roxanegay:

I often get questions from new writers asking what it takes to become a successful writer. In their questions is the implicit suggestion that there is a an answer to this question, a formula that can be easily replicated.  Other times, I’m asked how writers can get published in X, Y, or Z magazine, as if writers have magical connections. 

It’s a nice fantasy, the idea that success has a marked path, that there are secret passages that will gain you entrance to the publications of your dreams. These things may exist but I know not of them.

I try to write every day. I try to read every day. I try to get better by taking a hard look at what I’ve written, where the weaknesses are, why those weaknesses might be there. I am familiar with most magazines now but when I wasn’t, I used Duotrope to learn about publications that might be a good fit for my work. When I found a writer in a literary magazine whose work resonated, I looked at where else they’ve been published and sent my work there. I learned to deal with constant rejection, I mean constant, and it sucked and I had little pity parties about it, and then I got back to reading and writing and learning and trying to get better. 

Most of the time, I submit to publications like everyone else. I don’t have very many magical contacts. I find submission guidelines on magazine websites and submit via whatever means these guidelines indicate. I keep doing this over and over until I get a yes. I’m pretty relentless. I call this the cockroach school of submission. Not even nuclear winter will keep me from submitting my work. 

Now that I’m more established, I am solicited by editors but these solicitations only happen because I’ve created a body of work and maybe some of it is good. You can’t just go from zero to 60, most of the time. Knowing the “right” people is perhaps 10% of the battle. The other 90% is writing. It’s always going to be writing. The sooner you accept that at some point, you just have to write, the easier it will be to get where you want to go.

There’s a nice little rush when a solicitation happens. And then, I submit more work. 

Also, I offer these tips. 

I’m sorry the secret is not more glamorous. 

Currently Crushing On: Roxane Gay

The first time that I heard of Roxane Gay, I was mindlessly scrolling through my Tumblr feed. In between collages of teen pop stars and screenshots of Seinfeld episodes, I saw a post from theIlluminati Girl Gang Tumblr with the title “Roxane is spelled with one N.” I hadn’t read a word, but I was already thinking ”damn girl, you tell them.” I clicked on the link.

“I have become accustomed to rejection.” These are the words that welcome you to Roxane’s website. They are a pretty good indicator of Roxane’s unapologetic honesty of her flaws, her desires, herself. This comes through in her writing. She isn’t afraid to state things, things that people often don’t want to hear, things that people never expect to hear from a woman of color. She isn’t afraid to be funny in one sentence and serious in the next. She isn’t afraid to write from the traumatic to the banal, from kidnappings in Haiti to the most recent installment of Die Hard. She isn’t afraid to go there—race, class, gender, privilege, politics  love, violence, humanity–all take part in her words. Most importantly, she isn’t afraid, or perhaps better said, isn’t ashamed of being afraid.

Now it may seem from these series of bold statements that Roxane and I are intimate friends, that we have exchanged poems and cackled at cheap one-liners from action movies while munching on Sour Patch Kids on a Thursday night. I wish. Until recently, I was only a netspace fangirl, following Roxane from afar. Needless to say, when I heard she was coming to talk at Brown on being a “bad feminist,” I had a fangirl freakout. I bridged the interweb distance and emailed Roxane, mustering all of my “professional” intentions to mask my giddy excitement at the prospect of meeting her. We set time for an interview before her talk. I wrote it in bright pink pen on my planner. I wore my favorite sweatshirt to the interview.

It’s a funny moment when you put a face to the words. Here she was, that hilarious movie reviewer, that sharp-witted commentator, that brilliant writer, sitting at the Brown bookstore, watching me nervously handle my tea. Roxane is soft-spoken, approachable, willing to share. I launched into a muddled monologue of all the the feels Roxane’s writings inspired, of why I saw her as my feminist godmother. She warmly responded to my “so being a writer, whats up with that!?’ pleas. I gave her a copy of Bluestockings’s first issue. She tweeted about me. (Dreams come true is what I’m trying to say.)

Roxane at a reading.
Image Credit: vouchedbooks.com

Roxane’s essay, “Bad Feminist,” reads like the the feminist manifesto my fairy godmother whispered to me. If you haven’t read it, stop reading this and read it right now. (Seriously, read it now!) Basically, it’s everything I have felt about what “being a feminist” means, but better articulated, plus things I never had considered. Roxane draws the comparison between essential notions of being a “woman” (which we can all now say comfortably is some serious b.s.) to essential notions of being a “feminist”—militant, angry, hairy, hates men, hates babies—which still permeate society and which are reinforced by women of power who shy away from the f-word. This is because, as Roxane points out, there is risk in calling yourself a feminist. Not only do you have to deal with all of the absurd stereotypes and prejudice that will be thrown at you for simply not wanting to be “treated like shit,” but you also now put yourself at risk of failure. Of failing to be a “good feminist.” Especially with the recent articles on  ”women’s problem to have it all” (or women’s failure) Roxane writes, “These articles make it seem like there is, in fact, a right way to be a woman and a wrong way to be a woman. And the standard appears to be ever changing and unachievable.”

She continues (and I gush in affirmation):

I have written before about how bad it is to think of feminism, or being a feminist, as  ”good/bad.” First off, because as a movement and as a marker of identity, feminism has never been stable or inclusive enough in all of its history. And I don’t see that as a failure of the movement or a marker of its illegitimacy. Feminism is a process, it’s a constant negotiation, it’s a “figuring it out,” never a “having it all.” It’s singing along to the Ying Yang Twins while knowing their lyrics are mysoginistic, and getting angry when Chris Brown performs at the Grammys after battering his partner. It’s loving fashion and reading Vogue, and getting pissed off when they feature several male writers and forget female writers are also worthy of recognition. It’s thinking about maxi dresses and never thinking about car engines. It’s being Roxane, it’s being me, it’s being you, it’s being human, and wanting to be treated as such. That’s what I took most from meeting Roxane. Basic human empathy is the only qualification for being a feminist, good or bad. 

-Ana Alvarez, Managing Editor

Image Credit: Eastern Illinois University on Flickr

(Source: bluestockingsmag)

roxanegay:

Another year, another VIDA count.  When you look at the raw numbers, it is disheartening, particularly given that this is the third year the count has been done. Three years is enough time to create change, even if it’s a little change. I’m tired of conversations. What else is there to say? Editors don’t give enough of a damn to change the status quo. 

There’s nothing to really say at this point. The gender (and racial) inequity exists. It is stark. Counting is useful for reminding us.

I don’t think the VIDA numbers are perfect. I don’t think numbers alone can tell the entire story about gender equity in major publications. That said, the numbers do mean something. They do matter. At some point, we have to move beyond historical inequities as an explanation. It is 2013, not 1993. 

When these statistics come out, people love to talk about all sorts of mathematical reasons why perhaps these numbers aren’t as bad as they seem, as if we can rationalize our way out of bullshit.

One of the favored stances is that it’s really all about submission ratios. Please. How much work from the submission queue gets into The New Yorker? These are magazines that publish a great deal of work from their staffs and by solicitation. I’m absolutely willing to agree that submission queues are, for most magazines great and small, dominated by white men. There are any number of reasons why this might be the case but editors can easily solve this problem. There is an abundance of diversity, not just in terms of writers, but in terms of aesthetic, in the writing world. Reach out and touch someone. 

Tin House, is a bright spot and there are a couple others but it’s sad that this is the prize, that we’re grateful for these scraps from the editorial table.

I think what’s hardest is that I read these magazines and I respect them. I subscribe to The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s, London Review of Books, and sometimes Tin House, because I enjoy reading them. I enjoy learning from them or finding things to disagree with. I hope to write for these publications someday, not because I’m a woman, but because I have a perspective that is, I think, unique. 

We get so bogged down in these numbers that we forget that diversity isn’t just about numbers. It is about diversity of thought and one of the best ways to include a diversity of thought is by sharing perspectives from a diverse group of people who will, by virtue of who they are and how they move through the world, have interesting things to say. It’s simplistic to say this is simply about men and women. It’s about so much more.  

Last night’s Oscar ceremony and some of the commentary around the ceremony make the best possible case for why diversity matters. We largely knew what to expect with host Seth MacFarlane—immature sexist jokes that weren’t quite funny but could be if he tried, just a little. And then of course he offered a racist joke, a homophobic joke, a fat joke or two (the Rex Reed joke had a little something to it). This is what MacFarlane does and he’s been very successful.

The ceremony was what it was and MacFarlane is who he is. Most of his jokes fell flat, not because they were offensive, but because they weren’t good. They lacked imagination or intelligence and were largely predicated on the notion that the word “boob” is hilarious, which if you are eleven, I suppose it is. By the end of the night MacFarlane had rendered himself irrelevant, sticking to traditional jokes about the length of the ceremony and waiting for the show’s merciful end, for all of us.

And then, there was a tweet from The Onion, referring to nine-year old Quvenzhané Wallis as a c-word. The tweet was meant to be satirical because satire is what The Onion traffics in. I am guessing the tweet was designed to comment on how we discuss famous young women on a night where Anne Hathaway was criticized as too earnest and Kristen Stewart was criticized as too sullen and unappreciative of her blessings. Young women in Hollywood cannot win, no matter what they do. There are more than a few smart jokes that could illustrate this rock and hard place women in Hollywood are crammed into.

I do believe the person responsible for The Onion tweet in question would have made that tasteless joke about any nine-year old actress. This tweet was ill advised and repulsive, not just because the actress was nine, or because MacFarlane had, earlier in the evening, made a joke about her being too old for George Clooney in sixteen years, but primarily because young black women, black girls, are regularly hypersexualized. There was this additional, fraught context that someone didn’t take into consideration and probably couldn’t take into consideration because they are oblivious. They are oblivious to the context because they’ve never been around people who are familiar with it, because they’ve never been held accountable.

People often fail to understand the importance of diversity. They assume it’s all about quotas and political correction but it is about so much more. Diversity (and we’re talking race, class, gender, sexuality, political affiliation, religion, all of it) is about putting multiple points of view into a conversation. It’s about ensuring that no one is operating in the kind of cultural vacuum where they don’t stop to consider context. It’s why certain people and shows and publications keep running into the same brick wall of public outcry about diversity—because these people consistently demonstrate a callous and willful ignorance of context. They see these lines that shouldn’t be crossed and cross them anyway because they are blissfully unencumbered by context.

I’m not outraged about this one tweet. I’m outraged about the cultural disease that spawned this tweet, the one where certain people are devalued and denigrated for sport and then told to laugh it off because hey, you know, it’s humor.

Or I’m outraged because I was twelve the first time I was called a cunt and I didn’t even know what the word meant. I was nearly thirteen the next time, and by then I did know what the word meant. An old man told me he loved “fresh cunt” and was not shy in detailing what he was going to do to mine. I was wearing a jumper and tights. And that’s also part of the cultural disease, this need to explain to you that I didn’t ask for it, that I was dressed modestly. This particular incident is not even something I have ever spent too much time thinking about because, frankly, it’s one of the lesser offenses. It barely registers until something reminds me of it, like a poorly considered tweet. Cultural disease.

If you get too riled up about this sort of thing, you’re humorless. You’re easily offended. You’re told to “get over it.” You’re told to have a “sense of humor.”

I might be all laughed out.

Rarely does anyone stop to consider that certain groups of people are always the butt of the joke, all too often, the jokes are just stupid. Give folks a break, once in a while.

Or, you, sirs, are no George Carlin.

When a wound heals, first the bleeding stops. A scab forms and slowly the skin around the wound grows thicker and stretches under the scab until it reaches the other side of the wound. When the scab falls off, there is new skin, there is healing. But sometimes, wounds aren’t allowed to heal. Sometimes, they are picked at and picked at and picked at, and they stay open, weeping.

Maybe I’m not outraged. I’m exhausted and open and exposed and a lot of other people are too because we are wounds that get picked at and picked at and picked at one day, there won’t be anything left to heal. 

(Source: roxanegay)

roxanegay:

Today, I am done with tired, gratuitous references to the appearances of attractive women writers in discussions of any kind about their books. And also, it’s weird that I have to be done with this in 2013. I literally had to double check my calendar last night, in case I was in a time warp. I was reading a 2013 book preview post on a website where the phrase “fetching author photo” was used and I simply snapped.

The way some people go on about attractive women writers, you would think these great beauties were some kind of exception to the rule of hideous scribbling women. It’s quite odd because any time I’m at a literary event, I’m quite impressed by how attractive and chic the majority of those in attendance are and I’m not saying that from some post-aesthetic place where inner beauty reigns. I’m saying, I have eyes and physical qualities I find attractive and I see all kinds of writers who are absolutely universal standards of hot, all across the country and nearly everyone scrubs up decently for an author photo. 

Why then, is there such amazement when beautiful women write successful books? Are we still suffering the mythology that women cannot be both attractive and intelligent? Is it passive aggressive resentment about how far beauty can get a person? At what point will people get over these things? I am ready to fast forward to then.

And then, of course, there is the fact that so rarely are men given this kind of scrutiny. Have you seen the guy who wrote Truth in Advertising? John Kenney? When I saw his author photo on the book jacket, I was like, that is an extraordinarily attractive man! But you won’t hear any discussion of that in conjunction with discussions of his book. Male writers get to be attractive without comment unless, obviously, I am commenting. He is quite attractive. 

There is no ideal world and I wouldn’t really want to live in one. We are part of a culture where looks matter. I am not pretending this culture does not exist. I am not pretending looks don’t help.  I do think critics and book bloggers can do better. I think we can try and change the culture in small ways. I am guessing we can manage to talk about books by beautiful women without frothing like neanderthals.