...And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (Esther 4:14)
The seed for this blog was planted on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Israel, two years before I was diagnosed with autism.
Over the course of that trip, I reread the Book of Esther. Twice.
It was an odd choice of reading. Because, the truth was, I had never liked Esther. Now I realized why. Esther was powerlessness young girl in a patriarchal society and that struck a chord in me.
Looking at it through that lens, I saw that while my story was smaller than hers, it was substantially larger than my fears and insecurities. So, when I got home, I decided it was time to find my voice, as Esther had, and I wanted to do it through writing.
It was an odd choice of reading. Because, the truth was, I had never liked Esther. Now I realized why. Esther was powerlessness young girl in a patriarchal society and that struck a chord in me.
Recognizing this made it possible for me to connect with the story. I finished the Book of Esther on the plane to Tel Aviv, and then I read it again in between the events that affected me so profoundly during my trip.
Looking at it through that lens, I saw that while my story was smaller than hers, it was substantially larger than my fears and insecurities. So, when I got home, I decided it was time to find my voice, as Esther had, and I wanted to do it through writing.
So I wrote and rewrote and finally, fairly recently, I began to see that it wasn't just about striving. It was about timing.
And timing is a thing in Esther.
In reading and rereading Esther, I had realized something. Esther wasn't powerless. She was waiting.
As a young Jewish girl married to the Persian King, Esther had to be careful. The King didn't know she was Jewish and there were a lot of people in Persia who hated the Jews. One of the biggest haters in fact was the evil Haman, advisor to the King, who was already plotting to exterminate the Jews of Persia.
Esther's uncle Mordecai tells her about the plot, but Esther doesn't do anything.
Mordecai urges Esther to stand up for her people, suggesting she was brought to the kingdom for “such a time as this.” Esther doesn't disagree with him but instead of acting impulsively, she calls for a fast.
When the fast is finished, Esther gathers up her courage and approaches the King. The King could have had her executed for the affront, but doesn't. Instead, he accepts her invitation to come to a banquet she has prepared, and he agrees to bring his advisor Haman, the Jew-hater.
The King still doesn't know that Esther is Jewish. And the expectation you have, as you read the story, is that Esther is going to tell him. But she doesn't. Instead, she invites the King and Haman to a second banquet to be held on the following evening.
On the surface, it doesn’t really make sense. What difference, we wonder, will one day make?
And then, that night, the king is unable to sleep. So he calls for the records of the realm and discovers an account of a recent assassination plot. For the first time, the king learns it was a Jew who foiled the attempt on his life.
The king doesn't realize that this Jew is Esther's uncle Mordecai, but he is about to find out. Because now it is time to speak.
The following evening at the banquet, Esther tells the king about her heritage and her people and how Haman intends to destroy them. And the king is disposed to listen.
The Jews of ancient Persia are saved from annihilation, and Esther has found her voice.
All things have their season... under heaven. A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. (Ecclesiastes 3:1,7)
Angelique Bouchard from the TV Show Dark Shadows
On this episode of the Autistic POV podcast (please note I changed the name to Autistic POV after this episode!) I shared some information on freewriting and my experience with freewriting. I’m just starting this practice and will be talking about it again.
From the podcast write up::
Freewriting can help us improve creativity, explore identity, and even improve physical and emotional health. In this episode, we explore the practice and benefits of freewriting with an emphasis on how autistic people might benefit in the three key areas of creativity, identity, and healing.
I wanted to share the following resources related to this episode:
- A short summary of evidence-based research on freewriting and creativity is available on the University of Bolton website in the article Psychological Benefits of Free Writing.
- A very nice PDF on the benefits of freewriting and the research of Dr. Pennebaker is available from the University of Wisconsin: Therapeutic Journaling PDF
- You may also want to check out the book Expressive Writing by by James W. Pennebaker and John Frank Evans
- I also read about autism and identity in Tony Attwood's book The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome. This is an older book but I have found it helpful.
- Both these books should be available at your local library or elsewhere via interlibrary loan
If you like this content, please consider following and / or sharing the show with others!
Of Autism and Audience
There are a lot of different theories about autism, and some are better than others. Take the whole lack of empathy thing. I get it. Sometimes I do not seem empathetic at all. But it's not really about empathy, it's about communication.
Autistics DO care about others, we just don't always communicate it. Sometimes we seem uncaring because we misunderstand what others expect; sometimes we get snagged by our special interests and forget about people for a while. But it's not about a lack of caring. If anything, we probably care too much.
But what about autistic writers? Do we care about our readers?
Some people (particularly those who've read an autistic first draft) might say we don't. But to me, this is a lot like saying autistics lack empathy. It's just not accurate.
Autistic neurobiology can affect our ability to construct a narrative (see my post, Autism and the Narrative Process). Poor narrative structure can create a confusing story.
We don't want to confuse anyone. We want people to like our work—and I think most of us want to be understood even more.
Unfortunately, the characters we write about can add to reader confusion.
When Characters Annoy
I have belonged to various critique groups over the years and I've gotten some lovely feedback on my writing, but not all comments have been easy to hear. Part of the reason for this may be the specifics of what was said. But I feel that another more important part may be related to autism and what's called theory of mind (which is simply the ability to understand other people).
According to Julie Brown author of Writers on the Spectrum, because autistics may struggle with theory of mind (and understanding other people), we're more likely to base our characters on ourselves than most neurotypical writers. This tendency could make us extra-sensitive to negative labels being applied to our characters, especially if we have a history of being bullied.
This is something we have to come to terms with IF we want to publish our work, at this point in time, anyway, because we will get feedback at some point whether we want it or not. It is worth saying, of course, that nobody has to publish anything if they don't want to (which was my approach for most of my life).
But my assumption here is that you might want to go public and that if you do you may run into people who think your characters are kind of like you. In my case, that's creepy or immature or messed up (or annoying). In your case, it might be something completely different.
People disliking your characters isn't the worst thing that can happen, however. The worst thing, in my experience, is to finish a novel and find out that the character development you thought was obvious is completely invisible to others.
When that happens, like it did to me, what can we do about it?
The Problem of Character Arc
While some stories are subtler than others, clarity is key in fiction and if people can't see your characters change over the course of the story, I think you need to fix it. This can be done with writer resources, a human critique group, or with AI collaboration. There are pros and cons to each. I don't want to take a deep dive on that other than to say I used all three.
The human critique group alerted me to the fact that my main character in Trancing Miranda didn't change enough. In some ways, given the addiction theme, I felt like that was kind of the point. In others, however, I could see that Miranda's arc was unclear.
So I turned to two of my favorite writing resources, Save the Cat Writes a Novel, and Romancing the Beat. I like these books because they present a simple approach to structure (and to me, writing is already complicated enough). I also like that you can use these resources to structure your story after you've written draft one.
Using these books helped me identify my individual character's themes and their primary wound or flaw. Then I was able to kind of retrofit what I'd written into the suggested beat sheets.
This was NOT easy. So I turned to Claude Sonnet 200k and brainstormed back and forth for several weeks. In the end, I was able to come up with a beat sheet that made sense. This involved taking things out and simplifying the story. A lot.
While I know this isn't an issue for all autistic writers I struggle with long-form fiction and complex plots. So for me, it's easier to aim for a novella or even a novelette and not worry about word count or high stakes events at all.
Where I'm At
I'm not done with Trancing Miranda yet but I do have a plan. Edits are going well. And I am not trying to make the story something its not.
I don't think that my stories have the kind of suspense that a lot of other paranormal fiction has. I am not writing kick-ass heroines or larger than life heros or marathon sex scenes. I'm trying to write about things like pain and healing and forgiveness and trust in my own odd sort of way.
Not everyone wants that kind of story, but those that do have to be able to see it.
I'm not there yet but I think I'm think I'm getting there. As always, I will keep you posted.
_____________
Save the Cat Writes a Novel and Romancing the Beat (affiliate links) are both available on Amazon. There are a lot of great books on writing out there. My all time favorite is Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing (affiliate link). The beat books (first two mentioned), however, have helped me with structure and character development which are two of my biggest challenges.
(Julie Brown's book Writers on the Spectrum (affiliate link) is on Amazon too. It's a great book but it isn't a writer's guide.)
I can also not stress enough how helpful brainstorming with AI has been and will be doing a post on that at some point. Claude will choke from time to time, but he will never tell you your main character is a creep!
Please note, if you purchase a book through one of my Amazon Affiliate links, I will receive a small commission at no cost to you.
I thought it might be fun to talk about some of things I blog about on Writing on the Spectrum, so I started a podcast.At first I called it the Autistic Writers podcast then I changed it to Autistic POV. It's on most popular podcast apps (and will also post here).
This is the first episode. It gives a broad overview of what I'm learning about autism and writing. I don't really have anyone to talk to about autism and writing so I think this could procide a nice outlet--in addition to blogging of course.
I also hope this will help keep me on track. Autism has become one of my special interests but writing (actually doing it, though I do like to talk about) and reading still come first. I also like watching a bit of TV here and there (right now it's The Originals) and learning about parapsychology so it can be hard to maintain a balance at times!
Podcast Intro
Welcome to the first episode of Autistic Writers—now Autistic POV! My name is Barbara Graver, and this is a place where we'll be chatting about autism and autism related topics. In this first episode, I talk a bit about autism and creativity, autistic character traits (strengths) and my plans for the podcast. I hope you'll check back and please do follow the show!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Social Icons