How to Serve the Dead: A Confucian Alternate History in The Cosmic Background, some forthcoming stories, and an excerpt from my mostly-done novel
How to Serve the Dead: A Confucian Alternate History in The Cosmic Background
How to Serve the Dead: A Confucian Alternate History is free to read in the inaugural issue of The Cosmic Background, a new flash fiction site. I’m really excited about The Cosmic Background and I’m incredibly honored that Sam and Chelsea chose this story for one of their first issues.
This story is, admittedly, very odd. Its protagonist is Zi Lu, one of Confucius’s disciples who I have always been fascinating with. As portrayed in the Analects, Zi Lu is quick-thinking and incredibly smart, and prone to be led astray by that same quick-thinking and intelligence. He’s constantly looking for edge cases, pushing boundaries, and showing off his smarts, but struggles to keep himself centered on what really matters—care for others and service to humanity. For reasons that are probably obvious, I sympathize with him a great deal.
The historical Zi Lu was caught up in court intrigue at Wey and killed. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was capable of putting the whole of his intellect towards service to others and the betterment of humanity? What kind of world could he have made, if his life wasn’t wasted by court intrigue?
There is no way to know. And perhaps I am being too clever for asking—history happened as it happened, and there is no undoing it. But alternate history stories are a way to explore, a way to ask ourselves “what if” or even, perhaps, look to the past and think “if only…”
I also think that the particular passage of the Analects (link to original classical Chinese) that I based the story around is itself quite profound. In it, Confucius specifically and emphatically refuses to engage in questions of the supernatural, redirecting Zi Lu towards the actual well-being of actual humans. I think that there is an important lesson in this for all spiritual practice—regardless of supernatural claims or theology, what matters in the end is the welfare of real people in the real world. I tried to carry this lesson through the entire story, although I am a speculative fiction writer and could not help but put in a little bit of the supernatural in the ending.
In writing the story, I have made a few simplifications and fudges to history. The term I translate as “the dead” in literal truth is closer to “gods and spirits” or “supernatural beings” but the spirits in question definitely include the spirits of the dead. Similarly, I refer to Zi Lu as “Zi Lu” throughout the story, although that is actually his courtesy name, and would have only been used after his death. In life, he would have been called “You.”
Anyway, I have now gone on for more than half the length of the entire story, so I will leave off before it gets any longer. I hope that you enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it!
A Few Thoughts on How to Receive and Process Criticism
In the writing world, there’s a proliferation of advice and systems and structures and policies about how give critique on a draft work of fiction. But there is comparatively little advice about how to receive critique, and very few if-any structures or systems (other than, perhaps, to not speak at all.) And as for processing after the fact—how to turn critique into actionable points for revision work—there is basically nothing.
I have no intention or capacity to actuall fill in these gaps. However, because I find myself giving the same advice over and over again to new writers who are trying to figure out how to navigate receiving and processing critique, I thought I would compile a few things here as a bulleted list).
(It’s worth noting that this is a discussion of critique—which is to say solicited feedback about draft writing in the context of a workshop or a writers’ group or personal relationships. It is not about literary criticism, commercial reviews, ten thousand people lighting up your mentions on Twitter, or anything else that sometimes goes under the name “critique.”)
Critique is not a to-do list.
Which simply means, just because someone is has given you a piece of critical feedback does not obligate you to change the story in accordance with their feedback. Most feedback, most of the time, doesn’t need any direct or specific action on your part. (In fact, receiving a piece of critical feedback does not obligate any response from you whatsoever, except perhaps a polite “thank you.”)
If you think a piece of feedback is well-founded (i.e. it comes from a place of genuine response and isn’t simply someone thoughtlessly recapitulating a rule that they learned from composition class, Strunk and White, or twitter), then it behooves you to carefully examine it and decide, on your own terms, what response it merits. For instance, if someone says “this part drags for me,” then it maybe you should reread the part in question and decide, on your own, whether or not it drags and only after that decide if you want to do anything about it or just stash it away for later.
Note: If the person giving critique is someone who you respect as an authority or a writer (like a teacher, or a author you’re a fan of) it is even more important that you take each item of critique from them on your own terms, and not on theirs.Critique is better as information than as advice.
Often, good critique simply reveals a problem. Or, if it does include a solution, it is a solution that is wrong for the story due to other reasons. Because critiquers are less familiar with your story than you are, they don’t necessarily understand all the moving parts of the story, and thus their recommendations will often make things worse.
One failure state here is to simply blindly accept a critiquer’s suggestions and revise accordingly. This can end up with a lumpy, frustrating story with a “too many cooks” feeling. But another failure state is to reject the criticism outright “well, she may be right that the story drags here, but I can’t cut this dialogue like she suggested, because I need it for foreshadowing the climax.” This can end up leaving good critique on the floor, and with a story with an awkward rough-draft feeling.
The happy medium here is to accept and use good critique, but not as a direct guideline for revision. Rather, if someone points out something that’s wrong with your story, that is useful information. Line it up with other critiques. Figure out, from the collective, what the problems are in your story, and then figure out (on your own) revisions that might address those problems. For example, maybe you really can’t streamline the scene that one critiquer says drags a little. But maybe you can make the scene before it snappier, which will in turn make the whole passage feel faster. For another example: Maybe the ending seems abrupt, but that doesn’t mean you need to expand the ending even if everyone tells you to. Maybe it’s actually because there isn’t enough conflict in the middle.
The point is simply: use critique as data about how people will read your story. Analyze your story with that data. Don’t simply take suggestions and apply them directly to your story without at least first doing your own analysis and thought.Keep a “fuck you, no” close to your heart.
This is going to sound like a repeat of the last two but: As the author of your story, you are the person who knows it best in the world. Thankfully, you’re also the only person who has final say about what goes in, what comes out, and how it’s shaped.
When receiving critique, particularly critique that is somewhat wrong-headed, there is a natural impulse to jump to the defense of our writing and our story. But this is counter-productive—it discourages people from offering their own experiences and critique, and it can drag you into a completely unproductive and useless back and forth in defense of your story, when you already have a 100% perfect defense available: If someone says you need to make the aliens orange, or take out the fight scene, or anything else that you think is just wrong, wrong, wrong, you can simply ignore that critique.
This spirit—ownership over your own work, custodianship of it, and confidence in that authority—is something that I think that all creative people have to find in their own heart in their own way. Because I’m vulgar, I think of this as my “fuck you, no.” If someone makes a bad suggestion, I have the power to simply say “fuck you, no” to that suggestion. Of course, I do not actually tell my critiquers to fuck themselves. I’m not that vulgar. I just hold my power to do so inside my heart while listening to critique.
The benefits of this are multitudinous. First, it saves the stress of being worried about the impact of bad critique on your story—it will have no, because “fuck you, no.” Second, it means that during critique, you can let go of defensiveness, because you already have a 100% perfect defense: “Fuck you, no.” This, at least to me and I’ve observed in others, opens up a more peaceful and analytical relationship to critique. Instead of just rejecting bad critique outright, I can use it as data—“Oh, so this passive made a reader thing that vampires were purple. Well, that’s a dumb thing to think when I made it clear that they’re green, but why might someone have thought that?” Because I’m free to reject the bulk of the critique, I am also free to rework, reuse, or repurpose it, completely unilaterally.If you are going to engage, look for information rather than debate
There is a perfectly respectable tradition that holds that a writer should not respond while recieving critique—they should simply note down what people say about the story and move along. There are also formats and structures which limit the ways or the topics about which a writer can respond. These traditions and forms—often associated with formal writing workshops in which relative strangers are critiquing each other’s work—are specific to their contexts and purposes. But there is nothing inherently wrong with only replying “thank you” to critique. If that works for you, do it.
That said, a lot of critique happens outside of those contexts, and there are a lot of reasons why, even in a formal context, you might want to speak up and respond. Particularly in informal, one-on-one discussions with critiquers (often called “beta reading”), you will get more benefit out of a back-and-forth discussion than simply passively listening. There are many reasons why you might want to respond to critique.
When you do respond to critique, though, it should be about seeking information, rather than about engaging in a debate or discussion about your story. Remember that you are the authority of your own work and to keep a “fuck you, no” close to your heart. Given the level of authority you have, it is pointless to engage in a back-and-forth about the story. If someone has a wrong-headed idea, there is no point in your correcting them. “What led you to think that vampires are purple?” is a better response than “but I said explicitly that vampires were green in the previous scene,” because it opens the door to more information. Likewise, if you don’t want to hear any more about a particular point, just say “okay, I have taken that on-board, do you have any comments about anything else?”
Particularly in informal, one on one environments, critique can feel like just having a discussion about your story. But it isn’t. Make sure to push in ways that are useful to you, rather than getting bogged down in argument. Even if the argument feels good at the time, your story will benefit more from information and fact-finding.Critique will hurt and that’s okay.
Critique is an inherently painful process. You take your story, which is sometimes a story you’ve worked on to make as good as you can, and other times so clearly a rough draft with flaws, and you hand it off to other people who then point out all its flaws that they can find.
Now, sometimes critique can also be exciting, and I don’t want to diminish that. But most critique processes have a degree of emotional pain. At worst, it can feel like giving life to all those negative voices in your head that tell you that your writing is awful and you shouldn’t bother and why not taking up a more healthy hobby like hiking or cross-stitch maybe chain-smoking?
I don’t have any magical suggestions to deal with the emotional pain of critique. I just want to acknowledge that it’s very real, not only for new writers, but for experienced ones as well. Even though over time you may (emphasis on may) build up some emotionally calluses, this pain affects everyone. There are some handful of writers who claim that critique never affects them this way, but unless you’re one of those lucky few, you’re just stuck with it.
The painful experience of critique is, to my mind, a worthwhile cost in order to improve my story and my writing as a whole. But it is, nonetheless, a cost, and a very real one.
Instead of thinking that this pain will go away, or that you’re weak or selfish for feeling it, consider ways of ameliorating the pain and stress of a critique experience. I’m not going to give you instructions on self-care—for one, you know yourself better than I know you, and for two, I’m pretty bad at it myself. But please know that you’re not alone and you don’t have to “tough it out” in order to be a good writer. Give yourself support.
An Exercept From My Almost-Finished Novel
Here’s the first two paragraphs of my novel that is almost out of revisions
People say that it's like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky. People say it's like being pulled into a black hole. People say it's like a typhoon, like a cyclone, like an earthquake. People say it's like falling in love.
I wouldn't know. I've never been struck by lightning; I've never been near a black hole; and the weather's never a surprise to me. I've never even been in love, except for her.
As you might be able to tell, it’s a love story.
Forthcoming stories in Lightspeed
I’m not sure when my next newsletter will be. I have a couple of stories—A Sojourn in the Fifth City and Richard Nixon and the Princess of the Crows—forthcoming in Lightspeed Magazine that should be out sometime this year. And I have literally no idea when or if I’ll ever have something to announce on the novel publication front.
Thanks for sticking with me through this long silence! I hope you enjoy How to Serve the Dead and I’ll see you next time.
I often characterize critique as symptoms / diagnosis / treatment. There's a sense in which the description of symptoms is always correct, because if the critiquer found a character unsympathetic or a plot point confusing, that's true for them even if twenty other readers had no problem -- but just because *one* person had that issue doesn't mean it's something you need to change. Diagnosis in turn points at a possible reason for the issue, but it isn't always correct; less experienced writers, or those who don't quite see what you're trying to do, may blame the wrong cause. And then treatment is the part that's most likely to get tossed by the writer receiving the critique, for all the reasons you name: the critiquer may not have thought it through enough and doesn't see how doing X to fix Y will cause Z problem, plus it's generally they way *they* would fix it for *their* story, which doesn't necessarily match your vision. But oh, when you get a crit partner who incisively sees right to the root of the problem and proposes exactly the fix to make it the story you always wanted it to be . . .
. . . then treasure that moment, because it's *only* a moment, and even that same person may not hand you flawless advice next time. But it's priceless when it happens.