Can we strike the word 'exotic' from the dictionary? Or, at very least, from the dictionaries of white Western SFF writers, critics and fans? Before crying Oh No, Censorship, bear with me. And have a caveat: I'm writing about a problem in which I'm complicit, so there's a good chance I'll not do it justice, or get at least some things wrong.

'Exotic' is a horrible, harmful word, and treating it as a neutral descriptor erases the experiences of those that it harms. It posits the value of a place as how excitingly different it is to outsiders, rather than how it's experienced by local people. It allows outsiders to coo over things we/they find sexy or strange, without giving a fuck about their context. It fetishises. It also carries a ton of racist baggage.

Thailand almost never gets portrayed in the West as anything other than Oriental Exoticland. From early travelogues to The King and I to The Windup Girl, travellers and expats sideline the actual characteristics of the place and the experiences of the people that live there in favour of self-fulfilling fantasies about how weird and different it is. This is so much the norm that many Western writers probably don't think they're doing it at all, and nor do their readers. But the assumption that an expat must be able to write Thailand well - by virtue of having lived a privileged life surrounded by imported home comforts and culture - is total nonsense. Living somewhere for a long time doesn't make you exempt, but it might make you think you are, which is a problem in itself. Just because I grew up in Thailand doesn't mean I don't need to constantly educate myself about Thai culture and the way my own culture promotes damaging representations of it.

In Imagining Siam*, Caron Eastgate Dann writes about the circular effect of the Western construction of the exotic East:

“because it is presented in this way by writers, readers expect to receive an exoticised description, and because it is expected by readers, writers feel encouraged, and perhaps even obliged, to fabricate tales of the weird, the exotic and the erotic.”

As both producers and consumers in Western culture, we reward this kind of behaviour, and throwing the word "exotic" around as a positive in reviews feeds the circle, as does pandering to the desire for exotica in writing. How do we break the circle? Not easily or immediately, for sure, but by listening to people whose cultures have been exoticised when they say it's shit, by looking long and hard at how and why we use the word, by refusing to use it uncritically, and not getting defensive when we do and are called on it - we might have a chance.

*which uses Said's concept of Orientalism to look at the way Thailand has been written by the West through the ages - I've just started reading it, and it's not a perfect book (some Anna Leonowens apologism, meh), but it seems pretty comprehensive, and very valuable as the first English-language study of its kind.

Good intentions aren't enough, because they can mask all manner of fail, conscious or un-. Case in point: this weekend, I received a Special Commendation for my James White Award shortlisted story, Train in Vain. This is a tremendous honour, and I'm thrilled and hugely thankful to the Award, its judges, and its supporters. I was happy just to be shortlisted, not least because it’s not the kind of story I usually write - an alternate history spy thriller - and I wrote it in part to grapple with some of the issues I had with the steampunk and spy fiction I was reading at the time. I don’t think I did a perfect job of it, but I hoped I'd written something that worked against the usual portrayal of the British in nineteenth-century Thailand as a "civilising" influence - and was glad that the judges thought such a thing was worth their time.

This is what the Award website has to say about the story (bolding mine):

Tori Truslow’s ‘Train in Vain’ is a compelling tale of exotic intrigue and intricate automata, told in breathlessly vivid and evocative prose. There is no let up in narrative pace in this highly believable blend of fantasy and adventure. There’s wit too, and a hint of darkness amid the exotic imagery. We were desperate to know how the story would be resolved and we’re convinced others will be as well.

Now, this puts me in a rather awkward position. As I said, I'm tremendously grateful to be recognised, but I'm also deeply uncomfortable at the language used here, and I can't not say something. Whatever the merits/non-merits of this individual story are, it's another white-filtered representation of a country and culture that only ever gets represented in SFF by white authors, and this is a problem in itself, but especially so when that writing gets valued in terms of its exoticness.

Am I part of the problem here? Of course. I may not have meant to, but I probably did play into exoticism in this story. I contribute – however inadvertently – to the exotification of Thailand, and instead of being criticised, I’m praised for it. And round we go.

Exoticism is by no means the only problem in Western SFF (meet its mutually-enabling twin, "authenticity"), but it is far too commonplace, and if we genuinely want the specfic field to be a diverse one we need to stop letting it go unchecked. Or all we’ll have is false diversity where self-fulfilling Western fantasies forever drown out other cultures’ own representations of themselves.

Because Rose is awesome and deserves this so much:

Originally posted by rose_lemberg at Help Rose get to Wiscon

Happy leap day! I think there’s something magic about the 29th of February. The day that doesn't usually exist. A secret day, stolen from time. Just, it should have a special weekday of its own. Lokisday, maybe. It’s warm-ish and sunny and I’ve harnessed the leap-magic to write and garden. Weeded the strawberries, and a patch of soil where I’ll plant some garlic later. I’ve also sown some of my space seeds, but they’re only wee sprout-things yet and won’t get planted out till it’s warmer.

I’ve fallen into my bad old hermity habits again and not kept up with LJ or DW for weeks. Woops. Again. Still think it was a good decision not to have an internet connection at home (except for on my phone and that’s only really good for twitter and quick emails), but I really should make more of an effort not to hermit when I’ve got a lovely coffee shop with free wi-fi nearby. So hi.

Feels like I’m getting better at managing life and my super-fun attention deficit, though. I’m easing myself into a routine and most days it works. I get up at 7-ish (I can press the snooze button like a boss but if I set the alarm for 6:45 I can usually get out of bed by 7:30). I discovered that I write easily and pretty well in the morning, which was sort of a tragic discovery as I hate mornings, but that’s no kind of excuse. If I don’t snooze too long I get to go for a walk. I write, and am managing 500-1000 words before lunch pretty much every day, which for me is TOTALLY AWESOME. And, somehow, I wrote 15K of novel in February! Some of it was even decent! Oh, oh, and I got a workshop booking, which more about soon!

Living by myself is mostly great. Then I do three weeks in a row without seeing anyone and then get surprised when my headspace goes haywire. I sometimes manage to convince myself that loneliness is a kind of perfect beautiful state in which I can exist forever in my flat and drink tea and write and make eyes at the sea and be pure, and I don’t know what the fuck that’s about. So I’m making more trips to London now, even though it’s expensive, because then I might not go crazy.

I also jumped on the tumblr wagon – I’m trillingwire, who else is on there? – initially so I could just geek about stuff without annoying my facebook/twitter friends, but it has also brought Unfuck Your Habitat into my life, which really could have been made for me. And I absolutely fucking adore this idea, but I would need people for that. Meantime I will just try to unfuck my internet habits by using the time I do get at the café to read the good stuff and be more involved, instead of just staring at twitter and reading webcomics.

But right now I have to go buy some garlic so I can plant it. Did you know you can just stick cloves of garlic into the ground and they turn into bulbs?! That’s some awesome Narnian shit right there.

It started snowing late last night, after an evening spent in envy of friends up and down the country who'd already had snowfalls. Worth waiting for. I ran outside, even though it was bitterly cold, just to taste it, just to look at the sea - of course, the sea was obscured by snow, and it got in my eyes so I couldn't see much of anything, but it was magical. I went back inside and sat by the window, staring at it and squeaking excitedly to myself.

Woke up this morning to see, of all things, a snowboarding class taking place outside my window (I live on a hill). As well as that, the whole neighbourhood was out with their sleds. The world was bright white and the sea was blue-grey ice. I went for a walk, along the top of the hill and then down to the old town. Everywhere I went there were people out playing, and I didn't see a single person who didn't look like they were utterly delighted. Which in this country is a rare thing. Ended up on the snow-covered beach where the sea-slushed ice rippled against the shore - god, it was beautiful. Today I felt happy to be alive just because it means I got to see this. Photos taken on my phone don't quite do it justice but here are some, anyway.






Leigh was originally a fishing town and still has a thriving cockling industry. This photo shows the area where the cockle boats unload - the shore here is made up of cockle shells. This boat is kind of a local celebrity, the descendant of a fishing boat lost on the way back from the Dunkirk evacuation.


Boats and snow. Snow and boats. New favourite thing.


I saw a lot of jolly good snowmen, and a few creepy ones, and this was the creepy winner.




The beach. I'm pretty darn pleased with this photo, actually.

And finally, because lol...

Have a cold, bleh, but working, and emerging just to W00T because in the last 3 days I have done a serious plot overhaul and re-plotted the remaining 2/3 of the novel, scene-by-scene, and I love it, and am excited about it , and it is so going to be a draft by the end of summer, it is it is it IS.

I graduated last week. The ceremony was a dull PR event for Warwick, Inc., but as an excuse to go back to my spiritual home and see my MA buddies and some of my teachers it was great. I didn't get to catch up and annoy ~all my old tutors with my needy fledgling writer blues, but I did get to have lunch with China Miéville, who is an inspiration and a gent. So I poured out my needy fledgling writer blues and he told me the thing I needed to hear, the thing I already knew but was hiding from: stop messing around, and write your fucking novel.

Which is not the right advice for everyone, but for me and in my circumstances, it really is.

I said at the beginning of the year that I would write a minimum of 500 novel-words a week. A nice, low-pressure, easily met target. This is how that's gone:

First week of the year: 400 words
Second week: 250 words
Third week: 0 words

HOWEVER, that's not to say I haven't been working. In the second week, I wrote a 4000-word story draft. Last week I did a bunch of the soul-destroying SEO articles that keep my body alive (and also graduated and merry-made, which re-kindled the soul). These days, when I'm at home, I can wake up at 7 and get up and start working and keep working and write 500-1000 words a day. For several days in a row. I've never been able to do that before.

Why now? Growing up, or practice, or...

A big change occurred in my life over the new year, and I can't talk about it publicly yet, but it seems to have shifted something in me. I'm more focused. I hope this is a lasting change and not a temporary coping mechanism, a way of blotting out my rage and helplessness in the face of things that I can't change. I hope.

But there is no excuse, now, not to spend every free day I have on this novel, this sprawling difficult tribute to the city I love, except for fear. And I told myself that this year would be about facing fear.

So in the light of this strange new ability to make myself get up and work, I think a re-assessment of my 2012 goals is in order. I am going to stop messing around, and write my fucking novel.

Spurred on by discussion on twitter after mentioning that I was thinking of changing the author photo on my website because I look way young in it, a small rant. It's of little enough consequence to the world at large, but fuck, I am so sick of a) being assumed to be several years younger than I am and b) all the variations on 'it's a compliment'.

It is no fun being assumed to still be in my teens when I'm 24. I know I am young, but getting taken seriously as a woman in my early twenties is hard enough in many quarters, and I'd rather not have people mentally subtracting years. I don't make assumptions about age when I meet someone - partly because I'm just really bad at telling, but also because I know how annoying it is - but I know it's not a conscious thing on many people's parts. There's making a mental judgment of someone's age and then there's being downright skeevy about it, though.

A charming little anecdote: couple of years ago, I went to watch a good friend act in a play. Said friend is a year younger than me, but looks older. I hung about afterwards so we could go for a drink, and he invited me up on stage to check out the set. The director and other actors saw me; the director told me I could look but not "play". Then my friend and I left. He told me that when he showed up the next day, the crew went all "wahey" at him, assuming he'd picked up a teenager; the director mock-berated him: "I hope you didn't take that little girl home". Nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Why would you do that? There's so much wrong going on here. Infantilisation, whatever he thought my age was. Snap judgments based on my appearance. Approval when he thought my friend had picked up a high-schooler, what the fuck?

But whenever I complain about things like this, the response is almost always: it's a compliment! you'll be grateful when you're older!

Because no one wants to look their age, right? It's better to look younger, because why? Age is ugly? "You look so young" as a compliment has always creeped me out. Granted, I can't speak for older women, but think I'd rather look like I'd lived all my years, felt all my feelings, thought so many thoughts. I don't know if I'm making any kind of coherent point here, but just, enough already. I'd take it as a courtesy not to be told I'll look 30 when I'm 50 like that's something to aspire to.

I wonder if anyone knows of some good fiction that deals with visual art and/or the artistic process? Speculative, preferably. Art as a player in the narrative, an important thematic focus or filter, or part of a character. Off the top of my head I've come up with KJ Bishop's excellent The Etched City, also Blake, and Alex has recommended me Elizabeth Hand's Generation Loss. I'd be glad of more recs.

One of my novel's protagonists, Pine, is an experimental photographer/mixed media artist, and his work is one of the filters I want to look at the city through, as well as being plot-relevant because he's photographing haunted places and we all know how well that usually turns out. I also have a musician/performance-artist character, Kannika, and her art is also about the city, so offers another filter/lens.

I'm wary of luxuriating in imaginary art for its own sake, and aware that this is easy to do ham-handedly and hard to do well. I've already noticed myself getting trigger-happy with the photography/film metaphors. And telling bits of story through descriptions of half-developed photos or projected films is fun but precarious. Experimenting by writing about experimentation and hoping it doesn't eat itself.

I think I love the art in The Etched City so much because it's almost a character in its own right, as well as performing narrative and character-enhancing functions. But it's also very well-described and kind of numinous without being too nebulous. Something to ponder.

But this is a procrastination. I should get back to writing.

One of my projects for this year is to start growing my own fruit and vegetables. It's something I've always wanted to do, and now that I'm more-or-less settled in the south-east and have a fairly spacious back garden, now seems a good time to give it a go. In the autumn I dug up a plot and started a compost heap. My granddad donated a small rosemary cutting and gooseberry bush, and several strawberry plants. I have an aunt who keeps an allotment and now that I'm back in the area will go and see if she has any spare seeds. I know as a beginner I should stick to sensible and straightforward things...

However, the seed merchants of ebay have an awful lot of pretty things on offer. I was mooning over them and then had an IDEA.

So I recently had my second-ever poem published, after a 2-year poetry hiatus, yay! And it's about Mars and I'm very proud of it. When Stone Telling's ever-awesome editors paid me for it I thought I'd buy myself a celebratory drink with the money. But! Then I thought, seeds are cheap, I could get a bunch of packets with this. And when I plant and harvest and eat them I'll know that these things were earned with only the sweat of my back and the ink of my pen, and that has to be an awesome feeling. Then I thought, sensible vegetables be damned, I shall buy SPACE-THEMED varieties, because the poem was about space. Yes, there are several vegetables that fit the theme! If tenuously, in some cases...

So I've just ordered:
Cosmic carrots (they are PURPLE!! and cosmic.)
Romanseco broccoli (a thing of SF'nal beauty)
Lemon cucumbers (they look like little suns!)
Mooli radishes (er, they are moon-coloured? whatevs, I like them)

So, I shall grow science fiction vegetables, paid for with poetry. I hope to share them with anyone who wants to come visiting at harvest-time.