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Every morning and night I walked through that city, to and from the museum, fall turning into winter. Each doorway, even mine, its own theatre of something, with its own suggestion or promise.

I allowed myself to go into clothing shops, and when I found a delicate black blouse I thought would go well with a simple skirt, and when I had saved enough money, I allowed myself to buy it. Trying it on in the dressing room, I became different. I left the shop, the small bag tucked under my arm. I don’t think I looked different to anyone else, but I carried the bag proudly with me.

After work, if Antoinette came too, we would find ourselves walking next to the cold black river, following it to the black lake, sometimes stopping to throw crumbs for the birds. Two figures on a canvas. I saw us that way.

‘I want a bathing suit,’ she said one evening. I don’t like to hear a person’s voice during this kind of moment.

Then we walked again. At a market we bought hot chocolate and drank it while sitting on a bench in front of the lake. Other people sat on other benches and the air was chilly. We were anything but alone. This time I didn’t mind listening to the things she wanted: a one-piece, backless bathing suit, a silk dress, a gold necklace with stars on it, a turquoise blouse. A portrait of her desires, there at the lake with the waves rising gently up in the darkness. I wanted her to have all of it.

‘Can you imagine,’ she said dreamily, ‘a party in which you receive all the things you’ve wanted all year, and then you put them on one by one?’

‘To be honest, I can only imagine receiving one of them.’

‘Why only one?’

‘I try to imagine things that might actually happen. It’s more pleasurable that way.’

‘None of it will come true, so what does it matter.’

‘You’re right, and yet . . .’

I would get her the blouse. After all, I had just saved enough for my own, why shouldn’t I get one for Antoinette? A few more skipped meals and I would be able to afford it.

For a while, then, my breaks at the museum were spent in the galleries. If I couldn’t eat, at least I would see something nice. I would write about it. One of the drawings I liked most was Three Virtues, and I went to it often. I would sit on the bench facing the drawing and forget where I was. Three different figures of a man fading into a red background while I faded into the room. It was certainly a strange drawing, though I don’t think it was meant to be. Sometimes I looked at pages from the Quran, studying its lettering. But I knew I was different from the other museumgoers; I had my work to do. Only when I was walking or at home could I be myself.

I wrote down my descriptions of the paintings, my notes, but I wasn’t sure what I would do with them. The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet, The Annunciation, Margaretha van Haexbergen.

Then I would see Antoinette, looking at herself in the mirror in the bathroom, careless, her sponge on the floor. In the courtyard in her – it was true – ugly coat. I started to write descriptions of her, the things she did when she was supposed to be cleaning, the way she looked when she spoke or was silent. I liked doing this as much as I liked describing the paintings, but I didn’t tell her I was going it. I didn’t talk about writing at all. She continued to tell me the things she wanted, that she had seen in the shops. Sometimes I wrote these things down in my notebook too. In my mind I began to picture her in the clothes she wanted, as if the intensity of her desire had made them appear. Very clearly, I saw her in a maroon dress.

 

*

 

Today as Antoinette and I were leaving the museum, we stopped to look at a painting of Mary. Or maybe it was me who looked; Antoinette was restless. In this painting, Mary is lying down but she’s awake to something. She’s looking up, her eyes open just enough to see what’s in front of her, or perhaps what she’s seeing is inside her own mind. Her white robe is slipping from her shoulders, her hands clasped, her arms resting on her pregnant belly. A red blanket. A dark room. It must be cold outside. Inside too. She is lit not radiantly, but with a half radiance and shadows all around. They touch her. And the red blanket gives off warmth, but Mary’s skin also looks warm. She appears as if she’s in ecstasy. I wonder what it feels like.

 

*

 

Antoinette visited me at my apartment only once. She came over and I made us mint tea. We each ate an orange. A biscuit.

‘You have hardly any furniture,’ she said in surprise.

‘I have enough.’

She looked around. ‘Hardly anything at all.’

It was true, but the things I liked were around me. Lying on my bed and waiting for me to return to it was a novel about a poet. An autumn leaf sat on the table between us, Antoinette in one chair and me in the other. We drank our tea.

‘Someday I hope to have a parlour with very beautiful furniture in it,’ she said. ‘I would spend all of my time there. A place to relax when I am not out visiting and a place to entertain my own guests. Wouldn’t you like that?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘The parlour or the visiting?’

‘Both, but especially the visiting.’ Antoinette appeared hurt. ‘I don’t mean you. This is different. I consider you to be my friend and so it’s my pleasure to have you here.’

‘Do you really think of me as a friend?’

‘Of course. And me? Do you see me as a friend?’

‘Yes,’ she said shyly.

‘Go on. What would the parlour look like?’

‘The wallpaper would be navy blue with orange flowers on it.’ She stopped and thought awhile. ‘A magenta-and-black Turkish rug in the shape of an oval would sit in front of the sofa. I don’t know what colour the sofa would be.’

‘Something neutral,’ I offered.

‘Grey.’

Though we have only dirtied a few dishes, and she always tried to clean as little as possible at work, Antoinette insisted on washing them before she went. It was sweet and I began to love her then.

 

Image, Detail from Three Virtues, Lorenzo Monaco, c. 1420

 

Indelicacy is published on 11th February 2020 by FSG and on 21st May 2020 by Daunt Books.

The post Indelicacy appeared first on Granta Magazine and Granta Books.

You’ve spent hours drafting query letters. You have suffered through rejections.

Finally, after almost giving up, a literary agent has expressed an interest in representing you and your book.

She has sent you a contract, perhaps in the form of a letter. You read it over and notice a few things in it you don’t like, as well as some terms you don’t understand.

Can you change the things that you don’t like?

How can you get an explanation of what you don’t understand?

Agency agreements: What you should know

As an attorney who has helped writers work through contract issues, I’ve seen many agent agreements and I’ve developed a sense of how to guide writers through the process.

Here’s what you need to know before signing a contract with an agent.

1. Consider the terms carefully

Proposed contracts with agents are just that — proposed. They are not set in stone. They can be changed; terms can be negotiated.

When an agent sends you a contract, it is written to benefit the agent. Until it is signed, the agent is not looking out for your best interest. She’s looking out for her own best interest.

Once the contract is signed, the agent will be working for you to obtain the most beneficial terms possible from the publisher. Until then, you must look out for yourself.

You may hesitate to question the contract terms you are being offered when you’ve worked so hard just to get the offer. It’s understandable to worry about losing the representation offer entirely if you ask about or request changes to the agreement. All the same, your questions should be answered to your satisfaction before you sign the contract.

By signing, you are beginning a relationship that could last a long time. In some cases, the relationship lasts for the life of the copyright of the work — and that can be up to 70 years after you have died.

If the agent balks at answering your questions or fails to respond respectfully to your request for changes, she may not be the best person to work with you. (Note: I’m not saying the agent must agree to the changes you request, only that the contract negotiation process must be respectful.)

2. Ask your potential agent these questions

Make sure that this agent is the right one for you by asking questions, like these suggested by the Association of Authors’ Representatives, a membership organization for agents.

Ask to speak with her other clients. Has she represented writers like you? (Debut, previously self-published, multi-genre, etc.) Why did the agent select you? What is it about your work that looks promising?

Hopefully, you did your research before you sent out query letters and you know that this agent has experience in your genre.

Do not assume the agent works in your genre. It may be that she is looking to broaden her book of business. If that’s the case, you need to decide whether you want to be her test case.

On one hand, being represented by a new agent (or an agent new to a genre) may give you the benefit of her unbridled enthusiasm. On the other hand, she may not have the contacts needed to land a publishing deal.

You need to understand the role the tagent will play in your career.

• What help will she provide in developing your book?
• How will the agent work with (monitor) the publisher?
• Will she play a role in the editing of the book? What about cover design?
• Will the agent be involved in the marketing your book after it is published?

Once you understand what the agent is going to do for you, you can scrutinize the contract to see if the agent’s promises are in it.

3. Understand these contract provisions

Here are a few provisions you’re likely to see in your contract, plus what they mean for you.

The “Work”

The “Work” being represented is the first definition in the contract. Agents require that they be appointed as sole and exclusive representatives of the Work. If the contract is for representation of one book only, clarify that you are under no obligation to submit any further work to the agent and are free to use another agent or no agent for your next book.

The definition of the Work clarifies the scope of the contract. The agency agreement should be clear on your freedom to create derivatives of the Work that are not subject to the agent’s representation. A derivative is a piece that is based on or derived from the Work that is the subject of the contract.

This clarity is particularly important for a non-fiction writer. If your book is about your life’s passion or expertise, you do not want to be locked into a contract that requires you to pay the agent a percentage of everything you do, write or say about that passion from that point forward.

Tip: If the definition of the Work is vague, ask to have it tightened up to reflect your understanding that your entire body of work that exists now and in the future is not part of the deal. If the relationship is a good one, the scope of the contract can be broadened later.

“Subsidiary rights”

The goal of having an agent is to secure a publishing contract to produce a printed volume in the English language. But there is a host of other rights encompassed in the representation agreement and ultimately in any publishing contract.

Often the subsidiary rights, the right to produce the same material in different formats, are not defined. It is to the agent’s benefit to keep the term vague.

Subsidiary rights can include foreign publication rights, first and second serial, motion picture, television, radio, audio, dramatic performance, abridgments and all other rights broken down by geographic territory. The key is to understand which rights you are giving to the agent for representation.

Tip: List exactly which subsidiary rights are included in the representation agreement to eliminate any ambiguity in the contract.

Remember that you have control over your own rights and you can divide them between different agents, especially if an agent specializes in a particular type of transaction and not others.

Tip: Keep the subsidiary rights to the minimum generally required by a publishing contract: audio, foreign, first and second serial. Again, if things are going well or a publishing contract calls for it, you can always broaden the contract with the agent.

“Best efforts”

“Best efforts” means that the agent is going to work hard on your behalf to secure a publishing deal. But without detailing the specifics, the best efforts clause is toothless. The contract should outline what the agent is going to do:

• Review the author’s work
• Provide editorial guidance
• Develop a strategy for publication
• Be an advisor on the publishing industry
• Market the work and the rights to appropriate publishers
• Monitor the royalties

Tip: Include an accountability clause in the contract. This requires the agent to report regularly and to document the efforts made on your behalf.

The termination provision

If the agency relationship is no longer working out, you will want to end it. Agent contracts can last from 30 days to the life of the work’s copyright.

However, an agent needs to be given enough time to sell the book. The gears of publishing turn slowly, even in the digital age.

An author must be able to terminate the agency agreement if the agent fails to use her best efforts, or if the agent secures a print publication deal and then chooses to “sit on” or not actively seek exploitation of the remaining rights in the contract.

If an agent fails to use her best efforts to secure a deal or sell the subsidiary rights, you will have a difficult (if not impossible) time finding another agent to help you exploit those rights unless you can end the contract with the first agent.

Tip: If you sign a long-term representation agreement, ask for a provision that allows termination if the work hasn’t sold after a certain period of time — a year, for example.

4. Know the importance of the agent relationship

Agents have relationships with publishers that you do not have. You are paying them a percentage of your sales because of who they know.

You are also paying them to negotiate with the publisher on your behalf. Should a deal arise, there will be critical terms to work out between you and the publisher. Agents have knowledge and experience that you may lack.

Knowing what to expect (and what not to expect) in the relationship between you and your agent and understanding the contract that defines that relationship will help ensure a successful business partnership.

Are you looking for a literary agent? What questions do you have about what should be in your contract?

While Kathryn is a lawyer, this post does not constitute legal advice. For specific advice, please see a legal professional.

This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

Photo via Amnaj Khetsamtip/ Shutterstock 

The post Signing With a Literary Agent? Here’s What Should Be In Your Contract appeared first on The Write Life.

Cartoonist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom begins her graphic memoir, Palimpsest: Documents from a Korean Adoption, with the following dedication:

This album is dedicated to all adoptees

—living and dead—

whose voices have been silenced

What follows is the story of how Sjöblom, adopted and raised by a family in Sweden, discovers a document that unravels everything she had been told to believe about her own history as an orphan. She recounts every difficult aspect of the investigation on the path to uncover the complicated truth about who really owns the story of adoption.

My interview with Sjöblom over video chat ranged far and wide, from her signature art-style to Sweden’s adoption lobby, from the female adoptee body to misconceptions about reunions, mental health, and first mothers. 

---

Marci Cancio-Bello: Would you be able to talk about showing your reunion with your birth mother?

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom: Yes. It was very difficult to write. We have a television program in Sweden called Without a Trace. It’s an entertainment show for the general audience to watch painful reunions between adoptees and their first parents and siblings. The narrative always, always ends with the adoptee, alone again, on her way home or something, saying, “Now I feel whole, now I feel like this part of me has been found, and I can be a normal person again.” There is this sense of catharsis and relief, and that everything is fine. This is what the program wants it to be, and what the Swedish audience needs to hear as well—that reunions are considered a finale, the closing of a chapter.

I have known hardly any adoptees who have said that about their reunions. Reunions are the beginning of something. Maybe a new relationship. But so many adoptees are really, really frustrated because they feel that the initial meeting may have been wonderful, but then it becomes another relationship full of trauma and questions. It’s not easy, and it’s definitely not as it’s depicted on television and film. 

I wanted to show that this is a different ending, that this is not what you think this book is going to be. It’s not the happy ending where I found the final piece of the puzzle. From the reunion comes more pain and more questions, and the reunion isn’t over. My birth mother and I didn’t really reunite, either. We met, but we didn’t talk that much. I didn’t find out that much, so I still feel like I’m just waiting to find her, still, in a way. But as a person, not as a physical person.

When we think about a reunion, before they ever happen, it’s about the physicality of the reunion, holding, seeing, wondering where you got your features from and all that, but then after that, it becomes about the person behind the face, who are they, why did they do this, why did this happen, and it’s also about the relatives around them, why did my grandmother decide to force my mother to give me up, blah blah blah. All these questions. So I left a lot out, but I still wanted to communicate that reunions are really, really difficult for everyone involved. I didn’t want anyone to feel comfortable at the end. 

MCB: Can you talk about why, toward the end of the book, you dedicated a few panels to showing how you spent your last few days in Korea, going to parks, spending time with your host family?

LWRS: I had a lot of fears when I made this book, and they kept changing when I was working on it, and of course I also had this fear that people would judge Korea, because I am very tough on Korea as the sending country. There’s a lot of prejudice about East Asian families, because one of the common images is that they are really ruthless, and the mothers are heartless and only want their children to succeed, and they push them to their limits, and they beat the children and all those things.

I wanted to show that Koreans are just like anybody else, that they are all different. We have these horrible Koreans in the agency and in City Hall, and then we have the wonderful, warm police officer who was helping me as much as she could, and then we have Min-Jeong, my translator and friend, whose whole family took us in. Her parents sort of became my children’s grandparents, so these final panels were to show that there are more sides to Korean families than just my mother’s. I also wanted to show that my trip to Korea wasn’t just painful, that there were a lot of happy, lovely memories from that too, and that we got something of a family, even if it wasn’t my biological family.

MCB: I hope this is not an inappropriate question, but do you regret having gone through the process, or are you glad you did it? 

LWRS: I’m really glad I did it. Maybe not so much on a personal level, but more as an activist. I think that a lot of people who identify with my struggles in the book and see that a lot of the things that I struggled with growing up was about trying not to be Asian, not to be an adoptee, trying to be white, trying desperately to fit into something that I could never fit into. I think that my search made me also come to terms with and deal with a lot of other things about being adopted that weren’t so much about where I come from, but rather who I am now. 

Birth mothers tend to be reduced to selfless angels or broken bad people. They are never seen as whole people.

It took me over 30 years to just accept the fact that I’m Asian. I finally feel comfortable with that. I don’t feel disappointed when I see myself in a mirror, or I feel disappointed, but on my own terms. But I don’t feel anymore that I wish I was blond, or that I wish I had blue eyes. I can acknowledge a lot of things that I had just been pushing down in my desperate need to fit into all these narratives about what I’m supposed to be as an adoptee. 

I thought the search was just about the search. But coming to terms with being Asian has been a major thing that also made me a better activist. I think it made me a better person as well. And I think I can be a better mother to my children, because if I’m proud of being Asian, I’m not going to make them feel bad about having inherited their looks from me. So there’s so much else to it than just the search. So yeah, I’m very happy with it, even though it brought about a lot of pain, but the pain hasn’t changed. 

I don’t think there is any: “You have to do this, or you have to do that.” It can be difficult enough to know what you want. If you don’t feel comfortable searching, then wait. There is only one thing you have to do, which is to try to listen to yourself.

MCB: Could you talk about your artistic process and art style? It’s so striking.

LWRS: The color scheme itself is something I’ve worked with for a long time. It has become a bit of a signum for me. Before I drew this book, I drew comics for children using the same color palette. I’m really into nature palettes with lots of browns and mossy greens. I knew that I didn’t want it to be black and white, even though it would have taken me a lot less time to not have to color in every panel. The term “palimpsest” came to me very early, long before the actual story fell into place. And since “palimpsest” refers to old parchment, I wanted to communicate that sense of fading, old paper. 

MCB: You also include a lot of text, since you’re working with so much documentation of research and correspondence, but it doesn’t visually bog down the narrative. It’s fluid and well-balanced.

LWRS: I think that my work as an illustrator comes through, because some panels are more like illustrations than comic panels, and I think it works quite well because sometimes you need a break when you’re reading a comic book. The story itself has been compared to a detective story. I think that is what makes it possible to have that much text. There is so much to tell, and certain things are impossible to communicate with images. Like the emails, for example; they’re important because there’s so much frustration—and lies—in the emails that I couldn’t leave them out without compromising what I wanted to do and say. Even with the factual bits of information about the adoption industry, it’s not so much about my own adoption but about the things I discovered that are important. Where the panels are more like illustrations, as a reader you might be able to pause a bit and realize, “Oh gosh, this is huge; it’s not just her story.” 

MCB: It allows you to control the pacing so readers can’t just skim through the emotionality and historicity. These pauses made me read the book carefully. 

LWRS: When I found out about my paperwork, I did exactly what I show in the book. I started Googling people, and this massive thing happened: I discovered that there is this term, “paper orphan,” to begin with, and that there is massive corruption in adoption, so my search was interrupted by this other insight.

We adoptees are the ones who are punished by society for not being as ‘good’ as we were expected to be.

On the one hand, I was being very self-centered and thinking about my own story, and then learning about all these other broken families, other adoptees who were searching in vain and discovering that they had been stolen. So it felt like I had to deal with discoveries about my own story, and then all these other people’s stories as well, and I didn’t want to leave them behind. 

MCB: I loved the motifs of the umbilical cord, the family tree, and the cover art depicting the Korean peninsula as a womb. As a female adoptee whose body holds the possibility to carry a child, it felt important to able to read about someone who has concerns about becoming a mother and creating literal blood ties. People don’t really talk about that sort of thing with adoptees. 

LWRS: Absolutely. I think it came from different places, but I remember when I got pregnant, I felt ashamed and guilty for having thought that my mother had made an easy choice just because that’s what I’d been told. I know that’s impossible, it wasn’t my own fault, but I felt very deceived by other people who would say, “They gave you up because they loved you so much.” And then you think, “Okay, well that’s nice,” and then they can move on. Like the letter from the adoption agency that opens the book, which says that hopefully my birth mother has a husband and new children and a good life. I had reduced her story very much to “She had me, and then she couldn’t take care of me, and was given a solution through adoption.” 

When I got pregnant, this storm of emotions just hit me, physically and mentally. It’s not just about adoption, because all my friends who have been pregnant have said the same thing: how you go through the pains of birth, and how connected you are to the kid. I felt so ashamed for having reduced pregnancy and birth to something extremely simple. Of course, you can never understand those things until you’ve gone through it yourself. 

We take for granted that the female body can do this, and we see this in the surrogacy industry too. It’s reduced to something that is almost not even part of yourself—that’s why you can rent a womb today, and it’s not part of the body, it’s not essential; it’s just a function of the body, like going to the toilet or something. 

So I think those bits in the book are a way for me to apologize. It’s massive, becoming a mother, even if you can’t keep your child, or don’t want to keep your child. It’s massive for the baby, too. It’s quite a thing to be ripped apart from the only person you know. That’s also something that is being reduced to being meaningless. 

MCB: When I read about how you had such anxiety during your pregnancy, I was reminded that this is not something women have space to talk about, especially adopted women who must struggle with particular anxieties about motherhood. 

LWRS: We are reminded by maternity care. In one of the first pages, my midwife tells me to talk to my mother about my birth, because we inherit from our mothers. For them, it’s just something they say because it’s a good recommendation, but for me, a whole trauma was being unraveled in that one little detail. I can’t talk to my mother. I don’t know who she is. We also can’t talk to our adopted mothers about it, not just because they may not have experienced childbirth, but also because there can be jealousy, and guilt as well.

I struggled with trying not to be Asian, not to be an adoptee, trying to be white, to be something that I could never fit into.

You have to fill in all this paperwork about degenerative diseases, and you have no information, there’s so much going on inside and out, and when people who don’t know they’re talking to an adoptee, they don’t understand that these questions can feel very blunt, and you can be emotionally unprepared to deal with that. 

In Sweden, if you have been through sexual violence, or if your parents have died, you’re offered special help when you get pregnant; but they don’t have it for adoptees. I’m advocating for a lot more support for adoptees. So many adopted mothers in Sweden contacted me after the book was written, and said, “I know exactly what you’re talking about. It was awful, it was difficult, and I could have dealt with this much more if anyone had told me that I should be prepared as an adoptee for all the trauma that can come back to me when I get pregnant.” 

MCB: And yet you didn’t do as many people tend to do, which is to demonize the birth mother. You saw and acknowledged your own birth mother as a complex person, even before you began your search. 

LWRS: In Sweden, birth mothers tend to be reduced to children, or selfless angels, or broken drug-addict alcoholics who couldn’t mother because they were bad people. They are never whole people, and they’re simplified a lot. 

I wanted my book to show respect for the first mothers, and to give them the complexity that they are never given in Sweden. Adoptive parents and adoption organizations have been talking for adoptees and reducing us to very simplified beings. I didn’t want to make the same mistake with the first mothers, so I didn’t want to make any assumptions other than asking questions in the book: “How did it feel for you? Were you lonely? Was it difficult for you?” and not saying, “It must have been difficult, it must have been [____],” but asking open questions in the panels to my mother. 

There are things that I have left out in the story because I didn’t want any reader to demonize her or to think, “Look at this woman; be glad you didn’t have to grow up with her.” It was a difficult reunion, but with all that trauma, could it have been an easier reunion? I don’t want to put that responsibility on my mother, no matter how hurt I was, to communicate something that would paint her in a bad light. 

MCB: I also appreciate how transparent you were about struggling with depression and mental health as a young person. I don’t know about Sweden, but America often shies away from anything that has to do with mental health.

LWRS: Yes, the same in Sweden, at least when it comes to adoptees. The adoption issue in Sweden is so connected to the adoption lobby that anything negative is automatically seen as political and anti-adoption. One of the first questions I get, not just about the book, but about my search or anything, is, “How did your adoptive parents react?” Everybody is so concerned about how they feel, and not: “What did it feel like for you to find your parents?” Always the first question is about my adoptive parents. 

And that is a bit how it is in general for Sweden. If we voice our concerns as adoptees about our health, and we don’t get the proper care that we need, people say this must be so hard for our parents. We are the ones who are dying. We are the ones who are committing suicide, and we are the ones who are punished by society for not being as “good” as we were expected to be, and yet everybody is concerned about the adoptive parents, because they did everything they could, and now we are ungrateful because we’re not healthy enough or whatever. It’s absolutely insane. 

When other Swedes commit suicide, we see it as a huge health problem that needs to be dealt with, but adoptees are not included. We have this group called Suicide Zero, which I work with, and which works to inform about suicide factors, where you can get help. They’ve listed high-risk groups on their webpage, such as LGBTQ people, refugees, and so on, but adoptees are not mentioned, even though we are the group with the highest suicide rates in society. There’s quite a lot of research done in several countries that match the numbers that we found in Sweden. The numbers are alarming, and yet if you try to talk about these things, people actually say, even in adoption organizations, “Yeah, but this is good, because it means that so many adoptees actually survive.”

We are overrepresented when it comes to foster care, crimes, suicide, attempted suicide, psychiatric care, we do worse at school, we don’t marry as much as the non-adopted population, we don’t have kids at the same rate, and all of this is dismissed, because we are told to look first at the adoptees who succeed, we should look at those who didn’t get adopted in their own countries, and be grateful for what we got. 

MCB: Does Sweden have citizenship issues in the adoptee communities? Adoptees are not included or acknowledged in conversations about citizenship and immigration.

LWRS: No, we don’t have that, so that’s one of the few good things. Several of us who are activists are working to make people understand that we are migrants. I don’t know if in the U.S. adoptees are included in the term “migrants.” They may be in numbers and statistics and academic environments, but not in the general conversation. We are separated from other immigrants. So we say adoptees and immigrants. But we are trying to say that we are also migrants in this country, which is important to understand for several reasons. It doesn’t make any sense at all, but it’s because the term “immigrant” has become loaded with a lot of other things. 

The adoption lobby also wants to cover up that it is an immigration issue. They want adoption to be seen solely as a bi-political thing, and it’s all about forming families, especially for childless couples to be able to have children. That’s where they want the focus to be, and not on the fact that we are forced migrants from a different country, because then the conversation would look very different. We have political parties with racist policies that want to limit the migrations, but they want to support more foreign adoptions, separating the issue that you have this kind of immigration that is welcome, and then you have the other migration that you want to stop, but they don’t realize that it’s all the same. 

The whole difference is that adoptees are wanted by wealthy Swedes, and we come without our parents, whereas other migrants might come over with their families, which they want to stop. An effective way for them to distinguish between us is to not acknowledge that we are all migrants, and to just talk about us in different terms so that it’s not obvious that they are completely hypocritical about migration issues. 

The post This Graphic Memoir About Adoption Isn’t Interested in Comfortable Answers appeared first on Electric Literature.

As an editor, one of the first pieces of feedback I give to writers is to vary word choice and sentence structure. But there’s one place where I go in the complete opposite direction: quote attribution.

When I started managing a local alt-weekly five years ago, I inherited their style guide. I could change it, but I decided to give it a little test drive first.

A simple “subject says” is the best format for quote attribution

That style guide recommended that writers almost exclusively use a simple “subject says” format to attribute quotes. I bristled a little. Taking all the wonderful varied ways to frame a quote and jettisoning them in favor of “says” felt wrong, sparse and cold.

But as I worked with more and more writers, I converted to the “subject says” formula. It strengthened pieces in a few ways, and I’ve carried this framework into other work. This advice is drawn from non-fiction and journalistic style writing, but you could also apply this approach to fiction if it suits your voice. 

If you’re unsure about fully converting to a “subject says” formulation, here are two ways it could help strengthen your writing.

Figure out who the focus of your piece is

When introducing a quote from a source, you’ll include some context around who’s speaking. 

Sometimes it’s more basic, such as the source’s occupation and expertise in an area. If the interview was held in a location that highlights your subject’s relevance to the subject, that could make its way in as well.

It makes a difference if the mayor is making a statement outside City Hall, or an offhand comment to a writer who’s followed them along to their kid’s soccer game. If you’re writing about someone who champions minimalism and they’re sitting behind a desk covered in post-it notes and stacks of books, that’s information your readers could find interesting.

This context helps, but remember that you’ve included your source in the piece for a reason. They offer credibility, or an insight, or an experience that is unique, and their voice matters. The context surrounding a quote shouldn’t overshadow the quote itself.

Your goal should be to showcase your source, not your writing. And overly flowery quote attributions can subtly (and not-so-subtly) pull focus away from the quotes – and away from the source – toward the writer.

The beauty of sticking with “says” is from a reader’s perspective, it doesn’t jump out. It does its work quietly, lets the reader know who’s speaking and then leaves them to continue on with the piece.

Not every word or turn of phrase needs to showcase the craft of the writer. A habit of “says” relieves your quote attributions of the pressure of communicating more than they have to. It makes space for your quotes to stand out. It keeps the focus on the source, not the framing of their quote.

Are there exceptions to this? Of course! Context is important for framing a quote, and unless you’ve interviewed someone who’s very tight-lipped, you’ll likely end up with more usable quotes than you have room for in your word count.

Sometimes selecting the best section of the quote means losing part of the context. Quote attributions can put this context back in concisely while keeping an otherwise low profile. 

Examples of these include:

• adds
• explains
• observes
• suggests

Other attributions might seem to add something, but often don’t say much more than “says,” including:

• comments
• states
• notes

If you’re unsure, ask yourself: would the meaning of the quote be lost if the attribution was changed to “says”? If not, stick with “says.” Sometimes less is more.

Link the subject to the quote

Another trick to keep your attributions clean and clear is to use the “subject says” order rather than “says subject.” The closer the source’s name is to their quote, the less work there is for the reader to connect the two.

Consider our hypothetical minimalism expert from earlier – let’s call her Linda Lesser – and some possible options to frame a quote of hers. None of these frameworks are necessarily wrong, but while reading these over, consider how many elements of the story you’re mentally keeping track of while finding your way through the sentence.

Linda Lesser, a self-styled consultant in minimalist approaches to work spaces, says that “A clean desk is like a clean slate, and can reduce potential distractions.”

Consider the distance there between Lesser and her quote, and if her qualifications add much in the preface.

“A clean desk is like a clean slate, and can reduce potential distractions,” says self-styled consultant in minimalist work spaces Linda Lesser.

This puts the quote up front and is more engaging, but there’s still a gap between quote and attribution.

“A clean desk is like a clean slate, and can reduce potential distractions,” Linda Lesser, a self-styled consultant in minimalist work spaces, says.

This is my preference for combining a quote with context, as we’ve linked the words directly to Linda, and then add context after. The reader doesn’t need to keep track of too much. And even simpler yet:

“A clean desk is like a clean slate, and can reduce potential distractions,” Linda Lesser says. She’s a self-styled consultant in minimalist work spaces, and…

The quote is linked to the source, and then we move on to more about Lesser. Her qualifications act as a transition from the quote, so another interesting fact could be added in afterward without bogging the sentence down.

It’s essential to vary sentence structure somewhat, but consider how many elements you’re asking your reader to carry along the way. 

A source adds a new voice to the piece. A simple quote attribution can help readers keep track of the action without getting too distracted.

How do you attribute quotes in your writing? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo via metamorworks / Shutterstock 

The post “Ah, That Was Easy!” — A Quick, Simple Trick to Make Your Quotes Stand Out appeared first on The Write Life.

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