Getting Naked for My Art

By Kasie Whitener

For a long time I’ve answered the question, “What’s unique about you?” with “I write vampire fiction.”

Last week sitting on a panel for an entrepreneur summit, I used the same description of myself and for the first time thought, “Is that true?”

It is true I have a vampire novel. It’s the one I’m revising in February. I’ve written two, the first and the sequel, and I’m consumed by these characters and the possibilities of them.

But I don’t write vampire fiction. I don’t even read vampire fiction any more.

I write GenX fiction. I write about running into the guy you hooked up with when you were 19 on the first day of your daughter’s kindergarten class. I write about getting a tattoo fixed and having a crush on the much-younger artist because he (and the smell of the place) reminds you of your first time. I write about the class reunion where your ex-boyfriend finally told you he knows you slept with his brother all those years ago. Yep. He knows.

I write about life at 40 juxtaposing what it is with what I thought it would be. I write about being younger than I think I am but much older than I want to be.

Most of my stories take the real story and twist it into something more dramatic, more engaging, more entertaining. But they almost always start in a real story. That’s not vampire fiction. Vampire fiction is fantasy from beginning to end. Vampires are not real and the lives they lead cannot be real, either.

My attraction to realism was born as early as high school. I hated, hated Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison because it pretended to be real until the end when the main character leaps off a cliff and flies. (Spoiler alert)

If fiction is going to be real, be real. Be raw. Tell the truth.

My masters’ thesis was on Naked Realism. A 90’s Version of Dirty Realism, Naked Realism is as raw as the author can get, as close to making characters people as he can. Naked Realism confesses to picked noses and smelly underpants and a person’s proclivity to avoid making a decision. In Naked Realism characters don’t go charging about trying to obtain their burning desire. They turn away from the ambition of desire and settle for less than they’re worth.

I write Naked Realism.

My characters are trapped in the inertia of time. Plagued by regrets and obsessed with not regretting anything, wishing for something more but unwilling to take the risk of going after it. My characters are sometimes totally unaware of the baggage they carry. They let pivotal moments pass them by. They explain away their cowardice with the cultural complacency they inherited.

I write Naked Realism.

It’s sometimes raw and it’s sometimes painful and it sometimes means I’m telling my story to strangers. But someone once said writing is easy, all you have to do is bleed on the page.