“The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that’s not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”
— Neil Gaiman
I often think about this quote by Neil Gaiman, who happens to be one of my favorite writers and the person I end up copying the most, as he puts it here. Gaiman is a big inspiration to me for many reasons, the first being the strong, confident voice he has and his ability to change it to fit whatever it is that he is writing. His flexibility no matter the medium he is writing, (novels, comics, children’s books, television episodes, etc.), while still being recognizable for the voice and material he presents is something I strive for in my own writing. He also has unique, whimsical ideas that I connect with, and he doesn’t limit himself to one genre. He’ll blur lines between genres, leading to the academic world arguing over what to label it so that it can be deemed worthy of study in the academic world. Many have claimed that Gaiman is a magical realism writer, though others have disagreed and called his writing purely fantasy. These are conversations that give me hope for the future of genre writing in the academic world because I believe that there is genre fiction worth studying in academia because of their craft and the messages they raise through fantastic mediums.
It is also because of his flexibility that I think I don’t copy his voice as much as other writers. Rather, I find myself copying his styles. His narrative voice usually changes between stories, depending on what story he’s telling. Then again, perhaps I copy him more than I think as I’ve also noticed that there are certain elements of his voice that are always present, no matter the story. But where he does this on purpose, I do it because I am still learning. I will also change my voice or tone to match the story I am trying to tell. However, shifting voices will also have me default into copying the voices of others in that genre. I’ll find myself echoing anyone from Ursula K Le Guin to Anne Sexton to Stephen King and back again. But I still catch those moments that are uniquely me.
I’ve been thinking about the concept of copying more often because the first time I really started to feel like I was growing as a writer was when I went back to look at one of my old works. I realized that I was copying someone—I was looking over the rough draft of my novel and realized that I sounded like a blend of Ursula K. Le Guin and J.R.R. Tolkien, which makes sense since they are two influential writers in high fantasy and science fiction—but I could also pinpoint the places that sounded more like me. They sounded like the blurbs and observations I have when I’m driving, taking a shower, or going for a walk. They sounded confident because at the time I wrote them, I was fully in my creative zone and not worrying about the rules I’m supposed to follow. It didn’t matter because I had a story to tell. It was me, and I felt it.
To this day, I still have a hard time trying to figure out what exactly my voice sounds like, but I’ve gotten to the point where I can look at a sentence or two in my manuscript and think, “Well, that’s not it.” I think that this shows maturity on my part, as a writer.
It took me until I was doing creative writing workshops at the Mississippi University for Women to realize that there are no original plots anymore, and to pursue something completely original was a fool’s quest. This was something I often beat myself up over at the time because I was afraid that my stories weren’t original enough, but it wasn’t about being original. It was about being authentic. Being yourself and pulling your unique perspective on the world into the story. Letting whatever knowledge, interests, beliefs, or trauma shape the story, that’s when it becomes innovative. That’s when you bring something unique to the table. And it took me until graduate school at Auburn University to really let that sink in. I’m stubborn that way.
This idea of innovation in genre is what I strive for in my writing. I strive to blur lines or challenge rules like Neil Gaiman or N. K. Jemisin. It’s obviously still a work in progress, but I have become confident that the more I practice, the closer I can get to being in the same league as them. N. K. Jemisin has become another big inspiration for me lately because of this idea. Her works are innovative because of the issues she brings to the table in her work and the powerful, confident voice she uses to make them capture readers’ attention. Her novel The Fifth Season is considered innovative in the fantasy and science fiction genres because of how she brings her passion for psychology and the social history of repression into light, using fantasy as a tool to make the heavy issues easier to swallow, yet easy to recognize in our own history.
I strive to do something similar as I write about issues that I care about, namely feminist themes such as a woman’s worth, when and how a woman must take up space, and representation of strong women who define themselves rather than letting other people define them. I embody these characters and issues by tapping into my own and other experiences and using them to challenge my characters. It’s only one example of the themes that I explore in my quest to find my own voice, but it is a strong one. This is why I chose the pieces I did for my portfolio: they are the ones that star female characters who embody the truest parts of my personality and have the most examples of my authentic writing voice.
First is “Rainy Day,” which I wrote in my fiction workshop in the Spring of 2021. This was my first experiment with magical realism, and I was proud of the results. I got the idea for it from a joke I said to my roommate when she pointed out that the time was 11:11 and to make a wish. Jokingly, I replied with “I wish it would rain money.” But I sat with that idea, wondering what would happen if that wish actually came true.
From that idea came the setting—a small coffee shop in Chicago that secretly grants wishes to people who are willing to make them in the shop—and the main characters: Matthew and Cassie. Their personalities had a difficult time coming to me in my first couple of drafts, which tends to be a trap I fall into when I get an idea for the plot before the characters. Their personalities were too bland and the only thing I knew about their background was that they had a tense history because they dated in high school and had a rough breakup.
The main theme I wanted to portray in this story was independence, growing up, and gaining the confidence to know what you want and chase it. This is something that Cassie is able to learn in the time between her breakup with Matthew and meeting him again as she ventured into the adult world and explored until she found something that legitimately made her happy, which in turn also made her confident. Matthew hears of her journey of self-discovery and realizes that he hasn’t been doing as much to chase his own passions, held back by the social pressures to keep up appearances that his parents set up for him.
While my peers in the workshop agreed that the premise of the story was good, they also agreed that they needed more from the characters. As I revisited the story later, I tried to flesh out the main characters by adding more to their backstories and past relationship based on feedback I got and a desire to represent more of myself and the struggles I had gone through in my own confidence and relationships as a teenager. I dove deeper into Cassie’s personality—particularly in her interests in magic and superstitions—and how they conflicted with Matthew’s. Where she was whimsical and a dreamer, Matthew was grounded and too concerned about how others viewed him to give in to whimsy.
I also had to dive deeper into Matthew’s personality to figure out what would attract him to Cassie despite their differences, and how their differences would push him to do something horrible enough that there would still be tension between them when they were adults. I toyed with the idea of making him vaguely interested in witchcraft, as well, mostly drawn to the idea of a tangible outside force helping his parents understand him. However, his anxiety gets the better of him, and as he catches himself going down the path that Cassie is—the path that is shunned by others—he’s scared of himself and his vulnerability, and he takes that fear and insecurity out on Cassie. The result was something much darker than I originally had, but it reflected on how their personal interests were void in Matthew’s eyes when it conflicted with his public appearance, which eventually leads to him spending his life keeping up public appearances instead of chasing his dreams while Cassie experiments and grows as time passes.
The last experiment I did with this story was after I had my Spring Sessions meeting with Sanjena Sathain, where we discussed my narrative voice and ways that I could make the story more unique. She pointed out that the “frame narrative” I was using to tell the story was too long, and the setting was too mundane. Our conversation led me to the idea of changing the story’s setting from a coffee shop to a metaphysical store, giving Matthew a more uncomfortable place to be that would increase the tension. The result was an interesting one that definitely gave me a chance to further flesh out Matthew’s character, but once I had finished it, I realized that the change of setting lessened the impact of the magical realism ending I had written in the original version. I found that the mundane setting was what made the money rain at the end so powerful. Most importantly, it reflected the development of Matthew’s character during that short amount of time during his lunch break: it opened his eyes to the possibility of the fantastic within the mundane, even in his life. Forcing Matthew into a fundamentally magical setting where he must face what makes him uncomfortable much faster doesn’t leave much room for the final epiphany he has at the end. Not to mention the implications that New Age Witchcraft can actually cause fantastic things like money falling from the sky to happen, which isn’t true. My research showed me that modern witches do not believe in that kind of magic, nor do they expect anything fantastic to happen, and such expectations are actually harmful to their community.
I also found after changing these aspects of my work that I disagreed with Sanjena Sathain about the format of my story being a framework narrative. The focus of the story was not meant to be the witchcraft that Cassie practiced or the second-hand embarrassment that Matthew got from it, it was supposed to be how they grew as people since then. The conversations that they had together about self-discovery, chasing dreams, seeking satisfaction and authenticity were meant to be the main focus of the story. The flashback is meant to serve as just that, a flashback to reflect on how different Matthew and Cassie really are, and how Matthew’s refusal to detract from the status quo made him stick to the safe path while Cassie grew up to take more risks and became more confidant as she did.
This led me to go back to the original version of my story, although I did keep some of the aspects of Matthew’s personality and backstory that I discovered while I was experimenting with that new idea. Ultimately, I am satisfied with the current version of this story. I think the characters are the strongest they have ever been, and my experiments led me to not only create a strong female character but also explore the social issues that men often face, opening a door for men to connect with Matthew and potentially be inspired to do a bit of daydreaming of their own.
Next is my retelling of “The Little Mermaid” titled “For King, Country, and Sea Men.” The idea originally came from a writing exercise Neil Gaiman shared in his Masterclass. In it, he used his retelling of “Snow White” titled “Snow, Glass, Apples” as an example. He referenced his process, saying he got the idea when he wondered to himself how a woman with snow-white skin could be seen as beautiful or be able to rise from the dead, and what kind of a messed-up person would see a corpse in the woods and decide to kiss it? His answers led to a retelling from the perspective of the Evil Queen, who was actually trying to kill Snow White because the beautiful young maiden was a vampire, and how her plan was foiled when a necrophiliac prince brought her back. He then invited his students to do the same thing, asking them to take a well-known story, ask questions about it, and then answer those questions ourselves by writing it.
I shared this prompt with my mother, and it turned into a conversation about the political benefits the prince of “The Little Mermaid” would have in marrying the Sea King’s daughter. I asked, “Why would the Sea King be against that marriage if it meant that a political union would stop fishing in their waters?” I then thought about how funny it would be if the marriage was arranged for those benefits but the prince and princess didn’t actually love each other. From that conversation came this story, one of my rare experiments in comedy.
This story gave me the opportunity to flex my high fantasy muscles during my fiction workshop as I brought in the complexities of world-building and politics in a fairy tale setting. I invented a race of merpeople for this story that was purposefully as far away from the images of mermaids that people usually conjure thanks to Disney. There are almost no human-like features to these merpeople; instead, they have pale, greenish-blue skin that appears translucent in the light so one can see their bones and veins, and their skin always feels moist to the touch. They have no hair anywhere on their bodies, webbed fingers and toes, gills along their necks, and a deep gurgle in their throats when they speak. I drew more information from sources like The Creature of the Black Lagoon or The Shape of Water when designing these creatures than I did from classic mermaids, and as I worked with them, I invented a culture to go along with their underwater lives and appearances.
It is these differences in the merpeople’s and human cultures that I wanted to explore in the main theme of my story. How do differences between cultures make the people alienate and fear each other? Here, it is not just in the physical differences that both peoples see and are disgusted by, but it is the religious and moral differences between them that cause conflict. The two kings are constantly arguing about how best to approach the political unrest brewing in the kingdom. There’s also conflict when Aerwyna, the sea princess, is expected to give up her lifestyle for the human prince she is marrying because polyamory is frowned upon on land, even though it is seen as a normal thing in her homeland. She isn’t allowed the wedding traditions common in her culture, either, and is instead dressed up and painted to appeal to the gaze of her betrothed. I wanted this to reflect on both her character—how brave she is to let go of her lifestyle and embrace a new one in the name of peace for her kingdom—and on Prince Titus’s character as well as their friendship develops. Through their interactions and dialogue, I wanted to show these two who are fated to be married despite the fact that they aren’t romantically interested in each other be drawn together platonically because of their love for their homelands and mutual goals for peace. As they learn more about each other, they are open to learning more about their cultures, as well. They share interests and support each other’s goals, and as they become closer they are able to communicate their needs and work together to help each other. I did all of this to show them establishing not only a partnership, but a healthy friendship.
Once the differences and tensions between the two races were established, I asked myself how they could be brought together so that they may work to try and understand each other? My characters decide that the answer to that is a love story as they write the “earliest” version of “The Little Mermaid” in order to gain the favor of the public. I meant for this to be a commentary on the importance people have in a nice love story, pointing to similar things that the British Royal Family have done in the past in fabricating a fairytale-like love story between the royal family member and their betrothed so that the public are more likely to support them, and how different the fabrication can be from reality. I granted my main characters a happy ending as well, as the prince and princess are relieved to realize that they both have no interest in the other romantically, and agree to remain married, see their own lovers in secret, and grow to become close friends and partners, (another subtle reference to the British royals, this time being Henry VIII and his famous wife who divorced because they had no sexual attraction to each other but remained friends afterward).
In my revision, I had to consider several changes since this beast of a story came out much longer than I had intended. Originally, Titus’s mistress, Rosaline, was pregnant with their child. There is a brief conflict as Titus worries about what will happen if the baby turns out to be a girl, as his father told him that he would only be allowed to adopt a male heir. This conflict is resolved very quickly, however, when Aerwyna meets Rosaline for the first time and is able to tell just from smelling her that the baby is a boy. In hindsight, this aspect of the story was unnecessary since it was resolved so quickly, so I opted to change that aspect of the story so that the baby was born from the beginning, cutting the conflict altogether.
I had gotten the suggestion at one point to consider changing the scene where Rosaline reads the story that she and Aerwyna have written for the kings, making it a performance from the traveling theatre troupe referenced instead so there is more action and potential for tension since something could go wrong during the performance. However, I ended up keeping the original scene since a performance didn’t quite fit what I was trying to accomplish. I wanted the story to be written down and sent to people rather than performed to play on the theme. If an audience is given the freedom to imagine a story as they are reading it, they are more likely to empathize with the characters than if they saw it performed in front of them. It also allowed me to keep my original punchline.
While the ending of my story is almost unrealistically optimistic, I decided to embrace that as part of the satire and fantasy world that I created. However, I did try to acknowledge the optimism in the ending in an epilogue of sorts. It takes place centuries after the events of the story. Hans Christian Anderson himself finds an old pamphlet of the story that was published in the prince’s kingdom and sent out to the public, and he is charmed but asks himself what would happen if the mermaid died at the end. I had gotten some advice to cut that scene as it was deemed unnecessary since the audience would be well-aware at this point that they were reading “The Little Mermaid,” but I opted to keep it in the end. Necessary or not, I’m fond of this ending as I think it drives home the punchline of the story.
The biggest reason that I included this story is that it is a strong example of how I have found my voice in my writing. Ignoring my previous anxieties about coming up with an “original” story, I took an already well-beloved story and put my own twists on it, beginning by asking questions about the original story and finding answers for them by writing them down. This gave me a surprising amount of freedom, inviting me to borrow whatever aspects of the already-existing format that I wanted while simultaneously letting me ignore the rules of the fairy tale and throw expectations out the window. This led to a short story with the most of those moments that were uniquely me. My voice. I saw it in my descriptions of Aerwyna, in the over-dramatic wailings of Rosaline, and in the way that Titus cares for those close to him. And it all came from a writing prompt related to a story about a vampire. Thank you, Mr. Gaiman.
I will be honest and say that the success of this retelling has made me want to revisit this prompt with other stories to see what else I can do. Perhaps a prompt like this is what I need to get away from the limits of rules, forms, and expectations and just be myself. I’m hoping that this is the beginning of a new process for me, and a practice that helps me get the last bit of confidence I need to truly hone my craft and find my voice.
Katie Writes 