{"id":18024,"date":"2025-08-15T16:06:28","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T21:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?p=18024"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:19:08","slug":"wisdom-to-impart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/wisdom-to-impart\/","title":{"rendered":"I have wisdom to impart"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been writing a long time, ~fifty years, from when I was about five and started telling my ADHD-addled brain stories to put myself to sleep. I started writing real-person fiction (although I didn\u2019t know what that was1<\/a><\/sup>) in fifth grade with a short story we were assigned and kind of just put my teacher in shock that it was so good\u2014and that I\u2019d dared to use a classmate\u2019s real name. It really was good, especially for a fifth grader. Wish I still had it.<\/p>\n

\"AI chugged along through my teens, wrote some RPF wish-fulfillment I destroyed because my dad found a book proposal2<\/a><\/sup> that disturbed him so he gave me an ultimatum: Let him read it or destroy it.<\/p>\n

I destroyed it. Mind you, I\u2019d typed that in triplicate with carbon paper on a manual typewriter that was heavier than the wrecking ball Miley Cyrus writhes on. Next, a classmate read an assignment and said with a very confused look and tone of voice, \u201cThis \u2026 sounds like something you want to happen.\u201d Well, I mean, yeah.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Anyway, I went to BYU and wrote more that was so treacly it embarrassed even myself, so I burned them in the sink of my dorm\u2019s bathroom. I remember that very clearly.<\/p>\n

Occasionally in there I\u2019d spin up little snippets of celebrity<\/em> RPF,4<\/a><\/sup> but not often. Every scenario I could concoct was too far-fetched, even for me, but what was worse\u2014I mostly didn\u2019t write these down. I\u2019d tell people<\/em>. With great excitement. Nobody<\/em> made fun of me to my face. Maybe they were entertained. Maybe I just came off as too unhinged. Maybe I just never heard whispers. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

I was growing up, hitting all my baby writer milestones, doing what fanfiction and RPF writers do, only I was doing it alone, never knowing there were other people doing the same thing I was. I was nineteen when I met two girls who actively wrote fiction with New Kids on the Block<\/a>5<\/a><\/sup> in the heroes\u2019 roles. By name. I sat there listening to their<\/em> wish-fulfillment RPF, watching their excitement. I can\u2019t remember how many<\/em> emotions rolled through me, but shock, disgust, wariness, and envy were four of them. Let\u2019s address these:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Shock.<\/span> That anyone did this. By the time this happened, I wasn\u2019t writing too much, and I sat there thinking, \u201cHey, I grew out of this a while back. These girls are my age. What are they doing still twirling around with glee?\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. Disgust.<\/span> I might be wrong, but I got the distinct impression that they truly believed their fantasies could come to life if they got close enough to Jordan Knight and Joey McIntyre to make it happen. I felt rather mature and level-headed by comparison, which is something I never<\/em> felt. I knew<\/em> the shit I wrote couldn\u2019t happen.<\/li>\n
  3. Wariness.<\/span> I didn\u2019t know what to make of their enthusiasm in telling me this. I didn\u2019t make fun of them. I was half entertained. Maybe they were unhinged. I didn\u2019t know. I never<\/em> told anyone else.<\/li>\n
  4. Envy.<\/span> They were so free<\/em> and open<\/em> and unashamed<\/em> of their frothy creations and their belief that they could make it happen if they got the opportunity. I wasn\u2019t that free anymore. I\u2019d been called on my motives and inspiration too many times, too seriously, with no mockery, not to have tamped down my enthusiasm.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Finally, I wrote a whole novel. You know, the one you shove under the bed after a while because you still had training wheels on. I let an older friend who was in an English grad program read it, and while she had issues with my lack of verisimilitude, she was very encouraging about my writing, structure, pace, and voice. Then<\/em> I let a whole lot of other people read it, who said they loved it. Okay, good. I had a basis on which to continue.<\/p>\n

    I (mostly) moved on from wish fulfillment a little later and got good responses. I wrote stuff that could<\/em> happen, but not to me<\/em>. This is what made me better at this writing business. As soon as I stopped inserting my whole<\/em> self into my work, instead building characters with bits and pieces of me I could portray with some verisimilitude, it all began to gel. I joined RWA<\/a>. I went to critique groups. I got good responses from editors. I got two literary agents. Then shit happened<\/a> and I not only stopped submitting, I stopped writing altogether.<\/p>\n

    Now, to my point: I established my voice and style long ago. I\u2019ve been out of the writing<\/em> community, that is, critique groups, for thirty years. I no longer have anything in common with new writers, or those who are H<\/span>oN<\/span>iN<\/span>g T<\/span>hE<\/span>iR<\/span> cR<\/span>aF<\/span>t<\/a>, and, like my 22-year-old daughter explaining some Grave Issue\u2122 to me Very Seriously\u2122 as if I have never<\/em> encountered this before or, worse, never actually thought<\/em> about it, the endlessly repetitive questions on \ud835\udd4f started getting to me because I don\u2019t know what\u2019s asked in genuine curiosity and good faith or what\u2019s engagement farming. Maybe it doesn\u2019t really matter.<\/p>\n

    So, instead of letting it irritate me, I\u2019m going to use these questions as a springboard to discuss technique, da rulez<\/a>, characterization, plot, tropes, genre, and any writerly thing else I find interesting.<\/p>\n

    \n

    ______________________________<\/p>\n

    1<\/a>.<\/span>   Real person fiction or real people fiction (RPF) is a genre of writing fan fiction, but featuring celebrities or other real people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    2<\/a>.<\/span>   I\u2019d figured out how to submit a book proposal by the time I was fifteen.<\/p>\n

    3<\/a>.<\/span>   Fuck all y\u2019all. I embraced it and now I tell people my writing is aspirational\u2014and not just for myself:
    \n\"\" <\/p>\n

    4<\/a>.<\/span>   Well, if you must<\/em> know: Donny Osmond and David Hasselhoff. Maybe<\/em> you could consider Tommy Lee Jones<\/a>, too, but that\u2019s questionable because I was shipping two characters who had nothing to do with me.<\/p>\n

    5<\/a>.<\/span>   It was 1987 and I had no<\/em> idea who New Kids on the Block was. I was all wrapped up in Def Leppard, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce, Whitesnake, and Heart, and, of course, the Labyrinth<\/em><\/a> soundtrack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u2019ve been writing a long time, ~fifty years, from when I was about five and started telling my ADHD-addled brain stories to put myself to sleep. I started writing real-person fiction (although I didn\u2019t know what that was1) in fifth grade with a short story we were assigned and kind of just put my teacher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[655,424],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdom-to-impart","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18024"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23820,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18024\/revisions\/23820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}