Thoughts on “Compassionate Simulation”, from PH Lee

Lee and I did have a very intense process while writing this story. There were a lot of craft questions but because the subject matter of this is so intimate and intense — a child’s relationship with abusive and authoritarian parents from whom they’re alienated — that the story is integrally tied into beliefs about family and children and norms and abuse. Lee has a more pessimistic view of some of these things than I do, which sometimes makes me feel like Polyanna, and sometimes feels like just a different background, and which may well be both. I’m also immunized to the artificiality of several literary techniques that are deployed for this subject matter since I’ve been working for so long. Lee did a good job of calling out contrivances, although some remain because literature is still literature. Like Lee, I enjoy how this fell. It was a rewarding collaboration.


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