Ampersand Gazette #38

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Pierre Buttin for The New York Times

TIMES INSIDER

Why We Write Explainers: An Explainer

New York Times guides to mystifying subjects may seem as if they come together in a matter of minutes, but they often take hours of research. 

from a Times Insider article in The New York Times
Why We Write Explainers: An Explainer
June 6, 2023 

I am not in the habit of borrowing images from The New York Times, but this one by Pierre Buttin, so caught me up that I had to. It accompanied the headline you see above: “Why We Write Explainers: An Explainer,” which, of course, made me laugh. Because who doesn’t need to explain why they’re explaining? 

In fact, I was thinking about several recent client sessions, and I’ve come to the conclusion that as a culture we overexplain. Well, no, not really. We’ve learned to overexplain.  

Further to that, that once we can explain something, we have an easier time letting it go.  

So what do explanations give us? And why do we insist on having them, or making them?   

In a word, I think explanations give us meaning. I’m with the illustrious psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. “Human beings can live without a lot of things, but the one thing we cannot live without is meaning.” I believe that. 

I also think that meaning is at quite a severe deficit in our world these days, despite New York Times’ Explainers, and despite the many of us who routinely seek or make meaning. 

So now, look again at Mr. Buttin’s image because it’s a perfect picture of how we create meaning, or really, create anything. Take it out of the context of meaning for a minute: I have a broad-brush idea for a series of novels. That idea definitely looks more like the left side of the image than the right. 

I sit on it. I cook the idea. I might do a little, or a lot, of research. I pray about the story. I meditate. I might doodle on an unlined piece of paper. Or take printer paper, also unlined, and make a cloud cluster of possibilities. Or make a specific dedication to my meditation/puzzling time. At no time, you will note, am I outlining a story. No time. Ever. 

I’m a discovery writer. I never write from an outline. Not even when I write nonfiction. In fact, most of the time, outlines give me hives. What happens in my creative process, eventually, is that as I get the story more and more onto the page, usually as handwritten notes not sentences, and less and less in the hallways of my mind, the lines start to separate just like in the middle of Mr. Buttin’s image. By the time I’m done with the novel, the lines are all tied up in a pretty white satin Tiffany bow.  

I have made meaning, in this particular case, through order. 

Most of us make meaning, instead of through order, via the answer to why. As long as we can supply a why, for anything really, we’re free to let it go, consider it resolved, move on. But until we have that why, a lot of us can’t let go. We stay in the left-hand side of the Explainer image, trying on meanings like shoes that are never quite right. 

One of the great metaphysical secrets of life, Beloved, is that everything has meaning. But, far more importantly, everything has the meaning you give it. Everything. 

What that means is going to the dentist can mean one thing to me, and an entirely different thing to you. The meaning is personal. 

But meaning, as dear to me as it is, can be a trap.  

Yes, you read that right: meaning can be a trap. 

So next time you’re struggling for meaning, let Mr. Buttin’s image arise in your mind. If you’re in the creative, chaotic stage of a process, let it be what it is, and don’t insist on meaning. You’ll get your meaning, I promise, but not only because you want it or need it. 

You’ll get your meaning from the inside-out when you hold still long enough to let the strands sort themselves into that beautiful little bow on the right, all tied up, and ready to be released. Demanding meaning before it’s time for meaning is a recipe for keeping you in meaninglessness. Letting meaning arise organically means you never, ever have to explain explainers ever again. 

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It’s Pride because it’s June. I’ve been saving this Letter to the Editor since last November. 

“Back in the late 1970s, the artist Gilbert Baker designed an inclusive symbol under which everyone in the spectrum was included: the rainbow. The stripes represented qualities including healing, sunlight, nature, art and serenity. Mr. Baker said: ‘What I liked about the rainbow is that it fits all of us. It’s all the colors. It represents all the genders. It represents all the races. It’s the rainbow of humanity.’” 

from a Letter to the Editor
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/opinion/letters/lgbt-gay-queer.html
November 14, 2022 

Have you ever heard anyone say, “Oh, I am so over the rainbow”? I have, and it hurts every time. I don’t need to rehearse for any of you what’s going on in the world about LGBTQ+ folx, I’m sure. Someone said recently that all of the drag queens in Florida ought to declare a day for them all to be RonDa Santis. I laughed. 

Just remember, darling, if you’re over the rainbow—as in we’re here, we’re queer, we’re staying—so be it, but it’s always somebody’s first pride. Let them have all the pride they can handle. Lately, we all need it.

Pete Marovich for The New York Times at the White House 2023 

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Ms. Foster said companies must address racism, sexism, homophobia and antisemitism in the workplace. But she believes that an overemphasis on identity groups and a tendency to reduce people to “victim or villain” can strip agency from and alienate everyone—including employees of color. She says her approach allows everyone ‘to make mistakes, say the wrong thing sometimes and be able to correct it.’…

‘Congratulations. You’re certified human beings,’ she said. ‘It’s not about being right or wrong but understanding when bias comes into play.’…

Ms. Foster, he said, helped people ‘feel OK with themselves, like maybe you haven’t been an activist or on this journey in your past, but let’s see how we can move forward.’ 

In other words, she helped them feel that they belonged in the conversation. 

The question of belonging has become the latest focus in the evolving world of corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programming. 

from an article in Business from The New York Times
Why Some Companies Are Saying ‘Diversity and Belonging’ Instead of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’
May 14, 2023 

Let’s wade right in to the deep end, shall we, just for kicks? We’re all biased. Yes, you read that right. We are all biased whether we admit it or not, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not.  

And before you start to argue with me that you’re not, the thing about bias is really quite simple. The only perception available to you is your own. No matter how hard you try to see through my eyes—you can’t. They’re mine, and they come with my sixty-five years of experience, and the filters which that experience has created in me, which is part of what forms my perspective. You’ve got your own. 

A recent Letter to the Editor in The New York Times, which I cannot find at the moment, made a distinction between inclusion, which has an element of tolerance to it, and belonging, which has an assumption of we’re-in-this-together.  

Everybody needs to feel they belong somewhere. Everybody. Is there someone is your world standing on the outside looking in these days? How can you let them know we’re in this together? 

Because, and here’s just one more little quickie explanation, we are. We’re here on planet Earth together, in this world, in this environment, together for better and for worse. And as the Internet meme says, “There’s no Planet B.” The quality of our sojourn here is up to each one of us. Helping someone else feel like they belong makes us feel like we make a difference, and there is no belonging greater than that, Beloved. 

Happy Pride. 

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And in publishing news …

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Christian de la Huerta is the host for the Reclaiming Our LGBTQ Spiritual Heritage virtual summit, June 17-24. It starts next Saturday.  

We had a lot of fun in our time together, but more importantly, we talked a lot about resistance and how it’s just not a workable strategy anymore, not in this contentious environment. Instead, we need to learn to resist without being in resistance. 

We also talked a lot about the theme of my new historical series, The Subversive Lovelies, although not in that context. The tagline for that series is “someone always goes first,” and Christian pointed out—the man’s known me for thirty years—that I am always one of those go-first people. It’s true. See below for an exciting reveal—you saw it here first! 

Here’s the sign-up: https://consciousleaderssummit.com/optin-545884751675376506103  

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Here is the ebook cover for Jasmine Increscent!!! Victoria Davies did a stellar job capturing Jasmine, the oldest of the Bailey sisters, now that her older sister is … well, her older brother. You’ll read his story in Jaq Retrograde & Jaq Direct.  

Here’s the blurb (to whet your appetite)— 

A wedding. Increasing. And it’s time to start her vicety … it’s a three-ring circus—oh, my. 

Jasmine Bailey is the second eldest of the Bailey siblings, yes, those Baileys. Known for being much more in the present than the future, years earlier she’d begun a one-woman mission to serve mothers who’d been abandoned by their spouses in the worst slum ever to darken New York City: Five Points. Universally recognized by her honorific, Lady Jasmine, throughout Gilded Age society, the wealthy take their checkbooks in hand whenever they see her strawberry blonde braid and her lissome figure coming. 

Now it’s time for Jasmine’s vicety—the second of four the sibs had planned upon the death of their beloved father four years earlier. Since then, Jezebel’s pair of viceties—The Obstreperous Trumpet, a saloon, and The Salacious Sundae, an ice cream parlor—were going great guns.  Jasmine had originally intended to create a high-end gambling hell. Except ... her wedding is scheduled in less than a month, and she’s increasing. There’s, uh, a lot on her plate. 

Jasmine’s research takes her from the lowest of the low policy shops in Mulberry Bend to an outré visit to the most elite gambling institution in town. Still, she’s struggling with what is in her heart about starting this vicety. A chance sentence, if you believe in that sort of thing, overheard whilst at breakfast one morning changes everything.  

Will her struggle with gambling resolve to her satisfaction, or will Jasmine have to scrap every idea she ever had about it to start over again? Sure, no doubt she could, but does she want to, and how will that affect her siblings and their nefariously well-meant agenda in Chelsea Towers? 

My editor, Tony Amato, tells me his edit ought to be done this weekend (it arrived at 9:58 PM last night!), so next week will be plowing into the corrections. I can’t wait. He says he always has to correct one excessive habit per book. This one was the use of the words even and really. He also deletes almost all my stage directions! What can I say, I’m a theatre person first. Just call me Georgina Bernard Shaw.

After I do the fixes, we’ll start the read-aloud proof. That’s one of my favorite parts of the publishing process. Then I’ll format it in Vellum, and once it’s done, upload it to Amazon et al.  

If you haven’t yet read Jezebel Rising, put it on the top of your TBR (to-be-read) pile. It’ll make Jasmine that much richer when you get to read her story. 

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I am, I’m sure, to no one’s surprise but my own, almost forty thousand words into the third book of The Subversive Lovelies, Gemma Eclipsing. The story has already shocked me. I am excited to see where Gemma takes me. Oh, and I’m still researching, a little, but nowhere near as much as I’d thought would be necessary. Writing is an amazing process.

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I know things can seem dark sometimes, Beloved, between the smoke in our skies and the fire in our legislatures. Do not, please, do not lose hope. The darkest dark is always next to the lightest light to make three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. Let the diversity of the colors in this lovely rainbow image remind you that we all belong here, and be ampersand until next time, S.