“Don’t Write About the Gay Thing” and Other Bullshit Writing Advice I Will Never Give Even One Fuck About
So today, a kind of weird thing happened on Twitter. Writer Saeed Jones performed at a panel on with a few other people who shared stories about the traumas they experienced as queer folk, poc, and women (the panel was actually called, “Trauma in Literature.”)
So…naturally the only logical thing was for some rando copy editor (Robert Ham) to call him out on Twitter for being narcissistic and accuse him of “braggadociousness” (not an actual word.)
The entire thing sent me into a spitting rage, for many related reasons. I mean, the audacity to go to a panel where people are probably summoning all of their courage to talk about the terrors they’ve lived through, and how they’ve survived in spite of being marginalized by society — just to be accused of being grandiose by a guy with no published books and 2% of Saeed’s follower count. PS: He didn’t seem to get the memo that Saeed Jones won a Pushcart. Clearly he’s talented.
I just have so much rage in my heart that I don’t know where else to put it but a fucking blog rant. I see things like Cat Marnell getting written up in The Times and I wonder who here is truly worthy of accolades: yet another anorexic, rich white party girl? Or a black Pushcart prize winner who committed the sin of telling his story at a panel?
Publishing, however “woke” it attempts to appear, is still fairly predictable to me. Each year, in and out, I see vain, wealthy, conventionally attractive white women talk about their drug addictions. Grizzled middle-aged men share stories about how they can’t live up to their dad’s legacy or can’t figure out what to do about an extramarital affair. Each year, these people just continually fail upwards, telling stories we’ve all heard a hundred times over, with a diminishing retribution arc. At least before, people had to pretend to feel bad about hurting others with their addictions or infidelity. Now they can just say they did it and be applauded for their honesty. At least many readers in the comments of the NYT acknowledged: an overweight woman of color or a gay person would not have been afforded even half of the publicity and opportunities.
My skin in this is that I’m bitter, obviously. I’ve worked really hard on my writing career, yet I’ll never be a Cat Marnell. I got my first article published in the Bay Area Reporter 20 years ago, and since then have been published in Maxim, The Ignatian, Shecky’s, Curve, Bust, Autostraddle, GO, Time Out and Nonchalant (and a few digital pubs that shall remain nameless because I submitted under a pen name.) I performed poetry for six years until I got picked up by the National Queer Arts festival, and my first screenplay became an internationally distributed short film. I thought that maybe, if I did enough time as a writer (like you know, doing time in a prison) that one day I would get a really big headline in a place like The Times. So for years, I sent out thousands of job applications and submissions while temping shit jobs, really wanting to making it work.
The closest I got to achieving my dream was a regular column at GO (the happiest time of my entire life, lol), getting to the final interview as a copy editor at Harlequin, getting to the final interview at L Magazine, getting to the final interview at World Screen News and getting to the final interview at NY Daily News, all for editorial jobs. Note the common thread: THE FINAL INTERVIEW. It’s like getting life’s shittiest ever B+. How disappointing it was each and every time to beat out the other proofreaders, take the tests, come into the office anywhere from 3–5 times, feel actual hope and be told at the end of each ordeal: “Thanks for your interest.”
Eventually when I hit my thirties, I just became broken and lost hope. Can you imagine getting to the final interview at four publications, just to be told it was all for nothing at the end of it? I went into coding, thinking it would be easier and more lucrative than media. If you’re a 35+ woman, it sure isn’t! I suggest doing something more realistic (like anything unrelated to tech) where you become obsolete as a female after 27.
It wasn’t until a friend of mine suggested taking a writer’s workshop last year (and the toughest one I’d ever taken in my life) that I remembered how much I love to write, how much I want to follow my passion. I know that it’s my destiny, I just don’t know how to make it sustainable. I got feedback from real industry pros with impressive credentials and somehow became enchanted with the delusional idea I could submit to The Times via two degrees of connection and finally achieve my goal. And…I failed yet again.
Then I went on to show my book to three editors. Two loved it and think it’s marketable (and I’m nearly done with my third draft, so maybe it will not suck.) The third (representing the biggest house) seemed duly unimpressed, and our conversation basically went like this:
Editor: “I just don’t see a story here.”
Me: “My mother was a mail-order bride. My father went down in history as the fattest person to ever be cryogenically frozen into a capsule. I traveled the country trying to find the meaning of love (and after a whirlwind romance or 70) realized I had to recover from the mass amounts of strange abuse I lived through and find it in myself before my wife finally came to me and I discovered that yes, it’s possible to love in a healthy way again. We got engaged on top of a castle. You don’t see a story, in any of that?”
Editor: “No. I think if you had a drug addiction, it would be sellable. Drug addictions are in.”
Me: “I didn’t really have the luxury of getting a drug addiction. One might say I was, you know, trying to stay alive. I drank a lot of appletinis when I was single, though.”
Editor: “Nah, alcoholism’s not in anymore. Have you thought about self-publishing?”
El Oh Fucking El. So…I guess if I had something “trendy” like an eating disorder, anxiety, or a drug addiction, was pretty, white and straight, I’d definitely be a best-seller. No one knows how hard it is not to give in to something like addiction when you’re living through an immense amount of pain. I shoved my pain into strange addictions like three hours of exercise a day, piercings, playing World of Warcraft or reading a bunch of steamy erotica for days on end and ignoring everything around me to the point of neglect. Or falling in love with the idea of love. I don’t dare sit here like Cat Marnell and say, “Escaping is fun and you can do whatever you want with no remorse!” I hurt friends and lovers by compulsively chasing relationships and making them worry about me when I injured myself emotionally and physically. I have spent years apologizing for my selfishness and I will never stop because I know that I was wrong.
A person can only take so much pain with no place to put it. And I knew that if I did a bunch of pills or coke, mommy and daddy couldn’t be bothered to send me to a five-star resort to save my life. They didn’t even pay for my food and clothing growing up, other relatives had to do that. If I lost myself in an addiction I could ultimately not pull myself out of, I would have died on the streets. But if I had been born wealthy and hot, I would have gotten a book deal. Instead my prize for surviving it all is just mediocrity and not being dead.
I loudly complained about this all to a relative on my white side, who said, “Don’t write about the gay thing. Or the Filipino thing. Just stop talking about that stuff because you can’t make a career out of it if you do.”
Yeah well. I’m gonna write about the fucking “gay thing.” I’m gonna write about the “biracial thing.” Because those “things” are my life and my story. I guess I’m not writing for people who watch The Kardashians. I’m writing for people who want to get through the blunt force trauma of being alive and committed the cardinal sin of being born marginal. The only thing that made me happy in the whole feedback process was getting an 18-year-old beta reader’s feedback via the second editor. She said she’d just come out and the book gave her hope. When I was her age, Ann Bannon was the only thing that helped me make it through all of the teasing and hopelessness. Her books meant more to me than the freaking Bible itself, which didn’t really help me find an answer in life at all. I knew that if someone else could love another woman in that breathless wonder and mystery, that I was not alone in this world.
So I’m going to keep writing about the “gay thing.” Because I can’t do anything else but be true to myself and move with force wherever the gravity of my passion ferries me. Maybe that’s my incurable, tragic addiction.
