No Such Thing as Perfect

 

Raina Bloodgood ~ from The Witch Collector by Charissa Weaks

This week here at the SFF Seven, our topic is Characters Who Aren't Perfect Specimens: Do you make the conscious effort to include characters with physical limitations?

I do. Could I do better?? Absolutely. Always.

In The Witch Collector, Raina Bloodgood, my heroine, is a voiceless witch in a land where magick is created by song. And yet this doesn't stop her from creating magick. From the moment the book begins, she's dealt with this her entire life, so she's learned to translate the ancient language that others sing into a hand language that allows her to create magickal constructions. I also offer a novella on my website that includes a heroine who is blind. And yet again, I think it's important to show how people with disabilities adapt or have already adapted, and so blindness doesn't define her. I also do not make disability something to be cured via magick. 

There have been people with disabilities in my life since I was a very young child, especially girls and women. My mother also taught special education for 25 years--I still have one of her sign language books. Disability, in many forms, has always been a part of my life. It obviously impacted me, more than I think I realized until I found myself writing my second heroine with a physical disability.

HOWEVER, all that said, it's important to remember that being a person with a disability does not render someone imperfect because there's no such thing as perfect in the first place. Also, we should strive to reflect our world--even in fantasy--meaning that our character list should contain diversity of all forms. If you hold up a mirror to the world, the reflection you get is not all white and it is not all non-disabled people. I know people who have physical disabilities, mental disabilities, and intellectual disabilities--they deserve to be represented in fiction, too. 

We writers have to do our best to be inclusive while doing no harm, being willing to listen, and striving to do better. 

XOXO,

Inclusion, Diversity, and Respect

Including disability in stories should be about helping everyone see themselves in fiction. I'm afraid that when I write, though, that's not usually top of mind. I'm far more interested in who people are. Why they are they way they are. As you delve into that kind of analysis, you run into the places and ways that people and bodies break -- or the way bodies have many ways of being in the world. 

Since I usually write around themes of alienation, otherness, and finding love and acceptance no matter who you are, it absolutely makes sense to write about differently-abled people. Not because I want to play ableist bingo at someone else's expense. When I wrote Edie, who was born deaf, I did not want her deafness to be her defining trait. This is not the source of her brokenness. Being deaf does not in any way equate to broken and I wanted that to remain true for Edie. Her wound had to do with her part in an old war. She's also an addict, and she's prejudiced. To heal herself, she has to put prejudice aside, kick her addiction, and come to terms with everything she'd ever done in the name of freeing her world. 

Deafness for Edie only mattered because it impacted how she experiences the world, the hero, and the conflict. Let me explain how many times I realized I had used hearing words in reference to her when she clearly and distinctly could not hear. 

Another character starts her story full of fears and unhappiness. She's still recovering from being nearly starved to death as well as from multiple broken bones. She has a raging and dangerous case of PTSD. 

So here I am saying what should be the quiet part out loud: I do not believe that love can cure anything. You might have to come burn my RWA card over it, but I don't. I firmly hold to the notion that love cures nothing. Ever. All it can do is make you want to be  a better version of yourself. That's mighty power, but it's not a panacea. 

In each of my characters, I insist that they be the ones to put themselves back together. Their partner can support or even inspire, but they cannot do the work. They cannot make the change for the character who needs to change. 

My goal is the literary equivalent of the Japanese practice of kintsugi - repairing what is broken by gluing it together with gold and creating something new in the process. Only my characters do that job themselves. Their hero or heroin may inspire them, but that's as good as it gets, and never ever do we disrespect who these characters are by 'fixing' something inherent to them. Certainly there's more work to do. And I'm going to get things wrong some times because while I live with disabling chronic illness, I can't presume to comprehend the lived experience of someone with a disability I don't suffer. But yes. Show me where a character is hurt and how. Then let's break out the gold dust and glue and knit some stuff back together again.

I need to do better, like these examples.

I, um, need to do better regarding disabled representation in my books. There is some discussion on the ethics of using cybernetic implants to "fix" folks born with disabilities, and I suppose my AI character Chloe starts off with impairment to all her senses since she's a computer with no physical body, but both of those angles are reaching. The truth is that I've dropped the ball. 

As these books did not:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle -- Main character Meg wears thick glasses, and her adventure is altered when she finds herself without them. One of the most poignant scenes features Meg and Aunt Beast, who is an alien creature without any visual sense but who is so incredibly beautiful despite. The disability representation here is deft, but my daughter who has eyesight similar to Meg was profoundly affected and appreciative.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo -- Kaz, the criminal mastermind and all-around badass, walks with a cane and has PTSD. Both of these conditions affect him differently but never stop him or slow him from protagging all over the place. As Alaina Leary wrote, "Kaz is a disabled character who is complex, badass, and decidedly attractive."

And one animation: Kanan Jarrus in Star Wars Rebels is in my top-three all-time favorite Jedi Knights, and he is so freaking amazing, not despite his blindness but because of who he becomes with it. He perceives the Force in a whole new way and brings fans along for that ride. 

Also, I'm really looking forward to Lillie Lainoff's One for All, "a gender-bent retelling of The Three Musketeers, in which a girl with a chronic illness trains a Musketeer and uncovers secrets, sisterhood, and self-love." It comes out next year, and as Lainoff is the founder of Disabled Kidlit Writers, my guess is the representation is going to be pretty awesome.

So, at least I have some models for how to do this right. Feel free to suggest others in the comments.

Not Every Character Is Physically Perfect

Do I make a conscious effort to include characters who aren't physically flawless in my novels? Yes. Dear readers, I will tell you why. Representation matters. Years ago, social media blew up with a plea from readers to include physical diversity in addition to cultural and racial diversity. I listened. So, yes, these days I make a conscious effort to include disabled characters, be their disability physical or mental. 

Do I do it well? Eh, I definitely have room to do it better. I do rely heavily on magic to skirt a lot of the day-to-day impediments and challenges. The male love interest in my Immortal Spy UF series has one arm amputated above the elbow. However, this character is a very old magical being with a keen scientific mind, so he uses magic to button his pants and lace his military boots. He applies a combo of science and magic to make his trove of prostheses that serve different functions from cooking to welding to combat, but they often melt or short-circuit when in conflict with higher magical powers. 

I have characters who suffer physical and mental consequences due to on-page conflicts who don't recover to a perfect state, but then again, I do have characters who recover to perfection. So, I'm far from a good example, but I am trying to do better. I'm not interested in tokenism but in having rich, multidimensional characters for whom any disability isn't the defining characteristic but an attribute. 

Limited editions?

So this week the subject is whether or notg we incude charcters with physical limitations in our stories.

Of course I do. Where wouod the fun be if every character was nearly perfect?

But the less glib answe goes something like this: The characters, as in real life, are deg=fined not only by what they can do, but by what they can't do. Gooing all the way back to UNDER THE OVERTREE, my very first novel, I have always believed charcters should have flaws. Any in thius case, I mean physical flaws. Mark Howell, the main player in the story (I can really call hi the hero of the tale) was obese and obsessed wigth not being o erweight. He was obsessed witgh a lot of things, really, but he couldnpt stand being overweight because he thought that held him back from the girl of his dreams.

Tyler Wilson a scrawny kid with horriboe eyesight and a dangerousoy loud mouth, saw tghe world differently and refused to let the fact that he was blind as a bat without his glasses and didnt have a battgleship body to back uo his battleship mouth stop him from firing said mouth off at the drop of a hat. they had two very different approaches to their world, as well they should.

The thing ofit is, we as people are defined not only by the world around us but by our perceptions if that world. I think you have to show that as much as possible in writing if you want to breathe life into your golems.

I ALWAYA want my golems to live as much as possible. how can i convince reader to care about the characters if they aren't able to understand their motivations I may as well as comic readers to accept stick figures (all I'm capabe of drawing these days). Theose flaws, those physical limitations can make all of the difference. In SEVEN FORGES Andover Lashk is maimed for life, His hands are utterly destroyed, and he faces a life as a cripple, assuming he survives the infection that set in on his damaged limbs. The challenges and miraculous cure he is offered shape the rest of his life from that moment on.

In the SEVEN FORGES series, it is important that one faction of the people see scars as a weakness and another sees scars as a sign or strength.

For me this us simple and effective way to show the differences in cultures. It is also a simple and effective way to show the strenhgths and weknesses of chracters who will elvolve and adapt, or fail to adapt, in a story.

Tead=ser time: Here's the back cover for a new anthology I'm editing. I'll posty more about that soon.

Cover Reveal! The Dragon's Daughter and the Winter Mage

I'm headed out of town so today I'm just sharing a cover reveal for my September release! The Dragon's Daughter and the Winter Mage comes out September 24 and isn't this cover stunning??

Preorder here!

     

Invisible Loner

Gendra—partblood daughter of an elite mossback soldier and the only shapeshifter to achieve the coveted dragon form—is anything but interesting. She’s actually plain and awkward and … invisible. Every guy she meets either looks right through her or—worse—thinks of her as just a friend. Fortunately Gen is far too practical to wallow in self pity. Much.

A Search for True Love

But as Gen accompanies her oldest friends on a quest for Her Majesty High Queen Ursula, she can’t help feeling bitter about her lonely fate as, two by two, they pair off with each other. As usual, everyone but odd-woman-out Gen seems to be finding the happiness in true love that has always eluded her. And Gen’s pathetic attempts to come out of her shell have only met with social disaster.

Dragon’s Daughter

Still, with magic rifts plaguing the Thirteen Kingdoms and a strange intelligence stalking them from an alter-realm, Gen has plenty to deal with—especially when she’s cut off from the group, isolated and facing a lethal danger. It just figures that Gen is on her own, once again. But with no one coming to save her, she has only herself to rely upon.

And, perhaps, the help of a mysterious, stranded magician… 

     

Dearest Reader...

 

This week we're talking about things we love loathe about publishing. What I love most is easy. The readers. I'm fairly new to publishing, though I've been in the writing world for a decade. Even still, readers have been such an encouragement for me. I've had people from around the world ask for signed copies of anthologies or track me down on Facebook to chat about The Witch Collector and how it changed from a novelette to a novel, or how Yeva and the Green Garden hooked them on my writing. I've watched a line form at a signing table in New York and readers smile and tell me how they couldn't wait to dig in. I just recently had a reader tell me how invested she is in the characters from Silver Heart, a novella I offer for free on my website. It gives me such joy to hear things like that. You don't have to please everyone--some people probably hate my work. But those who love it make it worth it. It makes my day to get messages from readers, and I cannot wait until the Witch Collector is out in the world. My little reader group--the Rebel Readers--are already such a wonderful support system. They're excited, and that makes ME excited. It makes me work harder.

As for things I don't like about publishing? Petty people and waiting. But these things feel minor in comparison to what I wrote above. I might be too new to answer this week's question with anything but naivety ;) But for now, I really love this gig, and I hope I get to do it for a very long time.

Writing: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 Ah, the idealism of the new author. Everything is so shiny. All possibility lays before whatever debut book is about to hit the world. That pivotal moment is the very best part of writing. Anything could happen. Then the book is published and an author's fortunes fall as they may. This is my list of the best and worst part about the journey.

The Good

• Finishing a book. There's nothing like that feeling. Nothing. I love solving story problems to the point that I wrap a story. 
• Editing. Fixing what I've written plays to my strengths - which, in case you're wondering - are overthinking and paralysis by analysis.
• Readers. 

The Bad

• First drafts. OMG, y'all. I so want this to come easier, but see the above line about overthinking. Now you can add in second guessing and not trusting myself.
• Finding/creating the time and space I need to do the deep work I need to do in order to write. Turns out moving your parents in with you during a pandemic isn't conducive to silence and contemplation.
• Isolation. The pandemic nonsense has zapped a bunch of us who need to come together once in awhile in some kind of evil master mind convention and trade energy.
• Daily chronic migraine. SO gets in the way. We're working on it. I swear.

The Ugly

• Me. Drafting. Again. Drafting is my own Sisyphean task. WANT TO FIX. Help me fix me!
• Having someone you need to be able to trust abuse that trust by withholding vital communication. This is a thing. Remember you own your own business. Don't be afraid to fire people. Somedays it's necessary. But it's definitely bad.
• My marketing.