Re: On loving monsters
Mar. 7th, 2024 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingAlways, in the back of my mind, there's someone reading what I write and somehow baking it into the worst possible interpretation. Something I'm always afraid of is coming off like a victim, but I don't think this has anything to do with me as an individual.
It's like, do you ever look at salaries and wonder how someone can afford to live on those wages? For example, how can an assistant editor at Hachette afford to live in New York on $40k/year, or how can an adjunct lecturer at an Ivy League school get by on less than $30k/year? The answer is that they don't live on this money. They have other sources of income, whether it's being supported by their parents or supported by their spouse or being independently wealthy.
Or maybe there's a writing workshop where you pay "only" $4k to spend a month in a cabin in the woods. But who's going to pay your actual rent during that month? Can you afford to take a full month away from work, and is your job still going to be waiting for you when you get back? While you're writing and not working, what if you need to go to the doctor? Or fill a prescription? Or just go to the grocery store?
Being an outsider to this type of privilege can be extremely alienating. It's all the more so as you get older and more opportunities are closed to you, a frustration that's exacerbated by condescending attitudes from people who either are or want to be inside the circle of privilege. So you're in your late thirties, and you want to "be a writer"? Did your internet friends on Tumblr tell you to follow your dreams, how cute. Now why don't you try writing a real book instead of your stupid little fanfictions and Amazon Kindle romances. That sort of thing.
This isn't about being a victim, and it's not really even about late stage capitalism. The experience of feeling like an outsider due to circumstances beyond your control is universal, because of course it is. And, while I respect the fantasy of finding friends and working together to achieve success in a hostile system, I'm much more interested in exploring the reality of what it means to do your best but still fail.
It's like, do you ever look at salaries and wonder how someone can afford to live on those wages? For example, how can an assistant editor at Hachette afford to live in New York on $40k/year, or how can an adjunct lecturer at an Ivy League school get by on less than $30k/year? The answer is that they don't live on this money. They have other sources of income, whether it's being supported by their parents or supported by their spouse or being independently wealthy.
Or maybe there's a writing workshop where you pay "only" $4k to spend a month in a cabin in the woods. But who's going to pay your actual rent during that month? Can you afford to take a full month away from work, and is your job still going to be waiting for you when you get back? While you're writing and not working, what if you need to go to the doctor? Or fill a prescription? Or just go to the grocery store?
Being an outsider to this type of privilege can be extremely alienating. It's all the more so as you get older and more opportunities are closed to you, a frustration that's exacerbated by condescending attitudes from people who either are or want to be inside the circle of privilege. So you're in your late thirties, and you want to "be a writer"? Did your internet friends on Tumblr tell you to follow your dreams, how cute. Now why don't you try writing a real book instead of your stupid little fanfictions and Amazon Kindle romances. That sort of thing.
This isn't about being a victim, and it's not really even about late stage capitalism. The experience of feeling like an outsider due to circumstances beyond your control is universal, because of course it is. And, while I respect the fantasy of finding friends and working together to achieve success in a hostile system, I'm much more interested in exploring the reality of what it means to do your best but still fail.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-11 10:22 pm (UTC)I think exploring that reality is interesting, if sad.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-17 06:29 pm (UTC)Sometimes I think about how funny it is that I used to read The New Yorker. Those writers really do live in their own little dream bubble. It seems like a fun bubble, but still.
I'm going to say something a bit edgy, but here goes:
In "alternative" venues for creative essays, there's often a strong emphasis on marginalized identities. I understand where that's coming from, because of course I do. But at the same time, I'm starting to feel like literally everyone who isn't in the New York publishing bubble is "marginalized," which is a very broad category to use to designate "people who didn't go to a posh private school in Manhattan."
In my best-case scenario, there would be middle-brow venues for people who aren't ultrawealthy but who don't feel comfortable leaning into the commodification of personal identity as a status marker of radicalization.
In my mind at least, these "middle-brow venues" seem like they would be the magazines that publish genre fiction, but like. A lot of horror fiction + weird fiction magazines are still edited by the oldest and whitest and straightest of men who don't feel shy about including outright homophobia or Eurocentrism in their submissions guides.
Idk man. Putting my writing on the open market has been a wild experience, to say the least. Thanks for giving me a chance to put my thoughts into words!
no subject
Date: 2024-03-22 08:19 pm (UTC)