People often wax poetic about the smell of books—the scent of old ink and paper is so eternally popular and beloved that you can even get it in perfume form. But Adam Levin’s upcoming novel Bubblegum is trying something a little different—the dust jacket of this book smells like bubblegum. This, of course, raises the question: what if all books were scented to reflect their contents? Kind of like smell-o-vision, but for reading. This could be the next big trend in literature, so here are some classics reimagined with smells.
Smells like the sea, but a very specific, terrible sea scent: low tide. A cross between a dying animal left out in the sun, plus salt, plus farts. The stench of man’s hubris and man’s homoeroticism (plus farts). Apparently it’s a great read if you can get past the smell, but many people can’t.
Only the warmest and most nostalgic smells: gingerbread, pine trees, fresh snow. The scent of a warm fireplace and drying flowers and wind floating through an open window. Smells that make you feel emo about your picturesque childhood in 1800s Massachusetts with your three talented sisters and—oh that wasn’t actually your childhood? Bummer for you.
Right away, you catch the scent of flowers but it’s suddenly obscured by… gasoline? Or gunpowder? Or maybe an obscure smell from your youth that you barely recognize but brings strong emotions? The smell is hard to put your finger on because it keeps changing, and every time you think you’ve got it, it becomes something else.
This book is wearing a whole bottle of perfume, so much that it makes your eyes water (but it still smells kind of good). However, underneath all the perfume you can make out the smell of decay, something sweet and gross. Carry this book with you for a day and you’ll be smelling like expensive perfume (and a constant reminder of your own mortality) for a week.
Ah, the crisp scent of the moors. Smells like dirt and heather and the air before snowfall. The kind of smells that really get you amped, like just completely full of unstoppable chaotic energy, energy that most people will rightly fear. Some people love this smell, but others think it’s confusing and a little much. Both are valid.
Smells like bread you can never have, which is to say it smells like particularly delicious bread. Bread you’d be tempted to ruin your life over. Also, a hearty dose of the mid-1800s French sewer system. You might wish there was a little less of the French sewer system, but Victor Hugo would strongly disagree. In fact, he’d probably argue there could be a little more sewer.
A delicious home-cooked meal. Roasted spring lamb, mint jelly, potatoes, peas, and salad fresh from the garden. And for dessert? Blackberries sprinkled with sugar. What could be more pleasant than that? Actually, I’m feeling a bit odd now. Everything is going dark. I’m starting to lose consciousness, I’m—.
I’ve had a restful break to think about the direction of my work and what’s next for me in the coming year. One observation is that I’ve had a somewhat negative tone to many posts from the past two years. I’ve been a consistent purveryor of tech fear.
I don’t regret creating any of this content, but I decided that I need to have a more balanced tone in my work. Overall, I’m an optimist when it comes to the intersection of technology, marketing, and humanity. With the dawn of a new decade, optimism is in short supply and I aim to do better.
The persistence of tech fear
Fear of our technological future has been with us since the dawn of the Industrial Age. I remember reading how the train companies were against telephones because they were afraid people would stop traveling!
The advent of the automobile created concerns about congestion and accidents.
When the early portable photographic cameras came out, there was a disgusted revolt by people who said taking pictures in a public park invaded their privacy.
Concerns that humanity has taken a technological wrong turn, or that particular technologies might be doing more harm than good, have been with us for centuries. For any new technology, its drawbacks initially seem to outweigh its benefits. When this happens with several technologies at once, the result is a wider sense of techno-pessimism.
However, that pessimism can be overdone.
Benefits and risks
There was a recent article in The Economist which pointed out that we take many benefits of technology for granted and dwell on the possibilities of unintended consequences. For example, the article points out:
Worries about screen time should be weighed against the much more substantial benefits of ubiquitous communication and the instant access to information and entertainment that smartphones make possible.
Fears that robots will steal people’s jobs may prompt politicians to tax them, for example, to discourage their use. Yet in the long run, countries that wish to maintain their standard of living as their workforce ages and shrinks will need more robots, not fewer.
The remedy to technology-related problems very often involves more technology. AI is being applied as part of the effort to stem the flow of extremist material on social media. The ultimate example is climate change. It is hard to imagine any solution that does not depend in part on innovations in clean energy, carbon capture, and energy storage.
I’m not saying that the debates spawned by “techlash” aren’t important. We must think through the possible consequences of technology … in fact, we need to have more of these broad debates at the highest levels of our policy-making organizations.
That should be a necessary (required?) step in the adoption of important new technologies.
The Economist article suggests that “perhaps the real source of anxiety is not the technology itself, but growing doubts about the ability of societies to hold this debate, and come up with good answers.”
Choosing optimism over tech fear
History still argues, on the whole, for optimism. The technological transformation since the Industrial Revolution has helped curb ancient evils, from child mortality to hunger, thirst, and ignorance.
Yes, the planet is warming and antibiotic resistance is spreading. But the solution to such problems calls for the deployment of more technology, not less. So as the decade turns, I’m trying put aside the gloom — at least a little — and try to be an advocate for the good.
To be alive in the tech-enabled 2020s is to be among the luckiest people who have ever lived. Technology brought me to you!
The tech fear in me and others will persist, but I can also choose to dispense hope.
If you’d like to hear more about tech fear/optimism, practical ideas about machine learning, and a surprising new retail trend, please tune in to the new episode of The Marketing Companion. It’s so easy. Just click here and tune in!
Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.
Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his introspective newsletter Timeless & Timely, where he covers the latest trends and the oldest principles.
Tim Washer is contributing creative direction to the show and he’s has worked for Conan O’Brien, John Oliver, among others. He helps corporations build more creative cultures.
If you’re a business owner or an entrepreneur, you know how hard it is to stay on top of all your contacts and ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks. Nimble is the simple, smart CRM that works directly within Office 365 and G Suite.
Nimble plugs into your email inbox and has a browser extension you can use on any website, including social media platforms and third-party apps. You’ll never have to leave the place you’re currently working on to access and update your existing contacts, as well as to create new contact records. Claim 30 percent off an annual license by going to nimble.com/companion and entering the promo code: COMPANION.
RSM Marketing provides an indispensable outsourced marketing department! Why struggle with turnover and staffing when RSM clients receive a marketing director and all the resources they need under a flat fee monthly subscription?
RSM employs dozens of specialists and experienced marketing directors who assist companies ranging from startups to market leaders with thousands of employees. Companies across the country from all categories are choosing this model to overcome marketing complexity and outpace their competition. The typical outsourcing client uses 11 RSM subject matter specialists but pays less than the cost of one of their own employees. RSM provides breakthrough marketing for clients and has been named twice to the INC 5000 list. Visit RSM for special Marketing Companion offers including $5,000 in free services.
Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.
I’ve had a restful break to think about the direction of my work and what’s next for me in the coming year. One observation is that I’ve had a somewhat negative tone to many posts from the past two years. I’ve been a consistent purveryor of tech fear.
I don’t regret creating any of this content, but I decided that I need to have a more balanced tone in my work. Overall, I’m an optimist when it comes to the intersection of technology, marketing, and humanity. With the dawn of a new decade, optimism is in short supply and I aim to do better.
The persistence of tech fear
Fear of our technological future has been with us since the dawn of the Industrial Age. I remember reading how the train companies were against telephones because they were afraid people would stop traveling!
The advent of the automobile created concerns about congestion and accidents.
When the early portable photographic cameras came out, there was a disgusted revolt by people who said taking pictures in a public park invaded their privacy.
Concerns that humanity has taken a technological wrong turn, or that particular technologies might be doing more harm than good, have been with us for centuries. For any new technology, its drawbacks initially seem to outweigh its benefits. When this happens with several technologies at once, the result is a wider sense of techno-pessimism.
However, that pessimism can be overdone.
Benefits and risks
There was a recent article in The Economist which pointed out that we take many benefits of technology for granted and dwell on the possibilities of unintended consequences. For example, the article points out:
Worries about screen time should be weighed against the much more substantial benefits of ubiquitous communication and the instant access to information and entertainment that smartphones make possible.
Fears that robots will steal people’s jobs may prompt politicians to tax them, for example, to discourage their use. Yet in the long run, countries that wish to maintain their standard of living as their workforce ages and shrinks will need more robots, not fewer.
The remedy to technology-related problems very often involves more technology. AI is being applied as part of the effort to stem the flow of extremist material on social media. The ultimate example is climate change. It is hard to imagine any solution that does not depend in part on innovations in clean energy, carbon capture, and energy storage.
I’m not saying that the debates spawned by “techlash” aren’t important. We must think through the possible consequences of technology … in fact, we need to have more of these broad debates at the highest levels of our policy-making organizations.
That should be a necessary (required?) step in the adoption of important new technologies.
The Economist article suggests that “perhaps the real source of anxiety is not the technology itself, but growing doubts about the ability of societies to hold this debate, and come up with good answers.”
Choosing optimism over tech fear
History still argues, on the whole, for optimism. The technological transformation since the Industrial Revolution has helped curb ancient evils, from child mortality to hunger, thirst, and ignorance.
Yes, the planet is warming and antibiotic resistance is spreading. But the solution to such problems calls for the deployment of more technology, not less. So as the decade turns, I’m trying put aside the gloom — at least a little — and try to be an advocate for the good.
To be alive in the tech-enabled 2020s is to be among the luckiest people who have ever lived. Technology brought me to you!
The tech fear in me and others will persist, but I can also choose to dispense hope.
If you’d like to hear more about tech fear/optimism, practical ideas about machine learning, and a surprising new retail trend, please tune in to the new episode of The Marketing Companion. It’s so easy. Just click here and tune in!
Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.
Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his introspective newsletter Timeless & Timely, where he covers the latest trends and the oldest principles.
Tim Washer is contributing creative direction to the show and he’s has worked for Conan O’Brien, John Oliver, among others. He helps corporations build more creative cultures.
If you’re a business owner or an entrepreneur, you know how hard it is to stay on top of all your contacts and ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks. Nimble is the simple, smart CRM that works directly within Office 365 and G Suite.
Nimble plugs into your email inbox and has a browser extension you can use on any website, including social media platforms and third-party apps. You’ll never have to leave the place you’re currently working on to access and update your existing contacts, as well as to create new contact records. Claim 30 percent off an annual license by going to nimble.com/companion and entering the promo code: COMPANION.
RSM Marketing provides an indispensable outsourced marketing department! Why struggle with turnover and staffing when RSM clients receive a marketing director and all the resources they need under a flat fee monthly subscription?
RSM employs dozens of specialists and experienced marketing directors who assist companies ranging from startups to market leaders with thousands of employees. Companies across the country from all categories are choosing this model to overcome marketing complexity and outpace their competition. The typical outsourcing client uses 11 RSM subject matter specialists but pays less than the cost of one of their own employees. RSM provides breakthrough marketing for clients and has been named twice to the INC 5000 list. Visit RSM for special Marketing Companion offers including $5,000 in free services.
Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.
The opening of Tiffany Tsao’s The Majestiesdoes not let you get away with murder: “When your sister murders three hundred people, you can’t help but wonder why – especially if you were one of the intended victims.” Dying in a hospital bed, Gwendolyn Sulinado recounts how her sister Estella enters the hotel kitchen in her gorgeous cheongsam to poison their whole family. One can imagine mystery and a femme fatale with a chignon, but the novel, despite being a page-turner and longlisted for the Australian Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction, transcends the boundaries of genre (“crime”/ “thriller”) or category (“Asian family drama”).
First published in Australia as Under Your Wings, The Majesties is a journey to unearth past events that led to Estrella’s monstrous act, a haunted world filled with secrets, deceits, destruction, and family bonds thicker than blood, prompting us to question: Who are the real monsters? As we track the sisters’ footprints from California to Melbourne, we uncover more layers, including a tale of two sisters and gender expectations in a morbid family web as well as the complex position of the Chinese elites within Indonesia’s violent history.
Born in San Diego and raised in Jakarta and Singapore, Sydney-based writer and literary translator Tiffany Tsao brings reflections on her cosmopolitan background and Indonesian heritage into the dark, rich story of the Sulinado family. The theme of in-between-ness was explored in her previous The Oddfits novels, a fantasy series set in Singapore about a boy who does not fit in. In the international sphere of global publishing and literary translation, Tsao is known as a staunch supporter of underrepresented voices in literature. When I first met her in Sydney in 2016, she was the Indonesia-Editor-at-Large at Asymptote, actively seeking and promoting writers from Indonesia, a country that is relatively marginal at the global literary stage and a home she has been increasingly attached to. Since then she has been involved in various translation and curatorial projects, including A World with a Thousand Doors, an Asymptote Translation Tuesday series showcasing Indonesian writing, and Intersastra Unrepressed series, which presents translations of works that are often sidelined or suppressed. Her translation of Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s poetry collection, Sergius Seeks Bacchuswas the winner of the English PEN Presentsand English PEN Translates awards.
Prior to the publication of The Majesties in the U.S., we conversed about the themes of family secrets, monstrosity, and history, why she chose to portray the wealthy Chinese Indonesian family as villains instead of victims of anti-Chinese prejudice, the problems of the Anglophone literary standards and what we can do to disrupt power structures.
Intan Paramaditha: The Majesties is a gothic family drama, a thrilling page turner, and a cultural and political critique. Tell me a little bit where the idea came from.
Tiffany Tsao: Wow, where do I start? My first book, The Oddfits, was set in Singapore, where I spent a lot of my childhood. But for my second novel, I wanted to draw on the Chinese Indonesian side of my identity, which I really only began to recognize and connect with quite late in life, in my early twenties.
Interestingly enough, in the very initial stages of writing, I intended to use wealthy Chinese Indonesian society simply as a backdrop. My desire was to focus mainly on the issue of familial secrecy—whether keeping unpleasant facts hidden might in fact be kinder than exposing everything and everyone for what they really are. But as I began fleshing out the novel’s thematic concerns and narrative structure, I rapidly realized that it was impossible to ignore the social and political issues influencing the characters I wanted to write. After all, the domestic sphere is an extension of the political and social and economic realm—what happens outside the home directly affects what happens inside it.
So while the novel is certainly about a family’s dark secrets, it is also about how this particular family’s dark deeds are partly an outgrowth of the darkness that surrounds them—corruption, anti-Chinese prejudice, and conditions that have given rise to an immense divide between society’s richest and the poorest.
The Indonesian historian Ong Hok Ham once observed that the anti-Chinese policies of the Dutch colonizers and New Order government were responsible for molding the ethnic Chinese into “economic animals.” To draw a parallel example from fiction, Frankenstein’s monster becomes monstrous because of the monstrous conditions he is subjected to. Similarly, the rich characters of The Majesties end up conforming to the most monstrous stereotypes of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia—insular, money-minded, suspicious of pribumi (“native”) Indonesians—partly becauseof the measures they take to ensure their wellbeing in the face of discrimination.
IP: Some of the most important discourse about contemporary Indonesian history is about the traumatic racial violence against the ethnic Chinese minority in May 1998. Since the ‘98 political reform, Indonesian artists and activists have tried to address this history of violence through books, films, or performing arts. How do you see your work in dialogue with this discourse?
TT: I’m glad you asked this question because while writing the novel I found myself asking: To what extent is it even possible for a work about anti-Chinese hostility in Indonesia not to focus on the events of May 1998? After all, there are extremely good reasons why May 1998 has been so critical to discussions of prejudice against the Chinese: the targeted attacks on the ethnic Chinese were utterly horrific, and it has taken years and years of hard work from activists, artists, and courageous survivors to get any acknowledgement from the government and general public that these attacks were in fact organized—and that the military itself was involved.
Rather than being about ethnic Chinese suffering, The Majesties is about what it takes to avoid such suffering.
Nevertheless, I personally didn’t feel comfortable with making May 1998 the focal point of this work. I was one of the fortunate and moneyed individuals who boarded a plane and left the country on the morning the violence broke out. My mother, siblings, and I watched the events reported live on CNN and BBC from Singapore, much like the Sulinado and Angsono families do in the novel. (Although my father remained in Jakarta, as did my paternal grandparents who lived near Glodok, where most of the violence occurred.) I feel an immense guilt about this—about having been able to leave when so many people simply couldn’t. How could I write in any meaningful way about May 1998 when my privileged circumstances enabled me to avoid it all together?
And so rather than being about ethnic Chinese suffering, The Majesties is about what it takes to avoid such suffering. Or to put it another way, instead of foregrounding Chinese Indonesian characters who are the victims of anti-Chinese prejudice, the novel is about a Chinese Indonesian family that accrues wealth and takes drastic measures so they do not have to be victims—with the result that they turn villain instead. So even as the novel is a critique of the dysfunction that accompanies wealth, it is by extent a critique of theracism that encourages individuals to ruthlessly accumulate wealth in order to ensure safety for themselves and their own.
IP: Since the May ‘98 riots, there has been a tendency to romanticize the Chinese heritage in Indonesian popular culture, which ironically co-exists with ongoing prejudice and discrimination. How does your writing about a wealthy Chinese Indonesian family respond to this?
TT: I do understand the logic behind this romanticization: what more obvious way to counter negative stereotypes and encourage the inclusion of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesian society than to affirm Chinese culture as worth celebrating? And I think it’s easy for both Chinese and non-Chinese people pushing for more inclusivity for Chinese Indonesians to fall into this trap. But in my opinion, romanticization only encourages a very superficial acceptance of Chinese culture—or what people end up thinking constitutes “Chinese culture.” Furthermore, I worry it bolsters perceptions of the Chinese population as a monolithic mass whose members all operate in standard and static “Chinese” ways.
The Sulinado family in the novel, as well as the Angsono family, offer examples of how it’s possible to identify and be identified as ethnic Chinese, yet practically speaking not be very “Chinese” at all. To quote an early chapter, the affinity they feel for their “ancestral land” is marked by “both solidarity and distance,” and at one point the narrator makes a snide remark about how the notion that the family is 100% pure ethnic Chinese is simply delusional—“as if no drop of native pribumi blood coursed through our own veins.” The family is also fairly Westernized in many respects: the goods they consume as members of high society include luxury goods from Paris, college degrees from Australia, holiday homes in California, aristocrat husbands from Europe, and the globalized charismatic Christian subculture that originated in the US.
IP: The Australian title of The Majesties is Under Your Wings, which is a biblical allusion. To what extent does the novel respond to the concepts and rhetoric of Christianity?
TT: To quite a large extent. The novel’s Australian title comes from the novel’s epigraph, which is a passage from Psalm 17, where the poet pleads to God, “Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.” I am by nature a very frank person, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see that there is a mercy and kindness in not subjecting people to certain truths, to keeping them in the shadows, so to speak. (I suppose there’s a similar message in the Lulu Wang film The Farewell.) I think you find traces of this here and there in the Bible: divine mercy depicted as refuge from the sun alongside the more common associations of divinity with sunlight, with revelation and the exposure of truth. If you think about it, Jesus dying in the place of sinful humankind is a merciful deception—a switcheroo on a cosmic scale.
I want us all to shed our preconceived notions of what books from country X or Y should look like.
Apart from drawing on my own personal theological ponderings to write The Majesties, I desired no less for the novel to offer insight into the sociocultural phenomenon of Christianity within the Chinese Indonesian community. Due to various historical reasons (including the Suharto regime’s discouragement of “Chinese” cultural, and by extension, religious practices), a significant percentage of Chinese Indonesians now identify as Christian. And particular strains of charismatic Christianity (think megachurches, televangelists, and prosperity theology) have become immensely popular. Many members of my own family became “born-again” Christians following the events of 1998—like many of the characters in the novel.
Even as The Majesties is deeply skeptical of the mass religious revival and conversion that swept through the Chinese Indonesian community in the late 1990s and 2000s, I didn’t mean it to be wholly condemnatory either. Characters like Nikki, even Leonard, are genuinely, desperately searching for something genuinely good and true to dedicate themselves to in the midst of the superficiality and decadence of the society into which they’ve been born.
IP: The Majesties also calls into question the expectations and stereotypes of Asians in the Western world. How was this critique shaped by your own cosmopolitan background as someone born and educated in the U.S. and currently living in Australia? What kind of intervention do you wish to make in conversations around Chinese cosmopolitanism and diaspora?
TT: My experiences moving around have definitely prompted me to think about the differences between being Asian in a Western context and being Asian in Asia. More specifically, I’ve had cause to think a lot about the different expectations and subcultures surrounding Chineseness in a Western context, versus in Singapore, versus in Indonesia.
I was born in the U.S., so I have a U.S. passport, which technically made me Chinese American, even though my family moved back to Southeast Asia when I was 3. In fact, my mother would often tell friends that I was ABC—“American-Born Chinese”—and so until my early teens, I assumed that I was Chinese American. But then I began reading books by Chinese American authors like Lawrence Yep and Amy Tan, and interacting with actual Chinese Americans, and I realized there was a whole sub-culture associated with Chinese Americannness that actually didn’t apply to my own experiences: certain tropes, jokes, cultural signifiers. Moving to the US for college cemented it: I was Chinese American on paper and my accent was more or less American-sounding (thanks to my attending international schools), but that was about it.
And it’s not just about being ethnic Chinese in a Western context versus in an Asian context either. In Singapore, if you’re Chinese, you’re in the majority, you’re in power, which isn’t the case in Indonesia. And in Singapore, whether you’re Chinese Singaporean or recently emigrated from mainland China matters too—there’s discrimination against the latter. And in Indonesia, whether your family is peranakan or totok—less or more culturally Chinese—can play a factor as well. And of course, class matters a lot, needless to say. Growing up in a wealthy family meant that I was insulated from racism’s effects—money buys you sanctuary from a lot of bad things.
I’m not sure I expect The Majesties to make any groundbreaking interventions, but I hope it continues to nudge conversations in the direction of more sensitivity to context. Asian American notions of what is “Asian” and Chinese American notions of what is “Chinese” aren’t necessarily universal.
TT: I think these issues matter to me because I am so disillusioned now. Five years ago, back when I didn’t know what I know now about the publishing industry, when I had barely dipped a toe into the lake that is literary translation, I naively believed in the soundness of these standards. I believed that when books in different languages did get translated, did get glowing reviews, did get stocked in major bookstores, it meant that those books were “the best” in some way.
But as I gained more experience in the literary translation industry, and saw more of what was happening on the Indonesian literary translation scene, I realized that which works were considered “appealing” enough to present to publishers for their consideration, or to eventually publish and support publicity-wise, was contingent not only on whether a work was sufficiently “Indonesian” enough in content, but whether it conformed to certain “literary” aesthetic standards that could actually be quite culturally subjective. For example, a poem that is praised for being moving and tender might be dismissed as “cheesy” or “melodramatic.” Or a story that isn’t set in Indonesia or overtly (exotically) “Indonesian” in content might receive a lot less interest from publishers.
In short, I see now just how broken The System is—that no, the cream won’t always rise to the top because the Anglophone world has very specific ideas about what kind of foreign cream it likes to consume. Therefore, more than ever before, I think it’s important to challenge The System’s standards. To at least get people to realize that what should be the most open-minded branch of the publishing industry—literature in translation—can actually be very close-minded as well.
What changes do I wish to see? I want us all to shed our preconceived notions of what books from country X or Y should look like. I want publishers to challenge their own reading tastes and that of their readers. I want Anglophone publishers’ lists to be overwhelmingly international, so that works in translation won’t have to compete with each other for a meager few slots. I also want a griffin. But griffins aren’t real, so grant me my other wishes, please!
IP: As a former Indonesia-at-large editor for Asymptote, you have played an important role in introducing Indonesian literature to the wider public. For instance, with Norman Erikson Pasaribu, you co-curated the Translation Tuesday series showcasing Indonesian writing, and most of the authors featured were women. Curating, editing, and programming are, of course, exercises of power. How do we develop curatorial strategies that challenge power structures?
TT: Phew. Big question. I think a good general “rule of thumb” might be to aim for maximum redistribution of power. So, perhaps, we should try, perpetually, to think beyond obvious or easy choices when it comes to choosing which authors to select for publications or awards, and which people we ask to act as curators and judges.
Also, maybe the fame that certain writers possess could be deployed to make space for still more writers—I know this was partly the rationale behind Norman’s and my decision to kick off the Translation Tuesday series with two female authors who are very well-known in Indonesia. We hoped that harnessing their “star power” would heighten visibility for the series as a whole, so that the following writers would benefit from a bigger readership. (If you want to read the series, you can start here and work your way backward via the links.) I do think that once you become more well-known as an author, you should think about how you might use the attention to shed more light on authors who deserve more recognition.
IP: It is exciting to see The Majesties travel the world andthe novel is currently being translated into Indonesian. Is it even important for international readers to know Indonesian literature? Which literary works and initiatives should be heard?
TT: You have no idea how happy I am that Norman is translating The Majesties into Indonesian. It’s been an absolute pleasure and honor to translate Norman’s work, and I’m pleased and honored that he is translating mine.
And that first question—what a question! Of course it’s important for international audiences to know Indonesian literature! And that second question—also, what a question! Especially since we’ve just spoken about subjective standards and gatekeeping. To avoid this clever trap you’ve laid for me, I’m going to follow the example you’ve set with your own stellar list for Lit Hub and observe first that this tiny list reflects my own biases and politics, not to mention ignorance.
A few months ago, I read Ruhaeni Intan’s novella Arapaima and it made me super excited. Its depiction of life as a young working-class woman is powerfully bleak and dark, and I’m looking forward to reading more from her. I hope to see her work translated some day. I’d also like to see the novel Api Awan Asapby the late Benuaq Dayak writer Korrie Layun Rampan in English as well. When it comes to ethnic minority and First-Nations literary representation within Indonesia, Korrie Layun Rampan was a pioneer.
In terms of what is available in English: one of my favorite “classic” works is Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk by Ahmad Tohari, which is set in a Javanese village before and during the anti-Communist purges of 1965. It’s about a woman who is, essentially, destroyed by the patriarchy. It’s been published in English as The Dancer. People know about Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Buru Quartet, but my favorite work of his is Bukan Pasar Malam (It’s Not An All Night Fair). And with all my heart, Intan, let me recommend your spine-tingling feminist short-story collection Apple and Knife, as well as your upcoming novel The Wandering, which is groundbreaking and rich and sly.
Some Indonesian authors write in English or self-translate their works. Poetry by Madina Malahayati Chumaera and Khairani Barokka spring to mind, as well as Eliza Vitri Handayani’s novel, From Now On Everything Will be Different. I read Theodora Sarah Abigail’s essay collection In the Hands of a Mischievous Godlast year, and it was raw and blue and made me very melancholy for a while.
It’s my happy duty to endorse the authors I translate: Dee Lestari’s Paper Boatsand Laksmi Pamuntjak’s The Birdwoman’s Palate were the first two books I translated, and I enjoyed the process of rendering them into English. I solemnly swear that Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s heartbreaking and heartening poetry collection Sergius Seeks Bacchus will change your life. Also, stay tuned for my translations-in-progress, which are still in search of a publisher: Norman’s queer and fantastic Happy Stories, Mostly (that’s the working title); Budi Darma’s wickedly humorous and strange collection, The People of Bloomington; and Dee Lestari’s awesome fantasy novel about scent, ambition, and a power-hungry plant, Aroma Karsa.
Regarding initiatives: I encourage everyone to support the Indonesian arts organization, InterSastra. I’m the translation editor for their most recent literature series, Unrepressed. The series’ purpose is to highlight literary works that tackle controversial topics, and also to provide publishing and training opportunities for emerging writers and translators. Another very cool recent initiative, spearheaded by Khairani Barokka for Modern Poetry in Translation, is this digital pamphlet My Body Is Stone, My House Is the Moon. It was produced in conjunction with Lakoat.Kujawas—a social enterprise and community organization based in Mollo, Timor and founded by the Indonesian writer Dicky Senda. I’d also love for Dalang Publishing to receive more recognition than it has so far. They’re a small California-based press dedicated to publishing Indonesian writers in English.
Building consistent organic search traffic is every digital publisher’s dream. But what does it really take to make your content SEO friendly?
The good news is it is not a rocket science.
On top of that, despite what many people think, it has nothing to do with “tricking” Google into thinking your content is high-quality or SEO friendly.
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, which basically means making sure a search algorithm can easily access and understand your content. There’s no dark art involved.
Here are the steps you should take to make your content SEO friendly:
1. Match Your Content Idea to a Searchable Phrase (Search Query)
So you have an idea in mind which you feel like writing about. This is where any content creation starts: “I have something to say on this topic, and I feel like it will be interesting and/or useful”.
Is anyone searching for this topic?
Chances are, if you have come up with the topic, there should be other people who may feel intrigued enough to research it in Google.
But how exactly are people searching for it?
This is the key question you should ask if you want to generate organic search engine traffic to your future content.
You need to know what people type in a search box when trying to find answers to questions you are covering in your content.
So your first step is to find those actual search queries.
This exercise is also useful because it helps research. Knowing what people are typing in Google’s search box will likely help you discover interesting angles, narrow your initial idea down to make it more specific and even structure your future article to make it more useful.
So even if you don’t really care about organic search positions, keyword research is useful to do.
These days, we have a variety of tools that help you identify a keyword to focus on. Here are a few tools and approaches you can try:
1.1. Type Your Terms into Ahrefs
Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is a great tool for that because it offers “All keyword ideas” tab that broadens your initial idea to related and synonymous terms.
So if you were to type [grow tomatoes] and click through to that section, you’d find both phrases containing the term (e.g. “how to grow tomatoes”) and related concepts (e.g. “when to plant tomatoes“):
This broadens your outlook and helps you come up with more words to include in your copy.
1.2. Discover What Your Future Competitor is Ranking For
If you’ve done at least some research on your content idea, you may have found some resources that are on the same or similar topic. So use those URLs to discover what they are ranking for.
Serpstats’ URL Analysis section is great for that:
Notice that Serpstat is also showing all “extra” search elements that show up for each query in Google, so you get a good idea of what your future target SERPs (search engine result pages) may look like.
Note that both of these platforms offer “keyword difficulty” metric signaling of the level of your future organic competition. Obviously, the lower the keyword difficulty is, the better.
On the other hand, the higher the search volume, the more clicks each SERP may drive. So you want to try and pick a keyword that has high search volume and low keyword difficulty.
While the process of researching keywords hasn’t changed much, the way we use keywords within content has.
These days, we don’t sacrifice the quality or flow of our copy for the sake of keyword density. In fact, we don’t pay attention to how many times we have used those keywords on-page.
We do use those keywords in prominent places on the page to make both Google and our human visitors more comfortable and confident there.
To put it simply, upon landing on your page, your users should clearly see terms they initially typed in the search box. That will put them more at ease and prompt them to linger a bit longer.
Keyword prominence means making your keywords visible on the page. It helps both search engine optimization and user-retention. Both of these help rankings.
Basically, you want those keywords to appear in:
Page title
Page URL slug (which in WordPress will be transferred from your title anyway)
First paragraph
Page subheading(s)
Image alt text (Do make those alt text descriptive as it helps accessibility)
Many SEO plugins (like Yoast and SEO Editor) can handle a lot of these SEO elements, so it is a good idea to pick one.
3. Use Semantic Analysis to Match Google’s Expectations and Make Your Content More Indepth
As I have already stated before, Google has moved away from matching the exact query to the pages in its index. Ever since its Hummingbird update, Google has slowly but surely become better and better at understanding each query context and searcher’s intent behind it.
To match that context better and optimize for the intent, use semantic analysis, which is basically about clustering each query into underlying and related concepts and covering you in your content.
Text Optimizer is a tool that takes Google’s search snippets for any query and applies semantic analysis to identify areas of improvement. Text Optimizer can be used for writing new content from scratch:
You can also use the tool to analyze your existing content to identify areas of improvements:
As you can see, Text Optimizer also helps analyze whether your content meets the query intent.
To increase your score at Text Optimizer:
Choose the most suitable words for your content and include them naturally into your article. Avoid keyword stuffing. Only choose terms that you find fitting your current context.
You may modify sentences or write new ones until you reach at least 80%
4. Diversify Your Content Formats
Google loves textual content, but the Internet in general and Google in particular has moved beyond text-only. Web users expect to see more formats, including videos and images. And Google recognizes that demand for content diversity, so it will feature all of those content formats.
In my previous article for Convince and Convert I described how videos improve SEO on many levels, including more exposure in search engine result pages and better on-page engagement.
With that in mind, any time you work on your article, think which other content assets can be created to enhance its value and improve SEO.
Luckily, creating videos doesn’t require any budget or skills. With tools like InVideo you can turn your articles into videos in a matter of seconds:
Select “I want to convert article into video” option
Paste in a maximum of 50 sentences (I usually use the tool to turn my article takeaways or subheadings into a video)
Pick the template and let the tool do the job
You can upload your own images (screenshots), tweak the subtitles and select the music
You are done! Now, upload the video to Youtube, add a keyword-rich title and description and embed it to your article.
For images, you can use Venngage or Visme to create nice visual takeaways or flowcharts (in case you have instructions to follow).
5. Set up an On-Page SEO Monitoring Routine
Finally, there’s always room for improvement, so monitoring your organic traffic is an important step here.
The must-have tool for that is Google’s own Search Console, which will show you which queries are sending you traffic. Just check your “Performance” tab regularly:
Another useful tool to have is Finteza, which shows your organic traffic performance allowing you to dig deeper to see whether your organic traffic clicks engage with your ads.
… or whether each search query sends traffic that brings conversions.
6. Don’t Forget External (Off-Site) Signals
Obviously, it is more to Google position than on-page optimization. You still need those backlinks that would help Google assign some authority to your content. But that’s a topic outside of the scope of this article. Besides, there’s a lot of content already written on that. And here’s another collection of tips on how to build links.
I hope this guide will help you optimize your content to make it easier for Google to understand and hence help the search giant’s algorithm assign search positions it truly deserves.
According to Evelyn Puerto (and pretty much every writing blog out there) writing dialogue boils down to one big rule: Make it sound realistic.
You not only communicate every day (unless you’re on a really heavy writing binge), but you hear other people communicating. Dialogue is all around us. Constantly. Sometimes too constantly. The TV blares it. Your favorite novel is full of it. Your family squawks it over dinner.
Inherently, you know how to write dialogue. Sometimes you just have to get out of your own way in order to get it on paper. Luckily, Evelyn was kind enough to give us some quick tips on how to get your dialogue just right.
Evelyn Puerto reads just about anything and writes in multiple genres. Her first book, Beyond the Rapids, won a Reader’s Favorite award. When she married, she inherited three stepdaughters, a pair of step-grandsons, and a psychotic cat. Currently, she writes from northeastern Wisconsin but soon will be heading south for shorter winters.
Flight of the Spark sounds amazing! Tell me a little about the book and how you came to write it.
Flight of the Spark is a dystopian fantasy in a medieval setting. Duty, desire, and destiny collide when fifteen-year-old Iskra’s betrayal causes her friend to disappear. Iskra’s quest to discover what happened to her friend entangles her fate with a cryptic, half-forgotten myth and a young man from an outcast group who ensnares her heart.
After I wrote Beyond the Rapids (a true story about one family’s triumph over religious persecution in Communist Ukraine), I started to think I could actually write a novel. Who knew it would take me six years? But it was a switch to go from non-fiction to fiction, and I wanted to take the time to learn to write fiction well.
Planning a Book Series
This is book one of a series, correct? How many are you planning?
This is the first book of the Outlawed Myth series. I’m planning three more, plus a have prequel novella that I hope to publish this spring or summer.
I get quite a few questions about how to plan a book series. How did you go about planning this one? Any tips and tricks for keeping things straight?
First, I figured out the basic story for the four books, how the story got started and how it ended. Over the years, I drafted all the books, three of them through NaNoWriMo. While that was a lot of work, it helped me clarify the main storyline in my mind.
The key for me is not just having the overall storyline, but a story within each novel. I don’t like series that just end on cliffhangers without some major plot resolution. So as I planned the series, I gave each book in the series a complete story arc of its own.
Scrivener has been my best friend in keeping things straight. I have all my world-building, character, and setting notes all in one place, so I can find easily what I called the days of the week or what color people’s eyes are.
Make Your Dialogue Realistic
Another question I get frequently, and something a lot of authors can improve upon, is dialogue. What’s your number one rule when writing dialogue?
Make it realistic. Early on I submitted a short story to a writing forum, and they told me my dialogue was on the nose. I had to look that up to see what they meant. In other words, my characters were telling each other things they already knew or were painfully obvious.
For example, if someone is explaining to her mother that she’s going to visit her brother, she wouldn’t say to her mother, “As you know, he’s a junior at the University of Kansas studying agriculture. He’s really hoping to own a farm someday.”
Mom knows all that. Dumping backstory into dialogue is a great way to make it sound unnatural and forced. And it’s dialogue that lets the writer tell the reader information, but it doesn’t serve the needs of the character.
Also, people don’t always say what they mean, or what they are thinking. Or they evade the main issue under discussion. These are all things to think about when writing realistic dialogue.
“People don’t always say what they mean, or what they are thinking. Or they evade the main issue under discussion. These are all things to think about when writing realistic dialogue.” —Evelyn Puerto
When I’m writing dialogue in a story, sometimes I act out the scenes. Do you do anything similar?
I often say it out loud, to hear if it sounds realistic.
Dialogue Isn’t For Long Info Dumps
You touched on this a moment ago, but I’d like to dive in a little further. Sometimes I see an author try to use dialogue in a story as an info dump and the character goes on and on for pages explaining the world or giving detailed backstory. Do you have any tricks to avoid this or how to tell what to cut when editing?
In Flight of the Spark, I used a device to give some backstory through dialogue. The main character was in that world’s equivalent of school, and they had a history lesson. Different members of the class shared different facts. In between, the teacher made comments, and the main character gave the reader her own internal critical commentary.
Nobody gave a lecture, the reader got a little background, and a glimpse into the main character’s opinion of the world she lived in.
The important thing is to decide if the reader needs to know that information right at that moment. If not, cut it out and maybe share it later.
Spice It Up with Action
Action beats are a great way to spice up a conversation. How frequently do you write in action beats? How do you keep them fresh and avoid overused action beats?
I try to use action beats as much as I can, partly to avoid dialogue tags.
This is when I start acting out my dialogue. As I say the words, I pay attention to what I’m starting to do. Am I sighing? Clenching my fist? Waving my hand in the air? This is one way I can think of new action beats.
Another way to avoid overusing them is to think about the direction the conversation is going. If the people involved are getting more angry the longer they talk, then the action beats should intensify along with their emotions. So the first beat might be a clenched jaw, the second a clenched fist, the third throwing a glass against the wall.
To keep mixing up the beats, I rely heavily on The Emotion Thesaurus. This is a great resource that suggests many ways to show a particular emotion, and I’ve found it to be priceless for coming up with a variety of beats.
“Asked” is Best
When you’re reading, do you have any dialogue pet peeves or “no-nos” you see other writers doing?
One big pet peeve has to do with dialogue tags. Some writers like to use all kinds of words, like shouted, yelled, orated, guessed, stated, the list just goes on. They are distracting, and it should be obvious from the dialogue or the action surrounding the conversation if someone is yelling or not. “Said” is all you need, with the occasional “asked.”
A Few More Writing Tips from Evelyn
What’s the worst thing about writing for you? How do you push past that?
Probably the fear that no one will like my work. It’s that fear that fuels my procrastination. Yes, that’s part of why it took me six years to produce my novel.
Getting feedback was extremely helpful, because it told me that at least some people enjoyed my work. That gave me the will to overcome the fear and to keep writing.
Any advice to give to novice writers out there?
Stick with it, and get your work out there. Now that Flight of the Spark has been published, I’m so much more motivated to finish the rest of the series.
When in doubt, act it out!
There’s a simple truth to dialogue in a story: It has to sound natural coming out of someone’s mouth.
The best way to make sure your dialogue sounds natural? Act it out!
You’ll feel a bit silly, perhaps, but feeling silly is much better than a reader rolling their eyes at your dialogue. Or worse, putting your book down altogether!
Get a buddy if you want and playact it like you’re table reading for a TV show. Or just go all out and act it out alone in your writing space, looking like a crazy person. (This is my preference, by the way.)
Do you read your dialogue aloud? Let me know in the comments!
PRACTICE
You guessed it: For today’s practice, you’re going to write a very dialogue-heavy scene. Set a timer for fifteen minutes and write. Write dialogue only. You may add action beats and dialogue tags. Otherwise, everything should be spoken.
Need a prompt to get you started? Write an interaction between a teacher and a student.
After your fifteen minutes are over, clear your throat and act out the scene! Do not skip this part!
Share your scene in the comments so we can all check it out. I also want to hear how the read-aloud went. Don’t forget to read and comment on your fellow writers’ work!
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