One of my good friends, Lio Min, had their novel, Beating Heart Baby, come out this Tuesday. (Their 30th birthday was also Wednesday — whew!) Beating Heart Baby is a work that I’ve seen them work on for years and years, so I’m glad it’s finally here.
If you look in the Acknowledgements section, you’ll find it divided into three sections: mind, heart, and guts. I’m in the heart section, where Lio credits me with coming up with the three sections. What they don’t tell you is that I came up with the idea to describe a certain type of writing, and, in our discussion, actually referenced one of their pieces, in (lol) Guts magazine. I still love that piece. My theory, as I explained it to Lio, was that writing comes from three places. The mind, the heart, and the body (or the guts).
I described mind writing as constant intellectualization, or an urge to turn to science, nature, or data to describe your theories, while whole-hearted writing as almost romantic, at worst sentimental, at best full of courage and empathy and understanding.
In my opinion, writing from the gut is both the most pleasurable writing to both do and read. It’s when you let yourself trust yourself totally to build a story that demonstrates your true values of the world because it’s full of writing risks that you deem not just important to your writing, but necessary.
I referenced Lio’s piece because it was, like most of my favorite writing of theirs, clear evidence of their ability to write in a way that most writers turn away. You can see it in their BuzzFeed pieces, their essays on their catchphrase “yeehaw,” their short story at Terraform, their column Formation Jukebox, and their interview with Mary H.K. Choi, where they reference…me!:
LM: A friend of mine has this saying, that there are three kinds of writing. Head writing, heart writing, and guts writing. So much of the way that you’re describing your writing and that one feels as they go through your books is that gut-level everything. And I’m not just saying that because Yolk is about food.
Lio’s a great writer, but they’ve also been an amazing friend to me. They love me despite this one time when we working together on a website that will remain nameless, and I purposefully sent them Tumblr posts over Slack in our open office plan to try and make them laugh, giggling openly as their face turned red and they struggled to breathe while they attempted to keep it together.
But that’s the nature of our friendship. It’s funny because Lio has always treated me like an older sister and I’ve told them I see them as a younger brother (I already have one, so I don’t mind having another). Although I have to say it’s funny they say that because I’ve never seen them as anything but an equal. Maybe it’s because they remember when I mention things like putting away my winter clothes for summer as a mark of adulthood, but seem to forget about the time I told them I slept directly on my mattress because I was too tired to put clean sheets on it. We have a lot in common, including:
The fact that apparently our first fanfics were both silly Lord of the Rings fanfic on fanfiction.net.
We both got in trouble for reading in class in middle school (Theirs was It by Stephen King in French class; mine was math class and a Royal Diaries book about Queen Victoria, which – honestly giving me detention for that should count as a hate crime)
We both ADORE Pacific Rim, one of the things that bonded us when we met in…2015? Years and years ago…
The fact that when I tell them that Megan Thee Stallion likes anime, they not only know how awesome that is, they follow her on Instagram, they look for Meg’s Crunchyroll merch, they write about how anime is ascendent in the culture, and, while they STILL haven’t watched The Disastrous Life of Saiki K, they understand that I got the original recommendation from Meg as well.
I’ve also jokingly told them they’re my “nepotism baby,” and believe me, it is very much a joke: every bit of Lio’s success has come from them making their own opportunities, finding the time and energy to write, prioritizing their own interests and tastes rather than trying to follow market trends. It means that their book is not just wholly original, like them, but comes from the core of their spirit – it’s a gutsy, heartfelt novel that is mindful of the intelligence and variety of its audience. The full-bodied book in every sense of the word.
To further understand their originality and more about their novel, I interviewed them earlier this week. Here are their answers:
3-5 films you’d recommend to everyone:
Satoshi Kon’s Paprika.
Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together
Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep (the original movie starring Maggie Cheung)
Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap (ostensibly about skateboarding but also so much more)
What’s your modern canon? Last night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (set in the Bay Area, where I live). The “Three Body Problem” books by Liu Cixin. They’re funny, weird, and the world they build is so inspirational and very scary, I actually could not put the book down. I constantly think about and constantly talk in three body problem languages. Not in a way that directly references the books – sometimes I just say that about Sage, Kiwi, and Onion [their three pets].
Favorite romantic trope?
Um…
Is it a slow burn?
Yeah! That’s it.
What about slow burns where characters lose touch for years and years?
Uh, you mean like in my book? Yeah. Although I have to say that sometimes they can be so indulgent I don’t have the patience for it. The wick can’t be 40 miles long! So, to a point, yes.
What about when they meet but not under their real names?
[I can hear their eyes rolling as they scoff] You mean like in the book?
YES.
Okay, favorite fandoms?
The way modern fandoms tend to escalate seems to be exponential to the point of being unsustainable. So I prefer the older anime fandom, like Revolutionary Girl Utena. I like the Naruto fandom but only in the vein of kind of making fun of it?
What about fandoms you used to be in? (Ed: This is also like in the book, by the way.)
I loved the Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix, His Dark Materials, the Odyssey – I have three different versions of it, and of course I’m a big fan of Madeline Miller’s Circe and Song of Achilles. I also love the book Cassandra by Christa Wolf so much that I have the cover of that book tattooed on my body.
Finally, to celebrate Lio Min’s book birthday and real life body birthday, the first ten people who reply to this email with evidence they bought the book and a link to their Venmo will have me paying for their copy! An indie bookstore is preferable but if you go to Amazon, Bookshop, or anywhere else, I won’t mind one bit.