is a business letter. Be as professional as possible, while still showing your passion for your work. But ultimately, the work has to speak for itself, so let’s get that agent through the query as quickly as possible and onto the book itself.
- Hit Send
Next step is to hit send. Go back to your list of agents and format your submissions the way each of them want it. This can sometimes feel so annoying, why can’t they all take a query the same way and why can’t they all take the same amount of pages, etc. But this is the game and the way it’s played. Literary agents have so many other things to occupy their time. When they have a chance to look at query letters, it makes it easier for them if the letter is the way they want it. Your query letter is your first impression, so make a good one.
My professor also gave me some good advice as to when is the best time to send out query letters – mid-January and mid-September. The logic is the agents are just getting settled after coming back from vacation and are fresh and ready to go. That is not to say you cannot query at any other time of the year. You absolutely should. Agents are reading all year round. But if you’re getting ready to query mid-December, you may find you’ll have more success if you wait the extra month before hitting send.
Hitting send takes a lot of courage. You’re pushing your baby chick out of the nest and hoping and praying it will fly. Even when the chick crashes to the ground, again and again, know that it can and will fly someday. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or next month, or next year, but someday. You’ve made it this far and that is an accomplishment.
- Wait
This is the hardest part, waiting for the responses to roll in. This was where my list came in so handy. I kept track of when I sent my query to a particular agent and what their response time was. That meant I could keep an eye on my calendar and when I was likely to hear back from people. Needless to say, there were weeks when seeing I had a new email in my inbox would make my heart pound.
Some agents get back super quickly (my record rejection time is three minutes), some never get back at all. Some agents send a form letter to reject, some get a bit more personal. For some, no response in and of itself means “rejected.” None of this is personal. It’s all business. Agents have to prioritize their current clients over getting new ones, so while it might seem easy to us writers to add someone’s name in an email, to them it’s time away from their clients. I’ve inwardly raged at the silent rejections and form letters before, I am not the first and I know I won’t be the last, but I know it’s nothing personal. This is the way it is.
Most rejections are the end of the road for that agent. You cross them off your list and move on. However, if an agent has given you an opening in their response, made a direct comment about your work, you can respond to them. Ask for their advice on moving forward with the work and making edits. Do not try to convince them that they were wrong to reject you. Their decision is final, you are just trying to get more insight into their process. They might answer your follow-up, they might not. Accept that and move on. Luckily, there is more than one agent out there.
If you can, find a way to celebrate the rejections. It’s an ugly part of the process and it’s inevitable, so you have to find a way to make it better. I remember going out for ice cream with my family to celebrate my first rejection during one of my querying rounds. Treat yourself in little ways – ice cream, movie nights, your favorite tea, a walk around the block, something that brings you joy – so that you can keep on soldiering through this tunnel until you reach the light at the end.
- Getting Lucky
If an agent asks to see more of your work, first scream your head off with excitement (perhaps not literally). Once you’ve calmed down, thank the agent and send them what they requested, usually this is a partial or full manuscript. Once you’ve hit sent on that, you wait again, but this time you are guaranteed to get a response from them.
Even if several agents have asked for the full manuscript, you might still only get rejections. This is what happened to me. Several agents had requested the full manuscript and subsequently rejected and most of them for the same reason. One of those rejections was the final straw (I was on my lunch break at my first job when my camel back broke) and I went back to the drawing board and revised my book again. When I had finished that revision, I went back to those agents who had seen the full manuscript and asked if they wanted to see it again. Many said yes. One of those yeses became my agent.
When an agent makes you an offer, leap for joy and do your happy dance (this should be literally). Once you’ve calmed down, talk with the agent about their vision for your writing and how they operate. Your agent is going to be your partner, helping you navigate the publishing world and get the best possible publishing deal for your book. If you can’t work with them, then this partnership fails and your book is the loser for it. Talk with some of their current clients. Make sure you like what you hear from their clients. You may not have the same needs or outcomes as those clients, but this should give you a good sense of who the agent is as an advocate in the publishing world.
Once you’ve gotten an offer, you should inform all other agents that you’ve queried that you’ve received an offer. This is common courtesy, albeit a tedious one. But perhaps knowing an agent is making an offer will light a fire under someone to read your work sooner and make an offer themselves – you never know. If no one else does make an offer, it doesn’t really matter. You’ve won the jackpot – you have an agent!
- Wash, Rinse, Repeat, Write
So you’ve gone through the querying process. Maybe you had a few bites, maybe you got an offer, maybe you’ve only gotten rejections. At the very end of the day, it doesn’t really matter because every writer has to ask themselves the same question: Now what? What’s next?
This book’s query road is done. Maybe it’s on its way to being published, maybe it’s being set aside for later. Every writer has that drawer of unpublished manuscripts and ideas that haven’t been written yet. It’s time to take the next project out and begin that. Most writers have more than one great story in them. Just because it might not have worked for this project does not mean it won’t for the next.
As of right now (December 27, 2018), I have a literary agent but not a publishing contract. My agent sent out my book to all the editors she could think of who’d be interested and they all turned it down. So what am I doing now? I’m working on the next book, which happens to be a re-write of something I wrote when I was younger. I’m coming back to it now as an older, more mature, and hopefully better writer. And maybe that one will be my first published work. But even then, I’d still be where I am right now. Because even if I do get published, there would still be the next story to write and the one after that and the one after that. I’m a writer. The work is never done.
And every writer – published veteran, agented beginner, seasoned rejected, or fresh-eyed newbie – starts with the same blank page, waiting for the new story to unfold and fill it up.
So get to it – and good luck, may the writing force be with you!
* It has been pointed out to me that aspects of Query Tracker can be used for free.
Why Write
Connection – it’s what we all seek, I believe. To connect to others, to connect to the world, to connect to ourselves. The simplest of actions are those seeking connection. A hug to a loved one, a greeting to a friend, a smile to the barista handing you your morning coffee. If you wished to be alone forever, you would not extend the proverbial hand with any of these gestures. But we, as humans, do so and daily, hourly even. It is human nature to strive for connection.
For something we all naturally strive for, however, connection is all too often too hard to find. How is it possible to truly connect with another person? To know another’s inner most self and truly understand him or her? To walk the mile in another’s shoes? I don’t entirely see how stealing someone’s footwear can really help a person to understand who they are. It would probably be better to walk a mile in another’s skin, to have a better chance of understanding who that person truly is, but I assume that image was simply too gross to catch on. But even if you were to inhabit another person’s body for a mile, you could never truly inhabit another person’s mind and that is where the block happens. How do you connect when you cannot possibly know another person’s mind as well as your own?
And do you even know your own mind? We as human beings are constantly growing and changing, physically and emotionally. We are not rocks, stagnant and unmoving. One day we know everything about ourselves and the next day a stranger is looking back from the mirror. How do you connect then with someone else when you might not even know your own mind? How do you connect to yourself, to truly understand who you are as a person? Ultimately, is it even possible?
Stories are the bridge. It’s no longer you seeking the connection. It’s John Smith. It’s Hermione Granger. It’s Othello. It’s Jane Doe. It’s the versions of fictional characters or historical people written in words speaking from the page. The distance of the page creates a bridge of connection. I may never be a witch (much to my chagrin) but I can understand Hermione’s love of books. I may never be a man driven to murder, but I can understand Othello’s rage.
And because I can understand those things, through them I am connecting to someone. I am connecting to these characters, fictional or historical as they are. I am connecting to their creators, the writers who put them on the paper. Even if it is just for one moment, I am stretching back in time to Shakespeare and JK Rowling as they penned these words, comprehending perhaps the simplest of the thoughts and feelings that helped to create these characters. And I am connecting to whosoever else reads these same pages. Even if they do not feel as I do, they have read the same words and through that, we can talk about what we thought of those words.
Oscar Wilde once said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
Telling the truth is hard because it leaves you vulnerable. Ultimately, that is why connecting is so incredibly difficult. It’s terrifying to be so open to the world, even your closest friends, even to yourself. Because what if the world, your friends, your family don’t like what they see? What if you don’t like what you see?
Writing gives you the mask to speak the truth. Reading gives you the eyes to see it. The page allows the writer to escape from him or herself and in that freedom, you can find elements of who you are, developing as the story unfolds before your eyes. Likewise, the reader escapes from him or herself when they immerse themselves in the page, escaping into the life of another and perhaps finding both themselves and the writer in the process.
We write to speak the truth. To ourselves and to each other. And through those truths, there is the chance to connect to the reader on the other side. Even if that reader is the writer, just a minute older than before.
When a Harvard Graduate Still Believes in Magic
As I prepare to graduate from Harvard this morning, I had some words I thought worth sharing:
I’ve been waiting half of my life for an owl, more specifically, a letter delivered by an owl, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one here who’s been waiting. That Hogwarts owl has a really bad sense of direction; it is so very lost. Hogwarts was only on the pages of a book, but to a ten-year-old, and even to a twenty-two-year-old, Hogwarts, and the magic that exists there, are real.
I believe in magic. I can practically hear my parents groaning, wondering what kind of school they sent their daughter to. This is what you get for supporting a liberal arts education. I took the required science classes alongside my Folklore and Mythology classes.
Yet I still believe in magic. It’s not the magic of Narnia or Hogwarts or Oz or any other place we love to read and daydream about. It’s a much simpler kind of magic and far more extraordinary.
Someone once gave me a piece of advice that has stayed with me ever since: You don’t have to be trying to change the world in order to change someone’s world. The person giving the advice was referring to writing, that a novel about vampires could matter just as much, if not more, to a reader than a play by Shakespeare, a statement which feels blasphemous as an English major, but it is true nonetheless. You don’t have to be trying to change the world in order to change someone’s world. You just have to be. To me, that is magic.
We as people can change. We are not set in stone forever. We can change and be changed by other people. A smile as you pass by, a message over Facebook, a meal to catch up on life, a hug when there are no words at all. This is the magic that we possess, the power to connect to other people and through that, to do wonderful things. We have changed over the past four years and we will continue to change over the next four years and the many years after. You don’t have to be trying to change the world in order to change someone’s world.
Now some of us are planning on actually changing the world, but for the rest of us, we’ll just be. Abraham Lincoln said, “Whatever you are, be a good one.” A good friend, a good daughter or son, brother or sister, roommate, coworker, partner, leader – a good person. Be a good one. You don’t need to be a great one or the best one, just a good one. So that if you’re not out to change the world, you can still change someone’s world, even if that world is just your own.
I’d like to take a moment to recognize the people who have changed our worlds for the past four years. The House Masters, tutors, and staff who helped make homes for us. The professors, teaching fellows, and advisors who made learning exciting. Each other, our friends, who made the day to day worthwhile. And last but certainly not least, our families, without whom, we’d have no foundation to stand upon. Thank you all. You have changed our worlds for the better and I hope we’ve done the same for you.
All that said, if anyone does see an owl flying by with a letter in its beak, please let me know.
Congratulations, Harvard Class of 2017. The world is waiting for us.
How to Be a Feminist and Still Love Disney
Let me start off by saying, I love Disney. I’m a Disney baby, I’m a Disney fan, I could listen to Disney soundtracks for days on end. If I had to pick a princess to be, I’d want to be Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, for her goals, dedication, love of family and work ethic.
All that said, with the recent Beauty and the Beast adaptation, it has come back to me all the issues that Disney movies have had over the years.
Can you claim that Beauty and the Beast is a feminist tale when the primary relationship is a dressed up version of Stockholm Syndrome? Yes, Emma Watson’s Belle is a bit more independent and industrious, fighting for young girls’ rights to read, etc. – all wonderful things! – but she still falls in love with her kidnapper. Is that really feminist? Is that really a relationship we want being emulated by children? I certainly hope not.
Is Disney at fault for Beauty and the Beast? I don’t think so. Disney didn’t come up with the story, just like it didn’t come up with Rapunzel or Snow White or the Princess and the Frog. These stories have existed for ages in fairy tales and that is where the problem may have begun.
I’m sorry if I’m about to ruin someone’s childhood, but fairy tales in their original tellings are far from perfect. In fact, many are downright creepy. Why is a prince kissing a dead body (Snow White)? Why is a young woman falling in love with her kidnapper (Beauty and the Beast)? Why is a young woman kissing an animal (The Princess and the Frog)? In versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the young girl does a striptease for the wolf. In versions of Sleeping Beauty, the prince rapes the unconscious princess. In Han Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid, the young woman has to choose between murder or suicide. The list of fairy tales and their issues goes on.
When looked at through the eyes of an adult, there are a lot of things wrong with the fairy tales we grew up loving. Even the sanitized versions made by Disney.
So is it Disney’s fault that Belle isn’t a feminist? Not if they’re trying to do justice to the original. Should Disney (or any artist, for that matter) scrap the fairy tales as sources of inspiration? No.
Fairy tales were meant to give children the space to engage with their fears. If we start policing what children can or cannot be exposed to, then we hurt them just the same.
So let’s watch Disney movies. We just need to be honest about what we see on screen. Call it like you see it. Belle is not a feminist. But she does send messages that are good, like learning to see beyond a person’s appearance. Let’s talk to children about what makes a character someone to be emulated or not, instead of passing a yes or no judgement on whether these tales should be told or not in the first place. Stories are never that simple.
No character or story is ever perfect. How could it be? How can we ask characters to be perfect when we ourselves are not?
[For a look at the original fairy tales, The Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar, is a great place to start.]
Research Consent for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, Or How an English Major Does History of Science
This past semester I decided to go outside my academic comfort zone and take a History of Science class, which was recommended to me by a friend. I am very glad I took the class – the topics were interesting and the professor was amazing, would recommend with enthusiasm.
Despite this, I am an English major at heart, always have been and always will be. So when one of the essays on the final exam had a creative aspect, I took it where any English major would have taken it – to the literary world.
The prompt was to draft the “perfect” consent form for participants in genomic sequencing project, taking into account what information needs to be included and issues of genomic sovereignty, ownership of genetic data, patient privacy, social and ethnic inclusion, and informed consent. The prompt was set up that we could either create a group and write the perfect consent form for them or write a more traditional essay addressing how these issues would be handled in the perfect form. I decided to go the creative route – why write a traditional essay when you do not have to? – but instead of creating my own fictional group, I decided to tap into my literary love and write a consent form for an already famous fictional group. The result is below. I had a lot of fun preparing this “essay” and writing it. If my teaching fellow was a fan of the series, this would be a hit; if not, well…thankfully, this was an elective class.
Genomic Research Consent Form for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry
The following are the elements that would be necessary to include in a research consent form for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry:
- Purpose: The purpose of this research is to discover the “Wizard” gene. By sequencing British Wizard DNA and testing it against British Muggle DNA, it may be possible to discover what genetic differences or similarities exist between Wizards and Muggles.
- The samples provided for this study will not be used for any other purpose or testing without further consent from the participants.
- Procedure: Researchers will come to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to collect saliva, hair, and blood samples from students, faculty and staff. The DNA from these samples will then be sequenced. The genomic sequences will then be compared to British Muggle DNA.
- All samples will belong to the participants.
- Every participant will be required to sign a consent form. Underage wizards will require consent forms from legal guardians.
- Prior to entry to the school, researchers will be in communication with the Ministry of Magic to gain access to the community and the school itself.
- Prior to beginning the study, researchers will conduct information sessions for the Ministry of Magic as well as Hogwarts students, faculty, staff, and parents, as well as any interested community members. Hogwarts does not teach a biology or chemistry course so it will be necessary to educate the community on DNA and genomic sequencing, in order for participants to be informed about the process.
- Should studies be published based on this research, credit will be given to the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts School for its assistance and participation in this research.
- Should any profit be made from this research, half of the profit will be given to the Wizarding community, to be divided equally between the Ministry and Hogwarts. Money will be transferred in Muggle form to Gringotts Wizarding Bank.
- It is the belief of these researchers that conducting the study at Hogwarts School is the most efficient way to test for the “Wizard” gene, for the following reasons:
- Because Hogwarts is a boarding school, all possible participants are conveniently situated in one location. This would mean minimal contact with the community at large and efficiency in collecting the DNA.
- Because most of the British Wizarding community sends their children to Hogwarts, the School’s student body is a good representative of the population at large.
- Should the research prove inconclusive or suggest further studies, the researchers will return to the Ministry and Hogwarts to discuss further steps. This may require conducting research in the Wizarding community at large, in which case, permission from the Ministry will once again be sought.
It is the hope that this research will result in the growth of mutual ties between the Wizarding and Muggle communities of Britain. It is our hope that should we discover what makes Wizards and Muggles both different and similar, these two communities will be able to work together towards mutual goals.
I passed the class.
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