Re-visiting Rage as Writing Fuel

by SJ Sindu

In 2016, I wrote a blog post for Shade Mountain Press about the rage-trance under which I wrote two essays that appeared in their The Female Complaint anthology, and later in my first chapbook, I Once Met You But You Were Dead. The rage-trance, as I defined it, was the cycle of writing fueled by anger.

I was very angry in those days—angry at my parents, for trying to coerce me into an arranged marriage; angry at the world, for its abysmal treatment of queer people like me; angry at myself, for buying into dominant narratives about what my life and body needed to look like.

I still have rage inside me, but my anger has morphed into outrage. I don’t know how you can live in these times and not be outraged. I’m outraged that so many governments are doing nothing about climate change. I’m outraged that the onus for compassionate and low-waste consumption has been put squarely on us as individuals instead of where it should be—on corporations, the biggest producers of waste and pollution. I’m outraged that the rich are getting richer while most people struggle to survive.

But what I want to highlight is the difference between anger and outrage. Anger is self-destructive, and can eat you up if you’re not careful. Tying your writing to anger can at first be a great source of fuel, but eventually it becomes unsustainable—either because you have to keep producing anger and can’t, or because in the battle over your soul, anger has won.

What I argue for now is to fuel your writing with outrage. Anger can consume you, but outrage buoys you up. Anger is indiscriminately wide-lens, but outrage is focused fury. Anger lashes out, but outrage can aim true.

Let me be clear. When Twitter mobs attack activists fighting for a cause the mob believes in—that’s anger, pure and destructive. When organized Twitter activists push against soda companies stealing water from villages in South Asia and Africa—that’s outrage. There’s a difference.

Anger might have fueled my first chapbook, but it’s outrage that fuels my second, Dominant Genes. The rage is palpable—it is there in between the lines, gluing together the disparate and varied pieces of the collection. The collection features lyric and personal essays along with poetry, so cohesion was of great concern to me. I think it ultimately worked because there are thematic links throughout the chapbook—matrilineal heritage, love and marriage expectations, feminist resistance, queer exploration—but also because all these themes are linked by my approach of outrage.

So if you’re writing from a place of anger, I would urge you to turn that anger into outrage. Let the anger mature. Don’t let it consume you. Rather, use it to create art that does good in the world, even if that good is to hold up a mirror to someone who needs it.

SJ Sindu is a Tamil diaspora author of two literary novels, two hybrid chapbooks, and two forthcoming graphic novels. Her first novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies, won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award and her second novel, Blue-Skinned Gods, was published in November 2021. A 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, Sindu holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University. Sindu teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Sindu’s newest work, a hybrid chapbook titled Dominant Genes, was published by Black Lawrence Press in February 2022. More at sjsindu.com or @sjsindu on Twitter/Instagram.

Harper St. George on Inspiration & Romance in the Gilded Age

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Harper St. George, author of The Lady Tempts An Heir, which is perfect for anyone craving the swoony fake-dating romance and betrothal intrigue of Netflix’s hit show Bridgerton.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

The Lady Tempts An Heir, is book three in The Gilded Age Heiresses series. My series follows the “new money” Crenshaw family from New York who go to London to try to find titled husbands for their two daughters. These marriages really happened in the Gilded Age and were called “cash for class.” The families had recently gained their wealth through industrialization and were excluded from old society and titled noblemen into the family was one way to circumvent this barrier.

Max Crenshaw, the hero, is the brother of the American heiresses from the two previous books, and Lady Helena, the heroine, has also featured as a family friend in those books. Each book has been slowly building to the stage where Max has to step in and become the patriarch of his family, so I needed to show that happening with his own book. I also wanted to explore the effects of industrialization, both good and bad, which is really at the heart of the Gilded Age.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I needed to have a reason to bring Max and Helena together. It only seemed fitting that, since Max’s sisters had been pushed by their parents to marry in the previous books, that Max himself would have to deal with the same sort of parental pressure. His pressure was different in that a title didn’t matter for his spouse, but instead it was to secure the family legacy after his father had a health scare. Of course, he has no intention of marrying just to satisfy his father’s demand, so he comes up with the idea of a fake betrothal with Lady Helena.

Also, I am fascinated at the extremes created by industrialization. On one end of the spectrum you had tremendous wealth, but on the other end it was absolute poverty. I was able to show this by having Lady Helena run a charity that gives aid to women and children adversely effected by industry, while Max is leading his family’s company through a tumultuous time as workers demand greater rights.

They work together to navigate these outside challenges (his father is against Max’s more progressive views in dealing with the employees, and Helena’s society is against her associating with what that believe are “fallen” women). Through this they start to fall in love.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

Yes, and that absolutely happened in this book. Originally, I had planned for Max to pretend to capitulate to his father’s demand that he find a wife by going through the motions of courting several eligible women. Helena would work as an intermediary and introduce him to the young women. As he did this, he would have looked for and found a way to go around the ultimatum his father gave him, so that he wouldn’t need to marry in the end.

Instead, I was a few chapters into the book when Max decided that Lady Helena would do as a fake fiancée, and he came up with the scheme to pretend to ask her to marry him for their parents’ benefit. This changed the entire course of the book, but it worked out great and became a much stronger story.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I tend to have one idea and focus on it until I get to the end. That’s why I usually take a couple of weeks for a break between books, so that I can allow fresh ideas to percolate. I also do a lot of research for my books, and frequently find some nugget of information that sparks an idea. I’ll usually write it down in an idea file and go back to it while I’m on break to try to develop it a little bit more.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

Usually I sign multi-book contracts, so that really helps to decide what I write next, lol. It’s the next book in the contract. Writing in a series also helps, because usually I’ve set up a next character’s story in the book that I’m currently writing so that I can move right on to that book. I’m as eager as any reader would be to find out what happens to them in their book. If I’m at the end of a contract and series, then it’s usually whatever I’m researching at the moment that pulls me in a certain direction for writing.

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I have a three-year-old miniature Australian shepherd named Silver. He’s a big snuggler, but he wants your full attention when it comes to snuggling. There is no writing and snuggling at the same time. So we usually get the love out of the way and then he moves to lay at my feet while I’m working. He likes to have a paw or a part of his rump under my foot so that he can get in a good snooze while I work.