@lenaoflune

You be sure to @ me when you do!

@joycereynoldsward

Ah yes! Sorry, Joyce - I brain-blanked; I'm signed up for your newsletter, too. I have you catalogued in my noggin under "SFF crew", but I should have cross-catalogued you as a dear fellow CoSonaut as well. :)

@MLClark no problem! We brush against each other on other platforms so it's completely understandable (and I am kinda forgettable).

@joycereynoldsward

Hardly forgettable, Joyce!

I'm really thankful for the work you're putting into articulating grief in relation to writing practice and the mess of our current publishing economy. It resonates with a lot of how I was feeling for years, and I look forward to seeing where the work of reflection takes you. 💙

@MLClark interestingly I'm seeing more people articulating the same concerns. Many of them are my age or just slightly younger--Jones Generation women who got screwed over in our younger years, didn't manage to take advantage of the early days of selfpub because we were working, and are now basically irrelevant.

One thing I've struggled with articulating is the sense that the Gen X white men see Boomer/Jones white women as dispensable competition. Still unpacking that thought.

@joycereynoldsward

Please keep unpacking it!

The heyday of self-pub was always a bit overblown, with fluke success stories like Weir and Howey used to make it sound like great acclaim was there for the taking by anyone.

I've often noted that a major problem for publishing was the lack of funding for multiple global literary sectors, so that far too much hype was concentrated on still-clique-driven Western monopolies. We could have had a much richer playing field, with proper investment.

@MLClark yeah, this for me goes back even to before selfpub. I have wondered at times if I shouldn't have gone with initials or an androgynous pen name.

On the other hand, the options? J.R. Ward? Taken. Someone else is writing as J.M. Reynolds.

But all the same, I remember a convention presentation by a Big NY editor (GRRM's, no less).

It boiled down to "we aren't interested in non-tattooed, cishet, midlife and older, white women writers."

Several of us had that impression.

@joycereynoldsward

I resonate with that anxiety. I wanted to publish as ML from the start, but in my first sale I was told that the publisher didn't like initials (lies!)--and I still think they just wanted to boast a feminized name, which CRUSHED me, deflating confidence that I'd gotten in on the merits of my work.

Going forward, I also would not submit to writing calls based on author demographics--at a time when everyone was putting out issues based on author details first. 1/2

@joycereynoldsward

I know I would've been more successful if I'd played the game the way it was being presented at the time.

I would've been known as a nonbinary queer neurodivergent person with childhood trauma and bipolar that I could milk for many related writing calls.

But I just wanted to be assessed in open slush by the quality of my work.

Still, even though I wasn't judging others for leaning into what the industry put on offer, my dissenting view made folks nervous.

So it goes! 2/2

@MLClark kinfolk! I had people trying to shove me into writing nonfiction, including someone who I now realize viewed me as competition for her spouse (confirmed by another friend).

No names or initials, except to say this was someone whose linkage was to Philip K. Dick and at one time was considered up there with Tim Powers.

Same notion about being addressed for the quality of my work, not the quality of my connections or my personal life.

@joycereynoldsward

Solidarity, friend. :)

So I hope you see now why I do enjoy reading your posts, and look forward to each new addition when it shows up in the inbox. There is still much left to be said, and set down.

@MLClark thank you!

@MLClark oh, same for me about those author calls based on demographics.

One of my biggest mistakes was NOT telling people I was a high school student when sending work out in the '70s. At the time, I thought that was bad form.

@MLClark and another thing?

The fastest way for me to piss people off is to start talking about approaching contests as just another market. I really got negative reactions when I started doing that analysis of the selfpub competitions.

But it's true. I base it on Jay Lake's analysis of Writers of the Future. You don't look at winners, you look at semifinalists and finalists.

Yes, there's a pattern. And considering the same groups are judging the SPFBO, the SFSPC, and the novella contest....

@tyghebright @MLClark @LiberalLibrarian