My older sister and I have been sharing stories for as long as I can remember. From telling each other tales before we fell asleep, to swapping Nancy Drew titles from the stacks we’d both brought home from the library and had already finished, to her (wickedly) reading me the last chapter to Treasures of the Snow and me (wickedly) listening to her read it. (Wickedly because it robbed our mom of the chance to share the ending with us.)
Even now, we exchange titles of books we liked and think the other might like.
Some books and some authors I know will appeal to my sister with the surety I know that once I read her mind. The memory is vague, the details lost, but the certainty that I knew exactly what she was thinking, that for a moment I had stepped inside her mind, has stayed with me all these years the way the feeling of a dream sometimes stays with me throughout the day even after the dream itself fades to mist and disappears.
Recently, we’ve both been drawn more and more to stories which show a character healing from trauma, resolving or taking steps to resolve conflict, learning from mistakes, or consciously acting rather than reacting. And in those cases where the character does react, perhaps flying off the proverbial handle, there’s still a sense of self-awareness or adaptability. In the cases where the character makes the wrong choice, of course, there are consequences, but usually there’s also the gift of a realization, a chance for growth, or an opportunity for forgiveness.
In the same way that we, my sister and I, don’t want to be stagnant in our distress, trauma, mistakes, patterns, actions and reactions, we don’t want stagnant characters either.
We both found Becky Chambers around the same time. I’d discovered the Monk and Robot series. My sister had found one of Chambers’ more space-bound Sci-Fi stories perhaps The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.
After we’d swapped those titles and read all the other Chambers books out there to read (not nearly enough of them), I searched for something along the lines of: “If you like Becky Chambers read…”
While on this quest (some of the recommendations being works I’d already read, others not quite achieving the right gentle feel), I discovered that Becky Chambers’ work is considered “Optimistic Sci-Fi.” (There are several articles (linked below) that talk about her writing and the terms used to describe it.)
Her stories are not set in utopias. The characters aren’t perfect. The characters don’t always get exactly what they want. No one is spared a bit of struggle or, occasionally, heartbreak. But no one is left broken. No one is left irreparably shattered. Her stories often show how division is repaired. How misconceptions are corrected. How assumptions are tested. How biases are turned to something else.
The Wired’s article says, “In a world numbed by cynicisms and divisions, Chambers’ stories are intended to repair—to warm up our insides and restore feeling.”
I haven’t read my sister’s mind since that one, oddly-remembered time (I’m not sure I ever even told her that I’d read her mind, I’d assumed she’d had access to mine at the same moment and that we’d shared that experience and it didn’t need discussion), but I also don’t have to because we can talk. And we have talked many times about how we crave the restoration of feeling, how frustrating it is in fiction (and real life) when a character doesn’t learn or grow. We talk about the power of story.
There are many, many, many, many wonderful books out there.
And when either of us finds one that shines especially brightly, we share it.
And when we can’t find those gleaming, soul-repairing stories, we mourn a little together.
For we long for restoration.
What I love about Chambers’ books—and books like A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries, Ann Leckie’s books, Piranesi by Suzanna Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series—is the hope. Is the sweet, overflowing, unrepentant hope that is offered. That something hurting in the character can be salved. Even if sometimes that hope is still wrapped up a little in suffering. Even if not everything gets fixed. It’s the hope that something better can be both imagined and realized. The world doesn’t have to end in a nuclear explosion. But if it does those left don’t have to resort to cannibalism or extreme survivalist violence.
None of these stories are set in utopias. The worlds depicted are often as unyielding and destructive as our own (sometimes that nuclear explosion has already happened). But as the characters move around in their ugly worlds, they themselves do not become ugly. In fact, they often become the glimpse of beauty, the healed and healer, the loved and loving.
The stories hold a message that says, “You might have been hurt, you might have been treated unfairly, you might not have gotten what you want in the way you wanted it, but you are here. You are alive. You are understood.”
It’s the sense of being understood, of being seen, of being heard that touches me most. To be understood and to understand at the same time; to feel that two-sided coin is to receive a gift.
One day (probably mostly due to a lack of sleep and also to a series of rejections from various areas in my life), I was feeling beaten down, low-of-spirit, and in need of understanding. Now I have many good friends who care about me and will listen, but it can be complicated to truly understand someone or to be understood. Sometimes being misheard is more frustrating than not being heard at all. Sometimes an experience in its entirety (ie., one’s entire life and all the layers therein) needs to be shared to be fully understood. At that low moment what I was dealing with was complex and multi-layered and it would have taken too long to bring someone up to speed. So, because it was also beyond what I consider to be reasonable telephoning hours, I took out my journal and wrote:
Wanting someone
who understands
What I’ve done, what I do, not to help me fix anything
but to listen, to hear, to really understand.
So I come to myself
And say, here. I am the one who knows all that.
And if I don’t exactly listen,
At least I write.
At least I write. There is power in writing. There is power in reading. There is power in story.
What stories do, what writing does is speak to the sheltered and hidden places deep within us. The complex and complicated areas. The places that we fear to let see the light of day whether because of shame, worry of ridicule, time, or something else.
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| Barnaby Frost by Laurel Lee - Illustrated by Dennis Adler |
What story does is provide universal themes for characters—and those who read about them—to walk through, to learn lessons from, to demonstrate how a great loss can be experienced and survived, it speaks to our greater human experience.
What “optimistic” stories show are the flowers growing up through the cracks in the cement. Enemies being reconciled. Anger being resolved. Trauma being addressed and comforted. Characters being accepted for who and what they are. Character (and reader) being seen and understood.
These stories don’t end happily ever after. Not necessarily. But they also don’t rule out that possibility.
Even in the moments that get me most down, I usually can remember my great fortune and my up close and personal experience with beauty. For I’ve been touched by kindness, was brought up with love, have and have kept wonderful friendships, traveled to interesting places, done exciting things, and utilized the unusual ability/opportunity to pursue the activities, topics, and work that interest me. How very lucky I am.
On the other hand, my life is also not set in a utopia. I’ve been on the tearful end of heartache, experienced loss (real and imagined), lived with physical pain, been shown my limitations, fallen off both sides of the fence of misunderstandings, plagued others and myself with my personal flaws, kept repeating unhelpful patterns, and had what I worked for, longed for, dreamed of kept just out of reach of my grasping fingers. How unlucky I am.
I’ve had both. Because that is life. That is the experience of living.
Not everything is all bad. Not everything is all good.
But story is powerful.
For nearly twenty years now, I’ve formally dedicated my focus to the craft of writing. For much of that time (and still), my desire is to have my novels traditionally published. For all of that time –even during a dark, voiceless period when I thought I’d lost touch with creativity, even after my dad died and grief whispered, “What’s the point?”—after rejections, after brush-ups with reality (like needing money to live), after pounding on doors that turned out to be walls, I’ve always come back to a new page, a new book, a new character because not to write is, for me, not to fully live.
Always, I’ve come back to story.
Now certainly, it would be so nice for my dream to come into realness. It would be nice to be paid for the work that I do. It would be most nice to share my writing with more people on a larger scale.
But story goes beyond that. It has to.
After being invited to visit their school, Kurt Vonnegut wrote back to the students at Xavier High School in New York to say that while he wouldn’t be able to visit he could advise them (among other wonderful things) to, “Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.”
Being creative is an integral part of the human experience. No matter what the outcome. At the end of the letter, Vonnegut gave those students an assignment to write a six-line, rhyming poem and to share it with no one. Then to go even further than that by tearing it into pieces and throwing it away. He said, “You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what's inside you, and you have made your soul grow.”
After I read that, I write a six-line, rhyming poem. And it does something. It makes me smile for a moment. And then I tear it up and throw it away. Did my soul grow? Maybe it did, a little bit.
In general, I write to explore myself and existence. I write to understand others. I write for fun. I write to release feelings. I write for the sheer joy of making things up. I write for many reasons.
And because my publication dreams are still important to me, I also actively query agents for my books and submit my stories to magazines.
I get a lot of rejections.
A lot.
Really a lot.
And when the despair within me cries out, “Why am I not good enough?” or “What am I doing wrong?” or “Just tell me why you said no” another part of me remembers Becky Chambers and her optimistic science fiction. Another part remembers Kurt Vonnegut’s words.
There might certainly be some fatal flaw in my stories—an inadequate something, a failing to maintain tension, an uncompelling voice, a boring plot, a slow beginning, an inability to fit some cookie-cutter mold, a lack of commerciability, a tendency to ramble on and on and on. My stories might in fact, not be good enough. But even so, I write. And as I do, more and more of my stories lean to hope. They encourage gentleness. They hint at a better future. This is not to say that my (poor) characters don’t get themselves into binds, don’t experience hardship, don’t have tension, conflict, or goals. But “world-ending stakes” aren’t all that matter. Not to me.
Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I suppose that could be adapted to include an entire genre. For there’s a lack of Optimistic Fiction. The kind of stories my sister and I crave most these days. Sci-fi or otherwise.
So I write.
And the stories I’m writing are because the “If you like Becky Chambers read…” list doesn’t satisfy me. The stories I’m writing are taking shape the way they are so that there will be one more story I can send my sister to read that shows restoration. One more title to share.
Maybe, as far as traditional publishing is concerned, my dream will never be realized because there is something essential, something door-unlockingly vital that I’m missing. But maybe there’s not.
Characters don’t always get what they want. Neither do I.
But maybe that’s beside the point.
Maybe I’m writing the stories my sister needs.
Maybe I’m writing the stories I need.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/3/18/21183867/becky-chambers-books-science-fiction-read
https://www.wired.com/story/is-becky-chambers-ultimate-hope-science-fiction/
https://tolstoytherapy.com/books-if-you-like-becky-chambers/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kurt-vonnegut-xavier-letter_n_4964532
