Lillian Y. Lin was one of our 2024 Digital Residents. As a part of this program, we do Q&As with our residents to feature them, their work, and their words. See our Q&A with Lillian below, and explore more Spotlights here.
TSW: Tell us about your work, writing, or project. What are you writing these days? How is your work changing, and how is it changing you?
Lillian Lin: I’m in the midst of writing the first draft of my debut fantasy novel about an Asian American woman discovering who she really is with the help of her cat as her spirit guide. I formally started writing at the conclusion of our Fall Digital Residency and am about a third of the way through the storyline thus far. The residency really helped me hone in on who I am writing for and why, so I was able to begin this project on footing aligned with my passions and value set. That said, this book is unfolding not only a bucket list of things I have always been interested in but never took the time to explore, but it is also making me re-examine my past and the relationships I and other Asian American women friends of mine experience. In short, writing has become a vehicle for creative discovery, a light shone on collective intergenerational trauma, and a buoy of hope as our political climate becomes a destabilizing force in our lives.
TSW: What were you processing during our residency program? Did anything unlock for you? If so, what new entrance did you find for your work or for yourself as a writer in the world? And what caused that shift?
LL: This residency helped me gain clarity into who I am as a writer, who I am writing for, and why I write. As a writer, I am telling my truth to the world. I want to give readers a sense of permission to feel the way they do as children of immigrants living in America and through this empathy, validate how they can make their own choices to suit their lives. Writing is a documented journey of self-growth as well as a way to be seen and heard. I feel like this residency has given me a strong sense of self and purpose. Of this, I am eternally grateful.
TSW: What’s a mantra or motto that you have in mind these days when you are writing or creating? Is there a writing routine or ritual that keeps you beginning?
LL: One thing I tell myself frequently lately is to just “Get it all out!” because it’s never going to be perfect in the first draft. Sometimes, the act of writing changes the course of what you’re writing and you find a new path you hadn’t predicted in your outline. Once you have your characters figured out, they’ll be able to hold their share of the weight when it comes to moving the plot forward, showing change in character development, and creating friction or resistance with the reader in revealing contrasting viewpoints.
TSW: What is something that someone said — a fellow resident, a past mentor, perhaps something from one of the bonus sessions — that helped change the way you see your writing or work?
LL: One of my writing mentors told me that I needed to be aware of the fact that I am a writer of color and that my style of storytelling as well as the subject matter I discuss will not necessarily be understood by others that subscribe to the mainstream style of craft that is taught in schools and other institutions of Western writing. Understanding this liberated and bolstered my confidence in how and why I write as a first generation born in the States, child of immigrants from Taiwan. Writing is an artistic pursuit entrenched in the cultural background of the author. My writing does not have to be for all people, but is for the audience I want to give voice and representation to.
