Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward Believe Learning Often Involves Making Mistakes

Ruth Joffre talks with Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward about the craft book and class ‘Writing the Other,’ which offers a practical guide to writing about other cultures with care, attention, respect, and research.

Every few months, it seems, a debate resurfaces in the literary community: Are writers allowed to tell stories from perspectives other than their own or based on experiences beyond their own? Every time this discourse emerges, I want to remind people of Writing the Other, a book that inspired an organization of the same name, which offers a practical guide to writing about other peoples and cultures with care, attention, respect, and research.

Authors Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward organized the first Writing the Other workshop to provide writers with guidance on how to write others well, which includes acknowledging one’s own biases and privileges, fostering the diligence and intention required for respectful representations, and overcoming the fear of doing something wrong in order to learn how to do it right. It’s not easy, but it remains critical for writers of all genres, and the book based on that first workshop remains one of the best texts on the subject today, almost twenty years after its publication.

That book went on to inspire the founding of the organization Writing the Other, which is driven by K. Tempest Bradford, with Nisi Shawl, Cynthia Ward, and many other instructors providing additional classes and resources for students of writing interested in expanding their craft. I was lucky enough to chat with Shawl and Ward about the book, how it shaped their careers, and their experiences teaching this work over the years.

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Ruth Joffre: The origin of Writing the Other can be traced back to an experience at the 1992 Clarion West Writers Workshop, in which a classmate stated that it would be a mistake to write about people of different ethnicities because you might get it terribly wrong. How did this moment shape or change your thinking on the craft of writing, as well as your careers as writers?

Nisi Shawl: I can’t say that moment did much to shape or change my thinking on writing craft. My distrust of our classmate’s conclusion came out of my abiding distrust of taking the easy path in any creative endeavor. That had long been a central tenet of my creative creed. Nothing new there. However, that moment certainly had a huge influence on my writing career! Back then, and also recently, it seemed our response filled a deep need for positively addressing a thorny problem. The essay, the book, and the classes have gotten a lot of attention, and that translates into respect for all my work.

Cynthia Ward: I was also present, and I was surprised. I always conceptualized writing as being about characters who weren’t like me (perhaps a youth spent reading pulp and comics is showing). So no change for me at the time. Later, Nisi invited me to participate in creating and teaching the original Writing the Other workshop, which started some big changes, not only in my writing career but in my understanding of self and society. (I began, for example, to recognize the marginalization of atheists like myself as a group.)

RJ: In the book, you introduce the acronym ROAARS, which stands for race, (sexual) orientation, age, ability, religion, and sex. How did you arrive at this acronym? Was it important to you that it sound fierce and empowering? (In my mind, it sounds like a mighty roar, like a dinosaur’s.)

NS: I’m glad it sounds that way to you! I believe the original intent was simply to have a pronounceable acronym. It derived, to the best of my recall, from messing around with the initials of each element.

RJ: Since 2005, when the book was published, what changes have you seen in the way people think and write about ROAARS categories and other differences? For example, one of the differentiators you left out—by design—was class, a topic of frequent discussion today as workers organize, unionize, and fight for their rights.

NS: When I teach Writing the Other 101, I begin by soliciting students’ updates to the categories we talked about twenty years ago. At the time, class was absent from the book because it was absent from the usual discourse about which differences mattered. Those “important” differences were what we focused on in the book.

Now, popular culture admits that class is a significant demographic marker, so we need to add it. Also of new or increased significance are characters’ placement on the cis/trans axis and their citizenship. We could probably modify the original acronym to “CROAARSCC,” which I guess sounds more like a frog than a dinosaur.

CW: We need to add and alter and to get ahead of the sociocultural curve to the extent possible, because, however modestly, Writing the Other is an interactive influence in expanding awareness and inclusivity.

For example, atheists have become more visible in the US, but the broader culture still uncritically subsumes atheism and a diverse variety of other nonreligious ontologies (agnosticism, areligious faith, etc.) under the erasive term “religion,” which has significant consequences—and not just in literature. There are states that bar nonbelievers from holding office.

RJ: In the book, you include many writing exercises and prompts to help readers and students understand different concepts presented in the text, as well as to explore their own ideas and misconceptions. Why was it important to you to include this interactive element?

NS: The book is based on the original class, so we included exercises we used in the class. Plus it’s an absolutely crucial element of my personal educational philosophy that students get to try stuff. That’s partly about how I learn myself and partly about how I want people to do things, not merely talk about them.

CW: Doing things forces you to put the information into practice. Practice may not make perfect, but it gets you farther along than passive text reception alone.

RJ: You note in the book how uncomfortable people can be when discussing otherness and ROAARS categories, particularly race. In the classroom setting, how do you as teachers lead students through this discomfort and use the teachings of the book in a virtual or in-person setting?

NS: What we do in person is to remind folks that we’re all here to learn, and learning often involves making mistakes. We counsel our students to help foster an atmosphere conducive to trying things out, and we give them a pledge to repeat that reinforces group safety and openness. Online classes get the same parameters as part of our guidelines and expectations, and they sign an agreement to abide by them before their first session begins.

RJ: In your years of teaching for Writing the Other, what have been some of the most common questions students ask and how have you responded to them?

NS: I’m almost always asked if a particular premise, passage, or story the student has written or thought about writing is harmful. And my response is that while I can give that student my opinion, what they really need is the advice of a cultural consultant (also known as a sensitivity reader) who’s able to immerse themselves entirely in the work in question.

The second most common question I get is “How do I go about finding a sensitivity reader?” My response changes, of course, as the availability of professional sensitivity readers fluctuates. I wrote an article for the monthly newsletter put out by Novelists, Inc. on the topic.

RJ: What other craft books and resources do you recommend?

NS: I heartily recommend Samuel R. Delany’s book About Writing, which contains essays, letters, and interviews that reward reading and rereading. It speaks to writers at just about every level of proficiency.

I also recommend the anthology Pocket Workshop, edited by M. Huw Evans and Tod McCoy. It includes an excerpt from About Writing and an essay by me on describing Black people’s hair. In another couple months, another anthology is coming out: Ex Marginalia, edited by the brilliant Chinelo Onwualu. I have an essay in that one, too, plus I’m really looking forward to what the rest of the contributors have to say.

CW: The most useful craft book I’ve read is Take Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing by Libbie Hawker. If you’re scratching your head and going, “Wait, what, you’re recommending a book on plotting?” the type of outlining in question here isn’t related to plot, or what happens; it’s related to theme, or the meaning of what happens. I reread this book several times in a row and then fixed a bunch of unsold stories, some dating back decades, and sold them all. I continue to reread this guide regularly.