On writing with my biases, prejudices, and stories in check.

Or: beware of the Christian signalling in your writing.

It's crazy how stuff we don't even believe in will just organically make their way into our writing. I've been re-reading a book I wrote almost 14 years ago and beyond the already expected cringe feeling from reading your old writing, I've been astonished with all the Christian signalling that there's in this manuscript.

I'm not Christian, and although I'm baptized and was basically forced into having my first communion I do not sign up for Catholicism at any level. In my 38 years of life, I've been willingly inside a church less a dozen times. Actually, I’m not religious at all, but these tropes have been so deeply ingrained into our life and belief system that they will just surface and you won't even notice.

Brazil is a deeply catholic and evangelical country so there’s a difference between christian signalling back home and here in North-America. Still, we know that even if our countries are supposed to be secular, religion has a big influence in our societies.

This particular book was written when I was quite young and had not yet learned how to be more socially and politically critical about my writing and the art I read/watch/listen to. It's not really surprising to see creative choices I made back then that do not correspond with who I am now. But it's amazing to see how some of this Christian signalling appears and I just know I didn't see it as such back then.

This is one of the reasons I believe it's so important for writers to understand where the stories we write come from and what our biases are. I’m not someone who personally holds any prejudice towards any political or social minority, but these prejudices are so ingrained in our society that I might not see them for what they are. I'm not a christian but for some reason one of my characters was basically an alien version of the virgin Mary. It's wild and way less creative than it might sound like.

These unseen signals can add moral perspectives that you never intended into your work. A woman whose sole purpose is to give birth to someone is a very Christian conservative narrative point, and this specific narrative trope can be tracked back to the bible. The whole concept of morality is very hard to disassociate from a religious view of what is moral or not. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unseen it. It’s hard.

Writing as a whole is hard, so this becomes just part of the process. I’m not saying you need to write your first draft thinking about these things, but that as a writer is good to keep in mind these elements when you go back to your first, second and whatever draft you wrote before and see how biases, preconceptions and even prejudice might actually slip into your story without you even knowing.

Of course, you can write a Christian story, or use a Christian trope to subvert it, my point here is just how wild it is that these things are so ingrained into our day-to-day life that we will unintentionally write them down and not realize it. I guess writing is just like living, a constant process of learning and deprogramming all the prejudice society has injected us with.

See you next time! 😊