I Found My Literary Soulmate

I encourage you to find yours too.

Five years ago, Mary Yukari Waters told a group of her writing students to look for their “writing soulmates”—writers who write like you write, who have similar voices, who write about the kinds of things you write about. She gave her students reasons for doing this. Among her reasons was this: They are proof there are readers out there who like the kinds of things you are writing. I was in Waters’ class, and I began looking for my literary soulmate.

Looking for one’s literary soulmate is like looking for love. When you’re searching for it too hard, it evades you. This is not to say I didn’t read so many writers I loved—of course I have, all of my life. But try as I might, I didn’t find anyone who checked all the boxes I was looking for in a literary soulmate. Then, just like love, it tapped me on the shoulder when I wasn’t expecting it. One day, my daughter gave me a book of short stories she’d read and liked. She told me she thought I’d like it too. I did.

The book was a debut collection of short stories called Back Talk by Danielle Lazarin. I enjoyed reading it, yes, but in its pages, I accidentally stumbled upon someone who, although she is much younger than I am, has a similar sensibility in her writing style, in her view of the world, and in her choice of subjects. I felt I understood her. I felt, if she read my writing, she might immediately understand me too.

Just as Waters had said it would, the existence of Lazarin’s book gave me hope. If people liked the things Lazarin was writing about, maybe they’d like the things I write about too. If people liked Lazarin’s voice, perhaps they’d like mine. An agent had taken Lazarin on as a client—maybe an agent would take a chance on me someday too. Penguin Books published Lazarin’s debut book, a collection of short stories—perhaps there was a future for the linked short story collection I was working on.

Reading Lazarin gave me hope because our writing sensibilities and our journeys are similar in some ways. When I read her book, I was at the beginning of my MFA program. Since then, my voice has changed somewhat. I’m sure hers has too. The similarities between us are a little less. But that kernel of similarity is there, the one that gave me hope five years ago, when I hadn’t published a single thing. It’s one of the things that gave me confidence that someone would like my stories enough to publish them one day. It’s one of the things that kept me going.

Who is your literary soulmate?

P.S. While writing this, I visited Lazarin’s website to see what she’s up to these days, and I was excited to find my writing soul sister is here on Substack.