Write Magical Realism with Alexandra V. Méndez

Write along with Alexandra’s playlist!

Prompt #1: Time & Place

Think of a particular place where you’ve spent time. It could be a house, a room, a vacation spot, a train, a church– any place that holds significance for you! 

Why is this place important to you? What memories does it evoke? What is your relationship to this place?

Prompt #2: Uncovering the Magic

Now imbue this place that you wrote about in the first prompt with some kind of magic. The way you do this is up to you. Maybe the place is magical because of the feeling that it gives off, or because of some seemingly impossible element or property. Or perhaps it is simply magical because of how you write about it– in the surprising similes, metaphors, adjectives, and verbs you choose. 

Imagine a character who enters this magical place. The character is not you, though they may be similar to you. Do they feel that they belong here? Do they feel that they do not belong or are they unsure of whether they belong? Write the character’s experience as they enter this magical space.

Q&A with Alexandra Méndez

Can you talk more about magic realism and why it was right to tell this story? 

When I started saying that I wanted to explore Mesoamerican beliefs and art and history and kind of novelize that, that kind of merged with wanting to make magical this childhood forest space for me. And so that’s kind of how it came out in that magic realism way.

Can you describe the actual publishing process? What advice do you have for folks who want to publish their novel or short story one day?

I started writing in 2011, so it was a long time in the works. Other people read the draft, various different drafts. You know, I would say the moment that I started reaching out to agents and editors was the moment when I knew that I had edited the book to the best of my ability. I knew I needed professional industry people telling me how could I really bring that book to what it needed to be. I guess my advice would be like, it’s worth it to really pay attention to writing the best book you can possibly write. Obviously, that’s the dream, right, to get published. But I think really the way to do that in many ways is to write your own story and not worry about what it is that seems popular. Write the thing that you really need to write and make sure you write it as well as you can possibly write it. And if it takes you a long time and you write a lot of drafts, but somehow the story is still clinging to you, like, trust that you know and get other eyes on it. Get feedback.

How do you go about worldbuilding and planning out the world that your characters are in?

Thank you very much for that question. It’s an interesting question. We think about worldbuilding in terms of fantasy a lot, right? And if you’re writing realistic fiction, then presumably readers are already familiar with the world that it’s set in. But I would argue that, in a certain sense, worldbuilding is necessary for any piece of fiction that you’re writing if you want to set the scene for people and not expect people to already understand the world that you’re talking about. I would say a lot of it has to do with how characters respond to situations. It’s not always about just describing the setting. It’s describing how the characters are reacting to and engaging and interacting with the setting and the place and things around them, right? So instead of talking about, you know, the first time Jade sees her new house, instead of talking about, “Oh, what does the house look like?”, well, how does she perceive it in relation to her old house in Chicago, right? That’s kind of about setting, but also about introducing the reader to the world of Jade in the book. So that’s a little bit of how I approached it.

When did you discover your interest in writing?

When I was very little, I had a teacher tell me, maybe in first grade, she said, if you can read, you can write. And that’s not a given. I’m very glad someone told me that. And eventually, I realized that books were written by people and that grownups wrote made-up stories. And this was a very fine and normal thing that one could aspire to do. Once I realized that was possible, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

This event was originally recorded on November 4th, 2022.