196: Writing an Identity Not Your Own with Alex Temblador
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We've got a special guest episode this week! Alex Temblador joins us to discuss writing characters who have a marginalized identity, her new book Writing an Identity Not Your Own, why it's important for writers to be aware of their biases, and more.
Alex Temblador is the Mixed Latine award-winning author of Secrets of the Casa Rosada and Half Outlaw. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a contributor to Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America and Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology. Alex has taught creative writing seminars, workshops, and classes with the Women's Fiction Writers Association, WritingWorkshops.com, the Writer's League of Texas, and more, as well as spoken about diversity in the literary world with the Texas Library Association, Abydos Learning Conference, and at many other festivals, conferences, and universities. She is an award-winning travel, arts, and culture journalist who specializes in diversity, equity, and inclusion, publishing in the likes of Conde Nast Traveler, Outside, and Travel + Leisure, and speaking about such topics at SXSW, the Society of American Travel Writers, and the World Travel Market. Alex lives in Dallas, Texas, where she runs a literary panel series called LitTalk.
Buy Alex's book Writing an Identity Not Your Own: A Guide for Creative Writers
Check out her course on Writing An Identity Not Your Own: For Speculative Fiction Writers and get $40 off with code WRITINGPODCAST40
Follow her on IG @alex_temblador
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Writing an Identity Not Your Own with Alex Temblador
Hello everyone, welcome to your big creative life. Thanks for being here. Listening to the podcast, or watching the YouTube video. I'm so excited for a special episode of the podcast. We have a guest here who is going to talk to us about her book writing and identity, not your own, as a guide for creative writers. And we'll get into all things identity and characters. And Alex, do you want to just introduce yourself.
Yeah. Hi everyone. My name is Alex Temblador. I'm a mix Latine author based in like the Dallas area. I have three books. My first two are novels, Secrets of the Casa Rosada is a young adult magical realism novel. Half outlaws the young adult magical realism as well, and then last year I had writing and editing, Not Your Own published with Saint Martin’s and it's my only nonfiction writing craft book. Yeah, I have published short stories with various like in in anthologies like Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America and Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology Growing up Mexican and got my MFA in creative writing from the University of Central Oklahoma. And I'm also a freelance travel home product culture journalist as well.
I love it. You have so many cool things that we could dive into but the bulk of what we're gonna talk about in this episode. Just y'all have a heads up is about this book. But I told Alex when we started recording that I wanted to kind of hear about the behind the scenes of this book, because I think it's really interesting and also making the transition from fiction to nonfiction, which I think is really interesting too. So you mentioned kind of a little bit about your background getting MFA and everything was writing something that you always knew you wanted to do. Like, were you one of those? People who were always writing as a kid.
Yes. So kind of when my first book got published, I asked my dad to, like, speak at my first, like book launch an event. And he pulled out this like little story that I wrote when I was a child. I think in 3rd grade so I was already kind of writing then, but around that same time I can't remember if it was before the book came out. Right after I, my aunt found a letter that I had written to her. Actually, I'd written it to an author that came to her school. She was here in the DFW area, and nobody came to my school and we didn't have visiting authors in my schools in Wichita Falls, TX, but I had written this letter to this author and in it I told her, and I think I was like. Seven saying I want to be an author when I grow up one day.
Oh. But you know, life and the world. And when you're not exposed to like I wasn't exposed to arts people. I was an artist when I was a kid, too, and I loved reading books. But I didn't have anybody who was an artist or a writer or creative type really in my life. So I didn't know I could go and do that as a job, so I really didn't discover like, I started writing, probably consistently trying to write when I was in junior high a little bit and then that kind that continued on, but I didn't really make it a like goal to become a writer till I took a short story class in college while I was getting my history degree which I still got. I didn't even get an English degree. And after taking 111 class I said I have to do this… this is it. Now I'm going to be a writer for the rest of my life.
You knew? Yeah. And can you talk a little bit about your process of kind of like deciding on an MFA program or like if this is truly something you should pursue because that's a question I get occasionally and I don't have an MFA. I have an undergrad degree in English and then an unrelated graduate degree, but occasionally get questions like do I get an MSA or not. So I'm curious your take on that and what your experience was.
Hmm. Yeah. So I went into my MFA very young I was. I think I was 21, which is considerably young and I like looking on it now. I was not ready. I probably shouldn't have quite gone into it yet. But you know, when I graduated my history degree and I had heard about MFAs from that short story class, I was like, well, I'm going to go straight ahead. I don't what else am I gonna do I applied to I think 15 MFA programs. Actually I got into none of them, but I weirdly got into an MFA. No, sorry. An MA English program with a focus in creative writing that I did not apply for. I ended up calling them and going no, I applied for MFA program and they said no. You applied for MA and I said I swear I didn't like I have like the receipts. Anyways, that was the only school I got into. So I got in the MA program. And after a semester switched over to the MFA program now it was the best three years. Some of the best three years of my life. All I'm doing is reading and writing and I'm thriving and loving it.
That being said, it's not necessary for people these days and me being I was the only person of color in my program. I don't actually if I was the only historically marginalized person in my program, as far as I knew, at least in the fiction side now, nonfiction. I wasn't around them, so I don't know, but at least on the fiction side, I mean, we didn't have any queer people. We didn't have any people with disabilities in my program, as far as I know. And I could be wrong. Nobody definitely wrote about them if they were part of those communities… I didn't even have any teachers, also similar identities, so I did feel a little bit like I was writing things that people didn't want to engage with or they were very uncomfortable with me writing about racism and experiences that I had as a Latina, and I had some very odd and awkward experiences. But that aside, I still very much enjoyed it. Now I teach creative writing, seminars and presentations with like writing workshops.com or Chicago story Studio Riders, League of Texas, or women's Fiction Writers Association. And so you can create your own MFA program. You know, kind of yourself and get a lot of the information out there without having to go take time off to be in those classes. And I'm very much highly suggest that there's so many free classes as well. So I don't think it's necessary to, you know, learn and grow as a writer to go get it.
Yeah, that makes sense. And I've heard from people like writer friends who have MFAs that one of the big benefits is just the writing community, like kind of having that. So I think if you can do the DIY. If you if you find the community.
If you find it like in my program, my program's actually gone. They closed down my interface program. I was the very last one and only.
Oh, they got it.
As far as I know, only two of us. Have published novels that were in my program, so I didn't even come out with a community, which is unfortunate. I ended up making my community. You know, 15 almost almost 15 years later, 12 years, 10 years later when I started publishing, yeah.
Yeah. Well, there you go. There's like different routes to kind of get to the… Saying whether it's learning our community or whatever aspect it is that you're looking for.
OK.
So I'd love it if you can just talk a bit about how the idea for this book came to be, because you talked about becoming it was a fiction program and then you have these two novels that you wrote. So how did this… what was the seed that was planted about this topic to write a book about this?
Yeah. So I'm kind of going to start a little bit back as a journalist, when I started out becoming a journalist, I was only trying to have a full-time writing job. So like in the meantime of becoming an author like I never pursued journalism, except just so that I could have this job. And when I started out in journalism, I started working. With an outlet. That was focused on families of diverse backgrounds, SO2 mom families 2, Dad families, adoption, surrogacy. They focused on a lot of the LGBTQ community, so Trans rights. I wrote about gay marriage like that was one of the first articles I wrote was when gay marriage was legalized in the US, so I quickly got into learning about different identities that didn't relate to me in my journalism career, and that that has expanded the whole time. And I've actually kind of an expert in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion in the travel space. So I've always been interested in this topic, like how do we write about different communities, especially in tourism, when I am writing about different communities, like how do I do it respectfully and ethically and such.
And in the book I talk about, I even had kind of a very unique aspect of like growing up in a very in a family with a lot of different identities. Like I'm mixed, I'm half Mexican, half white, my brother's gay. My sister has intellectual and physical disabilities. My dad is Mexican American. But you know, he's like six generation. My mom is white. You know, we have differing political views in the family. All of these like diverse aspects of identity within my own family. So I was already thinking about this, especially with my sister. Having to learn about body language and different communities that I don't have and seeing other people look at her in certain ways or behave differently between me and her. So all those things were kind of working together when 2020 came around and American Dirt came out and there was this big conversation in the literary community of somebody is riding outside of their own identity. They have good intentions and good intentions are great, but they do it wrong and now it's perpetuating stereotypes and cliches and tropes and it's doing the thing that she didn't even intend to do, and this big conversation was going on right when the pandemic was busting out about, you know, how do we write with their identities? Should you? Can you? Is it OK? And how would you even go about doing it? I was approached by writing workshops.com to teach a class on this. I think it was probably in June of 2020, actually somewhere in the summer and I was very nervous. I had taught some other classes about diversity, equity, inclusion with them. And I just did a lot of research and I had probably the most people in an online class I've ever had. And that one online class. And I knew that people really wanted answers.
And over the course of time, of course, I've done a lot more research. I've done a lot more reading, pulled more information on this, but I ended up discovering there was no book on this topic that was. The last book that was written on the topic that kind of covers the like wider range of identities that I covered in my book. I think it was published like 20 years ago, if not like 25. I'm kind of off on that and it was very, very small. There was some websites online but they were not being managed anymore fairly because it takes a lot of work. One man had written kind of about race and identity. But there really wasn't anything else, and so even just for myself as an author, I wanted something, and I kept waiting around and hoping people would write it, and I would go to conferences and nobody wanted to talk about it, or if they did, they would say things. That just didn't make sense and also. Just shuts down the whole question I didn't like when people just shut down the question and don't want to talk about it because there's something going on here. We are actually writing historically marginalized identities. We all write women. Most of us all write women. At least one woman character in a book, and we're not even focusing on at least that. So I knew there was probably something that I could put together and I just took on the task because I didn't think.
Anybody else would? It's sort of, it's like that saying of like. Write the book that you wish was out there, like in a different kind of way. You're like, why isn't this around?
Yes.
It should be.
Yeah. Yeah. And I had a like, of course, I questioned myself. Like, who am I to write this book? I'm not like I'm an award-winning author, but I'm not New York Times bestselling famous or anything, but I don't think that is necessary. I knew with my background as a journalist and my own personal background and. And all the research I've done all the times that I've been teaching this class. That I could say something good and be confident in what I have. Say and also just bring forth the perspective because I get why people don't want to write, didn't want to write this book. That makes a little sense to me, but I'm glad it's out here now.
Yeah. OK, so I want to I want to dive into a couple of concepts from the book or just talk about different pieces of it. There's so much in here. I really encourage all listening to get a copy of this book. I found it like so comprehensive but also really easy to digest like it was very accessible. Everything you were talking about. So I really, I appreciate the care that went into this. I'll just. Say as a reader and a writer myself.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, it was really. It was really good. And I OK, so I want to talk about, like, just the concept of identity. First of all, because you use a phrase you use a lot is like historically marginalized identity. So you can you talk a bit about what that means when we're talking about this just so everyone kind of understands like what that what falls under the matter or what how you.
Yeah.
Yeah. So each of us inhabits multiple identities, whether that's in terms of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, disabilities. Age, political beliefs, religious beliefs where you live in the US, all those things encompasses your identity. However, within various regions or cities or nations, there are historically marginalized identities which are communities that have been affected politically, socially, economically. Environmentally, in negative ways they've been oppressed either historically, culturally, currently, etc. And so we know, through statistics, through anecdotes, through history, what these marginalized identities are. So within my book, I cover five of the main ones. And then there's also a ton of discussion kind of at the back into the book of other ones. But I cover race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disabilities, and nationality. Like in in big ways and so, for example, historically marginalized identity would be the black community. We know, you know, historically they've been enslaved and brought to the US. They've been oppressed in terms of the laws, in terms of society, you know, having segregation, et cetera, and all of those things impacts how they live in, in the world today, how other people perceive them, how they perceive the world. And so when we're talking about historically marginalized identities. It's real, especially in terms of writing. I want us to let go of that old mindset that our parents and our teachers taught us. When we were growing up to like not see race to not see differences, we're all human. Yay. Yeah, of course. We are all human, but well, we but having been taught that to, you know, be to not notice somebody's disabilities or not notice somebody as queer. What it actually does is allows our biases to flourish in our own personal life and in within our writing. And it results in stereotypes and tropes. And so with my book I'm trying to help you see. Like yes, your character. If you are running historically marginalized identity, has a different identity from you. That we need to understand about learn about their that identity in that community's background, how the biases and stereotypes about that community can show up in our work, even if we're allies and accomplices, and. We support the different movements to bring them out of oppression. That stuff can still show up in our work, and I get plenty of examples of how that happens in my own work. And in the book.
Yeah, the examples are some of the best parts of this and also just looking through because there were a couple from like novels that I have read, you talk about The Help, you talk about Memoirs of a Geisha. Like all these really well known. You know, he said the fiction where it's like, Oh yeah.
OK. Yeah, yeah.
And it's a good learning. We like enjoyed reading them.
Yeah.
But we didn't like recognize it all the time, which is totally OK. It's a practice to be able to recognize it.
Yeah, and how important going back to the concept of bias, like how important do you think it is for writers to be aware of their own biases that they might have?
Yeah, I think a lot of people are uncomfortable to say that they have biases, but I recently just did a workshop where it was called like, I have biases too, because we all have them. It's something that you didn't have permission to receive, but you got it from the moment you were born. You get it from TV, film, movies, TV, books. There's this thing called vicarious operant conditioning. I mentioned where that term comes from in my book. It's a great essay about fat representation and romance novels. And essentially what it does is we start to associate positive and negative things based on the stuff we read and the media we consume, so. Whether you wanted to or not, your brain is just automatically kind of doing this is you're in taking all this information and you're creating biases about other communities and groups you all of your identities are your in group and the other identities are the out. And even if you've worked through a lot of those biases and go like, you know, I believe in equal rights for the LGBTQ community. That's not to say that some of those messaging can't accidentally get in your work. I call them biased blocks. And they occur to me all the time and I have a critique reader. Sensitivity reader reach out and go like hey, something is off there. I don't think you meant to say it in this way. And they were absolutely right. It's just when we get caught up in our voice of our characters or in the plot line or. The sending or whatever it may be, we don't always have the ability to like zoom out of the work and see what we've just written because we're so in it and it's. But yeah, biases, we definitely need to work and recognize and break them down. All the time in this writing process.
Yeah. It's like an ongoing thing and writing and. Then life like. All over the place.
Yeah.
OK, so there's like a debate going, not even a debate. I don't know. It's just a topic of discussion in the writing community of like, should you write historically marginalized identity? That is not your own should this be something that writers do? So what are your thoughts? If someone has that question on if this is something that a writer should do?
Yeah, good question. As I mentioned earlier, we've all been writing women and not all of us are women. And it's been done. Poorly fair. However, I think it would be very hard for writers of all gender identities to like pull out women completely from their work. Unless you're like, writing a specific type of story. We'll just put that aside, so I think #1 it's important to remember that what we've been writing historically marginalized. Identity is, so I kind of moved past that question and go well. We haven't been writing it well because I don't think we have a process of teaching people how to create characters. And a lot of workshop styles, a lot of like MFA programs or presentations will go just like write, like, just practice writing and then you share your writing. But we actually don't get very miniscule about how we create characters, and I think that in lies our problem of not being able to recognize how to write other identities, and just historically marginalized identities because we're not, like, required this of authors and writers in the past.
I also think just because you don't have anybody in your cast of characters who has historically marginalized identity, most of us are still writing within our reality. And in our reality, historically marginalized identities exist, so we might unknowingly not even be like, not even have a character with historically marginalized identity but say something that is ablest or not even think about certain laws and cultural practices that people have historically marginalized identities in that society. Face it can come up in the setting. It can come up in the language. For example, you might say something like the deaf leading the blind, which is an ableist praise and that might have nothing. You might not even have a disabled character in your whole story, but I would suggest like pulling that line out. So even when we're world building, say you're world building in fantasy or sci-fi. I would question if you don't have historically marginalized identities, why not? And as your reader might also, it might, your reader might go well maybe that's showing their bias. Maybe they don't like disabled people or queer people or. Or maybe you as the author just didn't think about this world, and the fact that. Whether it's race or sexual orientation, or maybe. It's just like historically marginalized communities based on where they live or the hair color or the clothes they wear, whatever it may be like, thinking about those dynamics of marginalization within the world that you're building. So I think this is not something we can really separate as much as we would like to have an easy answer of like just don't write it. This is also not a to… I'm not giving you permission to do something Willy Nilly. I would like people to like, really take time and care. And my biggest question at the end is what did you do to write this character well, and if you don't have the receipts, then I need you to go back and rework it.
Yeah. And it's probably going to show in the finished product well, it's like you're taking care with so many other elements of a novel that also need to be taken care and doing work with this and then getting feedback as well, just like get feedback on any.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. So I know you've been teaching this and you know the book has come out. What are concerns that you've heard that people have about writing an identity that is not your own?
Oh yeah, I think world building is pretty big from the speculative fiction side. I ended up creating a course because unfortunately I just couldn't put every genre in this book. It's definitely more for like. General writers of all backgrounds. I do have a little bit of genre aspects in the book. But. I know that I'll probably end up having to create specific guides for people of different genres, so I ended up creating a sci-fi fantasy course or like speculative fiction course for people who are world building because I I do understand that's a totally different process. Than it is for literary fiction writers or screenwriters. I think some of the other big concerns is always like. What if I get something wrong?
What?
What do I do? What if they come and attack me and? I think it's a healthy fear to have. I think that's a lot of the reasons why people don't feel comfortable having a main character with historically marginalized identity or even a secondary character. And that's absolutely fair, I understand. But there's so many tools. And ways in which you can prevent that and if you do, do if you go forth in the traditional route, you have like 5 different editors and possibly a sensitivity reader help you out in the process as well. If you're self-publishing, of course I always suggest please get editors and sensitivity readers because you're the one that's going to have to be kind of managing that just because of the process. Uh. But I do suggest to people like there's so much that you can do and, in the end, if something happens and granted in 10 years from now, the language might change or you might discover something you discover 10 years earlier, you and it comes up, you come out and say. You know, I apologize. I'm educating myself further on this topic. Like if there is a way to update it or edit it with your publisher or on a self-published site do that and then kind of you know move forward that's kind of all you can do but in the meanwhile you know being allies to authors of marginalized backgrounds and reading their books and. Supporting them and sharing them and all those things you can do and keep learning in the meantime. So I think probably fear is just fear of, like putting it out to the world. I also tell people just you can also practice. You don't have to share it with the world. You can just write a whole book and also not publish it. I mean, this is a. A long-term practice type of thing, so you might not get it on the first round and that's absolutely OK. You've not wasted your time. If anything, you're just learning and growing as a writer.
Yeah, that makes sense. Can you talk about editing in the process of writing and identity, not your own one? I mean, I'll just say one of the things I loved is you have like the editing kind of checklist towards the end, which I always, always appreciate because I like in the editing process like I think it's helpful for some writers to just have like, OK, look, what are the things? I need to kind of check off and like. In this process so. Yeah. Can you talk about editing being an important component of this?
Yes, so I know a lot of writers hate editing. It's my favorite part of the process. I just want to get the first draft out. OK, good. I'm not alone. Writing the book is the hardest part for me. Editing is exciting cause I can do it fast. But yeah, I wanted to create that checklist because I think this process there's so much to think about, like I gotta think about dialogue. I gotta think about stereotypes. I gotta think about descriptions and terminology, and I wanted to break it down for people because editing is really where you're going to catch yourself. A lot of the mistakes and this is going to sound a little backwards, but the best thing you can do is actually expect to make mistakes, because then you're going to look for the mistakes. If you don't expect to make a mistake, you're not going to be looking for it. And so in the editing phase, you're kind of like an excavator. They're looking for those things in the dirt that's kind of hidden away. And and I I want you to go in with that process. You're gonna find a lot of stuff that you didn't realize you had, and you'll make check Marks and go and fix it. But then with your editors and your sensitivity readers, you can really it or not even editors. Also, beta readers impart on them. Hey, I'm really nervous about this. The picture of this one character, please give me feedback. Please don't hold back, please. You know, be as explicit as you can because it is very important to me. That I represent this Community respectfully and authentically, and I, and I think learning this language of critiquing and receiving feedback and and giving direction for feedback is important as well. So I also have even a critique chapter. So if you're in a writing group and you don't know how to talk to people. About this to tell them hey. This is kind of like a little sexist depiction or I think you wrote something that is inappropriate, like here's how you can discuss it with other people as well.
I think I had an experience, maybe I don't know. Seven years ago or something in a group where that was happening and I just felt like I didn't have the tools to be like, hey, how can we kind of tackle this and you give some great examples of how to word things so that it's not so confrontational or blasting the person. But it's really about like educating, but also just kind of working with them in a way that. Makes the process, I think a little smoother, so I could have used this in that. In that group.
Yeah, I think it's coming additive going like we're on the same side here. I'm not over here to like, make you feel bad. And granted, not everybody's at the same level of bias awareness or doing the inner work. And that's totally fair, but kind of approaching them being like I'm on your side. I just don't want anything to go out that's kind of like.
Right.
Upset you in the long run. So like, let's work together and be uncomfortable for 10 seconds and then we'll. Move past it.
Yeah, yeah, it's totally worth it in the long run.
Yeah.
OK, so in the process of researching all of this and writing this book and everything, did you come across other resources? We talked at the beginning about how like there wasn't really a book like this that was, you know, you felt like address this properly. Do you feel like there have been strides in the last couple of years ago. Resources.
Yes, it makes me super excited. I did mention kind of there was a book that focused on race and identity and that was David Mira is a stranger's journey, race identity and narrative craft. So that was that. Had already been published before. My book was fantastic book and also like discusses the workshop setting as well, which is fascinating. But last year actually, when my book was published, two other fantastic books came out that discussed this topic, and in slightly different ways than mine. So the conscious style guide by carrying. Then it really focuses more on. So, like sentence, the sentence aspect of your of your work. Fantastic. Love it as a resource and actually Karen Yen has so many, so much resources on a website. I think it's also called the conscious style guide. Anything you would ever need to know about, like language and stereotypes and tropes and all that, she's got it on that website. It's fantastic. And then a tale of two *******, a writer's guide to conquering the most sexist tropes in literary history. Great title.
Right.
Great title, written by Meg Ventresca. If you remember on Twitter, there was an account called men, right? Women where and Meg is the genius behind men, right, women which would show like all these awful passages of literary men writing women in the past and present day, and it was humorous and funny and banty and witty. And her book is similar in that it kind of takes like, this is terrible. Approach to this whole conversation and gives you a ton of wild examples and exercises and practices, so I really highly suggest those imagining autism focuses. Of course, on the autism and stereotypes and fiction. And I hear there might in the future hopefully be another book folks selling a specific disabled identity. I can't discuss it, but I'm hoping that it's not for me. It's not for me, it's from another writer. I'm really hoping that that gets published soon within the next few years. So I am seeing. It being like more resource and in terms of books coming. Out about this topic.
Good. Oh, that's great.
And if you do pick up my book, there's a whole like list of resources at the back of it. And if you take my speculative fiction course on this topic, which is on my website, I have resources in there that are not in the book. That are related to this topic specifically for the speculative fiction genre.
Perfect. We'll link all that in the show notes because I have a lot of. Vast majority of the clients that I work with for freelance editing are fancy authors and then also I feel like just my audience is a lot of fantasy authors. So yeah, that might be really interesting for people to have a deep dive into that specifically. So I'll link all that and show notes for people
Great. Thank you.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that'd be helpful. So what do you feel like has been the reception. From people like, since this has been published, it was published last year.
Yes. And I think August it's coming up on one year.
OK.
Ohh happy one year.
Thank you.
Yeah. What's the what's the reception been like?
Yeah, it's fascinating. I was so nervous and I think I was crying right before it came out. And while I was working on it because I just thought, Oh my God, people are gonna attack me and hate me or whatever. Yeah, I have gotten a lot of fantastic reviews. I actually read all my good reads, reviews. I know that's why people suggest don't do that. But. Because this topic. Like it's a specific topic, I want to know like what do people want more information about? Is there something like I missed? Is there something? I mean did I get anything wrong? I want to fix etcetera, so I do read my reviews and it's so funny. Even the three star reviews are like. Or I won't say three start. There's a couple of battery is not bad, but like maybe one to three stars. And it's funny how they get what I'm saying in the book. They're like, so you mean I have to research all of the identities, and I have to do this and this. And I'm like, yeah, that's the whole point. Like, you got it, like. But I can tell I've only got a few.
Oh.
People who are clearly so uncomfortable with the topic about bias and stereotypes, and that is absolutely fine, and I expected it, you know, even in the reviews, like people will say, take your time reading this book. I had to take a lot of breaks. And I tell people please do. That most of the reviews I get and feedback I get from people are like I needed this in my life. I just got an e-mail from somebody asking me is this going to be in Spanish? I want to. Share. This with my Spanish colleagues. This is so fantastic which I don't know right now if it's going to be translated or not. I get people who have listened on audiobook and also got in the book so they can.
Call.
You know, process it in two different ways. I had a guy come up to me at a conference. Said, you know, I heard this book came out and I had some thoughts. And then I read the book and my thoughts changed and then I came to hear you talk and you know, my thoughts changed again. But he was like, so positive he didn't want to like share. Like clearly I think when he saw the book he had maybe negative opinions about it. But in reading the book and then coming to see me chat, he was hmm like happy and excited. About the book after that. So I was so glad that he. You know, gave it a chance and his initial reactions weren't like were, I guess, like changed or relaxed after reading the book, I get a lot of that feedback where people are like either very excited. They've always wanted this, this resource, and they, they're so glad they have it now or. They were nervous. Uh. Concerns and then they read it and they're like, OK, this is not as scary as I thought it would be. And I think a lot of that has to do with what you said. I intentionally try to make it digestible. You don't. This is not like a writing craft book where you're like, uh, flowery language. And I don't want to, like, roll my eyes at that. But I get how that… yeah. And feel. Like, keeps you a hand away. Like, not approachable. I wanted this to be approachable. I share all of my mishaps and embarrassing moments. I can share more if anybody needs it. And I'm always there to answer questions by e-mail or on social media. So. You know, I think I've. Just been very, very grateful of the good feedback I've gotten from this book.
Good. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. It's, it's, it's such an interesting mix of like you have the kind of more educational component and literary analysis. But then there's also like your story and your experiences. And then also yeah, talking about you know, feedback that you got from sense.
Yes.
Reader about a character you were writing and like, I don't know, it's very yeah, I really enjoyed it and think it'll be super helpful for. People. What next for you as a writer? Are you going back to fiction, or you doing more non-fiction? Anything you can share?
Yeah, so nonfiction really threw me for a loop. For a loop. Writing this book. Really affected my fiction. I will. I go to back to nonfiction. I mean, I'm writing articles all the time, so I'm I've still write nonfiction. Will I write a non fiction book again? Probably. I'm going to take a break from that. It's a whole different part of the brain. And if it, I don't even know. I've thought about writing like. Memoir of like short stories and such or not short stories essays. But I have. I've wrote another novel. It's still kind of on sub, I don't know what will end up happening with that. But I wrote that novel before I wrote writing, and I did not your own. So after writing this craft book. I mean, I think I took like a year and a half like I couldn't write like I just could not write fiction. I took a pretty long break. I was burnt out from my three books because I had three books come out in seven years, which is pretty good. It's also just like, mentally exhausting at 2:00. Right now I'm working on 2 novels at the same time. Yeah, different genres. I've kind of been playing around with different genres, approaching, writing in a different way. After having written this book, of course I'm integrating the writing and idea, not your own process in a new way with my books, but I'm also so like writing books that really bring me joy, even though some of them have a few dark themes, but they're just like, fun and exciting, and I'm trying to recapture the excitement and joy that I had with writing when I was young starting out.
Yes. And that's like the best thing to do. After that period of. Now I imagine like just allowing yourself to get into a story that you're excited about and it feels.
Fun, yeah, trying new genres like to be upfront with your, with your listeners. I'm actually a debut author in every genre I've published. So I have a YA novel. I have an adult novel and I have this nonfiction, so I'm still a debut author technically in a just the way. And they're all in different genres, which a lot of times maybe publishing will tell you. Like, don't jump around genres, but I can't help it. I just love it. I'm working on a romance. Right now and also like. Kind of literary fiction, thriller, risk and I. I've been writing some literary fiction with speculative sci-fi elements as well that I really do expect to one day finish too, so I'm just having fun, like learning how to write in a new way and learning different genres and why not. And my brain is learning a new writing process. I'm going way slower than I ever have. But it's really enjoyable.
Good, good. Well, Alex, this has been so helpful. Again, I'll put all the links in the show notes, so people can check out the book writing and identity, not your own. A guide for creative writers. And then I'll link to that, that workshop as well about the speculative fiction and put everything there. But thank you so much for chatting with me today. I think this is going to be super helpful for people who are just wanting.
Yeah.
Answers to questions about how to do this in a really careful, thoughtful way. So I appreciate it.
Yeah. And I just hope it makes people feel less alone in this process because. It is scary to talk about this with writer friends, with the writer community at large. I absolutely understand seeing stuff on like threads or Instagram or TikTok. Or wherever you're. At so, I hope this book makes you feel seen and heard, and I'm always open again. Like I said for questions, if you are interested in certain topic, I'm always looking for ways to like share more of this information. Because. I really want us and I really do believe that the writers are going to be the ones that change the landscape of literature more so than publishing. So yeah, thank you again for having me. And I'm so glad to have been here.
Yeah. Alright. Thanks.