Remember to listen to The Writers Block Podcast found on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Spotify. This series started on the podcast in April 2019 and is my intellectual property. Thank you.

Representation matters.

As a writer who identifies as Black, cisgender, heterosexual woman who writes, I am aware that most fiction is neither written for me or by those whom look like me.

The brilliant Walter Mosley said that in order for your characters to exist in the culture, they have to exist in the fiction. With that said, our jobs as writers is to write what is not there, what is not there, and even who should be there!

The writer-educator bell hooks said that no woman has ever written enough. I agree. I also submit that no minority person has written enough.

No Black person.

No Ingenious person.

No Latin/Latindad/Latinx person.

No Person of color.

No one that identifies as at the intersection of either of those identifies and any part of the LGBTQIA+ community has.

Over the next 5 weeks we will discuss the following topics, which I call the 5 I’s Of Representation. All these things, I believe, need to be considered when writing:

Imagine-

What do you see?

Image–

What do you want to show?

Identify (points to genre)-

What story do you want to write?

Identity–

Who do you want to see?

Intelligence–

How are you going to develop your characters?

Whether you realize it or not, you bring all your identities into every word you write, to every page you fill! You, as a writer, are still comprised of the some total of your two-fold experiences: those experiences in the world, and your experiences in the world as what you identify as. What you want to see in the world already exists in the form of YOU.

Put YOU in the world—this series will show you how.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris, Founder Hesed Writing & Communication Services