Tag Archive for: writing

Science Fiction: A Bastion of Hope

/in /by

by J.M. Phillippe


Social work, I tell people, is about holding hope for others when they are unable to hold it for themselves. More often than not, I meet people when they are in the midst of some sort of crisis. That crisis has painted their world pretty dark, and optimistic isn’t very high on the list of things they are feeling. And yet, the very act of going to therapy is an act of hope — it’s taking a chance that there may be another way to feel, another way to live life. They come with a spark, and it’s my job to help them nurture and grow that spark. I help them see the strengths they already have, and learn to accept that being human means having imperfection. When all else fails, I sit with them in their darkness until they can contemplate the existence of light again.

The world feels very scary to a great deal many people in my life right now. Here in the US, the electoral college just elected a man that the majority of the nation did not vote for, and he is pushing for policy most of us oppose. I have teenage clients being told by bullying classmates that they will be deported, Jewish clients being threatened with swastikas, trans clients terrified for their safety, and countless female clients terrified for their rights (including the right to not be sexually assaulted). Facts are being re-branded as opinions, and science dismissed as an elitist and biased view. People don’t know how to tell if the stories they are reading are real or fake — and too many people don’t even care. If it sounds like the truth (or rather, like what they already believe), that’s good enough.

It’s times like this that I hold on to one of my first and greatest loves: science fiction. Science fiction and fantasy have covered all this territory before. I think I have managed to read a story or see a movie about every kind of terrible thing that humanity can do to itself, or have done to them by some greater power. I have read every kind of ending as well, from the dark and nihilistic, to the fiercely optimistic. The most recent was the latest Star Wars movie, whose tag line is this:

While I can’t assume to know the motivation of every author out there, I can’t help but think that the reason why so many writers create such dark worlds is to show people a way through that darkness. However big the odds, there are always heroes willing to take them on. However hard the path, there are feet willing to walk it, and however horrible the consequences, there are people willing to risk it all. For hope.

Hope is one of the great themes of science fiction: where it lives, how it endures, what it can accomplish, what happens when it dies. You cannot tell a story about human beings without also talking about their hopes and dreams. My particular interest in science fiction and fantasy is the way it can take the human condition to the furthest stretch of “what if” and provide a possible answer to what humans would do then. And more often than not, what humans will do, whenever given even the tiniest chance, is hope.

Like many others, I found 2016 to be a very challenging year. I don’t know if we all just collectively only focused on the bad and missed the good (though a lot good happened as well), but it seemed like the year when a lot of people realized, as the great William Goldman (of The Princess Bride) said: “Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” None of us are buying this year.

Still, it’s my job to hold hope. The only reason I have been able to is that I spent my childhood practicing this skill. I usually needed it about midway through a book when everything in the story started getting darker and darker. I definitely needed it right before the end, when it seemed like any sort of happy ending would be impossible. But I stuck with it (and didn’t skip ahead) and even if all the characters would not survive the story, one thing almost always did: hope.

So I’d pick up the next book, and the next, and the next, and get the same message again and again. However dark the world, there were good people in it. However horrible humanity could be, there were other humans willing to stand up for the weak, for the innocent, and for the best in all of us.

And that is why I can look at 2016 and understand — the story is not over yet. I don’t know if 2017 will be a dark chapter or not, but I do know that in the end, however long this series goes, the good will win. We just have to keep flipping the pages, and we’ll get there eventually.

* * *
J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness and the short story The Sight. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City. She works as a therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.

When Gratitude Isn’t Easy

/in /by

by J.M. Phillippe

The common wisdom is that a daily practice of gratitude is not only good for the soul, it is also good for your mental health. As a therapist, I often help my clients focus on the positive in their life, and on their own strengths. Strengths-focus is the heart of Positive Psychology, “the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive.” Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive psychology wanted to find a way to help people “to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.” He found it in practices of strength-based focus on positivity.

I am a huge fan (and amateur practitioner of) positive psychology, so I get all the health benefits of gratitude. But lately, I have found gratitude to be particularly challenging — I am having a hard time staying focused on what is good.

Right now, there is a lot of hurt in the world. Here in the US, we have water protectors at Standing Rock getting hosed down in freezing water, and the Southern Poverty Law Center reporting a high number of incidents of hate crimes since the Presidential Election. My clinical clients are struggling — some have been targeted by hate crimes themselves and most are afraid of what will happen next. Plus, there is still a lot of bad things happening outside our country, the most recent being yet another huge natural disaster in Japan (BIG earthquake). In the midst of all these horrible things, how do you stay focused on the strengths? How do you continue to practice gratitude?

I want to remind people that gratitude is not an absolute feeling. It’s not something that requires that you feel it, and only it. Gratitude is an “and”, not a “but”. There are horrible things happening in the world, “and” I am thankful that most of the people I love are safe and sound. There is a lot of fear and hate floating around, and I am grateful that people are still able to come together under the umbrella of love. The “and” is not trying to eliminate, or even counter, everything that comes before. Gratitude is not about balance — some things are so horrible a simple expression of thankfullness could never even begin to counter them. Gratitude is a practice of opening up all the parts of us that are afraid, sad, and overwhelmed just enough to let some of the good in — and some of the good out. It is the the thing that lets us keep the words of Mr. Rogers in mind:

Gratitude reminds us that we are strong — is the very act of focusing on strengths. It says, life is hard, and I am capable enough, talented enough, and brave enough to handle it. Life is hard, and it is beautiful, and worth living.
It is when gratitude is the hardest to find that we most need to look for it, to look for the “and” as a way to help bolster us against everything that comes before. This Thanksgiving I will be far away from family, and still reeling from the events of the last few weeks, and still worried about the future. And I will be with friends, will be eating bountiful food in relative safety, and will be able to find moments of laughter to share. Life is never just one thing. This year, I am grateful for “and.”
*     *     *
J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness and the newly released short story The Sight. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City. She worked as a freelance journalist before earning a masters’ in social work. She works as a therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.

Writers vs. Readers

/in /by
by Bethany Maines

Writer’s Group:
to gather with others to read and critique excerpts of written work
Reading Group: to
gather with others to read and critique books, drink and snack
When done correctly, a writer’s group can operate as an auxiliary
brain or a training ground to push a writer forward in her craft.  They can be fun, inspiring and incredibly
helpful. They can also be a sucking hole of negativity and wasted time. 
With that in mind, it was with some trepidation that I recently
tested out a new group. The hostess had a dog (bonus points) and they had
established a rule of positivity and compliments before critiques (nice).  They had a time keeper and a word count on
the segments we read (organized!). Each writer was doing different genres and
styles, but that had the benefit of bringing diverse points of view to the
table.  In general, it was great. It
provided very valuable feedback and I can only hope that I was equally helpful
to the other writers.
However, in specific, it was wee bit disappointing as there
were no beverages or snacks.  The
reasoning – that hosting the group was enough trouble and that we were here to
do actual serious work, not carouse – makes total, logical, absolute sense.  But in the sense of “it’s been a long week,
and Bethany wants a potato chip and a glass of something” it was less than I
had hoped for.  
I think, possibly what I was really hoping for was a Reading
Group.  Every Reading Group I’ve ever
attended came with crackers, cheese, and wine – the three low effort food
groups. Now, in defense of the writer’s group, very few Reading Group’s I’ve
ever attended actually stayed entirely on topic.  There was a lot of… uh… digression, shall we
say.  And time keeping was absolute
disaster.  And learning was sort of ancillary
by-product of reading a book I didn’t pick out, but gosh darn it, the artichoke
dip was fantastic.

So next month?  I’ll
be packing my own snacks to the writers group. 
After all, that group comes with a dog.
***
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Wild Waters, Tales
from the City of Destiny and An
Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Hearing Voices

/in /by
By AB Plum
I hear voices in my head.
Most of the time.
Not every minute of the day or night. But . . . in countless places, at lots of moments—some inappropriate, such as:
·         While conferring with my tax-guru husband about my business expenses
·         While reviewing my latest marketing plan
·         While creating a FB ad
·         While struggling to grasp using video in FB ads
·         While listening for half a second to political callers (usually at dinnertime)
·         While zoning out in front of TV
·         While falling asleep

And . . . mostly, while writing at my computer. 

E.L. Doctorow said, “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
When the voices stop—especially when I’m at my computer—I’m in trouble. Major trouble.
Which means I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere in my story. (My characters absolutely refuse to be forced into a situation or action or thought that contradicts who they are). Ignoring me is the quickest way to get my attention.

Two years ago, though, I got hit by the flu. Not the coughing, sniffling, aching kind of flu. The kind that hospitalized me for ten days. I spent seven days in ICU, totally unaware of my surroundings or my brush with death, I heard neither the voices of the medical staff, my husband, nor my characters.
On Day 8, my doctor sent me to quarantine in the Continuing Care Unit. Coughing occupied most of my day and night, and I had the energy of wilted lettuce. I wondered if I’d ever feel ‘myself’ again. Excellent nursing, support from my husband, and my insistence on getting out of bed several times daily helped.
On Day 9, one of my characters popped into my head in the middle of a wobbly circuit around my room. A couple of more showed up before the doctor came by. They hung around after he left. Did I plan to loll around for another nine days? When did I plan to resume telling their stories? Didn’t they deserve a little empathy for their patience?

By the time the doctor returned that afternoon, I made the argument to go home.
And I did. The next day. Late on Day 10. With a cast of characters filling my head with their music.
What about you? Had your flu shot yet? Do you hear that little voice shouting, “Do it!”
Me? I’m scheduled for October 20 because the voices in my head believe in prevention.
AB Plum was born reading—according to her mother.  She started writing shortly thereafter. After publishing two romantic comedies and two romantic suspense novels, she has turned to psychological suspense. Look for release in late October of The Early Years, Book 1 in The MisFit Series.

Too Perfect

/in /by

By
Kimberly Jayne

I
love journals. I request them for birthdays and other gift-giving opportunities
where I can actually tell people what they can buy me. They’re going to buy me
something, so it may as well be what I want, right? Journals are beautiful
inside and out, and I must have them. Plus, I have never found a reason to
re-gift a journal. Ever. Because that would be wrong. 

But
here’s the problem. You knew there would be one, right? Yes, there’s a problem.
It’s the girdle of perfection that squeezes the daring out of me. See, my
beloved journals are perfect. I adore them. I fondle their smooth edges and
bindings and dream of the worthy thoughts and ideas that only I can pour
inside. I covet them like Scrooge covets his bags of gold, all for myself. The
one thing I don’t do is write in them. They are simply too perfect. 

I
currently have a collection of a dozen beautiful journals that now serve only
to taunt me because they’re gathering dust and slowly disintegrating, as all
things do with the passage of time, without the glory of someone’s pen (mine)
scrawling and jotting and doodling and masterpiecing across their pages. I
know. This could be the very definition of sad. *Sheds pitiful writer’s tears.*

So,
obviously, this is a bit of a conundrum because the reason I ask for journals
in the first place is precisely because they’re beautiful, and I really do want
to write in them. One would be perfect for recounting my life so my children
would actually learn who I am after I’m dead. One would be perfect for writing my
innermost thoughts about men and relationships and sex—but, er, what if someone
finds it after I’m dead? And still another without lines would be perfect for
drawing and sketching and arting, except that I’m no Michelangelo. I’m not even
a Southpark Trey Parker. And there I’d be, embarrassing my children from the
grave. *Pauses. Considers the merits of this one.*

I
have intended to change this situation for a long time, coaxing and finagling,
and bribing myself into writing something in each journal. So far, I
have inscribed my name. I do have nice handwriting. Meanwhile, I keep adding
more journals. Every time I walk into a book store, I walk out with a perfect,
hoardworthy journal that remains as I received it: empty and deprived.

So I
mentioned this little “problem” to some writer friends at a retreat last
weekend. One of them is not only a writer and a longtime friend but a life and
creativity coach. A wise and delightful woman, she immediately identified a
solution. Wabi-sabi. 

Wabi-sabi
represents Japanese aesthetics and a world view centered on the acceptance of
transience and imperfection. A concept derived from Buddhism, the aesthetic is
described as beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Like my
journals. Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry,
roughness, and the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes. In
other words, Wabi-sabi says the beauty of an object is in its flaws. In a
pretty but cracked vase, wabi-sabi is the flaw where the gift of light pours
in. And whose broken heart isn’t the personification of wabi-sabi?

In
short, wabi-sabi struck me right between the brain lobes, creating a fissure in
my thinking—and how very wabi-sabi that there the light shined in. It was so
simple. So illuminating. So right in front of me all along. By writing in my
journals, I’m not sullying their pages with my existential drivel. I’m not
destroying the beauty and perfection of their craftsmanship. I’m not wasting
the trees that gave their lives to be tattooed by my brain matter. In fact, I’m
making my journals more beautiful, more valuable, more worthwhile—if to no one
else but me. And any family that survives me. 

To make sure I won’t slide back into [absurd] old habits, I invited two of my nanababies to color on the first few pages. And guess what? The journals have become even more precious to me and, far from perfect, I’m free to fill them up with abandon—and writer stuff.

What
about you? What can wabi-sabi do for you? How can it break the girdle of
perfection that binds you? Can it free you, as it has freed me?
 
_____________________
Kimberly Jayne is the author of the dark fantasy series Demonesse: Avarus and the hilarious romantic comedy Take My Husband, Please. She has been making up stories since she was five, when she scribbled on her grandfather’s notepads her first tall tale about pigs flying. Yes, she started that shtick. Since then, she’s written just about everything and for various websites and clients, including humor features for Playgirl Magazine. She also performed her work in the 2011 Listen to Your Mother Show in Austin, Texas. Visit her at ReadKimberly.com.  
 

When You’re Busy Making Other Plans

/in /by

by J.M. Phillippe

There is this saying:

For most people, the shape of that life can be found in their daily routines, the tiny habits that carry us from waking up to going to sleep. Routines are seen as either amazing and wonderful, or soul-sucking and dreadful.

I am someone who has always resisted a routine. I wanted each day to look different than the one before it.  I wanted spontaneity and that sense that anything could happen. And yet, I fell into a routine anyway, because that is the nature of life. Work and school and other external structures shape our days, forcing us to wake up at certain times, which forces us to go to bed at certain times. The space in between carries all the usual things — taking showers, eating meals, doing chores, walking the same familiar paths of each day.

Moving to NY from LA, there were certain routines that made me feel safer. I began to go to the same places over and over again, and countered my fear of being alone in a new city by becoming a regular. There is a pub in midtown where they not only know my name, they know my order, and at least as much about my life as a casual social media friend. There is comfort in that, comfort in the familiar, in the steady rhythms of the day-to-day. Routine is just being a regular in your own life. 
What I have come to learn as I’ve gotten older is that routines happen whether we consciously form them or not. And in fact, consciously forming them (or changing them) is actually really hard. Now that I have a new job, many of my old routines have been forced to change, and I’ve been in this weird in bet

ween space where I haven’t figured out the new ones yet. I keep hoping this will be a great chance to shape how each day will look with more consideration than my days before. I want to add healthier habits to my routine and break away from some older, less desirable ones. I want to take my lunch every day, and do laundry more than on a “now we really are out of clothes to wear” basis. When my friends joke about not being able to adult anymore, I really feel like what we’re saying is that the routines of life can be overwhelming. The laundry always needs to get done. The dishes always need to be washed.

And if you’re a writer, that next project is always going to be in need of more work — writing, editing, planning, marketing. Work only gets done through the careful application of regular effort. Or it doesn’t get done, because your routine doesn’t include that particular effort. 
No one wants to feel like each day looks just like the last. But I think that sometimes my own resistance to that is actually doing me more harm than good. Each day DOES look like the last, because it turns out spontaneity takes its own kind of effort (and that I’m really more of a plan-ahead girl). Weeks get defined by regularly weekly activities — taking out the garbage, watching a particular weekly show, that family member that calls every Sunday, like clockwork. 
I am hoping that I will be able to actually use this external change of a new job to help me build a new and improved routine. The thing about things moving along like clock work is that they move along. If you want the gears to keep grinding, you need to give them a familiar path around the wheel. 
***

J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness and the newly released short story The Sight. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City. She worked as a freelance journalist before earning a masters’ in social work. She works as a therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.

The Dingbat Approach

/in /by
By Bethany Maines

This month at the Stiletto Gang we’ve been talking about
transitions and how moving to a new stage of life can affect writing. But I
have to admit that as I sat down to think about the topic all I found myself
pondering was the actual literal transitions of writing. One of the primary
tasks of a writer is to choose not just what to include, but what to leave out.
There are very few (if any?) novels that are told in one long continuous stream
of time. And every time the writer skips over the trip to the bathroom or the
drive from point A to point B she must choose how to indicate that transition.
Chapter 1
The Hard, Fast Break

Some writers like to make each new location or time switch a
new chapter.  It’s concrete. It’s self explanatory. And pretty hard for
the reader to get confused. But others like to the soft break.
***
In the typography world those little asterisks are called
dingbats. They come in all shapes and sizes and can be themed to the text.
Karen Harris Tully‘s series The Faarian Chronicles is a sci-fi young adult
adventure centered on a planet that was settled by Amazon warriors of Earth.
This gives the featured culture of the planet a Greek historical context (and
strong feminist heroines) and makes the transition dingbats of the omega symbol
fun and appropriate.
The softest break of all is the extra space.  As a
graphic designer, I’m not in favor of these. It’s far too easy, in a longer
work, for the extra space to get buried at the end of the page. Then what does
the designer do? Force the text to start lower down on the next page? That
looks awkward and can lead to confusion on the part of the reader. In other
words, if I see these in a book I immediately think the writer is a jerk who
doesn’t care about how much extra work their designer has to do.
Foolishly, when I first got into the publishing biz I found
myself incredibly surprised when my layout manuscript came back for proofing
that the designer had kept all of my transitions as I had typed them. Somehow I
genuinely thought that I would send off my MS and somewhere out in New York
someone would do something clever with my transitions.  I was kind of sad. 
I didn’t want to manage my own transitions – I wanted someone else to do all
the work for me.
Which when I think about it, is about what I think about
life transitions as well. How unfortunate that there’s no magic wand or
designer to outsource those problems to.  I guess I’m just going to put my
lifestyle setting on “dingbat” and see what I get.
***
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Wild Waters, Tales
from the City of Destiny and An
Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Transitioning in Age and Writing

/in /by
Transitioning in Age and Writing by Debra H. Goldstein

For the past few months, many
members of the Stiletto Gang have given you the opportunity to learn about our
similarities and differences through our 4th Thursday Clicking Our
Heels column or by interpreting the same topic in one of our monthly
posts.  Unfortunately, although I usually
pull Clicking Our Heels together, I’ve missed the monthly topics because my
travel schedule necessitated pre-scheduling my blog post before it was picked.  Not this month!  This time, you get my take on whether my
maturity as a writer (translate that to transition in chronological years) affects
my manuscripts.
The problem addressing this topic is
that even as the years pass, I don’t think I’ve matured yet.  Sure, I know more of my strengths (plotting)
and weaknesses (I’m reserved in life and have to go back and let you know more
of my characters’ inner thoughts), but I’m a writing neophyte.  I only began seriously writing in the past
five years. 
What comes to mind when you think of
a five-year-old? Curiosity? Incessant why, what, when, where

questions?
Exploration? Or, perhaps that adorable moment when the whirlwind falls asleep?

For the first few years, I punted. I
often was too naïve to ask the right questions, but I observed. Today, my
writing life is exactly like a five-year-old. 
I can’t soak up enough knowledge. 
Whether

I’m reading, taking a class, or talking to someone, I want to
learn everything.  Sometimes, I pick up a
habit or a concept that impresses me, but isn’t right for my writing. Other
times, I have a eureka lightbulb moment during which my writing jumps to a new
level.  Hopefully, the result of my
five-year-old wonder is that both my short and long pieces have improved. 

Whether I’m writing flash fiction, a
six-thousand-word story, or a novel, the length is dictated by what is required
to share the tale with you rather than my maturity as a writer. I remove boring
parts more easily because I am a better editor than I was five years ago, but
those edited parts may be replaced by longer passages of enhanced
characterization.


So, my answer as to whether maturity affects the
length of my manuscript is “It depends.” The only thing I am certain of is my
prayer that as I transition in years, my writing never loses the wonder of
being a five-year-old

Embracing the Change

/in /by
by J.M. Phillippe

Like many other writers, I have a day job. I am a social worker and have spent the last four years working in child welfare. While this can be a very rewarding field to work in, it is also a very draining field to work in. Self-care is a constant challenge due to the demands of the job. When you rarely get time for lunch, it is even harder to make time for writing — which has not been good for me, or my publishing schedule. 
It’s not just the hours, which are long, or the paperwork, which even the most prolific of writers would find daunting to keep up with — it’s that the constant stress leaves you so little mental energy to dig into character and conflict. Writing is work, of course, but it began to feel like more work than it ever had before. 
Every writer, regardless of their outside life, struggles to fit writing into that life. Writing is a very time consuming enterprise, and much of that time is spent away from other people, and away from the maintenance of every day living. It’s hard to write and do dishes at the same time (though so easy to get dishes done when you are avoiding a particularly challenging writing session). Time spent writing is time AWAY. You have to have the time to spare (or the ability to create it).  I was running out of away time to dedicate to writing (or laundry, which was piling up on the regular). Something had to give. 
So I sought out and found a new job at a mental health clinic — I will now be working as a therapist full time. What I am hoping this means is that I will have more time — and energy — for writing. 
And yet, change is hard. Change makes people very uncomfortable. (As someone who helps people change their lives for a living, I can attest that most people find it at best, a frustrating experience). So even though I’m very excited for this change, I am also nervous. What if this doesn’t work out the way I hope it will? What if I start to feel burned out again? What if I don’t make time for writing in this new schedule? 
Change comes with risk — it invites the unknown into your life. It leaves variables on the table that only time and experience can solve. And at this point, I’m still not sure what X will turn out to be. 
It feels very much like sitting down to write a new story with only a vague outline in mind, and no real idea how it’s going to end. So you’d think I’d be used to this feeling, used to facing down the unknown. The very act of writing is the act of embracing change over and over, solving for x time and time again. Writing is meant to be uncomfortable and challenging, or else it wouldn’t also be rewarding. Change, like writing, is hard every single time. It also is the only way that something new, and potentially amazing, can happen. 
Here’s to opening the door and inviting in the amazing!
***

J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness and the newly released short story The Sight. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City. She worked as a freelance journalist before earning a masters’ in social work. She works as a family therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.

The First J.M. Phillippe

/in /by

by J.M. Phillippe

Earlier this month, Bethany Maines shared the question so many authors struggle with: “what other authors are you like?” As the Olympics finishes up this week, it’s pretty obvious that comparison is inevitable for anyone in the public eye — particularly women (as the journalists covering the Olympics seemed to only know how to talk about female athletes in relation to male athletes). This is why Simone Biles is my new favorite role model:

Because when it comes to describing my writing style, or even trying to find the right mixed-genre combo to describe my first novel, Perfect Likeness, I am often at a loss. “I write like me,” I want to tell people. Unfortunately I am not a household name yet and thus can’t compare myself to only myself. (I may need some writing equivalent of gold medals first.) I have to try to find someone that is writing like me, who people like, to compare myself to. Preferably a best selling author so that people think “oh yeah, I love that person!” and then, you know, buy and read my book. 
We can’t all be Simone Biles. Or J.K. Rowling. Or Stephen King. Or “put your Big Name Author here”. In fact, most authors I know in real life are pretty happy to be in the competition at all. We’re not looking to medal — we’re just hoping to get one or two (hundred, if possible) devoted fans.
The other big issue with “who are you like?” is that it taps into one of my biggest insecurities as a writer: that I don’t have a unique voice (or a unique story). Look, at this point, three out of five people I talk about my plots with pipe up with something along the lines of “it’s just like that other book/that movie/that video game/that song/that esoteric piece of art I did my PhD thesis on.” (Okay, maybe not that last one, but wouldn’t that be cool!?!) The “It’s All Been Done” record (go ahead and cue the Barenaked Ladies song) playing in my head is responsible for at least 60 percent of all my anxiety-filled blank-page moments. 
The LAST thing I want is to write something just like any other book, or just like any author (yes, even the best selling ones). I have fought long and hard with myself to come up with something that didn’t sound to me just like everything else I’ve read. In fact, the biggest reason I write is because I don’t feel like I have read anyone else quite like me. 
Which sounds great — all the way up until you have to market your book and someone asks you “what else is this book like/what other author are you like?” Because unlike gold medalists, there are A LOT of different authors and books, and people want some sort of sense of what they are going to get themselves into before committing 300 plus pages to a story. 
What this means is that the writer part of myself is often at odds with the marketing part of myself. The writer part of myself wants to jump genres and experiment with writing style and format. The marketing part of myself wants to create a brand that people will recognize so that they can say, “oh, that’s a J.M. Phillippe kind of book.” The marketing part of myself knows that it takes more than a single event to make a gold medalist; there are years of dedicated practice behind that moment. There are hours and hours (and yes, even years) of constantly working at it for most writers to become Big Name Writers. And an essential part of that work — however much we may hate it — is creating a Big Name Brand.
I don’t have a good answer for this constant push and pull between these two sides of myself (but I do have a great recommendation for a comic by Nick Seluk called The Awkward Yeti, featuring Heart and Brain, which basically sums up my eternal struggles against myself perfectly):
 I think the struggle is going to be a constant one. And nothing brings it to light more quickly than someone asking me what other kind of writer I am like. I always have to fight the urge to say “I’m the first J.M. Phillippe.” 
But maybe someday, I will be the author that others compare themselves to. 
***
J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness and the newly released short story The Sight. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City. She worked as a freelance journalist before earning a masters’ in social work. She works as a family therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.