Yesterday I had my first interview about the book – very exciting! people are reading it and liking it! also: my publicist rules! – and later I found myself regretting half the things I said because I got pretty rambly. Though at the very end of it everything became clear to me, what I needed to say and how I needed to say it.
I’ve been talking lately how much I hate writing non-fiction because you have to make this big point, and you have to make it pretty directly (at least for mainstream publications), and I’m so accustomed to letting my characters make the point, through actions or thoughts, but not as much through direct statements.
If you had an entire book of characters saying things like, “The point is that society tells little girls that they need to be girlfriends and wives and then they are more likely to grow up dependent on men and unable to find their own identity and succeed as whole, singular human beings,” nobody would read the damn book. Or maybe they might read it, but it wouldn’t be particularly successful as fiction, now would it? (I know people are going to start proving me wrong the minute I post this. Ayn Rand! OK. Don’t talk to me about Ayn Rand.)
Anyway that’s not the kind of fiction I want to read or am interested in writing. But then when you get to an interview and they ask you to tell you what you meant, hoo boy, I can sure stumble sometimes.
Because it’s not even absolute, these ideas I have about relationships. A character could also say in my book, “But luckily times are changing(ish), and there are plenty of women who rebel against the belief that they can’t be happy unless they are in a relationship (with a man or woman, mind you), and it’s important for the rebels and non-rebels to meet, so they can educate each other in every way possible. Because sometimes those rebels need to hear that it’s ok to need someone, and sometimes those non-rebels need to hear that they are never going to figure out who they are until they spend some time on their own.” (This is all pretty obvious stuff. Right? Except when it’s not. Or except when it’s wrong.)
You can see how I might tend to go on though. (I mean look at that fucking paragraph up there.) There’s no easy answer to any of this. And I have not even begun to talk about sex, though I have plenty to say about that. We’ll save it for a rainy day. I think I’ll sit down and write down some ideas I have about the book. About how understanding your identity is crucial to happiness. About how relationships can corrupt a weak soul. About what we can do to rise above it all and be the strongest people we can.
