I need to preface this post with some disclaimers and related facts about me.
1) I am not a political creature - especially not online. I am a fiction writer. This, in my mind, means you pay me to lie to you. Why on earth would anyone think that makes me qualified to share my opinions as fact? Why on earth would anyone want to hear my political opinions or take them to heart? No lie, I roll my eyes every single time an actor or fiction writer uses their platform to share their opinion on anything political. 2) I'm more of an introvert than an extrovert. Sure, I can fake an outgoing nature when necessary but I much prefer individuals over groups and absolutely prefer small groups over large ones. I also tend to cheer for underdogs. 3) I believe in giving every single person I meet at least two meetings before I start to form an opinion on whether to like them or not. Sure, I typically get a pretty good "read" within 15 minutes of meeting someone, but I have off days. I figure they do, too. This might sound like my nice side shining through, but in reality I find it more interesting to dislike someone for solid personal reasons than to dislike them for some blanket excuse involving one adjective or another. What can I say? I'm a "verbs > adjectives" kind of gal. 4) I - like every other author out there - truly dislike the process of searching out an agent or publisher. No offence intended to those working in those fields, but it's a lot like picking through a field of land mines while wearing a prom dress and carrying a wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tubeman. 5) I really weighed out whether I was going to post this or not as I am in the process of searching for an agent and/or a publisher and truly fear that a post like this could destroy my chances of finding one. Thankfully, it's long, so what are the odds it will hold an attention span even this far? All that being said, politics plays a part in the book world. This is a (sad) fact of the business. Let's face it, no matter how you feel about political correctness, censorship, or the tradition of the written word stirring the cauldron of independent thought, there is a pachyderm treading the publishing halls. And how about those current "cancel culture" trends that exist no matter how much you might want to ignore the stomping and trumpeting. Terms like "sensitivity reader", "cultural appropriation", "diversity" and "inclusive language" seem to be argued more than the old standby evils of plagiarism and improper manuscript formatting. Don't even get me started on adjective labels for the authors who are currently being sought after. Suffice it to say that nearly everyone one of us writing today is either "too something" or "not enough something" to fit the nit-picky list of adjectives that have absolutely nothing to do with the story being presented. Worse, from what I've seen, the definitions of what is acceptable today may not be the same definitions tomorrow let alone 2 year from now. Trying to find the perfect formula of characters, setting, and plot to please everyone is impossible. True, that's always been the case but these days it feels like the formula has been written in a forgotten offshoot of Sanskrit using live ants as the medium. If you don't believe me, do an internet search of books that publishers have cancelled shortly before their release because someone decided they were offensive. Now, being a reader and having "edited" (read that as "rewritten") for an overseas company in my freelancing life I can honestly say that there is a lot of stuff out there that can be considered offensive in general terms by most people. There are a great many books that I've passed by because the excerpts I've read showed me that I would not enjoy them. I just always figured that it was my responsibility to choose to cast my vote for the success of any book with my pocketbook. Now? Well, let's just say that I'm not appreciating being told what is appropriate for me to read/write and what is not - especially when I see some of the content that is trending. This is coming from me: a writer who occasionally offends herself with some of what she writes (blame my characters, they have minds of their own. I'm just along for the ride) and is not big on the idea of outside censorship unless it deals with what a parent decides to withhold from their minor child. This affects each of us as writers. How many of you have tried to navigate the mine field of disgruntlement by writing a story that hits all the right notes? How many of your characters have you had to twist into some new form during editing. How many settings have you changed? How much more carefully have you had to pick through the editors and publishers to find one that might take a look at your creation and not turn their nose up because the current political landscape doesn't favor one sentence on page three? Or worse yet, how about finding one that not only might think your work is worthy but will also consider representing YOU with all of your varied adjectives? Note: In case you're wondering why I'm posting this now, my nicer side just went through a list of 96 agents who are looking for picture books. Out of that list, there were 3 that I think might consider it. It's a picture book with 32 pages and 13 words. My NICE side created it. How cataclysmicly wrong could my book really be that I could only find 3 maybes? Sure, some of the places not queried were not a good fit for actual reasons like: that agent only handles education related books, or they only handle list books with photos instead of created art. The rest? Well, that's where the murky waters of current trends come into play. I'm all for diversity in writers and writing. I just always considered diversity to be more...well...diverse. As an author on the hunt for representation, it is my job to look at what that representation is looking for and make a realistic evaluation of my likelihood of fulfilling that desire. Sending to everyone willy-nilly is a waste of their time and a waste of my time. It also screams that I couldn't be bothered to do my research on them which is just bad form. Long and short, me and my book were simply not the right mix of things for the other 93 picture book agents on the list. Now translate that to a novel length manuscript. It's maddening, isn't it? It's also exhausting and more than a little soul sucking. So, what to do? I mean, do we just give up? Do we write and then lock it away until sometime in the vague future where it might fit in? Do we try to write to the market - while keeping in mind that we are looking at a market that is at least 2 years away in the case of the larger publishers? Do we try to make the middle ground of self-publishing work because the puzzle in front of us has no reference picture and is most likely missing half the pieces? I don't think there is one correct answer aside from this: Be true to yourself when you write. You have to sell it to readers and that means you have to care about it enough to make them care about it, too. Most importantly, in the end you have to live with your work. Make sure you haven't twisted your stories so much that they keep you up at night.
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June 2022
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