Object Lessons

Intersectionality is such a fascinating thing to me.

It's been a very useful tool in learning about myself and why I think the way that I do. Different aspects of my identity work together to make me who I am.

For example, I have a specific set of intersectionality that lends itself to the use of object lessons.

I'm both a preacher's kid and former children's church pastor, and I'm a teacher. So I've found that object lessons - analogies between regular occurrences and specific life lessons - come quite naturally to me.

I've noticed it most often in my Tiktok writing content - I'll consider something that's happened to me in my day-to-day life and use it as a lesson to connect to things I've learned about the writing process and myself as a writer.

These run the gambit from conversations with students throughout the school day to experiences that I have with managing my natural hair. When I'm considering what to film for the day's content, I'll turn back over something that happened that day and find a life lesson that I can share with my followers.

I realize that being a content creator has helped me to be more reflective and aware as both a writer and a person, though my original goal in becoming an active "Tiktoker" was to start garnering an audience for when I eventually publish my first novel. However, it has not only helped me to improve in areas such as public speaking, but has helped me to connect with many like-minded people, and we all uplift each other and celebrate each others' wins.

Sometimes the object lessons that I use are quite concrete; I shared the story of how I was almost caught by a vanity publisher when trying to publish my first novel, and how it taught me to be cautious while trying to pursue my dreams.

Sometimes they're more tangential; I decided to use a different product in my hair and I was ecstatic with the results. I connected this to my writing by detailing how I'd tried a new method when both beginning a new novel and revising, and both of those new methods improved my work substantially.

Understanding the connections between fiction and everyday life is an essential skill for a writer. While reading can be an escape, there still needs to be connections that help us see ourselves in what we read.

I've found that little object lessons have helped me to keep that in mind since I'm always working hard to find connections between things to teach lessons, learn new things, and reach people.

Sometimes I feel like the analogies that I make won't reach as many people, like the ones that I make between my hair and writing; I've found that not to be the case at all. this past weekend I tried an old method with a new product and absolutely HATED the results. Rather than try to fix it, I just rinsed out all of the product and started over. I made the connection to starting over in writing projects; a novel that I was originally very proud of, but soon heard back from beta readers that it needed a whole slew of revisions before it would be ready for publishing. That novel is on the back burner for now, and I plan on practically starting over from scratch to write it.

To my surprise, I got a lot of interaction on that post from people with all kinds of hair textures. Though I'm a part of the natural hair community, there are people who deal with similar struggles of trying to get their hair to cooperate and to find the products that work best with their hair. Besides, it was nice to see that other writers have experienced similar things with their writing; a little bit of encouragement that it's nothing to be ashamed of.

Another example is when I use teaching moments from my day and connect them to my own writing. I tell my students frequently that they should read their work aloud because that's when you'll catch things that you missed like awkward sentences, missing words, or odd punctuation. I try to follow my own advice and extend it to an old tradition that my brother and I have wherein he plays videogames while listening to me read my work aloud to him. Many people were able to connect to that, sharing how they've also read aloud to spouses, friends, and sometimes children.

Paying attention to these connections and sharing object lessons has, undoubtedly, helped me to become a better writer and teacher. Intersectionality is pretty cool.

If you'd like to see more examples of my object lessons, check out my TikTok at Jwritesfiction!