Now that your mom, sister, husband, a few friends, writing comadres, teachers and classmates at UCLA have weighed in on your story, what does the rewriting process look like?
Over the last couple months, since I got married, I’ve been hard at work, making sure my latest novel MODEL RICANS doesn’t violate the privacy of my loved ones. It’s been annoying me, because I never really wanted to write something THIS personal, but apparently I had to, for many reasons:
- On New Year’s Eve 2022, I had a mini meltdown and needed to get to the root of my meltdowns before getting married.
- In February, my teacher Colette Sartor at UCLA Extension said every writer should write his/her personal narrative to understand the story he/she will end up writing — every time, with different characters — throughout his/her writing career.
- All the feedback I got on MARIA LA GATA was the same: slow down and lemme connect with this character, for the love of Yemanja.
So…I got REAL personal. About ME. Basically transcribed my journals documenting the super risky things I got into when I was 13 and 14, which my parents never read or knew, but explain my behavior over the last 30 years. The last thing I want to do, after all the love and support they have been giving me over the years, is piss them off by publishing something they didn’t have a chance to discuss with me face-to-face, or at least dispute over phone or text. I know. Big assumption that this story will get published, but hey – that’s my goal, so I’m preparing all of us for that reality…and in the meantime, LEARNING a ton.
The unexpected side effect of writing about the painful past is getting closer to my family.
Our hearts are open. The truth is out. My mom didn’t sleep for a couple nights. We both got sick. Thought it was the COVID, but tests were negative, so I think both our hearts were trying to pump harder to heal this freshly re-opened wound. And then, I told her — “Mom, I’m not special. Every single one of us has a mother and a father, whether present or not, and we all navigate the world differently, depending on those two main characters.” And my memory of all of it? Well, it’s gonna be different from her memory, my sister’s memory, my best friend’s memory, etc, etc. That’s why I say this is fiction. FICTION, ma. FAKE. Not Real. A STORY everyone can relate to. “Inspired by my life.” She was into that. As was my sister. Their feedback was most important before I could move forward with rewriting.
The main thing I established with everyone: MODEL RICANS is a work of fiction.
“Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.” That’s the boilerplate at the opening of most books and the ending of many films. I’m not famous so I’m not going to sit here and write a fucking memoir. Plus, my memory of the past is filtered through my own specific lens, and I take massive liberties with that memory so it fits into a nice literary package, so ya – ALL my writings about my own life fall into FICTION.
This is why I am taking Novel IV at UCLA; not memoir. The class goes until Sept 7, so I’ve started rewriting, with all the feedback from everyone listed above. Tic bought me this really cool new journal which lists all the months and dates along the top. I’ve sectioned it off with paper clips into 20 pages per character. This is helping me free-write from each of their POVs while re-organizing the sequence of events in such a way that grabs my target audiences:
- Latinas working in tech
- Literary agents
- Orlando’s Puerto Rican diaspora
- Californians who think Florida is a political wasteland…
- And…who am I missing? White guys with money who love to invest in hot Latinas? Yeah. That’s a demographic.
As I rewrite, my teachers Collette Sartor and Mark Sarvas at UCLA Extension have equipped me with checklists to balance each scene:
- action
- purpose
- character
- stakes
- tension
- theme
My hope is that I can stop meandering away from my opening hook…which is what? I keep re-writing it. According to the feedback, there should be at least one or two – not 10! Originally, I thought it was:
A Puerto Rican Princess tells everyone she’s Nuyorican even though she grew up in Orlando in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
But that felt very YA (Young Adult) genre, so I changed it to, “A Latina climbs the social ladders of high school to college to the upper echelons of the tech industry until she self-implodes.” That might be closer, but not sure that’s exactly it. Apparently I have not yet decided, and it seems important to make that decision before rewriting. So…how do I make that decision? Let’s look at my previous book, THE NINE LIVES OF MARIA LA GATA. The hook was clear:
How did my bisabuela become a rum runner in 1920s Puerto Rico?
That was a hook that piqued EVERYONE’s curiosity because no one has watched/read a story about a female rum runner, especially not Puerto Rican. It was also interesting because there aren’t a lot of stories/movies about what Puerto Rico was like in the 1920s, so that was a second hook. Yes, there can be several, but not too many because then you compromise TENSION, which is the thing that keeps the reader engaged and eagerly turning pages to find out what the special ingredients were for bisabuela to choose her path, and to be successful on said path.
Knowing from my UCLA teacher Colette Sartor that every book a writer writes is founded upon his/her personal narrative, THE NINE LIVES OF MARIA LA GATA is essentially the same story as MODEL RICANS, you just need to search-and-replace the characters, time period, and industry, and this case, the hook, or essential question of the novel, would be:
How did a Latina from the Midwest of Florida navigate her way to Silicon Valley at the height of the 1990s/2000s tech boom?
And perhaps the second hook is: What was Silicon Valley like through the lens of a person of color 20 years ago, especially now that “diversity and inclusion” is the thing #trending in tech and ALL corporate settings?
BUT – knowing all the literary agents had a hard time “connecting” with MARIA LA GATA as a character, and after reading hundreds of pages by my classmates, who either feature characters and hooks I emotionally connect with, or don’t, I realize there needs to be a third emotional hook in my story, because a 200-something-page novel isn’t a blog post or a newspaper article reporting facts about rum running or the tech industry.
A novel needs to take a reader through an emotional journey.
For example, maybe the emotional hook is: Why is it important that a Latina has a say in the tech industry, or any industry at all? What’s at stake? Is that emotional? Or is that just a statistic at a Latina in tech conference? I read that statistics can hook a reader, but again, this is a novel, not a Ted Talk or an academic report for policy makers (well, maybe it is — in disguise!).
Maybe the emotional hook was this character having suicidal feelings of despair in New York, because after 20 years of building her career, she is working a job she doesn’t want on her obituary. But then I realized: Who cares? Lots of people fail or work jobs they hate. Readers could be like, “Oh, boo hoo, you spent 20 years NOT raising babies like most Latinas? Poor you!”
Ironically enough — that potential reaction led me toward a clue for a good emotional hook.
And now, I am ready to rewrite.
Is this Autofiction?
Ugh. “Autofiction.” Sounds like “Selfie Fiction.” Puke. Isn’t auto fiction ALL writing? As soon as the moment has passed in present time, EVEN MEMOIR isn’t entirely TRUE. OK I got it. Autofiction is basically about to become a huge Google Search keyword. Maybe we need to define fiction first, before we start ranting in a zoom room.
Fiction is everything. ESPECIALLY when you’re the only one who thinks you’re famous…
Great questions to put on the whiteboard during next rewrite — thank you, Jennifer Chukwu — for inspiring it:
- What am I arriving to while embodying this character?
- What does your inner child want right now?
- Ethics. At what point is the story fiction? same rules we follow on social media
Barney Lichtenstein asked during the talk: What’s the point of autofiction? Does the author want the reader to try to weed out what’s true and what isn’t? Most importantly, is this a good story, and who cares what is true or not?
Agreed, Barney. Who cares. Just write a good story, dammit.
The main audience is ourselves, as is all art — the icing on the cake is if other people want to read it, connect to it, identify with it, and learn from it. Amen.