Writing While Female or Black or Gay:
Diverse Voices in Publishing
Published by Sun Dogs Creations
Changing the World One Book at a Time
ISBN: 9780982239971
Cover Design by Angel Leya
Copyright © 2015 and 2016 Laine Cunningham
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Praise for Writing While
Female or Black or Gay
“…full of wit, sarcasm, insight and humor … She caves in castles on the hill, roasts the big name publishers (and so-called liberal literary magazines as well) and discusses topics that are poisonous for new writers – unless they be young white males (and even there she has some pointers that are laugh out loud funny). … truthful and caustic and sensible … a must read.
Grady Harp, Hall of Fame Reviewer
“Something I find particularly interesting about this book is that it lays bare lots about the publishing industry. What influences publishing decisions, how sales are monitored (or not monitored) and how target audiences are categorised. It's really a must-read for every author, even if you're not female, black or gay. The book ends with a list of simple, practical actions all book lovers can undertake in order to help reverse engineer this industry of prejudice.”
Marion Grace Woolley, Author,
Those Rosy Hours at Mazandaran
“Read this. If you’re a reader, read this. If you’re an author, new or old, who is female or black or gay (or minority or LGBT or even a plain ol’ white guy – there’s stuff in there for you too), then you need to read this.”
Angel Leya, Goodreads Reviewer
Once upon a time when I was still part of the corporate world, I asked a woman who had risen to the rarified rank of corporate officer if she would tell me about her professional journey. This was early in my journey as an author, and I had taken a part-time position as a receptionist at the same firm. Clearly I had zero interest in climbing the corporate ladder, but I had every personal interest in hearing how a woman who was older than myself had managed to break through that ceiling.
Perhaps my offer to take her to lunch for that purpose came as a complete surprise, because she readily agreed. She seemed relaxed when she said yes, so there was no reason for me to think that she wouldn’t be forthcoming. Reserved, of course, in the details that she offered, and definitely unwilling to reveal the trials she had undergone at that particular company, but open enough.
It would be, I thought, a chance to hear a story of fortitude, cleverness and passion. For half an hour, we would be mentor and mentee, two women with high aspirations and the strength of will to see them through.
She arrived at the front desk at the appointed time. She drove; her car was nicer and she had often eaten at the restaurant where we would share a meal. The usual office-related chitchat filled the time it took to settle at the table and place the order. The moment the waiter whisked away, she said, “I’m not sure what you’re hoping to hear but there isn’t much to tell.”
The message was clear. She would feed me only what was readily available in her corporate bio and nothing more. There would be no revelatory guidance about the bumps she had encountered or the pathways she’d taken around those obstacles. The official façade would stand.
When this book was conceived, I reached out to associates old and new. Their own journeys were varied; some had been published through traditional houses, some had struck out as indie authors. A handful had been published traditionally and then banded together to create their own publishing units to handle their new works. Many had never been published. Together, they represented the range of individuals addressed in this book, including the white male authors whose stories place diverse characters in prime positions.
They were challenged to stand firm and speak clearly. All were offered anonymity and the chance to strip identifying details out of their stories. Many of the ones who have never received a publishing contract responded that they didn’t feel as if their experience was broad enough or involved enough to speak to the issue. Some never replied. And among the ones who did reply, some flinched.
There was the woman who had risen to the top of a publishing company who responded in a thoughtful voice that carried meaningful messages. As the book was being written, she adjusted her messages so that they stepped back from a direct challenge to the broader industry. Then, as the book entered production, she asked that her contributions be struck entirely.
There were the lesbian woman and the gay man who separately said their experiences didn’t count because they had been successful in traditional publishing arenas. And so, even though they had faced obstacles, sharing their journeys would not, they felt, be helpful.
There was the man who judged the unflinching way issues are addressed in this work as the type of “feminist” work that denigrated the entire male gender.
There was the transgender woman who responded through an associate to say that she would not be contributing.
There was the female fantasy author, one with exceptional talent whose career spanned nearly as many years as mine, who declined to participate because her voice would carry no weight without the validation of a publishing contract to boost her position.
All of them spoke the truth, their truth.
There were also individuals who were not invited to participate. During my own journey, I have reached out countless times for advice, assistance or support. A surprising number of those requests were fulfilled in ways that can only be seen as deliberately undermining. The world of publishing, like any other endeavor, can be cutthroat. That, too, speaks to the private truths those individuals hold.
When considering the form Writing While Female or Black or Gay would take, a book was clearly the best choice. It became a book, rather than a series of blog entries or several longform articles, specifically so that it could be heard within the industry and among readers. Nothing has power like a collection of words held between covers. Nothing has appeal like the ability to read, to savor, to reread.
Nothing has the ability to change the status quo like words passed from one reader to another, words that can be stored and revisited, lingered over, captured as a quote for duplication, excised as a chapter for study, reprinting, and posting, words that can fly around the world at record speed and speak in the quiet moments directly, intimately, profoundly.
A book is not an article that is to be read and passed beyond in the wash of daily life. It is not a tweet to be snapped up and as quickly allowed to snap out of awareness. It is not a picture or a post that provides only an emotional impact. Although it might contain all these things, a book is more.
It is a counselor and advisor, a place where people can turn for advice. It creates a space in which thoughts can engage and a mind can expand. It is the seed of something larger and infinitely more powerful, the alpha of the omega, a treasure in a box.
Words and language give every one of us the ability to speak and, critically, to be heard. And because what we say and how we speak empower us with the ability to be seen, a book can birth a revolution.
Join hands and join the revolution that can help make humanity whole.
Just turn the page.
God forbid you be female, black, gay, or any other version of “not a straight white guy” and pick up a pen today because gender, race, and the politics of power will shroud your words in obscurity for the rest of your natural born days. And for centuries after that, too, just to be thorough.
God…and yes, I’m referring to the bearded dude in flowing white robes with matte pink skin who is staunchly heterosexual and lately rabidly anti-immigration because, taking the cues most prominent in my world, what other god could there possibly be?...so, God forbid you write something magical and meaningful and surreal and enchanting and, goddammit, just plain smashing and not have a penis tucked away somewhere because that manuscript, despite being world-changing and life-affirming or world-denouncing and status-destroying, is going to molder in the fullness of its brilliance. As my dad used to say, it’s going to stay hidden under a bushel basket…but through no fault of your own.
Except for that full-breasted, dark-skinned, or alternative sexuality or alternative gender identity thing, of course. That’s totally your fault.
To understand why it’s the author’s fault, the publishing industry needs to be described. Many times, writers who have a rant to air against the publishing industry portray it as a walled fortress of Medieval proportions complete with unscalable stone walls and ironclad gates and throngs of eager minions (known to the industry as “recent MFA graduates”) who readily throw themselves upon the slush pile and slime themselves with the unworthy words of outsiders as they repel every attempt to breach the fortress that is publishing.
Untrue. Totally, completely untrue. There are no thick stone walls or ironclad gates. There are however throngs of eager minions, those recent MFA graduates who infest publishing houses like lice.
So, what does the publishing industry look like if not a MFA-louse infested castle? Why, New York City! And New York City is all pastoral greenways, diners in which coffee is always served with a saucer, gorgeous soaring old buildings with halls so narrow a couple cannot walk down them without one person trailing behind, and streets coated with a micro-thin layer of pulverized glass that sparkles like diamonds under the streetlamps at night. She is terrible and wonderful, beautiful and ugly, and she will eviscerate you as likely as coddle you as the mood strikes her…and you’ll never be able to gauge her mood accurately.
That’s publishing today. No walls except those that hold up the venerable institutions, and around which run clearly marked sidewalks and roads and subway tracks. No ironclad gates until you wander into the fashion district or Tiffany’s where security atriums trap you for a few panic-inspiring seconds until someone judges you unlikely to steal and allows you entrance (or, after having judged you unlikely to have stolen, egress).
There are, however, MFA lice (who, in the interest of maintaining the pastoral analogy I will hereafter refer to as aphids). Although MFAphids infest every house, they are all tucked out of sight near the mailroom where they are painted a sickly blue by the light of the screens on which they churn through endless unsolicited manuscripts. Nothing about their job makes for a brand-enhancing snapshot so yes, there is a dungeon of sorts for them. But otherwise all is beatific and intellectual and kind.
By all appearances, then, publishing is an open-to-all endeavor. Anyone is free to sling any manner of drivel “over the transom,” an old-school term derived from desperate authors centuries back who nightly stuffed their precious manuscripts through the transom window atop the door hoping the publisher would stumble over it in the morning and recognize the treasures stored up in their words. At this very moment, unsolicited submissions are more open than at any time in the recent past because even large publishers have flung the transom wide in the desperate hope of finding an agentless author they can dupe into taking even crappier terms than they already offer.
And sling authors do. Memoirs weighing in at 450,000 words that begin with the author’s illustrious birth and end, well, never because said author is constantly adding “just one more great thing that happened yesterday” to the back of the manuscript (which, as you’ve already noted, is not a memoir but an autobiography but which will nevertheless be called a memoir in perpetuity because said author has never once read a book about writing or publishing and never will). Epic self-help tomes that ignore the much shorter self-help books being read today because so-and-so’s book, the originating book of that particular branch of the self-help movement, was also epically long (what, 50 years ago now? When the entire industry and types of books published were dramatically different? But again, no clue so no matter). Ridiculously short young adult novels no self-respecting young adult would read because short novels are for kids. Romances where no one kisses. Mysteries that grade-schoolers can figure out on page one.
And so very, very many works of staggering beauty. Literary novels that have won awards and been feted everywhere except New York City’s pastoral greenways and narrow halls. Thrillers with such totally unique plotlines they qualify as a new category. Historical fiction that reveals other worlds and the people who lived there, family dramas that span generations, and contemporary stories set in exotic locals (i.e., foreign countries, vacation destinations, Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, the American South, the American Midwest, the non-hip urban landscape…anywhere, really, except New York City or the occasional slot allowed for Los Angeles).
None of them…and I mean none…are going to be published. Not if the name on the title page is female or has an ethnic sound, not if the stories focus on characters who are female or minorities or part of the LGBT community. Oh, and if you happen to be the right gender and the right color you still aren’t going to be published if:
Let’s try something, shall we? Search the Internet for terms like “diversity in children’s books,” “women’s fiction,” “whitewashed book covers,” “acclaim for female authors,” “minority authors as a niche market,” “gender imbalance in literary awards,” or any other phrase you can think of that might pop around this topic. What you’ll find are entire organizations dedicated to making publishers sit up and start counting the number of diverse employees at their houses, the number of diverse authors in their stables, and the number of diverse titles in their catalogues. You’ll be flooded with articles from magazines as venerated as The Atlantic and The Guardian, blog entries by authors of every gender and color, mission statements from small publishers who actually do publish everyone, and big publishers’ excuses.
Lots and lots of excuses.
It’s enough to make you quit writing…or even quit reading.
Don’t.
Instead, walk with me for just a little while. Let’s look at the breadth of the problem. Let’s touch on the depth of the problem. Then let us as readers and authors, publishers and critics, fix the problem.
And now, submitted for your review, Writing While Female or Black or Gay.
Some years ago I was enjoying coffee and a chat with a literary magazine editor. I had just finished reading a work by Jonathan Franzen and had read a title from Joyce Carol Oates’ backlist immediately afterward.
But wait, I thought as the kerfuffle around Franzen’s awards and talent continued to consume publishing news. Both authors are functioning at the same skill level and they’re basically writing about the same things. Why all the applause for Franzen and the ringing silence around Oates?
Because, the senior editor said, Oates writes women’s fiction. Franzen writes literature.