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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Hey, everybody! Welcome to our session with Lauren Buchis! We're gonna get started in just a second but before we do just a bit of housekeeping, and first of all, just to make sure everything is working. If you can see and hear me, can you please drop into the chat, and your favorite takeaway from the session with Janet and Demetrius. Right above this I, Michelle, was telling me that it was like seeing rock stars. Come to this. Okay? She says everything.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, they're so great world in those awesome. The graph. Yes, graphs are graphs are great.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: They? Oh, lots of lots of graph fans here. That's awesome

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: learning about astrogeology. Oh, third graph fan, amazing. Yeah, they're they're so amazing. And it's always so great to have them here, and I'm so excited to have our next session as well. So just before we get to bring Lauren on just a couple of quick notes.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So first as you all, I'm sure, know by now all of the replays are going to be added to the Hub page. Once they're done processing by zoom. I'm typically adding them in the morning the next day, so they'll be up they'll be up

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: tomorrow morning. Oh, Mark, I think you maybe cannot see me because of my slides. But I think you should be able to see me as well, and a little a little little box. But yeah, the the replays will be up once they're done processing by zoom, and they'll be available for a week after that, and then they'll be available for providing Academy members. If you are interested in upgrading to pro writing aid premium you have a

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: 40% off. The yearly subscription plan is available. Now. obviously, you'll be able to get all of the things with the software which we've detailed here. So the premium tools for authors, improving entire chapters

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: curating the editing, dating experience. But I also just really wanna quickly plug that if you upgrade with this discount, not only do you get a really great discount off the product. But it also just really helps us put these events on for free and it helps us be able to go back to the company and say, You know, these events are really, really valuable. And people get a lot out of them. So if you're at all thinking about upgrading. I would definitely take advantage of this offer to get that discount. And then again, it just helps support us, being

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able to put on these events for free

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: if you would like to keep talking about Science Fiction after this session, and throughout the week please feel free to join the community at the link there, and I'll put it in the chat in a second. And then just a couple of quick reminders for this session. So Lauren has an amazing presentation for us.

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If you have questions for her throughout the presentation, please use the QA. Box that will help me keep track of them, since the chat tends to move pretty quickly, and then, if you'd like to chat with other participants, please use the chat you'll need to select everyone from the dropdown to make sure that everybody in the chat can see it. If you'd like to send something just to me. You can select 2 hosts and panelists, and that will come just to me. But otherwise the everyone will make sure that everyone

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: one can see it. And then all of the special offers. Slides were available, and everything else are all available on the sci-fi. We cub. So with all of that being said, I think we are ready to begin. So welcome everyone to this session with Lauren Buchis. She is the award-winning and internationally best-selling South African author of the Shining Girls Zoo City and Afterland. Among other works, her novels have been published in 24 countries and are being adapted for film and TV.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: She's also a comics writer, screenwriter, journalist, and documentary maker, her novel, The Shining Girls. About a time traveling serial killer, and the survivor who turns the hunt around is now a Major Apple TV plus series with Elizabeth Moss. Her latest novel bridge about a young woman's search for her mother across realities is out everywhere now, and I'll put the link to Lauren's books in the chat.

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So welcome, Lauren, we are so happy to have you here.

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Lauren Beukes: Oh. thanks so much. I'm sorry I no longer have blue hair like my zoom fair enough. I also one had blue hair. So now we both have normal hair

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Lauren Beukes: brilliant. So I'm just gonna jump right into it. And I'm gonna check the time I'm I haven't timed this. So if I'm running over, I might just cut a section. So it's gonna be quite a personal talk about kind of my experience. But I hope there'll be like lots of really good advice in there as well

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Lauren Beukes: cool. I've wanted to be a writer since I was 5 years old, and I found out that that was something that you could do for a living. You could make up stories that that was a real job. And since then I've just wanted to do that absolutely. It only took me 20 years to be able to get to the point where I was able to do that full time, which is when I won the Rc. Clark award for my novel, Zoo City, and that was in 2,010, and since then I've been able to be a full time writer, and that's been really amazing, and I'm feel incredibly lucky and privileged to be able to do that.

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Lauren Beukes: I've now written one pop history, 6 novels 2 graphic novels and a collection of short stories and essays. I also worked as a journalist for a very long time. I've worked in film and TV. I was the show runner and Animated TV show called The Adventures of Pax Africa, which was South Africa's First half hour animated TV show, and I worked on a documentary about Miss Gay Western K. Called the Boys and Ganglands. The whole thing is on Youtube. It's not supposed to be. But you know.

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Lauren Beukes:  my book has been translated into 24 languages. I think it's 25 now, including Catalan. I just wanna point out something weird in this slide. So Zucchi is about a young woman who lives in Johannesburg and the Russian cover in the middle with kind of very greeny cover is clearly not a young black woman living in Johannesburg. It's very weird, and you don't always have control of that kind of thing.

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Lauren Beukes: Yeah. Shiny girls being translated into a bunch of languages. It's been really amazing it got adapted as a TV show, and I was lucky enough to Leonardo. Dicaprio bought the rights, and I was lucky enough to get to hang out with him on his yacht in Cape Town when he came to visit and I'm gonna show you that really cool picture. Now. So yeah, shiny girl's now a TV show with Elizabeth Moss. And here's me hang out with Leo.

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Lauren Beukes: So obviously, yeah, that's not something I have to do. I also didn't get to visit said while they were filming, because it was Covid. And but it's also like an incredible dream come true and amazing to have an adaptation of your work which is so respectful to the heart and the guts of the book, which is very much about how we talk about violence against women and trauma with such an amazing cast and activism. It's just been so amazing to have that happen in my life.

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Lauren Beukes:  And of course you know, like this is exactly what 5 year old me wanted like. This is everything I ever dreamed of, and this is, you know, obviously, what it was gonna be like. But I had this idea when I was a kid, and when I was a teenager about what writing would be like, and that was that it'd be amazing and easy and wonderful. And you could just like, relax, and like the ideas would like flow through you, and it'd be incredible. And and here's a picture of me as an actual teenager. Having exactly the same kind of thoughts.

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Lauren Beukes: So. Yeah, but of course writing is not dreamy and easy and wonderful for some people it is, but I'm not one of those. Unfortunately. And for me writing is more like this.

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Lauren Beukes: All crying and screaming while typing and panicking and trying to make things work. And it's really difficult. And it hasn't got easier the more books that I've written. You think it would, it would, but it hasn't, and that's been quite a realization.

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Lauren Beukes: And actually, last year while I was working on bridge. I have some writing advice which I always give people, which is just finish the damn book. That's the only thing which matters. It doesn't matter if it's a hot mess on the page, because once you have a hot mess, that's something you can work with, and you can sculpt it, and you can turn into something beautiful and cut off all the bits which don't work.

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Lauren Beukes: But I was in the middle of bridge. I just moved countries from South Africa to the UKI. Was struggling so much. I was like God. I don't know how to finish this book, and somebody freaking tweeted my own advice at me. And I was so mad because I was like, why would you throw that in my face? Because it's completely true, and it still holds true, and it even holds true to me.

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Lauren Beukes: But creating is hard and, you know, trying to hold the shape of a whole novel together is really difficult.

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Lauren Beukes: And even when it's fun, even when you're in Flo, it's still hard to sit down and like, make yourself do something and like solve the puzzles.

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Lauren Beukes: My psychologist has a really great analogy about this. She says that just because I'm an expert mountaineer, and I've climbed all these other peaks before doesn't mean I know how to climb this mountain, and I found that like really useful advice.

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Lauren Beukes: So my first piece of advice is to find something that you care about. When I was researching the shiny girls, you know the world is full of ideas, and and lots of them are very commercial trends come and go. I mean, obviously Tiktoks, like very much on the rise at the moment, and we have romantic. And we have all these amazing new genres which didn't really exist, which is just this huge wave at the moment.

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Lauren Beukes: But writing is lonely, and it's difficult. And you're gonna be in your head with these monitoring people for many, many, many, many, many, many, many hundreds of hours. So write something you care about. The illustration I have for this is when I was visiting a Chicago police station, when I was researching the shiny girls, they had all these old evidence boxes.

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Lauren Beukes: and any one of these could have been a story like any one of these photographs. These are all like real mug shots and like crime scene photos. But I found the one that was shiny to me, and I haven't actually told her story. That's just an example of like of what catches you. And

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Lauren Beukes: I think this photograph, although she's not someone I know. I don't know her life story. I don't know what it is, but there's something in her eyes, and there's a story there. And I had what this photograph up on my wall when I was writing the shiny girls, or you know, photograph all the photograph, I should say

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Lauren Beukes: just because I felt like that was kind of what the shiny girls were, that there was something. There was a fire inside them. And this gaze, like just really felt like that to me. So find something that you care about because you are going to be working on it for long periods of your day and your life

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Lauren Beukes: you can plan planning is really important. It's good to like, know which route you're gonna go up the mountain. It's good to have. Like all the correct gear. Some people are like super tech experts and like know exactly what they're doing and how to get there, and they plotted every single moment, and and everything's just laid out absolutely, beautifully.

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Lauren Beukes: But you can also make it up as you grow along, and

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Lauren Beukes: kind of figure your way up the mountain as you go and be like. Oh, actually, you know, and I feel like going back down to the valley for a bit, and seeing what's there. or you can do both.

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Lauren Beukes: I think I do both. You know I'm not. I'm not a professor, and I'm not a panster. I'm really kind of some weird meld of the 2. So you have to do what works for you. There is a subconscious magic in process, and I think this is what AI is never gonna be able to do is there is the subconscious

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Lauren Beukes: thing which happens as you're typing, and the words change, and the characters run away with you and to do something different. And it's not magic, and you're not possessed. It is your brain. It's the wonder of your brain. And it's the wonder of thinking about things and and and and actually writing it. And the process is the writing. And that's why it's so important to finish.

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Lauren Beukes: I. So yeah, I do. I do also plot. This is my motor wall for the shiny girls. And this was really kind of it was really important to me that I got the time travel. Right. This took up a wall in my house for like over a year. So you do need space to be able to do this kind of thing. But yeah. So I tracked all the different timelines. The killer took an object from each woman, and he left an object behind on each woman as well.

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Lauren Beukes: So I had to track all of that I dealt with how awful he was, because he's a broken, pathetic little man. By injuring him. But every single opportunity that I could.

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Lauren Beukes: and what that meant was, I also had to keep track of his injuries and how they were healing. So I really did need to have everything up on the board. I use Scribner, which is writing software. And they have a really lovely core Board feature. So you could just print out those cards. But I like to actually write it out, and especially when I have a really complicated plot.

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Lauren Beukes: just. And I also like to color code things so that I can see which you know, from running from a different character's perspective. It's a different color if it's a different historical timeline as a different color, and it just gives me a very quick, visual, amazing impression. Then I also leave space live, find

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Lauren Beukes: the interesting things which happen in between and to let let the kind of process and things emerge. And for things that you hadn't expected to come through.

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Lauren Beukes: Yeah, like, I was saying, subconscious magic.

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Lauren Beukes: So you know what's easier than writing is doing research, and I will spend as much time as research as possible, because it is so much more fun. I'm an ex journalist. And I've also been very lucky in that. I've often been able to go and do research in places that I'm writing about

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Lauren Beukes: sometimes doesn't work out my new novel said in Portland, and I wasn't able to go because the pandemic was happening. So II had been to Portland previously, and I based on them. And then I spoke to a lot of people who were based in Portland. And one of my friends actually did a Google Maps tour with me. And we went and kind of looked at locations on Google Maps and Google Street View.

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Lauren Beukes: But if you can go somewhere, if you can breathe the air and like and experience things. It's just makes such a difference. And it's surprising. And I think that'll that's what's so exciting is the research can surprise you.

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Lauren Beukes: So going to Antarctica. For a short story I was writing, but also really just because I wanted to go to Antarctica. But then I also wrote a story about it which you know was great. I was surprised by how black the water was. I just hadn't expected in these kind of like icy like. You know the icebergs rising up like Alps from like the frozen sea. It was absolutely incredible.

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Lauren Beukes: Likewise, when I was writing about Detroit and broken monsters. We have this image of Detroit as a broken city, and full of ruins and ruin porn. That they've now torn a lot of this down. This is the Packard plant.

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But Detroit is also a bright, shining city. There's a lot of tech there. The first time I ever saw Google Glass was actually in Detroit, and also there is an incredibly amazing, thriving art community. And that was so exciting to see and and to see these kind of really amazing places.

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Lauren Beukes: And when you're doing your research, it helps to talk to people. And whether that's because you're doing research into what it's like to be a police officer, or you're doing research into what it's like to be. One of my characters in bridge is a non binary Puerto Rican person and an artist and and an architect, and they're just very, very cool. But I wanna make sure I got it right. So I spent a lot of time talking to friends getting the Puerto Rican to Spanish

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Lauren Beukes: right. I might still have made mistakes by really really tried, and I ran it past like multiple people. But also other minds of freaking magic. And like you really get this insight into like who people are. And I again, I'm an extrovert. This is like a joy for me to be able to go and like talk to people and find out

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Lauren Beukes: things which surprised me, which I absolutely put in the book.

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So going to Detroit, you know, I hung up with police officers.

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Lauren Beukes: This is an ex detective, and he's now retired, and he wrote a huge 800 page book memoir about his experience in the Dpd. But then he also wrote a book called Who can the 80 can, which is not what I was expecting from hard and murder. Detective I've hung out with civil defense lawyers in Chicago Theater. Kids obviously did, not showing their faces for a reason where I've got to attend some auditions with them.

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Lauren Beukes: an example that they gave where people come up with surprising things. because when I was interviewing these teenagers, I said to them.

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Lauren Beukes: You know, I'm I'm playing with social media a lot in the book like, How does social media feel to you? Is that where everyone's, you know like is that part of how much of that is part of your lives.

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Lauren Beukes: And because they were theater kids. They said.

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Lauren Beukes:  our real lives feels like what's happening in the wings. And social media is like what we put out into the world.

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And it was just

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Lauren Beukes: it was. It was such a beautiful way of saying it. And of course it's not a new idea. People have expressed it other ways. But just the way they said, and being able to use that line of dialogue verbatim in the book was amazing.

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Lauren Beukes: I worked in a homeless shelter for the day, making soup in the soup kitchen, and then going to talk to people about their stories. I was very upfront, and I told people I was researching a novel, and I wanted to talk to people, and people love to tell you their stories, especially for fiction.

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Lauren Beukes: and yeah, so it was just really amazing to get kind of like insight into people's lives. This is a man called James Harris, and James actually told me

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Lauren Beukes: how you know this incredible life story. We're actually he being a teenager, and he'd be in kind of a teenage.

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Lauren Beukes:  slumlord, I don't know if that's correct technology these days. But he basically been the landlord of an abandoned building. And he said, the first thing he needs to do is put up curtains, and if you put up cheap curtains, that's enough to fool the neighbors. But also he was a 13 year old kid, and no one was going to take him seriously as the landlord. So he had this Korean woman, who was a neighbor, and she would come and pretend to be the landlord, and he called them abandon again. That's just such a beautiful word, and not something I would have found unless I actually went and spoke to people

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Lauren Beukes: also taxidermist

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Lauren Beukes: police detectives. This is Kenneth. The Reverend Gardner also told me some wild stories wearing alligator shoes, just such beautiful details.

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and then Frickin use it like use it for baton.

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Lauren Beukes:  Robert David Jones drove me around Detroit and we we went basically went out for nights to all the different parties, and I kind of lifted that for basin and and put it in the book. So if you read that chapter, it is very much kind of what happened that night

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Lauren Beukes:  and and also some wild stories about like, you know, an artist had died, and another artist had a ouija board tattooed on his chest, and they kind of had a wake for him, and they tried to summon his spirit, using the tattoo, and I would not afford to make that up.

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Lauren Beukes: What I didn't put in the book is that when Robert Dave Jones picked me up from the airport, this is my second trip to Detroit. He picked me on this van. I was like, oh, how how old I know this guy and I was like, and I got in. I was like, oh, nice motor wagon!

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Lauren Beukes: And he said, Oh, it's not a motor wagon I'm like. No, I know I was joking, and he said, it's not a motor wagon, but it is a mortuary van. I'm sorry I was late, like, you know. I borrowed it from my aunt and uncle and we had to drop off a dead old lady just before this, so that didn't make it into the book. But it was just a really fun adventure, likewise with bridge I got to hang out with my friend Hayley Tomes, who said these tapeworm and epilepsy in her lab in the University of Cape Town, and that is basically verbatim as it is in the book.

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Lauren Beukes: Which got to show me all the equipment and showed me how she mushed up the tapeworm, and then right at the end, she said, Well, do you want a slice of rat brain to take home? And I was like yes, of course I do

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Lauren Beukes: so. What was pretty cool is I got a slice of rat brain. It's in that straw. In that case, I promise it looks like tiny bit of desiccated snot it wasn't infected with tapeworm, and obviously I called it pinky, as in pinky in the brain and took it home. So yeah, sometimes you get free rat brain when you do research.

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Lauren Beukes: So question everything. And I think this is really important about your own assumptions. If you're going out to do research. It's really important to actually be aware that maybe you're wrong about stuff. And the best example I have is when I went to Haiti in 2015,

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and having grown up in Johannesburg, South Africa,

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Lauren Beukes: it felt very Haiti and port of Prince felt very similar to kind of where I grew up it felt like there was this kind of weird mix of rich and poor, and in South Africa we have one of the highest genie coefficients in the world, which is the divide between rich and poor. So there were a lot of people like living in very kind of rudimentary houses, but then there were also these very fancy clubs and restaurants, and like a hotel with like a rooftop bar, and all these weird, UN. Vehicles that were on the plate at driving people between them.

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Lauren Beukes: and it felt like a really interesting reflection of of home. And I'm always writing about home in some way, because I write about what's important to me. So you know, when I initially decide to go there, I was like, Look, I'm not gonna into voodoo. I don't think it's my place, and I just think it would be disrespectful, and it's been so over hyped. When I got there I realized that Voodoo, as as essential a religion and a practice to the people of Haiti as Catholicism is to Italy, and to ignore. That would be to ignore this essential part of the place.

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Lauren Beukes: So I spoke to the owner of the Hotel Olafson. Which is this? Very storied hotel? It's where Graham Greene, said the one of his novels. It's where the first HIV case was detected in the world.

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Lauren Beukes: And and apparently like lots of CIA made meetings and like old presidents, and, you know, like lots of lots of shenanigans happen at this place. And I said to rich Morgan, I said, Look, I really would like to talk to someone where it's not where I can do it respectfully. And I can try and do it, you know, accurately and truthfully.

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Lauren Beukes: And he said, great like my my bass player in my band is actually hung down. So I went to go meet him. This is my niece, and we bombed around Port a prince on the back of these motorbikes. We got to tanise his place and he walked down this corridor into this kind of town house, and there was a basement floor. This was obviously a place for ritualistic ceremony, and there was color powders on the ground, and there was a young woman drawing weird symbols on the blackboard.

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Lauren Beukes: and we had like a 3 h conversation. And he explained to me that what you do in Buddy practices you draw the symbols of the I have some examples of those images in a minute. And then afterwards he was very kind enough to give me a reading which he said it wouldn't normally do for blonde, which is white people, but because I was from South Africa.

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Lauren Beukes: He would. And it was. Really, it's really meaningful. And like really special here he is in a ceremonial gob, and then here are some of the which are the symbols you use to some low.

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Lauren Beukes: This is a mirror of the universe. This is kind of part of his practice. So bells and nails tangled together, a bottle of rum, so you can pour some spirits out for this for the law.

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Lauren Beukes: And then, as we're leaving. I say to him, oh, was that I know that 3 levels of voodoo was that young woman learning how to be a Mambo. and he's like, What are you talking about? I'm like, no, the young woman who's drawing the weird symbols on the board, and there was a young man watching her and like correcting her, and he was like what?

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Lauren Beukes: And he said she wasn't doing that wasn't voodoo. She was doing her physics homework.

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Lauren Beukes: Which I guess is a whole other kind of magic that I don't understand, but it was just. It was so great to just be like just smacked with, like, you know, my my expectations and my assumptions, and to just have that completely under mind.

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Lauren Beukes: And again, it also felt very familiar, which in South Africa, you know, I know a paleontologist who is also a sangorma or traditional healer. And this idea that science and traditional beliefs can't sit side by side is obviously, you know, not not true, and it was so great to be challenged that way, and I put that scene in the book for Beta because I felt like other people, the the character needed to suffer as I did with our dumb expectations.

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Lauren Beukes: Let's check how we doing on time. Good. Alright. So you know, once you actually have to like, get past research.

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Lauren Beukes: they're ways of approaching a story like finding a very particular point of view. So I was asked to write a Wonder Woman comic, and I was specifically asked to set it in Africa

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Lauren Beukes: and South Africa, and I was like cool because I sorry. As we know Africa is not a country. It's a whole continent, with many different nations and nationalities and languages and cultures. In South Africa. We alone, we have 11 national languages now 12, because they've just added South African sign language.

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Lauren Beukes:  and a Wonder woman story said in South Africa felt like it could go really badly wrong. It felt like it could become like a white Savior narrative that it would be really inappropriate.

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Lauren Beukes: And I was really trying to figure out how to work my way around this, because, of course it would be lovely to do it. But I didn't want to, you know. Find myself being

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Lauren Beukes: yeah, writing something that that I didn't believe in that, I felt was like problematic or difficult or not. Okay. So I came out from a different point of view, which is that I have a kid who's now 15, but I think she was about 7 at the time, and I was like, cool. I'm gonna do it as a kid's comic.

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Lauren Beukes: And here's some

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Lauren Beukes: stills from it. It's drawn by Mike Mayhak, who's absolutely wonderful. So it starts with that typical wonder woman adventure. She's like, you know, surfing in on the wing of her invisible jet. Her autonomous is the cheetah is there, and you know terrible things have happened. Batman's been turned to stone by Medusa, and Superman's being turned to a pig by Circe, the Sorceress, and Wonder woman's like whipping, and she saves the day.

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Lauren Beukes: And suddenly this giant cat leaps into into shots, and and the cheetah is like riding on top of it.

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and that's a bit strange. And then suddenly a giant hand comes in and plucks the cheetah right out, and we can see that the page is ripped.

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Lauren Beukes: And what's happening is that this is the adventure which is happening in the mind of a little girl called Zozo, and her older sister is so mad that she is drawn all over her dolls.

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and

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Lauren Beukes: is also like basically tries to tire up in the invisible rope. But there's a whole little drama which happens.

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Lauren Beukes: And what happens at the end is that so realizes she's supposed to be cleaning the toys, but instead she realizes that she can play Wonder woman herself, and she pulls out the plastic bucket where she's supposed to be cleaning the drawings off the dolls with, and she superheroes up in a very kind of classic action scene, and she uses her invisible jet

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Lauren Beukes: to save the day. When her sister almost gets attacked by dog. And it's just such a great way to like engage with this idea and talk about the superhero within. That, I hope kind of got around like the the potential issues that I had with it. And just felt like a really unique, really fresh story about what superheroes mean to us and what people like. Wonder woman means to us.

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Lauren Beukes: You can also put a twist in things. So another piece of comics work that I was asked to do was a Rapunzel for the Fables universe. Now, Fables is where it's very adult comic. It's for vertigo. It's which means there has sex and violence.

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Lauren Beukes: and what happens is that all the fairy tales have taken refuge in the real world. So I was asked specifically to write Rapunzel. And I was like, Okay, well, so this is a terrible very cheesecake cover like this cover. I'm much further. This one I went with. I was like, oh, Rapunzel is all about the hair, and she's about the tower. This is some artwork from inside.

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Lauren Beukes: So it's about the hair in the tower. And I was like, Okay.

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Lauren Beukes: Japanese horror is also about the hair.

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Lauren Beukes: and the well from Rangu is kind of the inverse of the tower.

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Lauren Beukes: And this is also where research comes in, because actually, if you eat hair balls, if you eat your own hair and kind of develop hairballs in your stomach that's actually called Rapunzel Syndrome and the movie Ringo, and the book comes from an old myth Callediku and the broken plates.

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Lauren Beukes: and she did emerge from the well. But there's also something which happens in Wells in Japan, where you get these kind of thread worms which almost look like they've been wrapped in hair. So of course, I put all of those things together. Put this twist on it, and I did a Jarot take on Rapunzel, where she becomes the woman in the well with all these kind of like haunted hair balls, which you know. Obviously, that's where my brain would go. I mean, it was just a really fun thing to do. But then, also, then, trying to, you know,

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Lauren Beukes: but really lucky kind of Japanese culture, and Rapunzel is the outside of here, and she's definitely not the hero.

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Lauren Beukes: So you know, the bad news is that with all of this stuff and all these things that you can do, all the research and the twists and the different Povs and all the play that you're doing because he's loved to write the Frickin book

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Lauren Beukes: all the work while crying

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Lauren Beukes: so back to the stupid quote. You've you've got to finish it.

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Lauren Beukes: and you gotta finish what you start. It's very easy to to just talk about the ideas. It's very easy to just do endless research whether that's actually going places and interviewing people or losing yourself down rabbit holes around neuroscience, or, you know, thread, thread, worms and wells, or whatever it is, a deep historical detail, but at some point you have to sit down and write. My friend Dj. Alder has a wonderful quote about this, which is that he starts every day with forgiveness.

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Lauren Beukes: and if he gives himself for whatever it didn't do the previous day, if you wrote a whole page and only save one word, that's fine. If he didn't write at all. That's fine. You need to forgive yourself. You need to get over your inner critic.

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Lauren Beukes: So writer is right. and they edits, and they rewrites, and they edit some more and they rewrite it again. You have to finish it.

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Lauren Beukes: and it's okay for it to be a hot, miss.

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Lauren Beukes: It really is like, that is the only way you can see yourself clear. So actually putting something together. So give yourself permission to like, give yourself permission to fail. It's it's fine. The first draft should be a mess, and then you can put it all together, and then you can fix it and hopefully assemble something which becomes a book.

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Lauren Beukes: So just in closing, I'm going to say that odd is the fire that we light against the darkness, and it feels really difficult in the time that we're living in right now. With the rise of fascism and the push against

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Lauren Beukes: women's rights and transphobia and homophobia to just feel that writing and telling stories is kind of pointless. But the stories we tell matter and the stories we tell about ourselves explain who we are to ourselves and to the other people.

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Lauren Beukes: So you know, if I leave you with this advice from one of the characters from our club Survivors club you know you gotta go out there and you gotta hit the road solo and you got it.

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Lauren Beukes: Fight your monster and you had to take it down. And the monster is finishing with Dan book. And it's okay because you can do it if you just give yourself the time.

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Lauren Beukes: Thank you. Bye.

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Lauren Beukes: thanks everyone. I am totally open for questions, and I think I race through that. So we've got time for lots of questions.

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Lauren Beukes: Haley. You're on mute, so I'm not sure what we should be doing now.

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Lauren Beukes: I'm going to go into the Q. And a. So my favorite writers and influences.

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Lauren Beukes: I read very widely, and I

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Lauren Beukes:  which which is which can be difficult, because, like, you know, being from South Africa, being Science Fiction writer, people are like, like. Please tell us all the African Science Fiction writers I'm like, oh, I don't actually know I love people I love far ranging from like Margaret Atwood and Jennifer Egan through to

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Lauren Beukes: William Gibson and Alan Moore. I love Nick Hawk away. I love sarah Pinska is a writer. I've just discovered. I love reading horror. People like radio. Hendrix. Sorry, Grady Hendrix of Radio Hendrix. So Brady Hendrix, Mariana Enriquez's new horror is just

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Lauren Beukes: devastating. It's just absolutely beautiful and incredible, and my favorite thing. But horror writers, and getting to hang out with them is, I think, we get all our darkness out on the page, and I think generally horror writers are like some of the nicest people in the world.

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Lauren Beukes: Frank's question was about being a reporter in the Chicago Sun Times in mid-nineties.

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Lauren Beukes: Oh, it's not a question. It's just commented, covering the loop flood in the Plainfield tornado. And more than your share of motors. I'm sorry. That sounds horrendous.

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But yeah, thank you. I actually interviewed

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Lauren Beukes: J. Jim Dirogis, who broke the R. Kelly story. So I got to meet and hang out with him in Chicago. And he told me, like all that detail, and it was just absolutely amazing to be able to really get these kind of first hand stories and try to get it right. But I love I love it. When people told me I got rice not kind of like, just because I'm like, Oh, I'm so amazing. But it's just it feels important to try and to pick things properly, to try and like get at authenticity through fiction.

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Lauren Beukes:  I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. How does primal detective novels work with Sci-fi? There are lots, I think.

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Lauren Beukes: I think, what both Science fiction and detective novels and noir are engaged with is society, and how it works, and specifically looking at the fracture points of society. And some of my favorite noir in particular, you know. You'll have characters ranging from someone who is, you know, like a

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Lauren Beukes: I don't know a scammer on the streets through to high society, and I love being able to see all those different aspects, and I think there are a lot of writers who who kind of play around in those areas and really interesting ways interrogating who we are in society, how these things put together.

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Lauren Beukes: and I think you know, a crime is also, it's, you know, such a real thing that we all live with.

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Lauren Beukes: Sci-fi, I think, is very much engaged with the idea of who we are right now kind of extrapolating those ideas into the future or kind of playing with them in a high concept.

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Lauren Beukes: And for me, that's such an important, powerful thing to do, because, yeah, zoom city is is fundamentally a novel about criminals and and crime. And how do you find forgiveness and what you've done and how you live with yourself.

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Lauren Beukes: But it's also yeah. And it's also touches on refugees and xenophobia against black Africans from black South Africans in South Africa. So it's kind of playing with, like all these different aspects.

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Lauren Beukes: But I could have done that. It's just kind of a very straight crime novel, but making it like this weird universe where criminals have magical animals which makes them immediately identifiable.

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Lauren Beukes: just became just put a twist on it. And it just allowed us, allowed me to talk about these quite deep issues in a way that was much more engaging and entertaining. The same way. The shining roles is fundamentally about violence against women. And let's be real. Most women who are murdered are murdered by the men who say they love them.

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Lauren Beukes: It's domestic violence rather than like serial killers. But I wasn't. Gonna write about a domestic violin case and and writing, using this time traveling serial killers, a device to be able to talk about that and what it means when we lose a life, and also how much things have changed for women across

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Lauren Beukes: history, and especially over the course of the twentieth century. It just gave me such a space to play, and for people to really engage with that.

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Lauren Beukes: Okay. So the threads on the sorry go ahead. Oh, no, no. Sorry. I was going to say, yeah, the threads on the wall. And yeah, there's in the wall. And how do you use them? Okay, cool. I'm gonna try and share that again. Hang on

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Lauren Beukes: if I can figure Rod how to do that. Okay.

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Lauren Beukes: okay, so

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Lauren Beukes: I don't normally use threads. It was really for this one, because it was tracking everything. So on the left hand side, we have the timeline of the murders. We have the killings. Timeline.

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Lauren Beukes: So this is all the jumps that he does. In the middle is the books timeline. So that is the actual plot of the book. And we jump around and Harper, the serial killers. Jumping between the nineteen-thirties and 1993. I ended the book in 1993 because I didn't want to have to deal with Reddit or something awful or Internet detectives trying to find that time traveling serial killer. I just wanted to kind of look at the twentieth century but I also have multiple perspectives. I have multiple characters. So some of it is written from Harper's Perspective. Who's the killer? Some of it is from Kirby. Who's the survivor who has turned the hunter around? Each woman gets their own kind of individual chapter where you really

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Lauren Beukes: feel who they are, and get a sense of like their lives, and what it means that their lives were ripped away from them which is genuinely upsetting. And people have been very upset with the book. But it's supposed to be because this is what it happens when we lose someone.

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Lauren Beukes:  so that's the timeline main box, which is all in the middle, and then down the side. On the left hand side is the serial killer's timeline, and where his jumps, which means I'm also tracking his injuries on the right hand side, and the very small kind of printed out piece of paper is the just below the map is the

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Lauren Beukes: actual historical timeline of each of the murders, and then the red strings link. They're all all the young women are listed at the top, you can see those photos. I went and found inspirational photos that I felt echoed some aspect of their personality or their character. And the objects that he takes from each young woman all leaves behind them. And that's kind of tracking everything. So the yellow lines. I think the objects that are left behind that are taken, and then black is when they're left behind, and the red is the the killings.

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Lauren Beukes: So it's very complicated, wouldn't recommend it. But it was also really important for me to like, really get it right to make sure that there weren't any plot holes. And also, you know, is a great take whole piece for a little while.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, it's a nice takes up the whole wall. That's great. I just wanna remind everyone if you have questions, please put them into the QA. If they go into the chat, there's a chance we won't see them. So Jessica asks, how do you know when you've done enough research and character development and should begin to write?

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Lauren Beukes: You know.

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Lauren Beukes: you know, that you're mucking around that you're like not actually spending the time character development. I think for me personally, like it comes in the actual writing. I often have a sense of like the characters voice not again like haunting where it's kind of. But I just kind of have

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Lauren Beukes: a sense of like where I want to start, and and often, like, often, I'll do a lot of research as I'm writing. So it's not for me a very specifically linear process. I'll I'll kind of start with an idea. And I'll start writing that. And I'm like, Okay, God, I need to know more about how

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Lauren Beukes: the shipping yards in Chicago in the 19 forties work to know I need to go and spend like 3 h watching Youtube videos, looking at how they launch boats in, and how women's roles in World War 2 actually worked out, and how black woman in particular would discriminate against

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Lauren Beukes: And and then I need to come back to the writing. So I think it's become self discipline, which is really difficult. But you're not a researcher. You're a writer, and you're not a character developer. So you actually just need to like figure it out and like, just actually start writing. And then holes.

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Lauren Beukes: One thing you could do is just mock your manuscript with like Triple X's, which is what I do. I'm like, which means Come back here later, like I don't know what the answer is, I don't know what this looks like. I don't know how to describe this but I'm just gonna write and I'm gonna fill in those blanks later. And I think that's good way to keep momentum going. Because otherwise you can, you know, fold on Youtube forever.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, it's it's so easy to be able to just keep going. And then I think you're right like you. You do just know when you're like, Okay, what am I doing? Am I? Am I procrastinating? Am I reaching for this? Because I'm trying to avoid something else? And it's because it's scary. It's terrifying. The blank page is terrifying and failing is terrifying. I think there's a big problem which kind of speaks to the next question, yeah. So if you want to read the question, I'll get into. Yeah, yeah, I was just going to. I was guessing same thing. So the next question is, do you have a specific routine to stop the imposter syndrome.

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Lauren Beukes: So this is a multifaceted answer. The one is that you know it's it's my site II have therapy, which is fantastic, and I'm lucky to be able to afford therapy. But it's this idea that you're just because you're a professional mountaineer doesn't know. Mean, you know how to climb this mountain. So it's giving myself a break they like, hey? You know what like. You actually don't. You don't know what you're doing here, and that's fine. You you have permission to suck and like to figure it out.

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Lauren Beukes: but it's also

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Lauren Beukes: Sorry I'm gonna come back. So I'm here for a second

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Lauren Beukes: compost syndrome. The research.

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Lauren Beukes: right? Yes, we all. We all have impostor syndrome, because we are all better readers than we are writers, all of us, every single one of us. We read at a certain level, and then, when we write, we hold ourselves to that level which is not where we are at all.

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Lauren Beukes: you know. Maybe maybe you're just underneath that level. But you're not that level

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Lauren Beukes: and like it is pointless me saying they're going like, Oh, my God, I'm never gonna write like Margaret Atwood like I might as well just give up which is something I nearly did with Moxie Land because I had very similar themes to Arts and Craig, which came out the same time. And I was like, what am I even doing? Forget it?

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Lauren Beukes: I think it is knowing that you you have a voice and your voice matters, and the way you tell a story is going to be different to the way someone else did it, even if it was with exactly the same characters, exactly the same concept, and to trust in your voice. And again, that is something that AI does not have. It does not have a voice, it doesn't have a perspective. And you bring all of who you are to the book as the reader, and as the writer

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Lauren Beukes: so it is again giving yourself a break, and realizing that you are a connoisseur of the best possible books.

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Lauren Beukes: and maybe one day you'll be at that level. But right now you just have to write and and and just get over yourself like, just go to get over it. You're not. You're not freaking. I don't know Nobel Prize winning author. You might be one day, but right now you're not, and I mean we're gonna get there is by practicing. It's the same with, you know, professional musicians doing their freaking scales.

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Lauren Beukes: I think sometimes where I struggle is to get into it. So there are a lot of tricks that you can use. The Pomodoro technique is great where you set a timer or you put the laundry on, and while the washing machine is going. You have to ride and you have. You have. You can't stop.

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Lauren Beukes: Other people in the set of time are on their phone. There are a lot of different apps like Forrest.

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Lauren Beukes: There are a lot of Pomodoro apps. you can also like, do the writing exercises which have done sometimes as a warm up you know where you find a prompt online like the Red Room, and you just write 15 min about the Red room, and you don't let yourself stop, and maybe even by hand, to like mix it up.

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Lauren Beukes: The other thing I will say is that one of the things which got my way and really contributed to my imposter syndrome was that I got an adult Adhd diagnosis in December, and being on medication has been life changing. I am not as hard of myself. A lot of my anxiety and depression is gone. And

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Lauren Beukes: you know, obviously, you shouldn't self diagnose you should go to like professional. But for me in particular, that was a majorly life changing thing. Because I was very hard on myself, and partly that's something we all do. And partly it's that my brain is structured specifically to do that.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, I always think about how there's not

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: the only way that I will not achieve my goals is if I don't try right. The only way I can make sure that my novel isn't published is if it doesn't exist, and so if I start writing it and start working on it, then there it can always be improved. I can, as you said, you can always learn and can always make it better. But if you never try, you're just never going to be forever. And and I think routine can help a lot of people

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Lauren Beukes: to have a set writing time, and I think you can also kind of train your brain to get into that mode. You know you can meditate beforehand. You can do your yoga stretches

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Lauren Beukes: you know, or just find a time in the space which is your sacred writing space. And that might be. You know a friend of mine is writing her novel on the tube in the mornings, on our commute into work, and you know, so it's not about finding the times, but making the time. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So someone asks, How do you combine genre so well?

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Lauren Beukes: I don't know. I just I just I can't tell you. I don't have a formula. It's just

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Lauren Beukes: again. This might be an Adhd thing. I just. I like lots of different shiny things and seeing how they combine. And

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Lauren Beukes: yeah, I think I think it's curiosity, like, I've really trained my curiosity. And I'm really curious. And I'm really interested in people. I'm really interested in the way the world works. And

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Lauren Beukes: and I just think it'd be boring to like, just do one genre I was talking about my new novel, which I'm not going to talk about. But I was like, Oh, it could be a straight historical novel I'm like, no, it's not gonna be. You're gonna put some weird twists in there. You won't be able to resist.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Yeah. And I also think that the presentation that happened earlier this this

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: session on story grid. They have a really interesting way of like approaching genre, as like sci-fi versus crime and kind of what these different story types are. So when I was thinking about, yeah, combining genre with worlds and that type of thing, and that that particular method really helped me start to start to think about that. If

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Lauren Beukes: those amongst you are looking for more ways to potentially procrastinate and learn about it. And that's what I do is I read across multiple genres. So I read Science Fiction. But I also read more, and I also read the tree fiction, which is on kind of genre

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and and from a variety of different writers, and just absorb as much as possible. Just become a giant amoeba just swallowing everything up around you. Yeah, I feel like there's one of the reasons why I love running these genre weeks is there's just so much to learn from all of them. We started doing them, and I was like, Oh, I know that I read fantasy and Science Fiction, but I actually learned so much from the crime and romance as well. Just so much that you can take from every, from everyone. Okay. Lisa asks, how can you know when to stick to a certain idea, and when to take a different approach.

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Lauren Beukes: I don't know if it's working if it's not working, you might have to step away from it for a little while. I like to. I have a lot of trusted friends, not I have a few trusted friends who, I trust, as kind of readers who can tell me where things are going.

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Lauren Beukes: But also sometimes things can be like really raw and fresh. And you have this tiny little seedling. You actually need to protect it. And any kind of feedback at that point can actually like crush it. So

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Lauren Beukes: so I don't know. I think again like you've got a feel in your gut like that. It's working. If it's not working, you need to step away from it for a while

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Lauren Beukes: and and maybe try a different tack. You know you could switch up if you switch it into the third person, or you could sit in past tense, or you could change the location. But I think I think again it comes down to finishing it like, I don't think you're gonna know it's not working until you've actually finished it.

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Lauren Beukes: And and that could be a I mean, a rough draft doesn't have to be like.

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Lauren Beukes: you know, like my rough drafts like 60,000 words. And then the final levels like 110,000 words. You know, there are like chapters which just like there's a big fight here, and then, like the person is mooded and they've got to solve it. And that's okay. But like but once I've got to the end, I'm like, Oh, of course, can't be a big fight scene between these 2 characters. Gotta be something else. You have to get to that endpoint

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: definitely. Okay. So Manson says, do you think it's necessary to put our real life experience in our fictional sci-fi novel? I've I've ever experienced a near death experience because of my carelessness, and it inspired me to put that into my novel as a lesson to never let your guard down on any occasion.

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Lauren Beukes: I don't think it's necessary to, but I think it does make it richer. And I think so. Many of our books are autobiographical in many ways. You know, and they're in jokes that we write just for us, which no one else is. Gonna understand?

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Lauren Beukes: And yeah, I think I think you do want your writing to be personal. I do think you want to like. Write into your lived experience and the things that have happened to you, especially if you can write about in a way that gives people insight into things

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: great.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: okay, let's just see what else we've got.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: someone else. What's a sure shot attention grabber in sci-fi.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I don't know. I was. Gonna say, it's a hard question to answer. Yes. I think this also just goes to the fact that what it grabs attention, for one reader is going to be different, too, and I think this also speaks back to what you were saying before on you know you should. You should write the book that you want to write, and the book that you for your readers, rather than trying to, you know. Go out there and see. Oh, what's going to sell or what's going to, you know?

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Lauren Beukes: Absolutely. So also, I mean, you know, waves move so fast. You're like killer mermaids might be really in right now, but in 6 months time it's over.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Yeah. Lou asks, how did you feel about working with artists and stuff to create the graphic novels and artwork for your stories. Did you feel like they captured everything you were seeing in your head?

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Lauren Beukes: It was even better than what I was seeing in my head. And actually it changed some of the things that I that I did. You know

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Lauren Beukes: II love collaboration, because again, other minds and freaking magic. And like, when you're collaborating with someone when you're collaborating with an artist. And this goes for like kids, picture books as well. Yeah, it's really a Co authorship, like, I am just the writer and the artist and I working together and creating like this whole new thing and and kind of bouncing off each other and reading each other.

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Lauren Beukes: There was a scene in Survivors Club where one of the characters. Alice? just has this look on her face

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Lauren Beukes: that the artist drew, and it wasn't. It wasn't correct for the dialogue, I was like, you know, and and artists generally sent thumbnail sketches through. So you can kind of get an idea

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Lauren Beukes: but I looked at that expression. I was like, that is a really interesting expression. I'm like, what is she thinking? I'm like, I don't think she's saying this line of dialogue at all. I think I think he has subconsciously tapped into something that I didn't understand about the character, but he has picked up by drawing her and I actually changed like we changed that dialogue, and like made it something else entirely, and it was so exciting to be able to do that when I worked in animation we had

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Lauren Beukes: I was very lucky. The animation studio. We worked and did everything in house, so it was like from storyboards through to sound recording through to you know, final minutes and post production. So when the actors were kind of coming into auditions, one of the actors, the way he performed the character was so much funnier

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Lauren Beukes: and kind of more neurotic than the character we'd written. It was supposed to be like this, tortured, like, you know, just like Imo, boys just like, oh, no, I'm feeling the world too intensely. And I'm ultimately gonna be the traitor. But actually, he was just like this weird kind of cool goofball who's just really anxious and interesting. I was like that is our characters. Forget it. I'm not interested in that character. I'm much more interested in

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Lauren Beukes: the character that this actor is basically made up on the spot from looking at a drawing and like looking at out lines of dialogue. And I love that I love being able to change my mind. And to have other people bring something which makes it more and richer and more interesting and surprising, and again, something I wouldn't have come up with.

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Lauren Beukes: It's great!

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Lauren Beukes: Oh, that's great! So, continuing the theme of kind of collaboration and feedback, Kat asks, when do you let someone see your work? Do you show anyone your work in the first draft stages? Oh, yeah, no, definitely. So once once I've kind of got quite far down the line. I'll I'll have trusted friends. Read it, and I work with a South African. So there's a question about Edison earlier.

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Lauren Beukes: so my first novel was published in South Africa, and the publisher was a bit they're a brilliant publisher, but they're

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Lauren Beukes: not the best on the admin like they break new, amazing voices. But they said to me, as a debut author, they were like, Well, who should your editor be? And I was like, I don't know what I was like. Okay, I'm gonna research this. And I researched. And I found this woman who Helen Moffat, who's an editor in South Africa, and she met mostly specializes in historical and like Renaissance, and like, you know, like she she told me when I met her that she doesn't read anything past the 19 twenties, and like she just doesn't think she's the right fit for my very kind of cyberpunk future. Cape town novel half told in this weird, made up slang that I invented.

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Lauren Beukes: And I was like, no, that's exactly why I do need you as an editor, because

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Lauren Beukes: because you will make it readable to a normal audience, and if you don't understand it, then I obviously haven't explained it properly, and I've worked with her and every one of my books. I pay her privately as a development editor, which I'm very again lucky to be able to do, and she's absolutely brilliant. And I think in publishing now, very few people actually do a development edit. It's much more of a copy edit.

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Lauren Beukes: And she she understands me, and she understands my voice. We've worked on 6 novels together in a short story collection, and the

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Lauren Beukes: you know, she

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Lauren Beukes: she'll often set like problem solve stuff. So with broken monsters we had, we. We had to go. We had to send the final manuscript off to the printers in like half an hour, and we're and I'm singing on my account. I don't know what the red object is that he's holding in his hand. I just don't know, and I need to know she's like, Do you need to know? Yes, I need to know. The plot needs to make sense.

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Lauren Beukes: And and she said, Well, maybe it says, maybe it's that. And and she said, Oh, my God, it's the shoes I'm like.

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Lauren Beukes: Course it's the shoes, of course it is. And it was actually there. I threaded it through, and there's a thing that the novel is. The book is smarter than the writer, and there's so much subconscious stuff which is happening you don't even know about. But when somebody points it out I've had happen in reviews as well where somebody's like, oh, you're obviously doing this, I'm like.

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Lauren Beukes: Oh, my God, right! Of course that is, I didn't. Oh, God! Like amazing! I feel like really smart now. But that was not intentional, and it was just incredible to have that kind of person I can trust, and readers I can really trust

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who can see things in the book.

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Lauren Beukes: And then also sometimes I hold my! I stand my God! Where I'm just like Nope, stand my ground. I'm like, I'm not moving you like, I know, using this isn't working. You don't like this character, but I know, deep in my God that it is and has to be this way. So it's kind of finding the mix of like

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Lauren Beukes: where to bust out your ego. Don't bust out your ego on the first draft. Do bust out your ego. If you feel something really strongly and and and it does make the book better in return. You and you know that deep down, but also be willing to listen to advice. Yeah, for sure. Can you speak a little bit more since we had this question about specifically how you found this editor? Was it through just Google search. Was it through word of mouth?

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Lauren Beukes: Sure I was. She was in South Africa, and it was word of mouth. And Cape Town is very small place. So it was. Really I can't. I know that there are a lot of Science Fiction writers who do offer professional editing services one person I think of off hand because I saw her Twitter recently was Cat Howard. It's cat with a K.

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Lauren Beukes: but I think there are like really good websites like right of aware, and stuff like that which can kind of queue into that. But I would. I would still, I mean, look on Twitter, even though it's now a health side even more of a health site. But yeah, and kind of like, look and see who people are talking to, and but also be very careful about paying for an editor again, definitely, always check with some with a website like right above, where? Because there's so many predatory

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Lauren Beukes: organizations that are really will try and take all your money. Vanity presses in particular, although one like hold onto the rights. Just be very careful. The writers and artists. Here book is also a very, very invaluable resource.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: great. So I think we have time for just 2 more. So Natalie asks, How do you handle writing about cultures and races that are different from your own?

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Lauren Beukes: I with Zeus City. I wrote a young black woman. Of course I'm South African. But even at the time this is back in, I was writing into between 2,008 and 2,009 came out in 2010. And this wasn't something that people did back then with sensitivity, readers, or, I think, a better phrase now is authenticity readers.

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Lauren Beukes:  But it was very important to me, like I knew that I had to get this right, and that I didn't want to mess this up or misrepresent people. So I spoke to a friend of mine. I hired her, and she's an amazing novelist herself to Keith Wana

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Lauren Beukes: and I hired her to be to read the book, and she sent me a whole like 3 pages of notes, and some of it was stuff like you don't buy a single Peter Stubbs and cigarette in the streets of Hilbra. You buy a Reddington gold, because because Hilbra was all about the chief knockoff

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Lauren Beukes: and she's like you probably wouldn't have people smoking methods, not really a thing which is happening. I'm like, yeah, but I need the light bulb to be out. And it's just a cool image, and I'm just gonna keep it. There's at least one method in my universe who's like, Who's there?

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Lauren Beukes: Oh, that's at the end of her notes. And I found her, and I was like, this is amazing. We haven't answered my big question, and she was like, What is your big question? I was like, well, God, how do I ask us? Like I was like, Okay, well, is Zindi black enough?

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Lauren Beukes: And and she burst out laughing. She said, what is black enough.

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Lauren Beukes:  And is there only one way of being black? She's like you have to. You have to write a character who is true to their upbringing and their background, and the Socio political and economic status, their gender, their sexuality, like their personal history.

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and it's been really amazing to have a lot of young black South Africans come up to me.

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Lauren Beukes: not a lot. But you know I've had a number of instances where people have been like. Oh, this character really meant a lot to me. And actually, the actor who I directed, who did the the new audio book version? Please find the correct audio book version, because there was a terrible white French Canadian audio book version. But the black South African version by Clinton, saw James is just amazing, and she

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Lauren Beukes: and she loved the character and fell in love with it, and, like just was

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Lauren Beukes: felt so embodied. Yeah, and and embodied the character. It was wonderful to do that. So I think they're always stupid. But you have to be very sensitive and appropriate and careful and respectful. And also people are telling you getting stuff wrong, and you gotta fix it or maybe abandon it. You know I had an idea that I would have a disabled villain, and my disabled friends was like, what do you know like disability is such a terrible trope

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Lauren Beukes: to turn people into villains like? Absolutely not. That's not okay. And your whole idea of like maybe having a disability would make you more invisible. They're like, that's not my experience of the world at all. If I go into the world. People find me annoying, and they remember me. Which is awful, and that you know I have seen it happen with the right of friend of mine as well. Who's blind and has a guide dog. But

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Lauren Beukes: yeah, so it it's again like, be challenge yourself. Ask the right questions, get authenticity readers pay them to do their jobs. And and really listen to what people have to say. And also, you know, some people like, look at. I don't think you should write this character then maybe that's something you shouldn't do. I don't know if I would write to city now. Because I think I think invoices is really important.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, that's all such great advice. Okay. Our final question from Laura is, what do you wish you had known when you'd first started writing. Wish I knew I had Adhd.

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Lauren Beukes:  I think that you've got to kind of that. It's hard that it's hard, and

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Lauren Beukes: my friend Richard Katy has a wonderful essay on his website about how everyone knows. He talks about the the 20 year overnight success. and he talks about how we all know writers who are better than us, who started at the same time that we did.

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Lauren Beukes: But they're not doing it today because you need so much guts and hearts to stick with it to keep telling the stories. And you're gonna you're gonna

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Lauren Beukes: get rejected. You're gonna get tons of rejections.

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Lauren Beukes: and you've gotta. You've got to roll with the gut punches you gotta like stand back up. You gotta like. Wipe the blood of your mouth, spit out some broken teeth and like, Get back in the ring like you've gotta if this is something you really want with all your heart

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Lauren Beukes: you've got to try and make it happen, and you've got to keep writing, and you've got to keep writing for yourself, and not for some kind of imagined audience chasing a trend.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: That's such great advice Lauren, thank you so much. This is so useful, and there's just been so much, so much feedback on the chat about how informative and inspiring. This was so. Thank you so much for taking the time today. You can find Lauren's books@laurenbuchis.com. We'll put that into the chat as well as onto the hub so that you can find it. And Lauren, is there any final words that you'd like to share before we sign off.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Finish the damn book. Just do it amazing. Well, thank you all so much. We'll put the replay up in the morning, and then again we will see you for the next session. In about an hour bye everybody.