Today's guest is Lorie Langdon, author of the Happily Never After series from Disney. Lorie joined me today to talk about ups and downs of a career, finding non-traditional routes to income, and how social media creates the illusion of success... even when it's not true.
Roselle Lim on The Importance of Food when Writing about Culture
By Roselle Lim
My large, extended family from my mother’s side immigrated to Canada from the Philippines. My eldest aunt was the first to come over and the rest followed her like goslings across the water. We packed our traditions and recipes into our suitcases and moving boxes, and hoped it would help us navigate the strange, new beyond.
In Canada, our tongues, which spoke Hokkien and Tagalog, felt swollen and clumsy wrapping itself around the syllables of English. Our feet stumbled, trying to navigate and learn new roads and customs. The only source of stability and comfort was family and food—in each other and in the familiar tastes of the country we left, we found strength in the dishes my aunts and my father cooked in our new homes.
In general, my family found the same spices and ingredients, and in the case when they didn’t, they substituted to recreate the flavor profile. What they simmered was something old yet new, with the distinct zest of the diaspora. The immigrant experience centres around community and food. The sharing of meals facilitates kinship and a way to connect to our heritage.
When I write about food, it’s not only an expression of my culture and my family—it’s a culmination of my life experiences through one specific lens.
Conversely, I am not lumpia or a bowl of salted duck egg congee.
Writing culture relying on food is reductive. It treats cuisine as the goal when in reality, food acts as the medium to convey nuance, traditions, and history. To write using a character’s traditional foods as a sole means to validate identity or representation is lazy and dismissive. It opens up the writer to perpetuating harmful stereotypes and problematic content.
Without acknowledging or respecting the history and subtleties in the dishes you are writing about, there is much lost in translation. For example, a bowl of arroz caldo on a cold, wintry day is comfort in a bowl and without the context of culture, you might as well write about a bowl of cereal on an ordinary weekday morning.
Food is life for me and often a passionate topic in the cultural framework. While its importance is unquestioned, writing about it in terms of representation and as a reflection of heritage should be taken with great care—the way my father marinates his short ribs with a secret spice blend and sliced kiwis for a day. After all, the act of cooking and feeding can be expressions of love, the way writing is an extension of creativity.
While food can be important to culture, it shouldn’t be the only tool in the arsenal. There are many other ways to convey the complexities of my identity. To me, food is best as a garnish that further enhances what I’d already established and prepared ahead of time. It’s meant to be savoured and act as one of the ways to understand the context and nuances of our identities.
Roselle Lim is the critically acclaimed author of Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune, Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop and her newest release, Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club. She lives on the north shore of Lake Erie and always has an artistic project on the go.
Kristina Forest On Finding Inspiration Through Daydreams
Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview.
Today’s guest for the WHAT is Kristina Forest, the author of Zyla & Kai a fresh love story about the will they, won't they—and why can't they—of first love.
Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?
Starting points for my ideas often come to me while I'm sleeping or daydreaming. One day I pictured a boy and a girl waiting at a bus station, and I just kind of knew that they were sneaking away. And that was it--I sat on the idea for a while. Then a few months later I saw the movie, Moonrise Kingdom about two kids who run away together, leaving everyone they know confused about their actions and whereabouts. I thought it was a uniquely structured movie. And then I remembered those two characters I'd thought about who were running away too. That's where the idea for Zyla & Kai really bloomed.
Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?
It really depends on the book. Sometimes an idea begins with a concept, or sometimes it begins with a vibe between two characters and I build the plot around the two of them. My philosophy is that character informs plot. So I might have an idea, like a boy and girl run away together. But then I have to go back and build out the characters to discover why they'd run away together. Where are they running away to? What influenced their decision? Why do they like each other? How do they relate to each other? Or maybe, what's keeping them apart?
Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?
In small ways. Sometimes certain aspects about a character will change and that will therefore affect how they react to certain situations in the plot. But I'm such a hardcore outliner that once my plot is in place it kind of stays that way for the most part while working on the first draft. But after I've finished the first draft and start revising, I do move things around when needed or when suggested by my editor!
Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?
New ideas come to me often, thankfully!
How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?
I write whichever books feels the most developed at the time, or whichever book I feel the most ready to write. Sometimes an idea needs a little more time in the oven and I don't like to force things to come together.
I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?
I'm so jealous of you and your 6 cats! I do have a few writing buddies. We used to write together in cafes, but now we're all living in different parts of the country so we write together virtually and it's very nice and productive! Writing can be such a solitary job, so creating community makes things easier.
Kristina Forest is an author of romance books for young adults. Her novels include I Wanna Be Where You Are, Now That I've Found You and Zyla & Kai. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School, and she can often be found rearranging her bookshelf.