My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Tracy Townsend to talk about her writing superpower of relentless larceny.
Fiction loves the trope of the crook with the heart of gold — the thief who steals only to enrich others, or feed their family, or (because we love to celebrate skill and panache) for the electrifying risk of it, their crimes carefully tailored to fit in their idiosyncratic moral code.
I am not that kind of a thief. I am something far worse: a larcenous writer.
I don’t mean that I steal other writers’ words (I am also a teacher and know all too well the proper place of plagiarists). No, I steal from the lives of the people around me. Given half a chance, I will snatch up everything you have — everything you are. And you can’t stop me.
My children complain that I’m not very good at talking when we go out to dinner. They’re right. I can’t help but survey the room, looking for striking facial features, listening for snatches of conversation out of context. I’m only half-attending to them, even in my best moments. They’ve made their peace with that, the generous souls. Sometimes, they even play the game with me. (I am nothing if not keen to train my apprentices: more ears and eyes to work the room. Some of my best finds have come from my children and their urchin instincts: “What’s going on with that guy’s hair?” “Mom, did she just say she’s, ‘bounding determined’? I don’t think that’s how that saying goes.”)
Writing as I do requires a constant, voracious appetite for other people’s goods: their distinctive looks, their surprising mannerisms, their catchphrases, their sartorial flourishes. I love writing big casts of characters I can slide between and among. My debut novel, The Nine, is steampunk fantasy intrigue told from nine different points of view (though not for the reason you’d think, based on the back cover copy). Each of those characters has a different perspective of the conflict, a different way of seeing the world around them and the people in it. Those perspectives give the plot its texture and tension. Nobody knows the whole story until it comes crashing together, the pieces pulled and pushed into a dramatic whole by the wrong people turning up in the right places.
But to get to that point, you need characters with these attributes, lovingly stolen from people I know — or barely know— and given a second life on the page.
- The man who hangs his spectacles from his shirt collar.
- The girl who sits on her feet and rubs her ankles together when she’s nervous.
- The man who invents the perfect nickname for everyone.
- The woman who never needs a watch, because she always knows the exact time.
- The woman who sits in every chair side-saddle.
And there are more, of course. There are mutinous hairlines and imperious lip-curls and barking fits of laughter gleefully filched from people who may never know of my crimes — or better, from people who might know me well enough to look for a piece of themselves on the page and be delighted. Or horrified. It’s all the same to me. I’ve stolen names and origin stories and, yes, turns of phrase and one-liners. One of my favorite quips in The Nine is a variation on a joke my husband has made so long, it could only possibly delight someone who has never met him before.
Fortunately, there are still a lot of people he has yet to meet.
The world is a huge place, bursting with detail. A credible sfnal world should be just as huge, with a horizon line stretching toward the latitudes and longitudes as yet untraveled. However far a writer pushes the narrative, there will be people in it. Those people should feel real. Theft is the way I make it happen, and I am very, very good at it.
So if we should happen to meet at a con, or a book signing, or anywhere else, be careful. I promise you, I’m watching, and I have an excellent memory. I paneled with Shaun Duke of Skiffy and Fanty at CapriCon 38 just a few weeks ago. I spied a very nice “wince and head-tilt” move that always proceeded his answer to a dicey question.
I’m sure it will come in useful soon. There’s much more in my series left to write.
Tracy Townsend holds a master’s degree in writing and rhetoric from DePaul University and a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from DePauw University, a source of regular consternation when proofreading her credentials. She is a past chair of the English Department at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, an elite public boarding school, where she currently teaches creative writing and science fiction and fantasy literature. She has been a martial arts instructor, a stage combat and accent coach, and a short-order cook for houses full of tired gamers. Now she lives in Bolingbrook, Illinois, with two bumptious hounds, two remarkable children, and one very patient husband. Her debut novel The Nine (Pyr), first in the Thieves of Fate series, was a finalist for Best Debut in the 2017 r/Fantasy Stabby Awards, was chosen as Black Gate magazine’s Best Read of 2017, and was Fantasy Book Critic’s Best Debut of 2017. Tracy is also a blog columnist for Luna Station Quarterly. You can find her online at www.tracytownsend.net or on Twitter at @TracyATownsend.
