About Mary Sue

There's been a debate raging amongst people I know (well, "raging" is probably a bit of an overstatement) about the presence of Mary Sue characters in published, non-fanfiction writing. Accusations are being leveled at some well-respected -- i.e., literary writers -- of indulging in Mary Sue-ness. For those not in the know, the origins of the Mary Sue character and phenomenon are explained here. As a result, writers are starting to worry whether their works-in-progress display even the slightest hint of Sue-ness. I find this infuriating, and here's why.

I think there is a real danger of letting the "Sue" Nazis suck the life out of fiction. Living out one's fantasies on the page may or may not be "Sue." However, when a writer gets so fearful of having that hideous appellation attached to their name or their work that they make a conscious effort to strip their characters, or at least their protagonists, of any resemblance to themselves, they're de-humanizing those characters. Every writer must draw from his or her own humanity in order to create fully-realized characters. Everything -- I mean everything -- you've read in a good book bears the stamp of its author in some fashion or another. The characters, the story arcs, the style. It's all the writer and everything he or she has seen and experienced in life.

Teh suck arrives when the writer ignores all real experience, and starts writing from vicarious experience. Then you get the tired re-hashes of television shows, fictionalized emotions, manufactured opinions and dreams. Every single story has already been told. The only unique each thing writer has to offer to that story is herself or himself. Divest the writer from the story, and you've divested the story of life.

Let me explain a little what I mean about "vicarious experience."

In the year following my divorce, every piece of fiction I wrote was about relationships gone bad. What's worse, I didn't realize it until I sat down months later and read through every one of them to try and pick some to send to a local short story chapbook contest. It never even occurred to me while I was writing that I was working out my issues in my fiction. Some of the stories were good, some of them were not so good, but all of them were about real emotions. At least I got that part right.

I'm not a believer in "naive fiction," which was described in an essay I remember reading in Tin House as something like, "If you're a cop, you must write about cops. If you're a salesclerk, you write about being a salesclerk." I think you can explore other realms of experience in your fiction, but we're all humans and we all have the same emotional core. We all experience heartbreak, lust, grief, humiliation, confusion, and awe. Different things inspire these emotions in different people, but the core emotion is the same. Even if you've never lost a parent, you know, way deep down, you have experienced some loss that shook you to your soul. So I don't think you have to have been orphaned to write about the loss of an orphan in your story. You just need to dig down deep into your own emotional memory to pull that feeling up, to develop empathy for your characters. Your memory of loss will breathe life into your paper-and-ink orphan and give her flesh and blood for the reader. But it has to come from you. In this world of the page, you are God.

Dear Kind Editor:

Just a note to anyone who might've emailed me over the past week or so. Apparently, Insight has been deleting emails before they ever arrive in my inbox in an effort to protect me from spam. If you sent me something important -- like a notification that you want to buy a story, a threat to instigate legal proceedings, or a proposal of marriage -- just assume that I didn't get it and please send it again. I've turned the evil spam filter off now.

O brave new world

Friday night, lying in bed waiting for sleep and listening to the sound of sleety rain hitting the windows, the first line of Betty's story came to me. So I got out of bed, went upstairs, turned on my computer and wrote the first line. The first line turned into a first paragraph, then a second, then a scene. I've now got about five pages of story. On the plus side, I know how this one ends, which is a rarity for me entering the story. On the down side, I know how it ends, which is usually a temptation for me to walk away from a project.

I like the adventurous nature of writing. I like setting out at the edge of the forest with no compass, only my knife, a water bottle and a box of matches, and seeing where my feet take me. I think that's why I always write about places other than my hometown or homestate, about people who are very different from me. I already know me. I already know where I live. If I wouldn't want to read about my home and me, why would I want to write about them either?

Of course, that might explain why I sell so few stories.

Wherein the fear-stricken writer writes about fear

I've been thinking about the discussion that mainly P.J. Thompson and I have been having about the lack of depth in modern fiction. I think she may have something about modern writers being afraid to dig beneath the surface. Two novels I read recently were both very artfully written and held my interest. But they left me feeling empty. The authors stayed at least two removes from their characters. Oh, the characters had emotions and personality flaws and all that. There were good guys and bad guys and a thrilling denouement. But both authors seemed to be afraid to get down in the muck where all the juicy stuff of humanity is. Each time they neared something close to unpleasant in human nature, they skittered away like sandpipers from the incoming tide, preferring to keep their writing at the level of clinical observation.

I also recently read a novel in which a woman kills her own son after offering to have sex with him. The author of that novel switched viewpoints within scenes, jumping shamelessly from one character's head to another. I knew everything about those characters, all their goodness and their ugliness, and I cared about all of them, even the bad ones.

There was a discussion recently in Charlie Finlay's journal about not being afraid of the endings as they loomed up on you. I think sometimes writers are also afraid of their own characters. The writer wants to keep them on the page, in their place, so they can act out the story that the writer wants to tell or, worse, convey the message the writer wants to impart.

Why is this unsatisfactory to me? Because I want to pick up a novel or story and see myself and the people I know in those pages. I want to read the truth. I want the writer to make me stop at some point and exclaim, "Yes! That's exactly how it is!" Even if it makes me squirm in the process. And as a writer, I'd like to be able to produce the same reaction in readers.

But what stops me and other writers from achieving that? I think it's fear. If you grew up in the United States, at some point in your childhood you were forced to play baseball. And at some point, unless you were a natural, the coach came out to the field to tell you not to be afraid of the ball. Get down in the dirt to field those groundballs. Choke up on the bat. Lean into the pitch. If you as a writer are afraid of having your nose smashed by a screaming baseball in the form of a real human emotion emanating from your pages, you might as well go back to playing t-ball.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Hello to the world

This is the place where the writer will talk about writing, and try not to whine too much. Please bear with me as renovations (and hijinks) ensue.