St. Francis Receiving the Stigma

If I had a motto, it would be, "Okay, but, seriously."

So. Okay. But. Seriously.

Sophie and I are the same age, live in the same county, and are both halfies of some kind. And we're both basically beasts. But that's mostly where the similarities end.

While Sophie's writing about faeries, I'm writing about eating disorders. While she's writing about fairy-dust-drugs, I'm writing about actual drugs. When she's writing about explosions, I'm writing about the families of the people who are killed in those explosions, trying to put their lives back together.

I'm not trying to qualify myself over Soph's. Just the freakin opposite. But that's the stigma.

There's this stigma that it's easier to write fantasy, sci fi, chick lit, than it is to write anything edgy. As someone who's always fallen more to the realistic-edgy side, I've definitely seen my literary brethren sticking up their noses at any manuscripts that don't include mental trauma, car crashes, and child abuse.

I'm exaggerating, obviously, but bear with me for a second.









Okay. But. Seriously.


I've had agents tell me my prose is too dark. I've had beta readers tell me my prose is too dark. Hell, I'm surprised my cats aren't telling me my prose is too dark. It's not a problem with every manuscript, and it's not a problem with every agent, but it's a problem that's there.

And the truth is, being dark is easy.

I'm a teenager. Let's be honest, here. Life isn't a bowl of cherries.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is lighten up.

And there's a stigma. There's the idea that people like Sophie, who write fantasy, and people like Madeleine and Megan, who write chick-lit YA (is that offensive? Hope not) aren't real writers. That they don't work as hard, or appreciate the craft as much, as someone who writes straight-up literary. Straight-up real life.

And I sort of have to question when real life became better than fantasy. When real life became better than anything.

I'm not immune to it, though. I've got one manuscript I couldn't finish because it was science fiction, and I couldn't reconcile my literary side with the part of me that wanted to write this manuscript. I couldn't bring myself to write science fiction. And I've got one manuscript that has a maybe-angel in it, and even querying it as Suburban Fantasy (made that up...cute, eh?) was difficult for me. I'll admit to magical realism every once in a while, but I practically got hives when I wrote my introductory post and admitted my stuff has fantasy elements.

But it does. And if I didn't feel that pressure...the pressure that if it's light, it's not important, and if it's fantasy, it's not real, keeps me from writing certain things, and keeps me from querying manuscripts in a way that would be most productive for them. Because even though I know it's real writing...I don't feel it.

So I guess Sophie and I have more in common than I thought. We both live in the same town. We're both sixteen. We're both halfies. And we both write fan...

Nope. Can't say it.


<3 hannah