Writing Around the Dad-Filter

by Sophie

PARENTS

You all know the old writing advice, right - "Write as though your parents are dead"?

It's good advice. Parents are one of the strongest filters between what's cooking in our brain and what ends up on the page. And that's not always a bad thing, of course - parents are often our first teachers, our value-setters, our moral guides. I'm grateful to mine. But the day came when I had to stick my fingers in my ears and go "blah blah blah I don't hear you, Dad" - figuratively speaking, of course.

(Now I have to pause here and tell you that my dad reads this blog regularly. Hi, Dad! So even as I write about filters, I'm probably filtering. But in the last year Dad and I have had lots of great conversations about a variety of things and I don't think he'll mind me sharing.)

I've written for many, many years, and my dad's always read bits and pieces of what I was working on. My brother's always written too, and Dad read some of his work too. One day we were all talking about writing, and my dad said, "Just don't ever write anything gratuitously violent. There's no excuse for that."

(Pause, again. We have to wait a minute for my dad to say "I said that? I never said that! I don't remember saying that." I'm hoping Mike is reading this too so he can back me up.)

Here's the thing. I wrote lots of stuff for a long time with my dad's words in my mind. I tried to ignore them, but they were just too powerful. So while I wrote my women's fiction and literary fiction and so on, I veered away from violence. Which some of you, those of you who have read my stuff, may find curious. Because I would say that one of the themes uniting all of my recent work - whether it's mystery, young adult, or paranormal - is human violence and where it springs from and what it does to people and how it informs our emotional landscape and visa versa. I'm telling you, it's a *big* deal to me. It might not be going too far to say it's fundamental to my work as a whole.

Now I could wimp out here and go "yeah, but it's not ever gratuitous." The thing is- "gratuitous," I mean really, isn't that a cheat? Who gets to decide? Whether it's sex or violence or wordiness or grammatical liberty-taking, isn't your not-enough often my over-the-top? I reject the non-gratuitous defense.

I write violence. I have my reasons. for some people it's too much, for others too little, and I reserve the right to change course at any time.


I'm going to pause one more time for my dad to say "Dear, I would never dream of telling you what to write" and "You and your brother are my favorite authors." I like hearing that. :) Yeah, he's my dad and all, but I can't hear that enough. If the Nobel committee took notes from people's parents, I expect my dad would write one, and that's nice.

So you know I have my own little writers, right? I tell them all the time that they are brilliant writers, because to me, they are. They shine bright, bright, bright for me, and I know I can't be objective, and I don't care. I'm sure I'm saying other things to them that are messing with their heads, and that thirty years from now I'll hear about it and probably deny it. My niece and nephew are also budding writers. They're also brilliant.

Being the parent of a writer is probably a thankless task much of the time, so today I'd just like to say "Thanks, Dad."

Here's a sample of my nephew's recent work: