The fact that I’ve seen multiple people imply that it’s abnormal for a prof to help their student publish creative writing work… huh??? Like that should be a really standard thing that’s happening, especially in MFAs, and Especially if that professor has experience in the publishing field and knows a work has a decent shot of being published 😭

Like, just because it’s normal for professors to put limited time into the publishing aspect in pursuit of teaching craft and creative skills instead, does NOT mean that we should settle for the bare fucking minimum in what is essentially career training

Tamamizu Monogatari, a unique love story

This article, unlike most of my recent longer pieces, was not planned in advance. I learned about the subject very recently, and instantly realized I absolutely have to introduce it to more people, the previously posted schedule be damned. The Tale of Tamamizu (玉水物語, Tamamizu Monogatari) is a story about a fox turning into a human, but a rather unconventional one, filled with an unusual degree of sympathy for the eponymous protagonist and focused on a rather unique relationship. In addition to summarizing it in detail and explaining the possible inspirations behind it, I will also try to explain why the tale found a new life on social media as a, broadly speaking, lgbt narrative, and why I think there is a compelling case to be made for such an interpretation. Unless stated otherwise, all images used through the article are taken from the Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive, on whose website you can view scans of the original Tamamizu Monogatari.

The Tale of Tamamizu, also known as The Contest of Autumn Leaves (Momiji Awase) is an example of otogi-zōshi, illustrated prose narrative. The story was presumably originally composed in the Muromachi period (1335-1573), and it survives in multiple copies dated either to the early Edo period or to the end of the Japanese “middle ages” directly preceding it. The identity of the author (or authors) is unknown. Despite its apparent popularity in the past, it seems no major studies of the tale of Tamamizu have ever been conducted. A streamlined translation (or rather an extensive summary) was published online by Kyoto University Library in 2001 and can be accessed here. In 2018, a full translation, as well as a brief introduction, were prepared for the anthology Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds. A Collection of Short Medieval Japanese Tales. Still, it doesn't seem either sparked all that much interest in Tamamizu, despite the story’s obvious modern appeal. Since the tale of Tamamizu is not well known, I will start with a detailed summary. I am consistently using female pronouns for Tamamizu after she transforms, as does the older translation. The other English translation switches between female and male pronouns. I will explain in the final paragraph of the article why I made the decision to follow the former. The Tale of Tamamizu The story of Tamamizu does not start with the eponymous character, but rather with a certain mr. Takayanagi from Toba. He is troubled, as while he is already 30, he has no children. He decides the only choice is to pray to gods and buddhas. This actually does work, and his wife becomes pregnant, and after the expected period gives birth to a daughter. She doesn’t get a name at any point in the story. The girl’s birth is followed by a timeskip. As we learn, she was distinguished by twenty five features associated with beauty. This is apparently a reference to the belief that a buddha possessed thirty two specific physical traits; the number might have been altered to twenty five because of a popular group of twenty five bodhisattvas associated with Amida. By the time she reached the age of fifteen or so, she also developed great skill in composing poetry in both Japanese and Chinese. Her parents at some point decided that it would be ideal to send her to serve in the emperor’s court in the future. The girl spends most of the time in awe of the blooming of flowers, the wind and other similar phenomena, as one would expect from a literary character of similar status. She maintains her own flower garden, and spends much of her time there.

On one of the days when she visited it alongside her friend Tsukisae, the daughter of her nurse, she caught the attention of a fox. The fox is, at this point in time, not yet Tamamizu. He wishes he could introduce himself to the girl. He considers the standard method - transforming into a nobleman - but he realizes this would likely sadden the girl’s parents, and would tarnish her reputation. He falls into despair. It does not exactly help that his attempts at visiting the garden again end up poorly - on the way there, he gets pelted with stones and then, after trying again, shot with an arrow. Still, he continued to hope to meet with the girl. An opportunity finally arose through a lucky coincidence. Another family living in the same area had multiple sons, but no daughters, much to the parents chagrin. They loudly lamented that they wished they had at least one girl among the children. The fox overheard that and realized it might be an opportunity. He transformed himself into a teenage girl (curiously, the story specifically puts her at the exact same age as the unnamed second protagonist), and enters their house. She explains that she is an orphan, and while passing by she overheard the family’s woes. She offers to become their daughter. The couple instantly agrees.

The fox spends some time living with her adoptive family, though she gets sad easily and keeps bursting into tears. After some time, they offer that they will find her a husband in due time, but she reacts to that poorly, and eventually suggests she would prefer to become the servant of a noble lady. Her adoptive mother agrees this isn’t a bad idea, and reveals that her younger sister is a lady-in-waiting of the daughter of a local noble, mr. Takayanagi. She suggests the fox could become her attendant too. She is overjoyed at this prospect, and is soon sent to Takayanagi’s mansion to meet with his daughter. The girl receives her new attendant warmly, and gives her a nickname, Tamamizu-no-mae (Tamamizu for short). They get along really well, and Tamamizu gets to partake in her various activities, serves her food and drinks, and even sleeps in the same bed (Tsukisae does too, though). While Tamamizu does remarkably well as a human, some of her fox habits remain. Most notably, she is really afraid of dogs. Her lady sympathizes with her plight, and actually bans dogs from her household. This is a much welcome change from Tamamizu’s point of view, though apparently some other members of the staff start to view her as a coward because of this, and simultaneously resent her closeness with the girl. The bond between Tamamizu and the girl reaches a new level when on a moonlight night they spontaneously compose a poem together. It deals with longing. We are told it was followed up by multiple other poems, which are not quoted in the story. Eventually the girl gets tired and heads to her room. However, Tamamizu remains outside gazing at the moon and eventually starts crying, unsure what fate awaits her. Tsukisae, who was inside all along, actually becomes concerned about Tamamizu, and says she feels sorry for her, correctly identifying the cause of her sorrow as love for an unidentified party. She shares her thoughts with their lady (in the form of a poem, of course). The latter summons Tamamizu inside, and soon all three go to bed together. Tamamizu is still overwhelmed by her feelings and can’t fall asleep, though. Tamamizu continues to serve the girl for the next three years. She also remains in touch with her adoptive mother, who sends her letters and new clothes every now and then. One day, many visitors arrived in the house for a friendly competition. The winner will be the person with the most beautiful collection of autumn leaves. Tamamizu decides she must find some for her mistress to give her an advantage. To accomplish that, at night for the first time in years she turns back into a fox, and leaves to visit her siblings. Not the adoptive ones, though. As it turns out, she has two fox brothers, one younger and one older. She actually hasn’t visited them in so long they assumed she died and held funerary services for her in the meanwhile. They are overjoyed to learn that is not the case, and after learning about her current life agree to help her with finding unique leaves. She tells them to leave them on the veranda of her mistress’ mansion, and reassures them it’s safe for foxes to be there thanks to the earlier decision to not allow dogs on the premises. After the visit Tamamizu returns home in her human form. Tsukisae and her mistress ask her where she has been, and she jokes about meeting with a “dubious fellow” (which, to be fair, is not even a lie, given the typical folkloric portrayal of foxes). This in turn leads to more jokes, revolving around Tamamizu no longer thinking about her mistress. She feels distressed by this suggestion.

Tamamizu’s brothers in the meanwhile succeed in their search for thrilling leaves. One of them found a branch with five-colored leaves decorated with the Lotus Sutra (as you probably know, one of the main religious texts in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition). Tamamizu is overjoyed, and instantly brings them to her mistress. The girl received plenty of leaves from other people in the meanwhile, but all of them pale in comparison. She is so happy about the gift that she requests Tamamizu to also write poems meant to accompany the presentation of the collection. She protests that she is unsuitable, but eventually accepts this honor and gets down to work. The parents of the girl came along to watch her write, and both of them concluded she is exceptionally skilled. She ends up providing five poems, one for each color of leaves gathered. They are subsequently combined by these the girl wrote herself.

Obviously, the main characters’ joint entry wins the competition. This grants the girl such fame that the emperor declares she should come to his court. Since her father is not affluent enough to pay for traveling there, he bestows additional estates upon him to make that possible. Even Tamamizu gets her own estate, Kakuta in Settsu Province. However, she decides it will be for the best to give it to her adoptive parents. Shortly after that, Tamamizu’s adoptive mother falls sick. She leaves her mistress to attend to her, but it did not help much and her condition kept worsening. Therefore, her stay had to be extended over and over again. This predicament worries her mistress, who sends her a letter to let her know that it is boring and gloomy without her around, and implores her to return as soon as her mother’s condition improves. Tsukisae is similarly concerned. Both of them voice their concerns through poems, which at this point should not be surprising for the reader.

Tamamizu of course appreciates these displays of sympathy, but she cannot return, so in response she only reassures both of them that she will meet with them again as soon as possible.  Shortly after that, the mother’s condition worsened yet again. The entire family laments through the entire day, but eventually everyone manages to fall asleep - save for Tamamizu. In the middle of the night Tamamizu notices that an old, hairless fox entered the house. She quickly realizes that he was her paternal uncle (a fox uncle, that is. Not a relative of her adoptive parents). The illness was his doing, as she quickly realizes. Tamamizu requests him to leave her adoptive mother alone. However, the old fox says he cannot do that, as the illness is his act of revenge against her family, since her father killed his child. He concluded it is only right to make his daughter sick so that she dies too.

Tamamizu admits that this makes sense in theory, but she points out that acting upon desire for revenge will only bring bad karma, and bad karma from previous lives is why both of them were born as foxes in the first place. She offers the old fox a crash course in Buddhist ethics, and warns him that accumulating even more bad karma might lead to someone eventually killing him too, and to yet more rebirths in one of the three realms which are best to avoid (animals, hungry spirits, hell).

The old fox notes following buddhas is for humans, not for those born in other realms of rebirth (he’s not entirely wrong, humans are generally held to be in the optimal condition to seek enlightenment; animals must follow instinct and thus end up accumulating bad karma, devas are to preoccupied with celestial bliss), but eventually he relents and agrees that it would be wrong to kill the woman because of the actions of her father. He concludes that it would not even make him feel better, since his child would remain dead. He tells Tamamizu that evidently he was able to meet her because of good karma acquired in a past life, asks her to pray for his deceased child, and leaves, announcing he shall become a monk reciting nenbutsu from now on. Tamamizu did what he asked for, and even performed a funerary service for her late cousin. With the problem solved, her adoptive mother returned to good health. She was therefore free to meet with her mistress again. She was elevated to the rank of chujo no kimi, the foremost among servants. However, despite her mistress’ best efforts to make her feel appreciated, she was suffering from persistent bouts of melancholy. She wished she could confess her love and consummate the relationship, but she concluded that since she kept her identity secret for so long, it would be no longer possible to reveal it without losing the acceptance of the girl. She decides she must disappear. However, before that she prepares a long poem explaining her predicament.

She placed it in a box, and gave it to her mistress, explaining that it should only be opened if something happens to her. She then broke down in tears.

Tamamizu’s mistress does not fully understand what is happening, and asks if she perhaps is worried about their planned relocation to the imperial court. However, Tamamizu denies that and guarantees she will accompany her on the journey there. Her mistress starts crying too, and says she has hoped they will always be together. Shortly after, the day of the journey came. Tamamizu’s mistress and mr. Takayanagi, now recognized as a lord, were certain that she went with them, but as soon as they reached their destination it turned out she was nowhere to be found. Days upon days of grieving followed. Eventually, the girl realized that she had no choice but to open the box. From the poem contained within, she learned everything about Tamamizu, from the day they first met all the way up to the disappearance. It explained how she hoped to protect her mistress through her current life and beyond, but had to give up after realizing it was all in vain. In the final words of the poem, she firmly refers to her with the name she was given by the girl - Tamamizu.

The poem moves her deeply, but the story does not have a happy ending - we never learn what happened to Tamamizu afterwards.

Tamamizu’s forerunners

It is agreed that much like the considerably more famous Tamamo no Mae, Tamamizu in part depends on earlier Chinese literature about foxes. Not exactly on the same sort of stories, though - she is not exactly a malevolent seductress, to put it lightly. The key to finding her forerunners is the scene in the beginning when the still nameless fox considers transforming into a male suitor at first, before settling on the form of a female attendant, and the erudition she displays through the story. An argument can be made that this is conscious engagement with a very specific type of older fox story, largely forgotten today. In Tang China, fox stories enjoyed considerable popularity. You may remember that I mentioned this in passing a few months ago in another fox-themed article. One of the genres popular at the time was focused on fox suitors. There are many stories like that, but they largely follow a similar plot: a male fox falls in love with a human girl, takes the form of a dashing literatus and requests marriage. The girl’s family rejects the proposal, as despite charm and erudition the fox is ultimately an outsider with no family, and doesn’t depend on the well established institution of matchmaking. Afterwards, he typically tries to win the girl over with some sort of trick, and fails in the process, thus meeting his demise when his real identity is inevitably exposed.

In some cases, twists are introduced and the fox is effectively exploited by the family: for example, in the story about a certain mr. Hu (a common surname which is a homonym for the word for fox) and the granddaughter of the official Li Yuangong, the Li family agrees for the girl to be taught by the fox, and even asks him for advice on various matters, just to kill him once he outlived his usefulness.

Zhou Wenju's painting A Literary Garden (文苑图, Wenyuantu), showing a group of discouring Tang literati (wikimedia commons)

Many literati came from humble backgrounds, and only attained high positions thanks to success in the imperial examinations. However, their advances were often frowned upon by nobles, who saw them as upstarts. Therefore, faking a more notable origin was widespread to secure a better position in the high strata of society. All of this is reflected in the stories of the fox suitors. Xiaofei Kang, who wrote my favorite monograph about Chinese fox beliefs, notes that the stories might have effectively been a way to cope with everyday anxieties. In other words, perhaps the fox self insert fails so that the real person sharing his precarious status can succeed.

Another aspect of the Tale of Tamamizu which offers a clue about its origins is the focus on Buddhism, and its role in the lives of non-humans in particular. Tamamizu evidently attains a considerable familiarity with Buddhist doctrine, to the point the old fox basically seems to perceive her as thinking more like a human than a fox. Evidently, she doesn’t think being an animal should prevent one from seeking good karma. This seems to reflect a medieval Buddhist phenomenon. Roughly from the Insei period (1086-1185) up to the eighteenth century, and especially between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, the dominant esoteric schools of Buddhism propagated the doctrine of hongaku (本覺), “original enlightenment”. This idea originates in an earlier Buddhis text, Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna. According to proponents of this idea all living beings, even plants, possessed an innate “Buddha nature”, as did natural features like mountains. They were innately capable of attaining enlightenment, or innately enlightened outright. Religion influences art, so it has been argued that the spread of new stories about animals behaving like people in the Muromachi period had a distinctly Buddhist dimension.

The modern reception of Tamamizu

Despite the fascinating themes of the story of Tamamizu, it only found a greater degree of modern recognition in 2019, outside of academic circles at that. I'm surprised it took so long, since when you think about it, the sensibilities of the author indeed seem surprisingly modern. The narrator even reassures us Tamamizu’s human form is the same age as the object of her affection, anticipating what sorts of shipping discourse could arise 700 years later. Anyway, in 2019 a fragment of the story was the subject of one of the classical Japanese literature questions from the National Center Test for University Admissions, a standardized university entrance exam held across Japan each January from 1990 to 2020. This obviously exposed an enormous number of people to it, not just exam-takers. Following this event, a Tamamizu fad seemingly swept social media and pixiv (curiously, there’s a single piece of art there which predates the phenomenon by six years; op actually updated the description in 2019 to say they are happy more people learned about the story). There’s even a Tamamizu Monogatari tag on Dynasty Scans as a result. It’s worth pointing out the wikipedia entry of the story was written in 2019 as well. Most curiously apparently a research project focused on Tamamizu, Kahoko Iguru’s Border transgression between species and gender as observed in “Tamamizu Monogatari”,  received a grant in the same year too (source; more info here). It doesn’t seem the results have been published yet. I will keep you updated if that changes, obviously. I am actually surprised I didn’t notice the Tamamizu phenomenon back then, even though 2019 Antonia was distinctly more terminally online than 2023 Antonia is. It’s worth noting that Tamamizu’s fame didn’t fade away. The online following the story gained was referenced in an Asahi Shimbun article a year later. A quick survey of social media will show you there are people still talking about Tamamizu today. People who aren’t me, that is. What made Tamamizu so unexpectedly popular - arguably more than the story has been in the past few centuries - in recent years? Most of the linked sources relatively neutrally state that people perceive it as a “unique love story”. Social media posts are often considerably more direct: for many people, the appeal lies in the realization the Tale of Tamamizu is probably the closest to a lesbian love story in the entire corpus of medieval Japanese literature. I won’t deny this is in no small part its appeal for me too. Note this is not an universal sentiment by any means, though. It is difficult to tell if this was the intent of the medieval author(s), of course. It is obviously impossible to deny that women attracted to women existed in medieval Japan, as is the case in every society since the dawn of history. However, they left little, if any, trace in textual sources. As pointed out by Bernard Faure, in Japan in the past as in many other historical societies “sexuality without men is properly unthinkable” and therefore received no coverage. While there is plenty of Japanese Buddhist literature dealing with male homosexuality (trust me though, you do not want to read it; I’ve included a brief explanation why in the bibliography), there is basically nothing when it comes to women. The only possible exception is what some authors argue might be a medieval depiction of a lesbian couple in Tengu Zōshi, a work I plan to discuss in more detail next month, but note that this would be only an example of condemnation, since this work is a religious polemic dealing with vices of the clergy. 

The supposed lesbian couple from Tengu Zōshi; image from Haruko Wakayabashi's The Seven Tengu Scrolls: Evil and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy in Medieval Japanese Buddhism; reproduced here for educational purposes only.

This sort of absence of evidence is a recurring pattern through history - you might recall my own attempts to find out what Bronze Age Mesopotamian sources have to say on this matter. Before the Meiji period, when the term dōseiai (同性愛) was coined as a calque of Charles Gilbert Chaddok’s freshly invented label “homosexual”, there wasn’t even a distinct Japanese term which could be applied to lesbian relationships. Once again, this does not indicate this phenomenon did not exist - but it does indicate that due to extreme levels of sexism in the perception of both sexuality and relationships it was difficult to even imagine for the average author. Faure suggests the prevailing attitude was presumably similar as in continental Buddhism, in which lesbian love “was at best perceived as a poor imitation of heterosexual relations—or a preparation for them—and as such condemned” at least in monastic rules. To put it bluntly, only penetrative sex was regarded as real.

And yet, in spite of this, I do not think it is wrong to wonder if perhaps what seems like subtext to a modern reader is actually intentional. This is obviously a reach, but given that relationships between women - not even romantic ones - were historically not a major concern of most authors, I would argue it is not impossible that a work which revolves virtually entirely around the relationships between female characters was written by a woman. Perhaps a woman romantically interested in other women, even. Even more boldly, I’d ponder if perhaps the ambiguous gender of the fox before transformation was meant to make the romance palatable to general audiences. Note that while foxes transforming is a mainstay of both Japanese and Chinese literature, the change of gender is actually quite uncommon in such stories, making this single reference all the more unusual. Granted, gender change is hardly a major focus in the story of Tamamizu. The only real indication the fox is male is the decision to take a male human form at first, but beyond that, things get muddy to the point the matter of gender in the story evidently warranted an actual study, as I pointed out earlier. As you’ve noticed, this matter was approached in different ways by translators too. I personally think the most important factor is the fact Tamamizu refers to herself with this name in the final poem. This name is intimately tied to the distinctly female identity she took. Whoever she was in the beginning, by the end of the story she is clearly Tamamizu. If one felt particularly bold a case perhaps even be made that Tamamizu can be read as a trans woman based on this, perhaps. I think simply disregarding the brief reference to a male form is valid too, though. Even if these arguments were to be refuted fully, I would argue that there is a further reason why at the very least reinterpreting the story as dealing with a gay relationship is not against the spirit of the original work. As I outlined, the tale of Tamamizu seems to draw inspiration from a very specific genre of fox stories, in which foxes are essentially a metaphor for people seeking relationships which were frowned upon. Obviously, the fact that Tamamizu is not a human by default makes any relationship she would be involved in somewhat unusual and frowned upon, but that does not assign a different metaphorical meaning to her struggle. Is Tamamizu even really fully a fox and not a human at all by the time she writes the confession of her love, though? The old fox seems to basically dispute if she still thinks like an animal. We also know that she maintained her human form for so long her biological relatives assumed she had passed away. She also found acceptance of virtually every single human character in the story - save for herself, that is. It’s also not like it’s hard to reinterpret her struggle specifically with the inability to consummate the relationship through the lens of the medieval Buddhist views of female sexuality, rather than through the lens of the general view that relationships between human and transformed foxes were doomed to failure. To paraphrase Cynthia Eller’s evergreen quote about futile search for nonexistent matriarchal prehistory in ancient texts, I do not think an invented wlw past can give anyone a future, but at the same time I do not think it means we should conclude that nobody ever had similar experiences in the past, or that we can relate with works even in ways their authors did not intend. For this reason, I would ultimately argue in favor of embracing the Tale of Tamamizu as a narrative which can be read as a lesbian love story.

Bibliography

Bernard Faure, The Red Thread. Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (please note: read this book very cautiously since multiple content warnings apply. Faure is a remarkably progressive author, so it’s not about his personal attitude or anything. The problem is that it is not possible to deny much of the Japanese Buddhist discourse about homosexuality had little to do with modern notion of gay relationships, and essentially amounts to explaining when exploitation of children is a pious act)

Rania Huntington, Alien Kind. Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative (some sort of explicit content warning applies here too, though mostly because some of the discussed works are trashy Qing period erotica. More funny than anything.)

Xiaofei Kang, The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China

Keller Kimbrough and Haruo Shirane (eds.), Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds. A Collection of Short Medieval Japanese Tales

Jacqueline Stone, Medieval Tendai hongaku thought and the new Kamakura Buddhism: A reconsideration

I'm one of those weirdos that likes to write my fics directly in ao3's editor, saving drafts there before publishing (I saw a poll recently where it was implied that doing this is decidedly not the norm, though I still don't get why...).

Anyway, I noticed lately that when I finally do publish one of these drafts, the date of publication doesn't update to the actual date of publication, but remains the date that the draft was started on (sometimes weeks past). Which means that my story gets buried in the feed, unless I go in and "backdate" it to the actual date of publication. But! When I do this, it now shows up as "fohatic published a backdated work" in email notifications :(

Is there a way around this? I feel like this is a new issue, or else I was doing something differently before... But for whatever reason, this is how it is for me these days! (if this is an ao3 bug that I need to report, apologies for taking up your time with it)

I also write fics directly into the AO3 window, and the reason why this isn't the norm is because AO3 doesn't automatically save your draft. You have to hit the button to save it. That means that if you navigate away from the page or if your browser hiccups or if AO3 goes down between when you start writing your fic and when you hit Post, you lose all your words. That's a risk I'm fine with taking, but that's also why folks think we're weird for doing that.

AO3 has always dated fics from the date that you start the work (or the chapter), not from the date that you post it. If you work in your drafts, you'll need to manually change the date in order for it to show at the top of the tag.

I can't say I've ever noticed any wording about "backdated work" before? That might be new? But if you're changing the date to the day that you're posting it then it's not backdated.

Backdating refers to posting something with a date prior to that day's date. For example, I moved some fics over from FF.net a year or two ago and I changed the dates on them to match the original posting date from FF.net - some time around 2007. If I posted a draft today and changed the date to today, then backdating doesn't apply.

I'll open it up here for Support to chime in, but the only thing I can think of is that the AO3 servers are in England and you might be posting with "today's date" in North America but you're doing so during that window when it's already tomorrow over in England. Time zones. What fun things they are.

Colson Whitehead on Making Novels Half-Asleep

I deleted my Substack because, you know, its founders are evil. But this post I wrote last October feels relevant for writers going into the New Year. If it's TLDR, skip down to the "What Meant Everything to Me" heading.

Writing with Chronic Fatigue

I went to the Brooklyn Book Festival last weekend! It was pure magic after so many years of being away from the English-speaking book world. I felt like someone on rations finally allowed to eat my fill, gulping down book panels and author talks.

Colson Whitehead Goes to Church

One of my favorite festival events was a talk with Colson Whitehead in the St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church. I’m a big fan of hosting cultural events in places of worship.

Colson Whitehead imparted insights that felt like gospel for writers. For those unfamiliar, Whitehead has published nine novels, two nonfiction books, and won two Pulitzer prizes. His book The Underground Railroad is one of my favorites of all time. 

But I did not always like Whitehead’s work. I first had to read his 2003 essay collection The Colossus of New York in university, and it struck me as self-obsessed, MFA-brand New York nonsense. Like, he romanticized Port Authority, the dirty hellhole bus station where, in 2003, I was an elementary schooler waiting nervously for buses that were always late while getting continuously harassed by grown-man casino gamblers dressed like lumberjacks.

I really hated Whitehead’s cheery romanticizations. I wouldn’t pick up another Whitehead book until 2017.

(^just an HD image of Colson Whitehead)

Add Whitehead to the list of authors who wrote some of my most detested 1-star reads before they published the 5-star books of my heart: NK Jemisin, Maggie Stiefvater, Jeff Vandermeer, Colson Whitehead—almost all of my favorite contemporary writers put out messy, uncompelling books before they entered the realm of the virtuoso. 

“I wrote a book called The Intuitionist,” Whitehead said at the church, referring to his debut, “and everyone hated it. So I thought, ‘Okay, I need to do better next time.’”*

It was surreal to hear a writer speak with such open eyes about the trajectory of their own career. Like, I knew I hated Whitehead’s early work. I didn’t realize that he knew it, too.

(It’s worth mentioning that someone who came up to ask Whitehead a question during the Q&A said, “The Intuitionist is my favorite book of all time.”)

But that wasn’t the insight that meant the most to me.

Nothing Is a Joke

Whitehead made joke after joke about chronic fatigue. He never used the words “chronic fatigue”; he never referred to his own health. But he repeatedly described scenarios that resonated with me as someone who lives with fatigue and hypersomnia:

“I spend most of my day just sleeping,” he said. “I mean, coming out here [to the book event]? Really big deal for me. Glad I could make it.”

And everyone laughed, but I don’t think that’s the kind of joke you make unless you mean it. I don’t think it would even dawn on a non-fatigued individual to make it.

What Meant Everything to Me

When Whitehead described his writing process, he said he writes about eight pages a week.

Eight pages a week.

Estimating 250 words/page, that’s 2,000 words per week. Or as he said, “32 pages per month, 320 pages after ten months. I find it adds up.”

He writes, he said, about three days each week. So that’s a little over 600 words each time he sits down to write.

To put this into perspective: If I write fewer than 2,000 words in a single writing session, I don’t consider it to have been a proper session. In less than a month, hundreds of thousands of people will join in NaNoWriMo and try to write at least 1,666 words every day for a month straight.

We live in a world where writers are encouraged to crank it way, way up, sacrificing what writing actually is in an attempt to maximize monetization of a craft that is not easily monetized. Romance writers give advice online for how to write just one draft of a book, no revision needed. Self-publishing writers crank out novella after novella to feed to the Kindle Unlimited machine. Everyone wants to be done with their book in a month. Memes proliferate in which writers scold themselves for daydreaming, plotting, outlining—for doing anything at all that isn’t literal putting words to the page, as if those other things weren’t integral to novel-making.

I thought I was immune to that hustle-and-grind mindset, because I know what writing a book actually entails for me and I have no intention of cranking out a first-draft story for KDP. 

But I had never once considered giving myself the patient grace that Colson Whitehead shows himself.

“I don’t push myself,” he said. “Writing is hard work. On days when I’m not up to it, I revise instead. Just tinker with my last paragraphs.”

He joked about how, during the pandemic, he had to write his novels while his young son was at home. Whitehead said he usually writes a paragraph or two, and then sleeps for a few hours.

Daddy, why are you always in the dark? his son asked during the lockdown.

It’s part of my process! he joked. But I think he also meant it. 

Novel Advice

He’s not the first writer to give this advice; this isn’t the first time I’ve heard it. Maggie Stiefvater wrote her first book only on Wednesday evenings, raising her children and working the rest of the time. Terry Pratchett wrote 400 words each day before he became a full-time writer.

But these are stories of pre-success, the ways we need to struggle when our creative lives are stuffed into the spare corners of our weeks. And when your week doesn’t have spare corners because you’re barely trudging on as it is, that advice doesn’t feel encouraging.

But Colson Whitehead is already successful. And this is still how he allots his writing time: In low-pressure, long-term, sustainable accumulations. 

2,000 words a week.

I’ve known for a long time that I can no longer wait for healthy, clearheaded days to write. I don’t have them anymore. But it sort of sounds like Colson Whitehead doesn’t have many of them to spare, either, and yet he wrote the most energetic Harlem heist book I could ever want (Harlem Shuffle). He wrote the most literary zombie apocalypse book imaginable (Zone One). He has an oeuvre that brought enough readers to fill church pews, the line to see him wrapping all around the block. And he built this work, according to him, in between long naps.

In fact, his writing style probably hinges on his method. He’d be writing very different kinds of books if he wrote quickly. His just-a-few-paragraphs-a-day approach*** is probably how he writes descriptions with so many precise details, like these images of a party-supply store after the apocalypse hits:

The unit had completed a sweep of a party-supply store, a narrow nook on Reade that had been washed off Broadway into a low-rent eddy. Dusty costumes hung from the ceiling as if on meat hooks: cowboys and robots from chart-busting sci-fi trilogies, ethnically obscure kiddie-show mascots, jungle beasts with long tails intended for the flirty tickling of faces. Kingdoms’ worth of princesses and their plastic accoutrements, stamped out on the royal assembly line, and the requisite Naughty Nurse suspended in the dead air, tilting in her rounds. Do Not Expose to Open Flame. For Amusement Only. The masks had been made in Korea, delivering back to the West the faces they had given the rest of the globe: presidents, screen stars, and mass murderers. The rubber filament inevitably snapped from the staple after five minutes. The graft wouldn’t take.

I used to imagine Colson Whitehead as just being so impossibly brilliant that he spit this stuff out on the fly, leagues beyond the rest of us mere mortals. Now I see it differently: It happened laboriously, made by a tired, human brain full of faith in its own accumulative productivity.

Going Forward

No more for me, I think, of harsh deadlines and crank-it-out word counts. Instead: I need to provide accommodations for my own writing life. I must consciously factor in my own fatigue and stop demanding that I strain myself in ways unsustainable for a long and fulfilling creative life. Instead: Crank it down. Way down. And take naps between the paragraphs.

2,000 words a week.

Thanks, Colson Whitehead, for being honest about the work. We need more of that in the book world.

----

*None of these quotes are verbatim, just based on memory.

**This is similar to how both Donna Tartt and Nabokov have described their own writing processes. Maybe we spend so much time screaming at new writers to “just write” that we don’t talk about how slowness and care may enhance the quality of our prose.

I think Jason and Tim may have canonically been in the same school grade before Jason died. Not because Tim skipped any grades, but because Jason was behind two grades. This would also mean Jason died before he ever made it into high school.

Based on what I have extrapolated from post-Crisis comics, this seems like a working timeline:

Here is a calendar view with arbitrarily chosen years and other details added in for reference (if you can’t see it very well, here’s the spreadsheet)

Below is the math + sources (all based on post-Crisis comics)

Before being adopted by Bruce, Batman #410 says Jason was a 5th grade dropout

(sidenote: Jason said his mom was sick for over a year and she died in the most recent February before Bruce met Jason in Batman #408-409)

By the time of Batman Annual 12 (published only a few months before Jason died)*, Jason was in 7th grade

His deathdate is given as April 27th in Batman Annual 25 and The Batman Files, which is during the school year

So he was probably in 7th grade when he died

Jason was most likely 14** when he died, and his Aug 16 birthday is before the New Jersey cut-off date of October 1st

Tim was most likely 12 when Jason died, since they’re almost exactly 2 years apart

Usually, 7th graders are 12-13 years old

So Jason was 2 years older than typical for 7th grade, and he is 2 years older than Tim

Tim started 9th grade/high school at age 14 (Robin II: Joker's Wild), over a year after Jason's death

14-15 is typical starting age for 9th grade, so Tim is clearly in the usual age-range for his grade

So Tim would be in 7th grade when Jason died. Same as Jason.

* Publishing dates don’t always match up with where things fit in a timeline. Especially since annuals aren’t always clearly positioned in related to the rest of the comic’s issues. In the annual, Jason does mention KGBeast, who he’d fought recently in the then-current Batman run.

My default is to presume things are meant to be set generally near other comics published the same time unless I see an indication otherwise. There isn’t much indication here—Jason’s age really isn’t mentioned at all during his actual run as Robin IIRC, we have to extrapolate from later comics.

**My reasons for Jason being 14 and Tim being 12 when he dies are long and complicated, but for a brief overview:

We know they’re almost exactly two years apart because Jason turned 18 on Aug 16th in Detective Comics #790, and just a while before that, Tim had turned 16 on July 19th in Robin Vol. 2 #116. That would make them around 1 year 11 months apart. The death certificate in The Batman Files says Jason was 15 when he died on April 27. However, Jay dying in April and Tim being 13 when his training starts a few months later (implied to be late summer/early fall, in Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying; age 13 confirmed again in Batman #448) and then December and more than 6 months passing before Tim is finally said to be 14 starting high school (Robin II: Joker’s Wild), and then having to stuff Tim’s Robin training, Knightfall, Contagion, Legacy, and Aftershocks into all being while he’s 14…all make it mathematically unreasonable for Tim & Jason to be anything other than 14 and 12 when Jason dies. Tim must turn 13 after Jason’s death, right before he’s introduced, so that he has time to become Robin etc. before he turns 14. Jason being 15 really doesn't work well when comparing to other comics, so I think it makes more sense to say they for some reason rounded up his age to 15 since he would have been turning 15 in a few months. With this timeline, Jason would be roughly 14 years, 8 months, and 11 days old when he died. There IS a comic (Batman #416) that implies Jason was Robin for longer than this would require, but the timeline for that makes my head hurt and it was contradicted by Nightwing: Year One anyway. There’s also the case of Dick’s age compared to them, which bitimdrake has already gone into depth about and also makes it less likely Jason was 15 since Dick was 19 when he became Nightwing (Batman #416) and at most 21 after Tim already became Robin (Deathstroke Annual 1, 1992). TL;DR: Jason could, theoretically, have been 15 when he died, but it makes the timeline so wonky to do that and 14 almost 15 works way better.

My personal headcanon is Jason drops out of 5th grade at age 10, probably due to homelife issues. Catherine Todd gets sick, and a year or more passes of Jason not being in school while she’s sick. It’s not entirely clear when Jason becomes homeless, though Batman #426 says he “disappeared” (according to his old neighbor) after his mom died to avoid getting put in a state home. Catherine dies in the closest February to when Dick quits being Robin/gets fired at age 19. Then Jason gets adopted at age 12, turns 13, and goes into 6th grade right after. This would match up perfectly for Jason to be in 7th grade by the time he’s 14, rather than 9th grade like most other 14 year olds.

(Which, at that point, especially when Jason had such good grades, why not let him skip to be in his own age group? idk, maybe Bruce or Jason or Alfred had particular thoughts about Jason continuing where he left off, maybe Gotham schools have particular feelings about that, who knows)

I do want to note, I think it is very unlikely Tim and Jason attended the same school in pre-Crisis canon. Jason’s school for 7th grade wasn’t specified, though in Batman and Robin Vol. 1 #25 he says he went to Thomas Wayne Middle School for 3 months (why only 3 months??? eerily that is the same amount of time between a spring semester starting & Jason’s April deathdate...an implication Jason switched schools or was homeschooled at Wayne Manor for a bit??).

EDIT: I've recently looked it up and realized some schools in the US do include 5th grade as middle school. So if Jason dropped out of 5th grade, at Thomas Wayne Middle School, three months after starting there, that could be an explanation for why he said that.

It seems like (but not totally sure) Jason probably went to public school, which would match up with Robin: Year One showing Dick go to a public middle school, too.

On the other hand, we know for sure that Tim attended various private boarding schools throughout his childhood (as stated in Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, Robin III: Cry of the Huntress, etc.) so I just really don’t think they were at the same schools. If you wanted to, though, you could easily make them go to the same schools in fanfic so they could be in the same classes.

Daily update post:

There's been talk about another hostage deal. I don't refer to that much, because so much of it is happening behind the scenes, is not being reported on, or is deliberately lied about to put pressure on one of the factors in the equation, I don't see a point in talking about it unless there's confirmation that there is a deal. That's what I did before, that's what I'll continue to do.

There's more than enough proof that Hamas used the hospitals in Gaza as bases for their terrorist activity, I've written about it multiple times, and yet the lie that Hamas did no such thing is SO big, and SO many people and organizations, which are considered reputable, were complicit in covering for Hamas' crimes, that every additional piece of evidence matters. Now we have the confession of a Gaza hospital director, who admits that he not only collaborated with Hamas' terrorist usage of his hospital, he actually joined Hamas, and was a member of this terrorist organization himself. He also testifies that Hamas used hospitals, because it considered them safe places (meaning, they knew the IDF is NOT going to attack there).

I mentioned in my daily post yesterday, that the Houthis' attempt at blockading Israel has become a threat to global economy. Today, the US has accordingly announced an international coalition of 10 countries so far (officially, it's reported that some countries will participate anonymously) to combat this terrorist threat from Yemen, funded by Iran. There's at least one Arab country that officially joined this coalition, Bahrain (one of the Arab countries that Israel has peace with). This reminds me once again of the First Gulf War. World order in regards to Iran is taking shape in front of our eyes. This is important stuff, with consequences much bigger and longer lasting than the war in Gaza, though very much connected to it (even if we won't feel them immediately).

Another drone from Lebanon infiltrated Israel's north today, it was intercepted by the IDF. I'll also take this opportunity for a reminder that rocket fire into Israel continues, even if I don't mention it in every update post. In the last 24 hours, many rockets were fired into Tel Aviv and central Israel.

A Hamas money launderer, in charge of transferring money from Iran and other countries to Hamas, money which fuels the organization's terrorist activities and fighting, has been killed in Gaza.

Actor Alec Baldwin was stopped by anti-Israel protesters, when he happened to pass by them in NYC. They demanded he condemn Israel, because apparently if you're a celebrity, you HAVE to have an opinion about every political subject in the world, and it's okay to harass you about it in your private time. That's not bullying if you're famous. But what's even more infuriating, is that the protesters implied Baldwin wouldn't condemn the Jewish state, because he works in Hollywood, meaning they repeated the age old antisemitic trope that Jews control the American film industry. These are the same people who make it unsafe for Jews to leave council meetings that discuss the war, without police protection. At what point do we call out this violent, bullying behavior, harming regular people, as an illegitimate form of protesting?

These are Amiram Cooper, Yoram Metzger and Chaim Perry. All of them are in their 80's.

They've been kidnapped by Hamas, which released a vid of them in captivity. The vid has not been published in Israeli media, as seems to have been the general policy when it comes to this part of Hamas' psychological warfare. I heard the familiy members (who obviously were shown the vid) of two of these kidnapped men. Both relatives said that all three men (who are from the same community) don't look like themselves, that they lost a lot of weight and seem to be in a bad shape.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

I think people forget a lot of these things we do in fandom spaces such as writing, painting and discussing and analysing works are hobbies that spark joy. The world we live in should not revolve with every breath we take around consumerism. Yet we describe what we create as content, and have discussions about whether one is allowed to give criticism on these works, with the argument that people want only positive comments because it's all made to be consumed and we live on praise (referring to this tweet and of course several discussions floating around Tumblr).

AO3 is a platform used by many different people in many different ways, who all may have differing approaches (hence this discussion coming up so often - there probably isn't a definitive answer that defines everyone!). But I think what's most important is that at the end of the day, it is free content (HATE the word content btw) that many people create as a HOBBY. The same goes for works here on tumblr. There is no obligation for it to hold quality, and people aren't necessarily looking to improve or be star writers, artists or video/gif editors! Of course we want praise, but that's not necessarily because we have made content for consumption - it's because we're having fun with a hobby. If it wasn't an enjoyable pastime, we wouldn't do it, and we'd certainly not pour hours, days, months or even years into works. (You do put that much time into something to create quality sometimes (sometimes just because life gets in the way or you work slowly in general), but you cannot keep that up if you don't enjoy what you're doing.) You don't shit on someone's hobby. You also don't go "here's how to improve" unprompted. You just go "that's lovely, thank you for sharing, I'm sharing your joy for what you created or the source material it's based on! And here's potentially a detailed account of things I enjoyed or noted!" (At least, I think you should)

Now on the other hand, there ARE also people on AO3 who may want to be professional authors (hi, me!). But a commenter CANNOT distinguish without asking or without seeing an author's note that this is the case. So I think because of this that the default approach to AO3, from a commenter's pov, should be to assume something was published by a hobbyist who wants to share joy and get positive feedback rather than someone looking for criticism UNLESS EXPLICITLY NOTED OTHERWISE. Like I said, I would love to be a published author someday! But I personally actually don't really want criticism on my AO3 fics. I write those for fun/as a hobby. The act of writing them IS hugely beneficial for me as a way of exploring and developing my writing skill, don't get me wrong! But that's because the act of practice itself already does a lot for that, and because I re-read what I write a TON. So I catch mistakes. Sometimes I correct them even after having published something, if I think it's important. If I want critical feedback, for someone to look at my writing and tell me about good and bad and opportunities for growth, I will ask. Until then, leave me alone with that and just tell me you enjoyed the work. And if you didn't, there's literally no need to tell me. You can just find something else you do enjoy, like I will start a different work if I no longer enjoy what I'm working on. I made that bc I wanted to. And another author may approach this differently again; they may want to use betas or refuse to re-read their stuff, they may want to use AO3 as a platform to gain feedback with which to grow their skill. Like I said, my approach doesn't equal someone else's. But I think it makes it that person's responsibility to then declare that on their work, simply because so many people will be doing it as a hobby rather than a pure skill boost. As I said - if we didn't enjoy it, we wouldn't do it. We always create with a love for the material and a love for the craft. Everything else is extra.

So no. I personally do not create things as a transactional item for which I demand payment in praise (if not money). I create because it makes me happy. Getting feedback makes me happier, and makes it more likely for me to keep going with that project. But otherwise I'll move onto another. You may consider that a transactional thing, but I don't think it should be considered so at ALL. Because it isn't, not to me. And I suspect it isn't for many more people. So let's ask ourselves instead: why do we define happiness as a transaction? Why can we no longer exchange joy without sticking a label of consumption and price on it? And why must everything created be of quality or strive for improvement?

Let's shift the narrative back. Let's consider hobbies and creative endeavours for what they TRULY give both us creators and audiences alike: joy.

In reference to your recent ask. I know some writers, me included bare really scared to ingest media in the genres we are currently writing in, for fear of accidentally sounding like the stories we just consumed. Is studying different genres before drafting actually important, like you said books that have been doing well in the last ten years for that specific genre?

first, i think it's flawed logic to avoid reading your genre because you're afraid of copying someone else. unless you straight up take their words, the worst that will happen is that someone will be better than you or have a similar idea as you and you'll feel bad about it. but you need to know what's out there in order to make informed decisions in your own work, in the same way you have to do research to develop a thesis in an academic paper. just because a novel is creative writing doesn't mean you can write in a vacuum. all creativity exists in response to existing work; your work can only ever get better by reading what else is out there, because there's more stuff you can respond to. and if you do take from someone else, by the time your manuscript gets into the hand of agents and editors, anything you might have borrowed will have been distorted into something new or completely edited out.

but that's broadly speaking. while actively drafting something new, writing's relationship with reading is a complicated one. i think it's important to read in your genre between projects (at least), and once you have a full draft, that's when you might want to begin more in depth market research, because that will help you create your pitch. market research isn't reading for funsies, it's developing a familiarity with the greater industry of publishing. that means you may only read the first 25% of a book and then the last ten pages, and move on to the next thing. reading for research is a completely different skill than reading for fun. you take what you need and you move on. your genre, whatever it is, is smaller than it seems, and the more you know about it, the more real it becomes to you. eventually you'll walk into a book store, go to your genre's section, and one out of every twenty books is going to be by an author you've met, worked with, or befriended.

you may be interested in more than one genre, or writing cross-genre, and that's fine. actually, that narrows your work significantly. the world of literary or upmarket science fiction, for example, is far smaller than literary fiction and science fiction separately. it's also a much newer market. if you're writing some kind of experimental, highbrow post-apocalypse novel, your predecessors are the road, station eleven, and a handful of others.

it may seem overwhelming, but the key is to read what interests you and let it inspire your work. ideally what interests you is also what you write, but i know that's not always a 1:1 scenario. then when you're ready to start sending your work out, that's when it's most important to buckle down and see what else is out there, so you're not sending an MS out into the world thinking you've created something wholly original when your basic concept hit the bestseller list last year and that author already sold film rights. you need to be able to acknowledge that other text in your query or pitch and explain how your story is different.

What I hate about modern-day comic book writing is that it's so jokey. The Riddler can break out of Arkham, kill twelve people, and threaten to blow up a subway car, and everyone will act like they're just LARPing? There'll be random hook-ups and a bunch of pop culture references and the whole situation will be treated with these knowing kid gloves, like everyone involved is Ralph and Sam clocking into work.

And you can't even say that it's lighthearted irreverence or dark humor, because the moment one of the writer's pet causes come up, THEN everyone gets all serious and solemn. So you get these scenes where the characters are treating gentrification like it's the worst thing imaginable, then playing grabass with Mr. Serial Killer like he's just their wacky neighbor.

It completely takes me out of the story, because it's clear the writer is only going to invest actual pathos and engagement into this world when it can be spun to some social justice angle.

I mean, even the shipping... the shipping is arguably bad on its own, but the way straight couples are treated like a retarded soap opera, pairing up at random and then breaking up for no reason, while gay couples are always treated like the second coming of romance and they're forever endgame... how does anyone take this stuff seriously?

Why is marriage this terrible thing that ages the characters and makes them boring, unless it's a gay couple, in which case them getting married is some long overdue triumph over adversity and the best possible direction the story could take and you're just supposed to marinate in how much sex these two characters are having with each other. It's not even porn. I could respect porn. It has a purpose. This is just like... there is a literally published Harley Quinn high school AU comic.

And you know, I watch a Mission: Impossible movie, it has real stakes. Tom Cruise is going "we have to stop this guy before he sets off the nuke!" That's all I'm asking for. That they treat the situation like it's a real thing that's happening to them and not a game show they're on. But these are such shitty writers that they can't put themselves into the headspace of "how would I feel if this were happening to me?"

Okay I promise this is genuine and I don't want to send hate, and if you don't believe it, fair...but why post the works involving minors and nsfw (yes that includes the incest) ? I do believe that you can write whatever you want, and I don't think you're some boggeyman that get his kick of writing about abused kids or whatever bullshit. But there's a difference between writing it and publishing it, and while I think it's unfair your blog was straight up deleted and not flagged, I can also understand why Tumblr did it : I read the ToS, and I don't think they're just for real minors (but it's my personnal interpretation). This type of work (text, art, etc) can be shared with a group of friends or a group of people who're all used to this kind of content, and maybe it would prevent the risk of people stumbling unto texts involving Logan and David for example (happened to me once, oof) and more importantly, Tumblr throwing a fit? You're an amazing artist and while I haven't kept up with your content for a while (I unfollowed when you started posting about incest and non-con against minors sorry, it's a topic I really don't like), I don't want you to keep on being flagged and banned forever.

the simplest answer i have is because it's part of who i am as a creator, and sharing those parts has not just been extremely liberating and cathartic for me, but for others too.

that's one of the most important things to me. it would be different if all i got was hate and not a shred of support or positivity -- if nobody told me that they liked it, that it helped them be more comfortable with themselves and their own work, then i don't know if i would. it's hard to say whether i would just get bogged down by hate and give it up or if it would keep going regardless.

but aside from that, it's the principle. it's the fact that i, as well as similar creators, am not forcing anyone to see this content. i am not posting things uncensored for anyone to stumble upon. i always use very specific warnings, read mores, and links. not once would you encounter a post of mine like that and see anything explicit unless you chose to view it.

and that's the principle i'm fighting for: choice.

this website used to be place where you could pretty much post anything, way before the Naughty Ban, because we understood it was all about personal choice. about curating your own content, blocking tags and blogs you didn't want to see, unfollowing if you had to (which you have EVERY right to do, and don't need to apologize for!). most of us followed online etiquette and those who didn't, again, you can just choose to unfollow or block. not report them just for posting shit you don't like.

the TOS explicitly states real minors. if they wanted to include fictional, they should have stated that. if they wanted to include fictional, they should not only reference the actual crime, but the thought crime of creating things that don't adhere to morals in reality.

personally, i think it's one or two people throwing a fit, but that's just me. i think my content, which is not even posted directly to this site and is by no means being shoved in anyone's face, is the least of this site's problems or concerns.

but anyways, that's why i'm ready to die on this hill. because i've met so many wonderful people from being open about what i post, no matter how disturbing it may be, and because we should all be able to post freely as creators if we're not directly showing anything explicit that could violate TOS.

Why Anita Driver should be Stopped - An Essay(ish) Post

Hi. So I don’t often do long posts like this, you probably know me as a fic writer and shitposter, but this situation has been irking me since I first read about it and so I only felt it right to explain why.

First off, I wanna say that I understand what she’s doing (I’m going to refer to Anita as she/her throughout this though I have no clue on the author’s actual gender identity). I think she’s very intelligent, using pastiche and parody to create content tailored towards a certain specific audience.

But as someone who knows their fandom history, and has moved in fanfiction circles for over 10 years, the attention one specific book I’m not going to refer to by title because I may throw up in my mouth a little, has received has me very worried for F1 RPF writers as a whole.

RPF has always been a main stay of fanfiction culture. Though there are many ‘antis’ who think it’s wrong and inappropriate to write about real people, RPF fandoms, think One Direction, BTS etc have always been some of the biggest out there.

And I’m sure you’ve seen as popular fan works such as the ‘After’ series by Anna Todd and ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ by E.L. James have transitioned from fan work into published original novels.

Because of this, fan works are booming. Fanfiction is less of a dirty little secret now, confined to locked sites and email chains, but is something that many people know about even if they don’t consume it themselves.

And so, enter Anita Driver. Capitalising on the BookTok trend of ‘spicy’ fiction (what I would call erotica), the author has taken it upon herself to self publish a novel in that similar style but using Daniel Ricciardo not just as inspiration, but as the main protagonist.

I get what she’s trying to do, I really do. I can see that it’s parody, it’s not meant to be taken seriously, but firstly it’s illegal and secondly it really puts fanfiction communities at risk.

Part One: Defamation

Legally, you can’t take someone else’s identity and profit off of it without their explicit consent to do so. There’s a reason Harry Styles became Hardin Scott, and Edward Cullen became Christian Grey. That’s someone else’s intellectual property, or their identity. You cannot legally make a profit out of that. The subject could quite easily build a lawsuit against the author, and the author would have no grounds for defence. There’s a reason AO3 do not allow you to share fundraising links or anything else similar to that, and it’s to protect themselves and the authors against possible lawsuits.

I’d also just like to add that there’s plenty of erotic F1 inspired books out there. I haven’t read them myself but I know that the ‘Dirty Air’ series draws inspiration from current drivers on the grid, but doesn’t explicitly mention anyone real by name! Every character is the intellectual property of the author, it is original fiction that can safely make a profit.

By using Daniel Ricciardo’s image and personality, Anita Driver is putting herself at risk, in this case, not for theft of intellectual property, but of defamation. I haven’t read the book, of course I haven’t read the book, but I can easily believe that the content within could be considered to be defamatory as it may damage public perceptions of him. Now I’m no expert on law, I took a semester of media law and that’s it, but people have definitely sued for less.

In U.K. law (which I’m going off because I know the most about it) “A statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant.” (x) It could easily be said that portraying Daniel in this way would cause damage to his reputation. We know his image isn’t squeaky clean, but having this book using his name could easily lead people to believe that he was in some way associated with its production. I don’t think anyone would like their public perception to be that they actively encourage and fund the production of erotica about them.

In a lawsuit, Amazon could also be held liable for this, as their website is the main distribution platform for the book, and Anita Driver is a pseudonym and and an unknown.

“It is a defence for the operator to show that it was not the operator who posted the statement on the website. The defence is defeated if the claimant shows that it was not possible for the claimant to identify the person who posted the statement.” (x) If Anita Driver remains anonymous, Amazon could easily be held liable in a court case. Because of this, it would be in their best interests to remove the book to avoid this. (I do not like Amazon, and while they would easily be able to fight the court case with their billions, it would be much easier for them to remove the book and avoid any possible cases.)

So honestly, it is easy to see why this book is a danger to the author. Now I’m not saying that Daniel would necessarily sue. I think he’d probably just laugh it off even if it does make him feel uncomfortable (which it probably does, it would me!) because he has more important things to do. But I honestly don’t know how F1 and Liberty Media might react to this, they would definitely be more likely considering Daniel’s Reputation in turn reflects their own.

Part Two: Danger to Fan Works

This leads me in nicely to part two, actually, because legal threats against fanfiction writers have been a real problem to various communities over the years. Anne Rice, creator of the ‘Interview with a Vampire’ series, had all works purged from the internet in the early 2000s, and threatened writers with legal action if they continued to post fanfiction.

Fanfiction has always been a niche. It’s a small part of the internet for those who want to put their blorbos in situations, or just to think about them fucking nasty. But fan works haven’t always been accepted. Many people still look down on fanfiction, particularly those feature OCs (original characters) or reader inserts.

Anita Driver’s book would be more at home on Wattpad than Kindle Unlimited. It is a fan work. It is written by fans, for fans, and should be kept to that specific audience (without paying for it of course, because as I said, it’s very illegal!)

A work of fanfiction being a book is nothing new, as I mentioned earlier, the ‘After’ series and ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ started out life as fanfiction. But when published, they were no longer fanfiction, they became original works of their own.

Putting fan works out in the open like that only threatens the F1 RPF community. It leaves us open, vulnerable, more so than normal. Sites like AO3 can only protect us to a certain extent, we can lock fics, sure, but that only stops those who don’t have an account from accessing our works.

If this one book is out there, who knows what may happen next. All it takes is for someone to say ‘I don’t want works featuring me published online and I will threaten a lawsuit’ and we’re back to email chains and password locked neocities webpages.

So it genuinely makes me worry.

And with the recent development of Dax Shepard sharing the book with Daniel himself, I feel that it’s all just too close. Fanfiction is never meant to be seen or read by its original subjects. Sure, they may actively seek it out if they want to, but unless they explicitly consent to it, they shouldn’t be seeing it. Daniel has had no say in the matter, it seems. It is being forced on him, which is going to look bad for the fanfiction community as a whole.

Part Three: Conclusion

Honestly, I don’t know whether I’m just being overly freaked out by this whole thing, I hope it just nicely blows over, the book disappears from people’s minds and we get to just keep our niche little side of the internet safe. But part of me is scared.

I’m scared for what may come, if the book is popular, will people try and emulate it? Will people start ripping fics from Tumblr/AO3/Wattpad to sell on Amazon to make a quick buck off the back of this? And will we have another Anne Rice type situation which kills the community completely?

I don’t know. And that’s what worries me. I hope that this whole thing blows over, that Daniel isn’t too freaked out, and that Anita Driver stops using ai image generators to make her book covers (Lance has waaay too many fingers on her most recent one. Caught you out babes x)

This is the end, for now. I suppose I’ll probably add to this if there are any more developments, and if anyone has anything to add (maybe some better law knowledge because mine is basic) please feel free!

Thanks for reading.

Since the Hbomberguy video has dragged everyone back into talking about academia, I have a rant:

The take, "Academic papers and academia in general tend toward a writing style that is intentionally inaccessible to maintain standards of ableism and academic elitism" (woke) is not the same statement as, "Because I do not understand this thing about this topic I have never researched at this level before, the work is inaccessible and therefore in Bad Faith™️" (not only broke but fucking wild).

Working as an academic advisor in my senior year, my specialty was helping people with writing. That included reviewing essays and helping with research mostly, as both of my degrees are research and writing intensive. Even with the MANDATORY Introduction to College Writing class freshman were forced into - unless, of course, you either tested well in AP English Language or passed the writing assessment that allowed you to skip the course (which most people didn't) - I often found myself explaining that academic papers are written with the understanding that the reader already possesses some meaningful amount of context. Students would come to me with full confidence just to show a paper reliant on paraphrasing and regurgitating the source text, ended with whatever hand-wavey, unresearched thoughts they had while reading and call it /Analysis/. Thus would begin the long, arduous process of teaching them how to actually research and structure an academic essay from scratch, down to identifying reputable sources and deciding how many is too many quotes.

As such, while it saddens me to see people put off of academic writing (and research as a whole) for the reason of inaccessibility, I get it. Disregarding the prevalence of paywalls blocking credible published works from the public, I'd argue that most papers assigned to studentsr weren't actually written for students. The 25 page article in the well established medical journal is going to be laden with esoterica and intracultural references; it was written for peer review by other professionals in their field with a baseline of pre-requisite knowledge. Similarly, if you're doing independent research and just roll into a random a decades old article you found on Google Scholar, it's likely to be confusing if you have no backgound in the topic. The expectation that anyone can just dive into a research paper written by an expert and immediately grasp the information provided completely misses the fact that learning is an active practice requiring critical thinking and access to reliable resources.

Why does that matter? Because the core facet of research is taking that confusing, inaccessible academic journal or data and /making it make sense/. Taking the time to learn terms you don't recognize, to read ALL OF the provided context, to reword and recontextualize the information to be digestible to an audience without expertise on the topic, that's THE POINT. When an assigment asks for ten sources, it's not for the sake of making you work harder. The entire exercise is to have you compare and contrast things like word choice, historical context, and author bias so you can synthesize your own understanding of the topic. Entire categories of the research and essay writing community exist simply for this goal: to make complex academic literature accessible to general audiences. It's what Internet Historian and Illuminaughti (fuck if I spelled that right) were pretending to do!

There are a lot of valid points to be made in the discussion of academia being inherently inaccessible. Unfortunately the Internet, specifically social media, has a way of boiling actual conversations down to the bare bones of "Is hard and I don't like it, therefore is bad."

(Note: This does not apply to professors/educators assigning a bunch of text without doing any actual teaching. Expecting everyone to be able to read something and just get it isn't a "challenge in critical thinking", it's bad teaching and makes things harder for people who may already find a learning challenging or inaccessible. Do better. )

Is academia filled with conventions that make it widely inaccessible to people from all education levels? Yes.

Do some people write with as many big words or as much autofellating fluff as possible purely for the purpose of sounding smart? YES.

But, as an academic writer and reader myself, and as a person with a bevvy of peers I respect deeply in the field of research, a significant amount of these articles are written in good faith by people who are using the vocabulary they have. The use of "big" words, esoteric references, and hyper-specific language isn't based in the desire for exclusion, but rather clarity for a peer group who are comfortable with the language being used is it's intended context.

Sorry about all this. I just actually enjoy academia when it's about the love of learning rather than being a pissing contest/bitchfest. Ignore me 😭

Archetypes are fine and originality isn't as important as you think

I think one of the most shocking things I learned in my writing class when we brought in a professional agent to lecture was that they really, really don't want your original story idea.

Agents and publishers want to know where to put your book on the shelf. They want to know which recent books it resembles, not super-hits like Game of Thrones. When they ask "What two books is this book like?" they want recent, practical examples of which non-Bestselling authors' work your work most resembles. Nothing turns them off faster than "This is totally original" / "This is like nothing you've ever seen."

Similarly, most audiences don't want totally original. I don't mean that pejoratively. We joke in the fanfic world that everyone just wants to read their favorite ship falling in love over and over but... that is actually true. That is an engaged audience. That said, fatigue does set in when all the fics or books begin to sound exactly the same, so what's the deal there, huh?

The deal is: agents, publishers, and audiences want the familiar thing they know they love with your unique spin on it that only you as a writer can create.

Now, my theory on how to achieve this, as a pre-pro who thinks about this a lot but doesn't claim to have a solution, is that this is what, "Write what you know," really refers to. Not that garbage your high school English teacher told you that you shouldn't set a story in a fantasy world because you've never lived there.

No, what "write what you know" means in fanfic is: take these characters and filter them through your personal experience and/or your interests. Which are also things you know. That can mean "I put them in a Coffeeshop AU because I've actually worked in a coffee shop and I want to show y'all what it's really like there" to "I'm personally interested in explorations of grief so I want to do hurt/comfort for these two around grief," or any other number of variations. It's why a weird concept written passionately is 10x more interesting than trying to chase what's "popular" in fandom, people want to see the uniqueness brought by the simple fact that you are writing it. You can give 10 authors the same prompt and they'll end up with 10 wildly different fics, I guarantee you, that's why no one gets tired of the same tropes being played over and over.

Now, for original fiction, at which I have less practice but which I think about a lot because I want to change that, I think again people get too hung up on being totally original and in this case I want to talk about a tendency to design an "original character" by focusing all the little details of their character before they start writing. The thing is, a lot of those little details don't matter. (It's better to start with an archetype and layer on those details, but we'll get to that.) There's danger in that, in part because your character needs to have an arc where they change between the beginning and the end, more than we need to know details like their favorite foods. Their favorite food should be whatever is most thematically relevant in the moment.

IE, when writing a story about losing a parent, whatever the parent made for them is their favorite food. When writing about someone who needs to reconnect with their inner child, greasy Pizza Hut pizza might be their favorite food because it's about something that gives the character pleasure that doesn't play to adult expectations on them. See? Knowing they like Pop Tarts jus because they like Pop Tarts is utterly meaningless, unless for example, you the author loves Pop Tarts and you know you can write a stirring monologue about how amazing Pop Tarts are that will make the audience feel your characters adoration of Pop Tarts. But you can substitute literally any food and write the same monologue, it has to either have emotional resonance or plot relevance, otherwise it doesn't matter what the food is.

But going back to characters, I think just starting with an archetype, adding a few details from your own life that you know you can write authentically, and then kicking this character through the mousetrap maze of your plot, really goes a lot further in making them unique than any amount of pre-planning of details that get you bogged down. And most popular characters reduce down to Archetype + Story-Relevant Details pretty damn quickly when you look at them.

Here's an example:

Last of Us = is a Lone Wolf and Cub archetype, ie, grizzled man takes a dependent child on a dangerous journey. That it's a post-apocalyptic landscape riddled by zombies tweaks the necessities of what skills the characters like Joel and Ellie need to survive. Add some author relevant details - he's from Texas but he lives in Boston now, he had a daughter who died (relevant to the plot, which is him adopting a "new" daughter), and he is former military and a blue-collar worker who therefore has the skills to survive in this setting, and you've got a pretty solid character that people grasp and people love right away, especially the more humanizing moments you throw in there, like the moment we see him break down when his daughter dies.

It should also be remembered: passion is what is needed here. You don't pick a trope you hate unless you're setting out to subvert it. You pick details that you care about and that you want to write about. Everything needs to be things you authentically care about writing and innovating on because you're gonna spend a lot of time with this story, more than anyone else. But the idea that one needs to start whole cloth, rather than focusing on the tropes, stories, archetypes, and personal experience that you care about, is utter nonsense and in fact does not actually sell.

Ked, as an experienced writer in fandoms, what would you do if you'd see a fic that's eerily similar to another one by anon author? I really have the feeling second fic basically stole the first fic's premise and most of the events with some twists, it's very specific so hardly the same idea occuring to two people, and the style is too different and the second one is published under a username. And it doesn't refer to the other fic existing at all.

Honestly, if you're asking what I, personally, would do, if I, specifically, saw this?

Unless there's big chunks of straight up plagiarized words, or they are trying to profit from it in a way that would do harm, I'd personally mind my own business. I have told folks before that if they don't like something in a fic (including my own), they can go write their own fic, and that includes their own version of the story. Yes, even if it takes the same turns mine did, yes even if they have the same kinds of conversations, yes even if it's basically the same story written in their style. I have seen fics that are straight up MY fics, rewritten, and I cannot stress enough how much I do not personally care as long as they're not trying to pass my actual written word off as their own, or profiting in a way harmful to me.

If you're asking what YOU should do, I can't answer that. There are people who do not feel the way I feel. There are people who get very angry when someone transforms a transformative work. I understand that it can be a very sensitive thing to some people, I'm just not one of them. You should do what you feel is appropriate to the situation. Maybe start by asking the actual author (if it's "anon" vs "orphaned" then the fic is still attached to the "anonymous" author's acct, you just can't see that... but they can, they will get comments, unlike with orphaned fics) what they would want in such a situation, and/or at best let them know about the other story and let the author decide what to do.

Shoscombe Old Place

The final Holmes story published by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1927, this forms part of Case-Book. Doyle would write a number of other works, including two Professor Challenger stories, before his death in July 1930.

This was originally trailed as "The Adventure of the Black Spaniel".

Newmarket Heath is the sight of Newmarket Racecourse, one of the most prominent horse racing venues in the UK. Therefore, this was a rather public horsewhipping. I am pretty sure that the Jockey Club, which regulated the sport until 2006, would have a thing or two to say about actual bodily harm.

The Grand National takes place at Aintree every year and is the most famous steeplechase race in Europe; even those don't normally bet will take part, either directly or via a sweepstake.

The race has become controversial due to many horses being fatally injured when falling, frequently at the steep drop of Becher's Brook, and then euthanised over the years; various changes have been made to try to make things safer. There have been five horse deaths since the 2012 changes from 595 runners; you are fully entitled to think five is five too many. 2023 saw Animal Rising protestors attempt to stop the race and cause a delay; Hill Sixteen ended up dying, with his trainer blaming the protestors for spooking the horses.

"The Derby" refers to the Epsom Derby, held every year on the first Saturday of June. It is the flat race with the highest prize in British horse racing, with a first prize of £885,781.84 in 2023, when Ryan Moore won it riding Auguste Rodin.

"The Jews" refers to moneylenders, the stereotypical profession that Jewish people practiced. Most Jews by 1902 did not of course.

"Halt-on-demand" stations are those where passengers have to request the train stops there either via informing the guard in advance if getting off, or by other methods if getting on, like holding your arm out for a bus, although electronic methods are in increasing use. Great Britain has around 135 of them.

Historically fishing was a major source of food for poorer rural families. From 1865, you needed a licence for salmon and trout fishing, although not for other fish. The rod licence's provisions were expanded over time to prevent overfishing and you now need a licence, as well as permission of the property owner, for most fishing in England and Wales. Not in most of Scotland and Northern Ireland though. There will also be restrictions on what you can keep (which has caused issues with foreign anglers who generally don't operate on the 'put it back' principle) and the whole angling business is now pretty heavily regulated. Fish without a licence and you can be on the hook for a fine of up to £2,500.

It is a legal requirement to register a death within five days in England and Wales. There is also a separate offence of preventing a lawful and decent burial, which has a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, but it is fairly rare for someone to be charged with it unless as part of a homicide case.

Genuine question; how is it self publishing with Lulu and are there any copyright issues? Thinking about taking some of my older world building and turning it into a Actual Novel.

I hope it's okay if I answer this publicly, I've had a few questions about it recently!

I've been doing it long enough that my frame of reference for difficulty may be a little skewed, but it's relatively straightforward -- Lulu has a publishing wizard that walks you through selecting options, uploading a document, adding a cover, and such. There is still a lot you have to do yourself that they don't really tell you how to, but it's not hard to google for some and they do have forums that cover other bits.

There are generally speaking no copyright issues with going through a self-publisher, but it depends on the services you obtain from them. With Lulu -- as with, I think, most Print-On-Demand printers -- there's an array of routes to go from unpublished document to published book.

So you can do it all yourself -- you can edit, proof, typeset, design the cover, purchase an ISBN, and do all the marketing. Or, at any step in the process, you can purchase services from Lulu that will do that for you. I can't recommend purchasing their proofing/design/marketing stuff; on the one hand it's where they make their money, but because of that they're not providing super great value for what you pay. And as a self-publisher, unless you have a massive platform or great marketing and hustle, you probably won't recoup in sales what you paid for.

Whether or not you buy other services, Lulu charges a per-book print fee, but you set your own prices, so like the book might cost $5 to print, but if you set the price at $10 you're making a pretty sweet profit per book. Some other POD publishers also charge a "setup" fee, but I'm not familiar with what that entails.

In any case, there's only one point at which copyright becomes an issue, which is the ISBN -- the serial number and barcode that identifies your book so that (for example) bookstores can sell it and libraries can stock it. You don't HAVE to have an ISBN, but it makes it much harder to get it distributed if you don't.

You can obtain an ISBN on your own -- cost varies by country, many make them available for free but in the US a single ISBN is $125 or you can buy like 100 for $500. If you want to have one but don't want to buy one, Lulu will give you one, but they then become the publisher of record. I don't really know how that works in terms of copyright, but it does impact some rights to the book, so if you use a Lulu-issued ISBN that would be something to research. If you're just publishing a book through them without using their ISBN, they're basically a printer -- they have no right to your book as an item of intellectual property.

Now, outside of copyright considerations, it is certainly more work to self-pub. If you want it to look professional you have to have access to a good program for typesetting, you have to know how to set margins and gutters, title/author headers and page number footers, and if you want to do an epub that's a whole other ball of wax.

I don't get super fancy. I typeset in Word, because Libre Office and Open Office (at least last I checked) didn't have a few of the features Word has, but any other program has a much higher learning barrier to entry. You also have to upload the document as a PDF, so you have to be able to save/print it as a PDF.

Lulu does have a cover-design app you can use to make a cover, but it's extremely basic, so if you don't want your cover to look like it was designed in Canva, you'll need access to a design program like Photoshop or Glimpse, or to commission a cover from someone who does. Once you've uploaded your document, Lulu will give you a template that tells you exactly what size your cover should be, where the bleed margins are, and etc.

And then we get into the nitty-gritty stuff like how only certain fonts can be used for the document (there are twelve fonts that Lulu allows, it's listed on their site somewhere, I just use Garamond) and you need to make sure any art that goes on the cover is either free for use or Creative Commons or similar (or you buy the art for use). Google does have a handy Creative Commons filter on their imagesearch function, which has been useful for me in the past, but on the copyright pages of many of my books you'll see credit given for images used.

So to do your first book there is a bit of a steep learning curve, but once you're past the curve, you'll have some pretty good skills for future publishing. I did a book a year for several years, in my twenties, and then didn't publish at all for several years, and had to relearn a lot when I started publishing again, but it came back pretty quickly. And depending on how fancy or professional you want your book to look, you don't necessarily have to put in a TON of work. Like, I try to make mine look as much like pro-published books as possible, but some authors on Lulu just shove a formatted word document into a PDF and call it a day, they don't bother with headers/footers and fancy formatting and such.

In any case, while I think going the professional route of querying publishers and agents is laudable and certainly I wouldn't advise anyone to go to selfpub first thing, selfpub can be awfully satisfying, and it starts to feel kind of like a fun hobby after a while.