Five things I didn't post (sorta)

I've had a lot of posts I've composed but not finished or posted this week.

1. I had one about the privilege of publication, and I still might finish up that one. Because I do sometimes think we may take foregranted the privileges that even allow us to get to the stage where we query agents, much acquire the skills and networking to really make a career of writing. I sometimes wonder how much the average published writer has to invest before seeing their first advance and how many books they have to write to earn out the costs of paper, printing, going to workshops and conventions, of researching and reading widely in their field.

This all stemmed from reading one well-respected agent who recommended professional, freelance editors to those writers who wanted feedback - as she herself does not offer feedback on rejections. And she openly admitted that the editors would run a writer about $2000 (U.S.). Then another agent, also well-respected, noted that writers didn't really get the experience of real editing until they worked with the professionals at a publishing house and that no free workshop or critique from a friend could match up.

I wondered what their suggestions would be for those writers who don't have that kind of money to spare and who do not, for various reasons, even have free workshops and critique circles available to them unless it's on the internet. I wondered what they would say to the writer who has accessibility issues due to disability (of any kind) and is struggling with finances, trying to decide between food and medication. I wondered if they would say, "Sorry, you're screwed. Publication isn't for you. Here's a link to PublishAmerica. Just give up."

I look at so many of the tips that people give writers, especially us unpublished folk, and I wonder if they're only talking to those of us who have significant disposable income, those who can finance trips to conventions to pitch to agents.

But I didn't post that post. But I did think a lot about C.E. Murphy (mizkit)'s thoughts on crowdfunding of fiction and it's advantages - in the short term - for financially strapped writers in contrast to author Cathrynne Valente's thoughts about why the death of traditional publishing is not so great actually and kind of a myth, namely, this:

No one goes around suggesting that everyone should become their own autonomous cheesemakers and cheering the death of the cheese industry. Why? Because that would result in a lot of shitty cheese.

I'll be the first to admit that I distrust the quality of most self-published material, save if it's from an author I've known through other venues. I trust that if C.E. Murphy crowdfunds something, we're getting good material.

And Valente is careful to note that not all self-publication or crowdfunding is an automatic sign of a lack of quality, but I wonder if she considers that sometimes the lack of quality is not about the talent of the writer but the dearth of resources for growth, self-improvement, and craft refinement available to them.

Okay, maybe I did just make a post about that.


2. The other thing I didn't post this week was about a writer's ethical obligations and my thoughts about yaoi. I've read, in recent months, some books that employed plot devices such as slavery, rape, torture, and murder and I found those books lacking in those areas, despite some of them being extremely well written in other respects.

It boiled down to me wanting to say that I think we as writers have an obligation to remember that when we write about things that they've actually happened and will happen to real people, and that our works may fall into the hands of someone unfortunate enough to have some experience, directly or indirectly, with them. But more than that, what people read shapes their attitudes and their attitudes shape their actions (or inactions) - and I think people who seek to make a profit should make sure that profit does not come at the cost of influencing bad attitudes and bad actions or harmful inactions on the part of our audiences.

Then I realized it would be so very arrogant for a writer such as me to make this post, to lecture and go on and on about this topic to others when I myself should be the recipient. I live at a terribly rich, costly (to others) intersection of privileges. White privilege, economic privilege, able privilege, American privilege, age privilege, (some) heteronormative privileges, cisgender privilege, Christian (raised, though not active or identifying as) privilege, etc, etc, etc.

If I learned nothing else from RaceFail it is that those of who sit atop the pile of privilege should, before we mouth off about how to treat other people and hold ourselves up as examples of that treatment, should make sure we are turning that lens on ourselves. The world does not particularly need our self-righteous, hypocritical moralizing and self-aggrandizement. Especially when we are able to make our voices louder and more clearly heard because of said privileges.

I'm glad I didn't complete that post or put it up. I won't finish it. I learned what I believe I needed to. I have so much more listening, shutting up, and privilege-checking to do before I have any business opening my big yap on certain subjects. I have a lot of humility and consciousness to cultivate. And I believe that true allies are the ones who, the more they cultivate those things, the less they blather on and the more they do. Or, to appropriate and rework a quote from St. Francis of Assissi, "Be a good ally. Use words if necessary."

And if I truly believe writers have certain obligations, the most important thing I can do is make sure I'm fulfilling them myself.


3. I had a post about why I really hate when people stereotype readers by genre. And that's the same thing I got pissed about during the whole New Adult debacle a while back. But, as always, fashionista_35 said things much better and righter than I ever could. Because I'm really tired of the ways in which we want to make clean, neat assumptions about readers based on their choice of literature.

For every girl that reads "Hunt for the Red October" and is all "yay submarines!" and just wants shit to blow up already, there's a guy (maybe even a straight/cis guy) who sneaks romances and secretly loves every Harlequin and Mills-and-Boon and Regency Romance he can get his straight, cisgendered hands on.

And for every one of those people? There are readers of all kinds (male, female, and all other gender expressions, all races, all sexualities, all levels, all origins) who like to read a whole bunch of things. Who switch from coming-of-age YA to fantasy epics to procedural detective series to chick lit to science journalism, literary nonfiction and thick, ultra-academically written biographies and are fans of them all - and they deserve not to be pigeonholed or stereotyped or ignored.

So, yeah. To anyone who wants to paint the bon-bon eating housewife picture of romance readers, let me buy you a round of the finest "FUCK YOU IN ALL YOUR VARIOUS ORIFICES I LOVE ROMANCE IT'S AWESOME" on tap. On the house. I'll be here all day, so feel free to come back for seconds. It's an all you eat around here, buddy.

Further, I don't like the implication that romance - being a female dominated field - is somehow the child of a lesser genre in the world of literature. I don't like the idea that when a man writes a romance under another genre, it's a sweeping literary classic. I do not like that men's reflections on women are given so much credibility but women's reflections on men and on themselves are devalued, relegated to genre ghettos. I do not like that somehow the women in male-written novels are seen as characters and symbols worthy of praise, but the women in women-written novels are Mary Sues. When women dare to express our desires and fantasies and dare not to stake our claim to sexuality, dare to reflect our side of the conversation when it comes sex, love, and relationships that it is automatically cheap, tawdry, infantile.

I don't stand for that kind of shit around here, to be frank. So I say again. FUCK YOU. I. LOVE. ROMANCE. IT IS FUCKING AWESOME.

4. And then there was this post about deodorant misogyny from yuki_onna and jewelry misogyny from kerrikins. I had a response post, but fuck it. What they said is what that amounts to.

I love storms, for one. I love watching them. I've lived through several tornadoes and epic storms and it was my mother who taught me to enjoy the simple pleasure of sitting on the front porch in the summer, listening to the rain pelt the trees, and the wind bend the branches and the dark gorgeous clouds gather over the sky. On behalf of all the times that my mother was cool as cucumbers and the good side of the pillow while the sirens went off, easily herding two kids, a bitchy cat, and an energetic Pomeranian into the bathtub until the sirens ceased, I would like to tell Kay Jewelers where they and their unimaginative, hideous jewelry can go. Clue: it ends with double hockey sticks and it ain't the NHL.

5. I had a slightly whiny post about how frustrated I feel with Soul Machines and the scene I'm working on is going all wrong wrong wrong and I feel stuck.

Then I took a nap with my lovely husband and dreamed about my entire family driving down the highway the wrong way going 90mph in a van with the brake lines cut and writing updates in the unfinished journals I kept in high school, inspired by the words "let's do the time warp again". And upon waking, I was less frustrated and more aware that if I can go back and do a Rocky Horror collage on old journals, I can edit this.

Oh, and then I had an Apricot Sour and decided that it was Superbowl Sunday and that I'm going to celebrate all the ways in which I am defiantly not watching football. So, yeah.

Oh, Puppy Bowl, how I love you. And no obnoxious ads from Tim Tebow's mother bragging about how her CHOICE (funny word, that) should be everyone's choice because of course, if you don't abort your baby it will obviously grow up to be a football star making millions of dollars. It won't, you know, potentially kill you or end with your child suffering and dying anyway. Focus On The Family is the short version. The actual title is Focus On The White, Straight, Cis, Christian, Affluent, Conservative-Minded Only Family. Thought I'd clear up that confusion for you.