A thought or two on writing

Finished reading Rivers Solomon’s “An Unkindness of Ghosts.” This is a different read from most if not all of my previous books. Its style might be called “gender vague.” The story is not new but takes a different twist because without sometimes having gender identities as a given the characters surprise the reader. It’s not easy to do well and Solomon is to be commended. Most the time it seems to me such attempts are done badly and I think it might be that an author tries to control the character too much from the start. We should also understand “gender vague” is not “gender neutral.” The author uses gender as part of the character’s attributes but attempts to steer those attributes into the corner. There is always the possibility that such style backfires. From a writing perspective we usually need to crawl before we can walk. To be novel in a novel world takes some practice. We must remember that the “new” is usually an extension of the old via experimentation. And sometimes very disappointingly, the novel becomes so common it soon is labelled and tagged like some animal skin and no longer very exciting. But the experimentation can go wrong another way, too. Solomon uses a bit of “misspelled dialect.” Once the author starts using street spellings where does it end and how am I supposed to read something that my brain sees as a foreign language. (James McBride goes in deep with local dialects and seems to pull it off.) The rationale is this is how people speak. I agree. And I’ll be the first to admit when people speak in a very localized accent I have to work at paying attention to what they say. And interpret what I am hearing which interrupts my listening. Every region has its own accent but your reader base is national. Something has go to give. In this text, I would stumble across a misspelled word that I thought was a thought by the protagonist stopped me for a long moment and forced me to figure out what I’d just read. This is a pit into which readers fall (not the writer) and affords an opportunity to quit reading the novel (which almost happened). Beware, then once the reader stops, it takes a compelling pull from the work to start up again. And any reason will do to help derail the reader (gotta mow the yard, gotta eat, bathroom break, Internet message). It’s tough. But done well, and Solomon does it well, then that is a good read. ###