Sarah Cypher on Cultural Heritage, Sexuality, and Magical Realism in her Debut Novel
Discover the writer's journey with Sarah Cypher, author of "The Skin and Its Girl". Don't forget to join her upcoming virtual classes in August and November to explore the realms of grant applications, manuscript rejections, and fiction revision.
1. Your debut novel deals with complex themes like sexual identity, cultural heritage, and family secrets. What advice would you give to young writers who are also trying to tackle such intricate subjects in their work?
At one point, my narrator says, “We are shaped by answering only the questions that people know how to ask.” Writing is often a process of asking different questions of ourselves. I was inspired by Audre Lorde’s advice to writers; she said, “What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say?” Take your time. Writing a draft (or many drafts) is a way of thinking—intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually—that helps us find language for the wisdom we’ve acquired, and even sometimes change our minds or find a new perspective.
Careful research is important too. I love the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” because it is a reminder to always learn more about your subject. And finally, I’d share that there is no one right way to write fiction—if you need to break the rules in order to tell a story that feels truest to your experience, that’s great!
2. Betty, the protagonist, grapples with her decision of staying in the country or following her heart and her lover. What do you hope readers take away from Betty's journey of self-discovery and understanding her family's history?
Betty finds that she already knows the answer to this question that has been tormenting her. The novel is, in part, her process of reconciling her personal story with the larger stories of her family’s history and seeing herself as strong in the same contrary ways her mother, aunt, and grandmother were strong. The women in this story have to sometimes break rules in order to survive—their worlds don’t want to make room for their power, so they find ways to stand up for it. I hope readers think about their own “either/or” situations in life and believe in the possibility of turning them into “either/and” situations.
3. Your writing has been praised for its poetic style and vivid storytelling. What tips can you share with young writers to help them develop a unique voice and style in their writing that captures the reader's imagination?
Don’t let anyone tell you that how you write is wrong. I often heard that my writing was too intricate, poetic, or visual, and I learned how to see these as strengths that I either dialed back or let rip, depending on what the scene needed. My process involved learning how to make that adjustment, and what other sorts of writing I could bring in to support or counteract my main voice.
One exercise I love, if you’re trying to switch things up, is to pick some writers whose style is very different from yours. Find a paragraph or two, and then type (or handwrite) that passage as if it were your own. Pretend that the words are flowing out of your own mind through your hands. Feel the shape of those other decisions about punctuation, word choice, sentence length, and balance of detail to exposition. Then compose a paragraph of your own story in that style. Repeat this with several different writers. You’ll feel other ways to use language and become more intentional about your own choices.
4. Your book is a blend of magical realism and the complexities of family relationships. How did you incorporate elements of magical realism in your writing, and what inspired you to meld these elements with the story of the Rummani family?
There was a lot of tension between the realist style I was taught in my late-1990s/early-2000s writing workshops and the sort of fiction I loved to read—novels by Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and high fantasy. I disagree that these have to be separate genres, and that magical, supernatural, or absurdist happenings aren’t, on some fundamental level of the human imagination, very real.
I think that surprising and invented elements can compress a lot of truth into something vivid and compelling. They can reflect truths about the human experience without pinning them down.
5. As a debut novelist, what lessons have you learned during the process of writing and publishing The Skin and Its Girl?
Writing for publication means that you hop on a steep learning curve, but I learned that it DOES get easier, at least with a good publishing team! A finished book is not a solitary achievement—I wrote the story, but it was refined by countless beta readers, made sharper by a sensitivity reader, and further honed during revisions with my agent and then my editor. The copyeditor and proofreaders did many passes of careful editing. Then there is all the work that goes into making a book a beautiful object: cover design, interior design, illustrations, selecting voice actors to read the audiobook… the list goes on! And by the time the novel is almost ready to go into the world, it then got the benefit of a whole team of experts who understand how to market a book, and publicists how to make sure it finds its way into the hands of reviewers and influencers. And a further community of writing peers offer care, support, and endorsements during this long process.
A published novel takes a village. An important, ongoing part of this “economy of generosity” is realizing how to pay it forward—how to be generous to other writers, too. Offer to review a book, moderate an event, check in with friends who are on submission, be a diligent workshop member, read and talk about books you love… there are so many ways!
Sign up for Sarah's upcoming virtual classes: Best Practices in Applying for Grants and Residencies for Writers, Troubleshooting the “Revise and Resubmit” Rejection, and First-Person & the Hidden I: A Revision Class & Workshop for Fiction Writing.