What I Wish Someone Had Told me About Being a Writer #8: Jen Sookfong Lee

Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, where she now lives with her son. Her books include The Conjoined, a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award, The End of East, and Shelter, a novel for young adults.  Jen appears regularly as a contributor on The Next Chapter on CBC Radio One and teaches at The Writers' Studio at Simon Fraser University.

What do you wish someone had told you before you published your first book?

This is going to sound boring, but I wish someone had sat me down and walked me through every step of the publishing process, everything from acquisition to substantive edits to headshots. Not knowing what you’re supposed to do and when is bewildering and not fun for someone like me, who fights with anxiety every day. You know, like most writers.

Is there a piece of advice you always give to emerging writers?

I say this all the time: stop protecting your characters. I think a lot of fiction writers have this fear that readers will think a protagonist is just a thinly-veiled version of themselves and then obscure them or write them incompletely. But this is the exact opposite of what good fiction should do. We should be allowing readers to burrow into our characters, to get to know them as intimately as we know our partners or parents or children. So, I say, screw it. Let the readers think your protagonist is you. Just write the most layered and complete character you can, in any way you manage it.