Everyone in my morning critique group is a woman, except for one man- by the name of Lindsey. It was his turn to be critiqued today (along with two other manuscripts, of course). After our workshop yesterday, he sought me out during lunch to request my email and send me a PowerPoint that I silently dubbed "the shame PowerPoint", since the implication was that he singled me out as someone who needed extra help in worldbuilding areas that I had thought myself strong in. Well, I'll take it as a compliment anyway. It was pretty nice of him to think of me and find me during lunch.
An editor came and talked to us today. We spoke about agents, publishing companies, and some terms that I didn't know (like publishing companies auctioning for a really good manuscript they all want). We also discussed the difficulties of writing outside our own ethnicity- specifically, how publishers tend to resist taking on manuscripts that contain mentions of other cultures if the book is written by a white author, particularly with the "Own Voice" movement sweeping the nation. After she left and we talked amongst ourselves, that discussion got... messy.
It's such a silly thing. So many of us want to promote diversity by normalizing non-white protagonists, but apparently people out in the world get upset when we do because we're white and shouldn't be allowed to do that? One of the authors in our group is writing about green elves, and she's not a green elf coming from a long history of North Pole culture. Diversity is a tricky subject.
While neither Ethel nor Gavin is white, I feel like I should be in the clear seeing as I'm writing a fantasy that takes place on another planet, and I didn't springboard off their ethnicities' cultures when designing Sikhoria (In a world where everything except wood dissolves in the acidic ocean, I ended up with a people who prize wood, and where the polluted water can be used as a weapon, so it certainly has its own culture going on there).
Either way, it'll be interesting to see what happens when this story gets published. I want either my non-white lead characters on the front cover, or something that symbolizes the story with no mention of their skintones at all; Janette was telling us that she wrote a black main character once, but the publishers designed a cover with a white kid on it. She said she was fine with it, because she didn't specifically SAY in the story that the main character was black- just that he was in her mind. She also told us all about how we shouldn't get our hopes up about our covers, because unless they're self-publishing and specifically commissioning a design on their own, the author has very limited say about it. Well. I think as long as my characters don't get whitewashed, I'll be happy.
Today, we had lunch with our critique group. The consensus for where we would get our food was Village Baker. They have $8 sandwiches there. That seemed like a lot to me, and I hadn't been hungry the last two mornings. So, I opted to bring my own lunch today. It was kind of nice to have the class assistant take orders and bring food here, because when I went to WIFYR two years ago, we all went out to a Chinese place and carpooled, and were squished in with some other groups. This was nice.
