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We Need Diverse Books: Why Diversity Matters for Everyone
Throughout October, we’ll be partnering with We Need Diverse Books to bring you a series of blog posts full of helpful advice, tips, and suggestions for writing diversity convincingly and respectfully in your fiction—from people who know what they’re talking about. Today, Marieke Nijkamp shares why diversity matters for everyone:
Why does diversity matter? The answer to that question should be simple and straightforward: because everyone deserves to be a hero. Because everyone deserves to be seen. Because representation matters.
Junot Díaz famously said: “If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”
Yet this is exactly what the vast majority of our stories does, whether intentionally or not. In a time when—in the US—more than half of the children born will be non-white, less than ten percent of books published are about characters of color or written by people of color. And while one out of five teens will deal with a serious debilitating mental illness, perhaps only one out of twenty books even recognizes mental illnesses exist…
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Anonymous asked: Hey, I was wondering if you had any tips for first-time NaNoWriMo participants? November isn't waiting for anyone and 50,000 words is hard to spit out.
Prepare. It seems daunting, and it is. You need to do what you can in advance to prepare for that fact. Stock up on comfort snacks and drinks. Set up/find a good writing place… or five. If you’re a planner, get as much outlining done as you can in the next few weeks. If you’re not a planner, at least get down a few notes on your overall plan.
Silence your inner editor. If you’ve never had to do this before, practice a bit this month. Try sitting down and writing for twenty minutes without stopping. Don’t edit what you wrote while writing it. Don’t edit after writing it. Just write for twenty minutes, then stop and walk away. When you get into NaNo you need to do this every time you start writing.
Don’t be afraid to productively procrastinate. Join forums on the site. Engage in discussions. Go to write-ins if you have them in your area. One of the huge draws of NaNoWriMo is the community. You are not alone on this journey. There are resources and people having each one of your experiences every day. Read the pep talks. When you get overwhelmed, go engage with others. Exchange frustrations, then challenge one another to a word war or set up a writing date.
Don’t fear the word count. Well, fear it a little bit. Fear can help motivate sometimes, but it can also overwhelm. It is entirely possible to write 50,000 words in a month. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and a shift in your goals and lifestyle to achieve it. However, whether you reach that goal and ‘win’ or not, the most important thing is dedicating yourself to a month of engaging in your craft, working on your goals, and just effing writing. Anything you end up with at the end of the month is more that you had going into it. This is not Yoda school. There is a try, and trying is what truly matters.
Hope this helps!
- O
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