Musing on the Muse

Next week, A Noble’s Path, the second book in my Enchanted Path series, is being released. It’s a bittersweet moment. I’m hoping that it leads to more interest in the series, but I know it also means having to embrace more marketing. It’s not my forte, not because I’m shy, but because it means selling myself as much as selling my book. The book I don’t mind talking about—I get very few opportunities to do so—but talking about myself seems immaterial to the writing process.Then again, maybe that’s not so true. There have been quite a few instances lately where a book has been reviled because the writer was considered insensitive to the subject matter, which happened to be outside their background. I write about Latina protagonists because I’m Latina and I felt there weren’t enough of us as leads in stories. I write speculative fiction because I love the idea that a story is not limited to what we know. And yet I wonder if the former statement negates the latter?Is it limiting to only write from a Latina perspective just because I’m Latina? Would it be equally limiting to only write from a female perspective because I’m a woman? I think about all those fairy tales dictated and transcribed by men, who gave little to no agency to women. Caucasians who included minorities as caricatures as plot devices for stories. In those instances, the writers were limited by their gender and ethnicity not knowing anything but their own narrow perspective. It made their characters wooden and incomplete. And yet, it does give us some insight into white male rationales from a certain time period.I suppose my opinion on this subject has yet to coalesce. Should a writer be allowed to write from all viewpoints? Isn’t trying to get into the heads of people unlike yourself the beginning of attempted understanding? In an ideal world, it would be. In reality, it alienates people. One side defensive, trying to justify their right to write whatever they want. On the other, a cancel culture that precludes debate or discussion. Again, I haven’t made my decision.The only thing I can say is my desire to see myself and my daughter in stories drove me to write, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen myself in Anne Shirley, Elizabeth Bennet and Jo March as well as countless other women and men as I immersed myself in their stories. Great stories should be universal and personal, simultaneously because stories should connect us—joyfully, painfully, in humor and in sadness—by making us seek each other out and talk about it.

Admitted--Not Accepted

Here’s a weird thought. Have you ever had that moment when someone makes it clear that although you’ve been admitted, it does not mean you’ve been accepted? It made me think about Cinderella.After Cinderella was found by the prince and then he married her, what happened next? She was, for all intents and purposes, a scullery maid who spent the better part of her life subservient to others. She may have been beautiful and good, but was she ready for a world that was not her own?It turns out there are many versions of this story as far back as Ancient Greece and exist outside of Europe. The story is essentially the same, with a widower and father remarrying a woman with daughters of her own who supplant the widower’s daughter. She, in turn is mistreated and maligned until a prince comes with some footwear from the lost and found and takes her as his wife. Happily ever after ensues.Or does it? A mysterious woman captures the prince’s imagination (and allegedly his heart) and he marries her into a royal household. Do they accept her? I keep thinking of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her speech to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice:“…for do not expect to be noticed by his family or friends, if you willfully act against the inclinations of all. You will be slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him. Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.”Was such a speech given to Cinderella when she first arrived at the palace? I’d like to think she was able to push back as Lizzy Bennet did, but Cinderella’s story was all about how good and compliant she was—not a firebrand. Did she accept her new lot—the same as her old one with better clothes—just as passively?We’ll never know what happily ever after looked like to Cinderella and her prince; we can only speculate. My only hope is that when any of us is confronted with situations in which we’re admitted, but not accepted we can say as calmly and coolly as Lizzy Bennet:“I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”