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First Draft Episode #315: Isaac Fitzsimons
July 22, 2021
Isaac Fitzsimons is the debut author of The Passing Playbook.
Today's episode is brought to you by Vision Season, a seven-week virtual masterclass in tending your creative garden with award-winning author Elana K. Arnold. This might sound familiar to First Draft listeners, and for good reason. I've talked to the brilliant Elana K. Arnold for the show before and her episodes are worth seeking out (listen here and here).
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Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week, I'm talking to Isaac Fitzsimon's debut author of The Passing Playbook. I so loved what Isaac had to say about writing a joyful story with a trans main character, experimenting with different kinds of stakes in contemporary stories, and on deciding how, and how much, to share about yourself when advocating for your work.
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Okay, now please sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Isaac Fitzsimmons.
Sarah Enni: Hi Isaac, how are you doing this morning?
Isaac Fitzsimons: Doing fine, thanks. How are you?
Sarah Enni: I'm doing well. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I'm so excited to talk about The Passing Playbook and I have questions cause it's already come out so I want to ask about how your debut experience has been, but first I want to lead up to that. So for my interviews, I like to go way back to the very beginning and I'd love to hear about where you were born and raised.
Isaac Fitzsimons: So I was born in D.C. and I was raised just outside the city in a suburb called Kensington, it's a little town. I've been in the D.C. area most of my life. I mean, I traveled for college and grad school, but I've always come back to the D.C. area.
Sarah Enni: I love also asking people about how reading and writing was a part of their young life. So what was that like for you growing up?
Isaac Fitzsimons: So I was a big reader growing up, and also a big writer, but the funny thing is, I don't remember the writing part. My mom moved recently and she found a whole bunch of my old school stuff. And there was so much, all the short stories that I wrote as a kid. And so I've got a box of them of just silly stories that I wrote. And even my kindergarten report card said that my favorite thing to do was go into the computer lab and writing and drawing my own stories.
So obviously, writing is something that I've always done, but I don't really remember doing it, but I really remember reading. And so as a very young child I'd read a lot. When I got to middle school and high school, I'd read less during the school year because we had so much academic stuff and academic reading to do.
But then in the summer we'd go to England and France, cause my mom is British so we have family there, and then she bought a little cottage in France. And so we'd go in the summer, we'd spend a week in England at first with family, and the first thing I'd do is go to the bookstore near my aunt's house and just buy like 10 books, like a bunch of books.
And then we'd go to France for a couple of months. And my French isn't great right now, when I was younger it was better, but I don't read French. And it was one of those things where we didn't have internet. We got TV one year because, what year was it? I think it was 2013. And there was this huge heatwave, or either the heatwave or it was the floods. It was one year where there was really extreme weather and we couldn't go outside so we got TV, but it was obviously in French. And so there was really nothing else to do in the house besides educating myself through reading.
So that was when I did the bulk of my reading. I just read all the books I bought that summer. And I have such great memories of that time of having no responsibilities, just sitting outside on the porch and reading.
Sarah Enni: Ah! What a dream. I'm like, "I want to go to a French cottage and just read all summer." That sounds absolutely wonderful. That is so interesting that you were a somewhat prolific writer, but you don't really recall it. I mean, to me , that sort of says that it was just ingrained. That it was just something you did, and so it didn't feel remarkable to be doing it. That seems like how we categorize those early memories. I read that you had done fan-fiction of Bunnicula. [Laughs], is that accurate?
Isaac Fitzsimons: So that's a story I have. It's accurate. That was first grade. And I have that story cause I actually found it. And we had something called The Writer's Workshop. Basically, it felt like hours so it was probably like 45 minutes, I don't know. But we could just write whatever we wanted. And I did some educational psychology and I did student training. And so with the kids that I'd worked with, they were always given prompts, like told what to write and how to write it.
But it wasn't like that at all for us, it was just like, "Write a story." They didn't grade us on grammar cause we were six, obviously, but it was just writing. And so I think my mom had read my brother Bunnicula and I had listened to it. And so I wrote a book, it's called The Vampire Bunny. It's really funny, I didn't know it was fan fiction at the time cause I didn't know what fan fiction was, but it was based on Bunnicula and I took the same character. So it was, yeah, just a thing for me.
Sarah Enni: I love it! It was also the first time in a minute that I've heard a Bunnicula reference and I'm like, "Ah! That was such a classic." I do want to ask a couple of questions about reading and writing that I'm gonna ask, and let me know if you feel comfortable with these questions. But I'm wondering how, or if, reading and writing as you were growing up, helped you shape, or experiment, or think about your conceptions of gender? Or if you have any particular memories as related to reading and writing and thinking about that for yourself.
Isaac Fitzsimons: I would say, looking back, definitely it did, even in the books that I read. I gravitated to books that were marketed towards boys, particularly adolescent boys. Even when I was in high school, I would gravitate to the middle grade books that were primarily targeted at boys. I've never really seen myself in writing, so it wasn't important in books, it wasn't that I was searching for myself.
The types of stories that were told appealed to me more than the books that were important to teenage girls, that my peers were reading. And I remember reading those books, there's one that I actually really loved, Sarah Dessen's Just Listen, it wasn't something that I would buy on the shelf myself, but I think somebody lent it to me.
And I remember looking at the cover and it was the one with the girl, she has like a tank top on, and tight jeans and I think the mid-drift is showing. And looking at it and being like, "Okay, this is what a girl looks like, or should look like." And feeling, this is not me at all.
I did read the book, I really liked the book, but I didn't see myself in the book. But then when I would read other books, like, "Okay, this is a character that I identify more with."
Sarah Enni: Right, I mean, I think of myself reading Jo March and having that be such a wonderful character cause she was not interested in doing what everybody around her expected, and being like, "Oh yeah, there's other ways." And you can insert yourself as doing what you want to do and trying to deal with the consequences of that. And the covers, as we all know, are so important. And we'll come back to that because the cover for The Passing Playbook is so gorgeous and such a wonderful representation of what's actually in the book.
The other question I have, and again, tell me if you're comfortable talking about this, is that I read that you have dyspraxia. You mentioned it on Twitter because you are signing many, many, many books by hand. If you're comfortable, I'd love to hear what that is and how that has been a part of growing up, and actually physically writing for you.
Isaac Fitzsimons: So I wasn't diagnosed with dyspraxia until college. But looking back at my handwriting, it's not even that it's bad cause it's terrible, but it gets worse and worse as I go along. So it starts off I'm like trying my hardest and then you get to page five, and this is children's book pages with lines that are wide, they try to make it easy for kids. But there's huge gaps in my writing. The letters don't make sense. And I don't know how people could read it and not say, "Okay, maybe there's an issue here that should be looked at." But nobody did. And so it was hard for me to write physically as a kid, and it still is.
And so dyspraxia is a developmental disorder, or disability, that's associated with poor coordination, poor hand-eye coordination. It has other components as well, but that's how it mostly affects me. And so I have very weak hand strength, which was tested when I finally got tested, and it's below my age average. Holding a pencil was really difficult for me. My kindergarten report card said that I liked going on the computer and typing and writing my own stories. And that's what I remember most is getting freedom typing.
So I was the kind of kid who taught myself how to type, touch type, when I was in, I think, second grade. And it wasn't fun touch typing. We had a computer program that was just the boring A / D like how to type it. And I would spend my Saturday mornings teaching myself to touch type because I knew that's how I had to get my feelings across was through a computer and not through writing.
I would give myself accommodations through elementary school. I remember in fifth grade, this is math not writing, but in math we had to rewrite the question in our homework from the textbook. And my dad had recently moved his office to our house, so we had a photocopier, this was before most people had photocopiers or printers with scanners.
So I would photocopy the math page and then just do the answer on the photocopied math page because I wasn't gonna waste my time and hand energy writing it. And my teacher was fine with it, luckily. I'm sure there's some teachers who would be like, "No, you must hand write it."
But I found myself giving myself accommodations. And so I really struggled with finding a signature that I knew I could do reliably and quickly, and wouldn't tire out my hand. So I just decided to do my first name. I'm not gonna mess with Fitzsimon cause it's too long. But I felt bad because I've received signed books, and a lot of time authors write these long lovely messages. And I knew that I just wouldn't be able to do that and keep it up.
So I'm just doing my name. If you want a personalization, I'll do the personalization, like the two name, but then I felt like I needed to let people know that it's not because I'm busy or I don't care, I just have too much to do too in so much time. It's actually a disability. I can't physically sign that amount of books if I do a personalized signature.
And so when I went to college, it was actually Daniel Radcliffe he's also dyspraxic, and he had done an interview about it. And I was reading the interview and was like, "This sounds a lot like me." So I told my mom. My brother has his own learning disabilities and so he went to school for kids with learning disabilities, so she was in the know about that. And I went to the school and they give me an assessment.
It's one of those things where it helped me to accept all of the difficulties that I have. Because there are things that are easy for other people that are very difficult for me, that shouldn't be difficult based on my age and my development, but they are.
And so it's being able to be like, "Yeah, I'm dyspraxic. There's some things that I can do and some things I can't do. Some that are just harder for me to do, if I choose to do them." It's been really freeing.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, having a name for something and an understanding of what it is. It's not just you, this is something that happens and other people are dealing with it as well. That's really powerful. And, thank god, you're living in the time of computers when we can go a different way and things can be easier.
Okay. I would love to talk about college and what you decided to study post high school. Also where, and when, creative writing came in a more serious way into your life.
Isaac Fitzsimons: So like I said, I've always liked writing. In high school I did the IB program, the International Baccalaureate. And part of it is you have to do, I think, 50 hours of creativity, 50 hours of service, and 50 hours of physical stuff. And so for my creativity, one of the things that I chose was a creative writing course at the Writer's Center in Bethesda. It was for teens and I did that course for maybe six weeks or something. I wrote a couple chapters of a story that I haven't picked up again, but it was actually not bad. If I could find it, I'm sure the writing isn't terrible.
In high school, again, I did another creative writing course. We did poetry, and short stories, and like flash fiction, which was fun. But I never really thought that writing could be a career for me. So in college I majored in psychology and I minored in education and communication sciences and disorders, which is like speech language therapy. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with those degrees and with the rest of my life.
With communication sciences and disorders, I had my own clients and I really enjoyed working with kids, but I didn't know if I wanted to be a speech language pathologist. With education, I've always been interested in education, partly because of my experience of being failed by the education system, and then also because my brother and his reading disabilities. I was interested in education, but I knew I didn't want to be a teacher because they possess a skill set that I do not have and they're incredible. So I went into educational psychology for my graduate degree and that was in Seattle.
And in college I did a creative writing course, but that was just more for fun. In grad school, I found myself having a lot of free time, which is funny because you would expect to have a lot of work. But because I'd always pushed myself academically, and did extracurricular, from like 7:20 to like, I don't know, eight o'clock at night, I was at school and then doing homework afterwards.
So in grad school I didn't have that. And I found myself finding time to read more and kind of catch up on the young adult and middle grade fiction that I'd missed out on when I was in high school and college. And then also, to write. So I decided to do the July camp NaNoWriMo, and I wrote a draft, really bad. Well, actually, I don't know how bad it is. I think it's pretty bad. I don't think it made it, but the first thing I wrote, the character is looking at himself in the mirror. So it was one of those basic writer mistakes. It was a middle-grade historical fiction.
I began to research more about what a career as a writer would be and what I needed to do. And so I looked into querying, I joined forums and started reading queries, learning more about agents, and things like that, and looking at craft. Then after grad school and I got my first job, I started writing in my free time.
Sarah Enni: So I'm so interested that when you had free time and were able to read, you naturally gravitated back towards kid lit and books for kids and teens, and you were also working with kids. Was that what brought it to mind? It sounds like, naturally, you just wanted to go back to reading that kind of fiction.
Isaac Fitzsimons: I think it happened naturally. That's the type of fiction that I gravitated to. And it really changes depending on my mood and what I'm into at the moment. But at that time in my life, that was when I started transitioning, in grad school. And so I was going through like a second adolescence. And so going back to that time, probably thinking about it now, speaking it out loud, it makes sense that I kind of went back to an adolescence that I had missed out on.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, that does make sense. And we've talked about covers with these traditional, quote unquote, female representations. When you came back and were going through that yourself of reorienting, thoughts of gender, and your own experience, were you finding books that spoke more to your experience, or were you finding more rich, young adult and middle-grade literature?
Isaac Fitzsimons: There were just a few books written with trans characters that I read. I think one is called I Am J. I can't think of other titles, but I definitely sought those out. I looked out for them and tried to find them, but they're difficult to find cause they weren't published by traditional publishers. So I definitely tried to find my story in fiction the best I could at that time.
Sarah Enni: Let's get you coming back to reading and then you set out to write with Camp NaNoWriMo. Did you finish the Camp NaNoWriMo project?
Isaac Fitzsimons: I don't know if I did. So the way that I write, in general, my first drafts are terrible. I think a lot of writers’ are. So I think I finished that first terrible draft and then I never went back to make it actually readable.
Sarah Enni: Put that one in a drawer.
Isaac Fitzsimons: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: I think everybody has their drawer book, or I think it helps to have a drawer book, to be honest. I want to talk about this professionalization of your writing and you really deciding that you were gonna write, seeking out what the publishing industry was like and how agents worked. I want to talk about how your writing style developed as well as get into pitch wars.
I'm not sure when that factors in, but I also read that you call yourself a, quote unquote, reformed plotter. And it sounds like maybe plotting and outlining took you too far from actually writing the book. Or, became the thing. I'd love to hear about how your process has developed.
Isaac Fitzsimons: So when I started out writing I was pretty big into outlining, and I still am, I like outlining. But I would find worksheets where they would write, “What's your character's eye color? What's your character's favorite food? When's their birthday?” they got into the in-depth. And when I start writing, I don't know that information. I didn't really feel like I needed to know that information. But when I first started out, that was kind of the advice that I got was to really know your characters before you started writing so I would fill out those sheets.
But then, inevitably, once I got into a draft I'd realize that the character can't be born then because of some plot reason so I'd have to change it. So I learned for myself that I don't really need that much to begin writing. It depends on the book. With The Passing Playbook, it was a scene that I was writing to. But the book I'm writing now, it's more two characters that came to my mind that I'm writing a story about. So what I need to begin writing depends on the book that I'm writing.
Generally, I want to know the beginning, some type of mid-point, and then how it's gonna end, even if I don't know the specific scenes that go into that. And that's what I use now. I've read so many books on craft, and I love them, and about outlining. And so I make outlines and then I kind of merge them all together. And it's a really messy process, but it's probably the most fun part of the writing process for me, that beginning when you have that idea that could really go in any direction and figuring out which direction you want to go.
So that's why I call myself a reformed plotter, because I used to think that I needed to know everything before I went ahead. Now I'm more relaxed. Honestly, I think of it a bit as having to trick myself to make myself think I'm ready for the next stage, even though I'm actually not. But if I don't trick myself, then I'm never gonna leave that outlining stage.
Sarah Enni: Yes, I relate to that. I also enjoy the process of, enjoy is a strong word for any of these stages of writing, but I do exactly what you're saying. Like a rough outline, a little idea of how the chapters are gonna go, and then when you reach a point in the book where you're like, "Oof, I kind of hit a wall, I'm not a hundred percent sure," going back to the outline and refreshing it with what you've done.
I like checking back in with the outline and knowing it's a flexible document. It does make it really messy, as you say, but I think you have to wade through a bunch of mess to get to anything that's even a good messy first draft.
So obviously that first camp NaNoWriMo book was not The Passing Playbook, it was something else. Can you lead me through the stages of how you got to the idea for The Passing Playbook and how that kind of developed?
Isaac Fitzsimons: So after I graduated from grad school, I moved back to the D.C. area. I was looking for jobs. I think I was writing at that time, during the job search. I was doing YA mystery, thriller type stories. And the funny thing is, I really love true crime and anything with death and murder I watch. But, The Passing Playbook is not death and murder at all.
Sarah Enni: No, it's not!
Isaac Fitzsimons: But that's what I gravitate to, what I enjoy reading and watching. So I had starts and stops of several different stories. Then I got a job and was working full-time. I was doing data entry for a research non-profit, where I'm still at now but no longer doing data entry. But I actually really enjoyed doing the data entry because I didn't have to use too much of my creative brain. I could just go in, do the entry, go home and then write.
But while I was doing data entry, I realized that I needed something to occupy my mind while I was doing it, cause it was kind of boring. So I began listening to podcasts and audio books and a radio program. So one day I was listening to a radio program and it was about a song that they traced through history. People came on the show and shared about how the song impacted their lives.
And then it came on, and he was talking about the song, Elvis Presley's Can't Help Falling in Love. And how, when he was at a military academy, an older boy taught him how to play it on guitar. And so I really loved that image of one boy teaching another boy how to play a song on the guitar. And then he went on to say that he later played that song for his wife on their first date.
It was just a beautiful story, all in all, but it wasn't gay. And I really wanted to make it gay because I felt like it had to be gay. And so that was really the idea for The Passing Playbook, that kernel, that scene of a boy teaching another boy how to play a love song on the guitar.
And I was thinking about the setting for it. The original story was at a military academy. I didn't really want to do a military academy. And so I was thinking about maybe it could be a summer camp, a musical theater summer camp, or a music camp or conservatory, because it had the guitar element. But that wasn't really working out either.
So it was 2016, which was the same as this year where there's the Euros, which is the European Football Cup. There's the Copa America, and then there's gonna be the Olympics, so there's a lot of soccer. And this is going way back to when I talked about going to France for the summer. Back in 1998, we were in France for the World Cup, and France was hosting and France won. And I remember, we were at a friend's house and everybody was celebrating, we were driving home and there were fireworks.
And from that moment on, I'd always watch those international competitions because there's always so much drama in it and you support your country. Well, I always support France and the U.S., but you want your country to win. But sometimes that means you want the rival to win as well because of the way the groupings work. So I just loved it for the drama. Fast-forward to 2016 when I was writing the book, soccer had just ended and I'd gotten into watching the rest of soccer, the Premier League.
So I decided to use soccer as that inspiration. So I had the setting, I had the soccer. I had the character of Justice who came to me in a really weird way, but I knew that I wanted it to be a kid from a conservative family. And then I needed to have the other love interest. And so taking all of that in, the conservative love interest, the soccer setting, which is sports and athletics, me being trans, having a trans character, sort of made sense. And that's how I came to it.
I didn't set out writing a book with a trans character fighting for his right to play, but it ended up that way in a really beautiful way. And I think, especially now with the current climate, it's just a really timely book. I didn't expect it to be so timely, and I'm actually kind of upset that it is so timely, cause I thought we would be past that now. But yeah, that's how the story came together.
Sarah Enni: That's fascinating. So the first book that you wrote did not have a trans main character, or that hadn't been your default of looking to write from that perspective, right?
Isaac Fitzsimons: The first book I wrote did not have a trans character, no. I knew at some point I probably would write a book with a trans main character, but I didn't think it was going to be my debut. I thought it would be something that I would do when I felt braver. But no, the story just kind of came to me.
Sarah Enni: That's great, and that is beautiful. That's my favorite, when the confluence of personal interest then develop, and naturally, some conflict in a story. I love that the image is the starting point, and then being able to develop the world naturally.
I have specific questions about The Passing Playbook, and I want to ask about how it, literally, came to pitch wars, and getting an agent, and stuff like that. But before we get into those basics, you gave us the outline for The Passing Playbook, but can you please give us the official pitch for that book?
Isaac Fitzsimons: Sure. So it is about a 15 year-old boy named Spencer who starts at a new school where nobody knows that he's trans. And he wants to keep it that way because of some bullying at his old school. But then he joins the soccer team and everything's going well until he gets benched because his coach finds out that his birth certificate still says female. So he has to decide whether to come out and fight the ruling, or stay stealth.
The coming out would mean coming out to everyone, including the teammate he's falling for. Staying stealth, would mean he would have to watch the rest of the season on the sidelines.
Sarah Enni: Nice. Good job!
Isaac Fitzsimons: That's the hardest part of any interview is that pitch.
Sarah Enni: It is! Sometimes I ask people to pitch books that came out years ago and they're like, "No!"
I would love for you to lead us through, you had this idea, this beautiful confluence of personal things that led to the outline for The Passing Playbook. How did the book develop? And I'm particularly interested in how pitch wars was a part of that, cause I know that's something a lot of my listeners will be curious about, or are participating in themselves.
Isaac Fitzsimons: So I found out about pitch wars back when I was in grad school diving into the possibility of actually writing as a career. So I would follow the Twitter, I'd go to watch the showcases, and I was like, "One year I'm gonna try to do pitch wars."
And so a couple of years went by, and I hadn't had a manuscript ready for it. I guess 2017, I was like, "Okay, this is the year I'm gonna get this manuscript written," because I had the idea for The Passing Playbook before. And I felt that this was a book that had legs, that could actually move and could be a real book. So I worked really hard to get it in a state that was ready for pitch wars and I applied.
I didn't get requests from the mentors that I applied to, but another mentor actually reached out to me and said, "I really love your book. I would love to mentor you in this program." And so I said, "Yes, absolutely." And the reason why I didn't apply to her in the first place was because I think she said she didn't like sports books, and so of course I didn't send it to somebody who said they didn't like sports.
But she really resonated with the characters in the story. And the book that I gave to her, it's very different from the book that is out on shelves now, in the best way possible. Because it was a bit of a mess. When I heard about escalating tension and raising stakes, I thought that meant that you threw bombs at your characters, like literal bombs.
So I watch a lot of soccer, and I don't know what team it was, but there had been a bus bomb. The opposing fans had put a bomb on the bus and I was like, "Okay, that's escalating stakes, definitely." So I threw in a bus bomb.
[Both laugh]
Isaac Fitzsimons: The bus bomb did not make it through, nobody got hurt, I took that part out. But we really dove into the relationship between Spencer and Justice. There was a point where they hated each other, then they started kissing. And my mentor was like, "No, this is the first time they've actually had a conversation in the entire book. You need to change that." So I dove into that.
Spencer's relationship with his parents really fleshed out, and I love his relationship with his parents. And I love his parents in the book because they're doing their best, but they're not perfect. And I think that's an important lesson to have.
I published the book up, did the pitch where they showcased it. And I think I got about like 13 requests, which wasn't huge, it was in the middle. Some people got a lot more than me, some people got a lot less than me, but I was like solid in the middle.
And I started querying those agents and I would get some feedback. Some of the feedback I got would be they'd want Spencer's journey to be more about him coming out, or our ideas didn't mesh. So I knew that that wouldn't be the right agent for this book. But after I got some consistent feedback about the pacing, I sent it to my friend who's also a writer, and he gave me some really great feedback.
So I pulled it from agents who had a full, or a partial, and revised it based on that feedback. And then sent out a new batch of queries, some to the same agents, some to new agents. And that query, and that package, started getting more requests and was more successful. And that's how I ended up signing with my current agent, who completely understands where I wanted to take this book. And I think the rest of my future writing as well, really leading with joy.
Even though I love true crime and stuff, that's not in my books. My books really emphasize the joyfulness of an experience, or of an identity, and not including traumatic events just for the sake of including trauma.
Sarah Enni: I do want to just pause on that for a second, because if listeners aren't familiar with this, or just that that's an important distinction. You're saying that The Passing Playbook is, like all queer stories, it is and it isn't, about coming out, right? Spencer is obviously out with his parents and with his family, but is sort of wanting to play it by ear at this new school and wanting to not have to deal with that all the time.
I'm just interested in what your thought process was about putting the story at that particular point. Like this person has a support system, but then they're still having to decide, on a case-by-case basis, when and how to come out to everybody new that he meets in his life.
Isaac Fitzsimons: I wanted to write for the upcoming generation of trans kids who are in that position. Who are able to access hormone blockers, are able to access the medical care that they need that prevents them from going through the puberty that doesn't assign with their gender identity. Because I think they have different challenges than trans people who don't have that experience. So in some ways their lives are easier, but in other ways it's more challenging. And I wanted to explore that dynamic.
So that's one of the reasons why Spencer is so young as well, he's 15, which is kind of young for young adult, that's kind of on the cusp. It's kind of like the lost stage between middle grade and young adult. They just don't do much with the 15 year-olds. But it was important for me to be young so that he could have transitioned young enough, but he's still old enough to be interested in relationships and stuff like that.
So that was kind of my intention going into it. I wanted to look at that story, and not a story of a trans kid who is just coming out and dealing with that. And I think those are stories that are important to tell, and other authors have done a brilliant job with those stories, but that wasn't the one that I wanted to tell with mine.
Sarah Enni: And I'm so glad then that you found an agent who obviously understood what you were going for, was supporting you. What you just said is so interesting to me about the stakes. Going from literally, "Let's throw bombs at our characters," to "Let's really boil it down to the relationships, and let's really get into that."
Because what struck me in reading The Passing Playbook was, and sometimes I struggle with framing these things as a question so this might end up being more of a statement that I'd love to hear your response to. But what struck me as I was reading was that I felt that you were doing such an interesting thing.
It reminded me of romance writers. And I just got the opportunity to interview a couple of romance writers and something that they talked about, which was so interesting to me, was that by adopting the rules of romance, which are, adult romance has that the characters have sex, and there's a happily-ever-after.
For YA rom-com, I think the rule is basically that there's a happily ever after, or that there's just a happy ending. And it seemed to me that by engaging with that sort of genre and its conventions that you were giving the reader this space to kind of relax. By knowing that at the end, this character is gonna be happy, it's not necessarily happy-ever-after because they're teens, but that they're gonna be in a good place.
That then, in the middle, you have this reader trust that you can then grapple with thorny stuff and talk about things with nuance and complications because the reader doesn't have to hold their breath about what's gonna happen at the end.
So again, not a question, but I'd love to just hear your thoughts and was that how you thought about the arc of the book?
Isaac Fitzsimons: Definitely. Because when I was starting to write, I would read books with trans characters, but also just queer characters in general. And when I was reading, I couldn't relax when I was reading it, because I was always worried that there would be that outing scene. And usually it's violent both emotionally and psychologically, also sometimes physically. Because those were the types of scenes that I'd read in previous books, that I'd watched on movies, that you see in TV shows, is that the trans character is going to be finally outed and maybe even assaulted.
And so I had a really hard time reading those types of books because it wasn't a relaxing experience for me. And that's primarily why I like reading because it relaxes me, or I can lose myself in a world. But I don't want to lose myself in a world where a character is going to be violently hurt.
And that's not to say that there isn't a place for realism in fiction, because there absolutely is, but that's not my personal preference for reading. That's what I use true crime for, so it's separate. So when writing at the outset, even though I threw a bus bomb at my character, I still had that mindset going in that he wasn't going to be outed, he wasn't going to be physically hurt, and he wasn't going to be dead named or mis-gendered on the page.
So there are some flashback scenes where it does happen, but you never know the name he had at birth. You never really experience him being mis-gendered in the present action. And that was completely intentional because I didn't want trans readers to go into the book and see that played out. Because for me, it's not a pleasant experience, especially in a book that is marketed as a rom-com.
And my team has done a great job at packaging the book. The cover is sweet and gentle and lovely. But still, when they hear the blurb, they assume that it's going to be a tough, gritty read. My mom had been begging for the book. I hadn't let her read it until I had an arc of it, actually. Because I didn't want her to read it while I was editing it.
And so she was begging me to read the book for years. Finally, I gave her the book and it took her a really long time to finish it. And she finally told me that she took so long finishing it because she thought it was going to end in tragedy.
And I talked to her about the book for years now, and she knew that that's not the type of writer that I am. And I told her that it wasn't gonna end in tragedy. But she still thought, because those are the stories that you see with trans gendered people in.
Sarah Enni: We're so accustomed to it, right?
Isaac Fitzsimons: Exactly.
Sarah Enni: Queer stories that end in that way.
Isaac Fitzsimons: Yeah. And so we tried our hardest to show that it is a joyful story and I hope it comes across in the packaging and the blurbs. But the incident with his birth certificate really doesn't even show up until like 65% of the way through the book. And that was, I'm not gonna say it was intentional because it wasn't, that just happened with the pacing. But I loved having that 65% of the book building the relationships, showing him and Justice's relationship develop, showing his relationship with his parents develop.
So you see that even though Spencer might not feel like he's supported, the reader knows that he has so much support so that there's something that he can fall back on if he needs it. And that was something that was really important for me to show.
Sarah Enni: Your very specific choice to create this world where you could talk about a lot of different trans issues, and also high school issues, and also soccer issues, your choice to put that in the context of a rom-com so that you could have this flexibility and trust of the reader, all depends on someone knowing what they're picking up.
So, I'm looking at my copy of The Passing Playbook here. It's the most adorable, beautiful, lovely cover. And then the colors are all muted and it really is saying a certain thing, but it sounds like you and your team had to be so conscious of how this was going to be seen by people just passing by it on the shelf.
Isaac Fitzsimons: It was an interesting process with the cover. First, we wanted to have a trans artist if we could, and so the artist is trans and that was important to us. And so we got a few sketches and all of the sketches that we received were really gentle moments from the book, like the one that eventually made it on the cover of the two boys together to show that it is a romance, that it is sort of gentle. It's not going to be an intense story.
My concern with that is that I wanted to balance the gentleness and the romance with the soccer aspect of it. So I love that we've got the soccer ball on there. And then the playbook is the central part. I really wanted to get a real play on the playbook, but it didn't work out that way.
It's great. I love it. But I wanted to have like an Easter egg and have a real a soccer play from my team, Manchester City, but that didn't work out. But we still got the soccer ball, it has sports in it, but it's also a love story between two boys, and I think that's great.
With the color, we went through so many different color schemes of the book. Like the blanket used to be yellow, the British version, which is behind me. But then when we were playing with the background colors, it wasn't really working. And so they settled on this really nice green, which I really love because, well, green is my favorite color in general, but also I just think it's not too harsh on the eyes. So it is a kind of gentle experience.
And I hope that when readers pick it up, they might see the blurb and they might think, "Oh, it might be intense." But then they see the cover and it's like, "Okay, it's a romance."
Sarah Enni: There's so much that goes into telegraphing. We talk about this with all categories and genres and movies and TV shows, right? You don't want the marketing to be at odds with what you actually experience when you consume media, because then no matter how good the media is, you don't feel like you got what you were expecting. And that's just a jarring experience for a consumer or an audience member.
Having those explicit talks with cover artists and with a team, it's always so interesting to me because then everyone has to be on the same page of like, "What is this book? What do we want people to know before they pick it up? How can we create expectations visually?" Which, as writers, my mind is blown when cover artists come back with stuff and you're like, "What? That's amazing!"
We're talking about a trans character who wants to play a sport. And we're talking about the laws surrounding how, and whether, trans students are able to play in school leagues and things like that. So you said that wasn't what you intended to set out writing, but it then became part of the story. What was the research like on that? And what has your experience been like really kind of getting into the weeds of, as you say, ever shifting rules surrounding what trans athletes are able to do?
Isaac Fitzsimons: I started off reading memoirs, looking at articles of actual cases of trans athletes being discriminated against. I think that the first one I found was probably Jazz Jennings. And so Jazz, I don't know if it's still going, but she had a show on TLC. She's written a book and she's a pretty well-known young trans activist. So she had an experience in her memoir about joining the soccer team as a kid and then not being allowed to play because she's trans, and the fighting that she had to go through.
Another one was Mack Pegs, she was a wrestler who was forced to wrestle in the girls' team, even though he was trans and had transitioned. And so with that, he would experience a lot of hate because people said it wasn't fair that he was wrestling against girls. I mean, he should have been wrestling with the guys, but that wasn't his fault. He was forced to wrestle with the girls because of his birth certificate.
And then there's a documentary that has been available for a while, it's been on the festival circuit, but now it's on Hulu, called Changing the Game. And so Mack is in that one. And there are a couple other trans athletes. So I'd watched that.
And I'd actually watched that while I was in the middle of revisions for The Passing Playbook. And after watching it, I was like, "Well, crap, I have to throw my book out." Because I don't get to that point until like 65% of the way through. I thought that maybe I should shift it earlier, and then have the rest of the book be Spencer struggling to fight against it.
But then I realized that really wasn't the book that I wanted to write. I wanted to see Spencer getting to that point where he is able to come out and fight against the ruling because, in my mind, even though the league allowed him to play - that's a spoiler alert - the league allows him to play, but it's not gonna be that simple.
And so the book ends in a good place, but I know people are gonna protest. He's gonna have to go through it again. They're gonna sue. Things are gonna be bad. But that really wasn't the way I wanted to explore it in this book because I wanted to keep it at that kind of gentle comfort read for trans readers, because I think that is what is necessary at this point in time.
Sarah Enni: I'm so interested in, and you kind of just touched on this, but just to put a pin in it. You are playing with Spencer's drive to play soccer, just like passion for soccer and wanting to go out and play, while staying rooted in the real world of the roadblocks that he'd face and how he'd have to navigate that. That's not an easy balance to strike.
Similarly in the book, there is a conversation about petitioning for a gender neutral bathroom, and those conversations are real and they do have stakes and they are intense. But they're not treated with that kind of, I don't want to say life-or-death quality, but just a really intense quality. It's treated as something that Spencer is experiencing along with all of these other joys in his life.
I guess I'm just asking how you, on a craft level, integrated that and played with that and kept the tone where you wanted it to be, even though you were bringing in all these other factors.
Isaac Fitzsimons: I think that was something that I'd worked on with my editor. We wanted Spencer, being trans, to be sort of more salient in certain points and less salient in other points. So it wasn't like he was waking up and having his breakfast cereal and being like, "Oh, it's a great day to be trans." But picking out those certain moments in his life where it is really noticeable to him. And so bathrooms is one of them. Even though he passes, using the boys bathroom is still an experience that brings some anxiety. And part of it is bringing in his passing privilege and his acknowledgement of that.
So having a character like Riley, who's non-binary, was a way to show Spencer's passing privilege and how he can use it to help other trans students. That's kind of how we approached it. I think that's the best way of how to approach it, is having that sort of foil to Spencer who is so confident in his identity at the beginning of the book, and throughout the book, while Riley is still sort of coming to their identity and Spencer can be a mentor to them.
Sarah Enni: There's this wonderful quote from you that I just wanted to see if you had thoughts on, or wanted to expand on, where you said, "For Spencer, there's two aspects of his love for soccer that I drew on. First, he craves the validation of being on the boys team and second, and more significant in my opinion, when he's playing soccer he feels completely in control of his body, which is important for the development of all teens, but especially for transgender teens."
I thought that, of course, the physicality of sport and soccer is so resonant for Spencer, his exact journey of where he is in his life and development.
Isaac Fitzsimons: I think I could go back to not being athletic at all. I've had to find other ways to appreciate my body and see my body as valuable and powerful. And so for Spencer soccer is that way. That's the way that he feels validated in who he is. And going back to the current anti-trans laws, you see these kids, you see videos of these kids, playing with their friends, succeeding and excelling and learning that hard work and teamwork. And to the idea that people want to limit that, or eliminate that, for these kids. It makes no sense to me.
There's a great quote from Changing the Game. I think it's a school administrator who says that high school sports shouldn't be about winning. It should be about that teamwork and that relationship building, including hard work. And I think that's so true. And then going deeper into trans kids, specifically, learning how to use your body in a healthy and powerful and productive way is so important for them. And so I wanted that to come through for Spencer.
I had a character that I cut, sadly, who was a girl who had played on Spencer's old team. Because I didn't want to show that Spencer didn't want to play with the girls because he doesn't think girls can be good at soccer, because that's not it at all. He wants to play on the boys team because he's a boy. And he wants to play on the boys team because that's the place where he feels like he belongs and where he can make the most difference and feel powerful in himself.
Sarah Enni: And that conversation about what is the point of playing a sport as a young person. I mean, Spencer goes to a private school, but in public schools where we are providing this experience of learning leadership and sportsmanship and skills. What is actually the function of it just sort of aligns with my conversations I have on this podcast often, about the professionalization of young people.
If you haven't started the violin by the time you're seven, like forget about it. There's so much pressure that we put on people, so young, to get really good at stuff that is ostensibly just about developing as a human and appreciating art and the joy of an experience. You should just be able to play soccer, basically.
I don't know. I don't have answers for these conversations, but I do think it's something that's important for us to keep in mind, not only as writers for young people, but people who have young people in our lives. It's so easy to be like, "Did you win?" Like, okay, well maybe, "Did you have fun?" Is a better question there. And for myself, I'm like, "Take it easy." Sometimes I'm like, "Let's just write to write and express yourself and separate sometimes from goals and success and capitalism." But, that's all easier said than done.
Isaac Fitzsimons: Absolutely.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, a casual statement to just throw out at you, but it's all kind of intermingling in my mind. There's one scene in the book that I really want to ask you about because you spoke to it in a different interview, and I wonder if you would mind telling us the story. And that scene is the Trans Day of Remembrance scene in The Passing Playbook. You've got this incredible real life story that you translate into the book. So would you mind telling us that story?
Isaac Fitzsimons: Sure. So, Trans Day of Remembrance is a day where you remember the trans people who have been killed that year prior. And I was in Seattle in grad school at the time, and Seattle has an amazing queer and trans community. And they were doing an event for Trans Day of Remembrance that I attended. And it was actually my first, and only, experience at a real Trans Day of Remembrance celebration or ceremony.
So the thing about Seattle, when do you think of Seattle, you think of rain and gray and bad weather. But in my experience, it is gray and misty and it kind of drizzles, but I'm from the east coast where we get storms, really violent storms, where the wind lashes and trees fall. But in Seattle you don't really get that. It's just kind of like wimpy, always gray, always raining. Except in the summer, like three months in the summer it's gorgeous blue skies, but the rest of the year it's gray and rainy.
And so Trans Day of Remember is in November. We had gone first to, they call it queer youth space. So it's like a house set up. I don't know if it's still in business, I hope it is. But they give shelter, they give food, they give clothing and resources to young queer people.
So first we were there and we had a talk and a ceremony about the day. And then we walked to Cal Anderson Park and they had like a marquee set up and a podium and microphones, and we all had candles and we were supposed to all light our candles and then somebody would stand at the podium and read out the list of names of the people who had died.
And so it starts raining as we're walking to the marquee and it's not like the typical Seattle rain, it's coming down in sheets, it's pouring down and there's wind. And this is just not typical in my experience in Seattle. So we get to the marquee and they begin reading the names and the microphone cuts out. We're all kind of like shielding our candles from the wind as well.
And the organizers, instead of not doing anything, they decide to pass around the sheets of paper. It's a big stack of paper cause it's the name of every person and where they came from, of the people who had died. And so they pass around the sheets of paper and we all read a name out loud and pass it to the next person.
There are probably 50 or so of us in that moment. And at the end, as we finished reading the last name, I swear this is true. And if you were at Cal Anderson Park that year, validate me, let me know. As soon as we finished the last name, the rain stopped and the wind stopped and it was just completely silent.
So I have a mixed relationship with religion, and not even a negative one, it's just that nobody bothered to teach me about religion growing up. So I wasn't oppressed or anything. Or I didn't come from a family like Justice's family. My family is just mostly atheists.
I came to religion myself. I don't know how religious I was at that time in my life, but I couldn't deny that even if there's not a God, that ancestors are looking down on us at that moment. And so originally the book ended... I think it just ended with Spencer and Justice together, honestly. And I think I was in the shower and that moment came to me and I was like, "No, that's how the book needs to end." And so I put that into the book and it's one of my favorite scenes. It's one of like two scenes that I get chills still when I read it.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It was so powerful to read it. And then to hear that it was based on a lived experience you had is like, yeah... one of those moments where fiction can just pale in comparison to these real experiences. I'm interested in anything you want to say, how does religion play in your life now?
Isaac Fitzsimons: Well, let me tell you my religious story. So, my mom's British, and so she's like Anglican, which is like Episcopalian in the U.S. And so we would go to an Episcopalian church growing up, occasionally, on some Sundays. And then I had friends who belong to different religions. And so if I would have a sleepover at their house, they would take me to the religious services the next day.
And I really loved seeing the different types of religious services. So there was never like a doubt in my mind that you couldn't hold many different religious thoughts, different gods, just because I was exposed to the different types of religions.
And so in high school, I decided that I wanted to start going to church. And so my mom found an amazing church in D.C. called All Souls. And it's a really queer church. Everybody's gay, like the reverend's gay. And at time I wasn't out as anything, I thought I was cis and straight. But seeing that, seeing all the gay people in a religious environment, made me realize that even if I were not cis and straight, I could still find religion and be religious and have that identity. So I was really lucky in that sense.
But my biggest issue with going to church was that my mom is a huge talker. And so we would be the last to leave at coffee hour. Literally, everybody would be going, they'd be packing up tables, and my mom would still be talking to somebody. And I couldn't deal with that. I loved the service, but I hated coffee hour. So I'm like, "Mom, I can't go to church with you." And my mom's an atheist, she's not religious at all, but she would go for me and she'd go for the coffee part.
So I stopped going to church because of that. But with the pandemic, I started doing live streaming. The National Cathedral does a live stream. And so I started doing that, watching that. In college, I took a course on biblical studies, but it was more about historical text and interpreting it in that lens and looking at all the inconsistencies in the stories and why that might be and who the intended audience was. So it was more of an academic analysis as opposed to, "This is what you should believe." And that's how I approach it.
And this isn't supposed to be an ad for the Episcopalian church or anything. But if that is the type of person you are, then the Episcopalian church offers that; where you can debate the realities and not feel like you've sinned. And so where I am comfortably now is in that church. I might go to physical services when they start up again. But I like doing the zoom, no happy hour, and then done.
Sarah Enni: I read an interview where you said, "Something I tell interns who I work with at my day job is to listen to Vienna by Billy Joel when you feel like you don't know what you're doing with your life."
[Both laugh]
Isaac Fitzsimons: Yeah, the interns meet with all the different departments to give them advice. I don't know when I started saying that, but I just felt like with some people, especially the young college kids who seek out internships, that they're probably a type A person. Probably more likely to get stressed out if things aren't going the way that they think it should because they've been told from a young age that these are the steps that you need to take in order to be successful. One of those steps is to have an internship.
After I finished grad school, I had a really hard time finding a job and my life still continued and went on and I'm fine. So just those moments in your life when you feel like you either should be at a space that you're not currently, I just want people to kind of relax and look at the wide picture of the things.
Sarah Enni: And I think that's great advice for, as you say, people who are type A, it's a good way to put it. I put myself in that category. And every once in a while you have to be like, "It's not a disappointment. It's just your life. This is just what's happening." I think that's great general advice, but I would just love to wrap up by asking if you have advice for younger queer writers, or people who are interested in telling queer stories, if you have anything you would advise them.
Isaac Fitzsimons: This is gonna be probably pretty cliché but it worked for me, is tell the story that you want to write. And you might not know that's the story that you want to write at the beginning, but just keep digging and uncovering more things, because that's how I got to The Passing Playbook. And I don't think if I'd continued writing a story that didn't have so much of me in it at the beginning, I don't think my debut would have been so impactful.
So, obviously, read widely. Consume widely. I got my idea for the book from a radio show. And so ideas come from all different places. And I think the wider you read and consume the more you can, I don't want to say steal, but kind of steal ideas and transform it and mold it to how to make it work for the genre that you write in.
So read, write, and then write the story that's in your heart, but also be protective of yourself. Cause I made the decision, even when I did pitch wars, I made the decision to come out as a trans writer cause I kinda felt that pressure that I had to. I know the 'own voices' thing that's been going on and it felt right for me at that point. But if it doesn't feel right for you, don't feel pressure to come out if you're not ready.
So, that's kind of a lot of advice, but take it or leave it.
Sarah Enni: It's a lot of great advice. And if you don't mind me just throwing in one last question here is, when I am getting ready to talk to someone like you, it's something I think about that you must be struggling with. How do I want to say this? When I prepare for interviews like this, I want to talk to you about your book, and craft, and writing. But I, of course, want to talk also about your experience as a trans writer and the trans character at the center of your book.
I just wonder what it's like for you to know that you are going to release a book in the world where you're gonna be asked all kinds of questions. And hopefully most people were respectful about it, but you are putting yourself out there for questions that are really personal. Has it been okay for you? How did you get yourself ready for that? If you have advice for someone who's about to go through that too I would be interested.
Isaac Fitzsimons: So luckily I've been really fortunate in that everybody I've talked to has been pretty respectful of boundaries. I mean, it's funny, because I wasn't out at my day job and I never actually officially came out. I just put in the chat, "My book's coming out next week, come to my event." And obviously, they read the description, and if they wanted to learn more, they could. In interviews, I don't mind saying, "As a trans writer, I do blah, blah, blah."
But in my day job, I don't want to be like the go-to trans person, expected to educate people on all things trans, because that is not why they hired me. And that's not the role that I should have to take. And so I see that in writing as well where, when these questions come from the direction of the book, or the character, or even some about me, the personal things that feel relevant to the interview, I don't have a problem answering those types of questions. But it's definitely something to think about as a young writer, how comfortable you are being open and how open you're comfortable being.
And that's something, if you have a team, your agent can help you with, your publicist can help you with, so definitely lean on people for support if you need to.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, and relying on your team, thinking about your own boundaries. As someone who interviews people all the time, I do think it's important that people understand that they can say, "I'm not comfortable with that question, let's move on."
I'm so glad that you have had a respectful experience and I'm so grateful to have been able to talk to you today. This was such a pleasure.
Isaac Fitzsimons: Thank you. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much to Isaac. Follow him on Twitter @IsaacFitzy and on Instagram @IsaacFitzBooks. You can follow me on both @SarahEnni (Twitter and Instagram), and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram).
And thank you to our sponsor, Vision Season. The fall course of Vision Season will run from August 8th to September 25th. To learn more about Vision Season and to sign up for the fall course, visit ElanaKArnold.com.
First Draft is produced by me, Sarah Enni. Today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to social media director, Jennifer and Nkosi and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson.
And as ever, thanks to you, Billy Joel fans for listening.
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