Emergency Contact

by Mary H.K. Choi

His mother used to say you shouldn’t marry anyone you wouldn’t want to divorce, and he understood that now. Lorraine was the emotional equivalent of a hollow-point round; the exit wound was a shit show.

Create diverse characters because you can. Especially ones that aren’t easy to write. A character that scares you is worth exploring. Yet if you breathe life into a character and it comes to you too easily—say you’re writing from the viewpoint of a black man in America and you’re not one? Think hard about where your inspiration is coming from. Are you writing stereotypes? Tropes? Are you fetishizing the otherness? Whose ideas are you spreading? Really consider how you transmit certain optics over others. Think about how much power that is.”

Damn that rock-star baby.

Loving someone was traumatizing. You never knew what would happen to them out there in the world. Everything precious was also vulnerable.