elevating marginalized voices

Maybe one of the worst parts of querying a novel is having to decide whether I want to cash in on the fact that it’s currently trendy to be “queer”. It’s not trendy to be a lesbian, mind. It’s trendy to be “gay” and “queer”, terms that are used interchangeably, and mean whatever you want them to mean. “Lesbian” just has a forever-stink about it.

It’s an exhausting ecosystem, made even moreso by literary agents trying to strongarm me into claiming an #OWNVOICES narrative, when that doesn’t even make sense, like, for anyone’s voice(s). I’m only one person, with one voice, and one story. I also don’t write autobiographies, unless my bloviating on this blog counts. Yes, my life and experiences inform my work, but if I only strictly wrote about my personal experiences, then we may as well shelve the concept of fiction entirely. Taken to its logical extreme, own voices implies one and done. Maybe I’m taking this too literally. Maybe I’m dense. On their homepage, We Need Diverse Books claims, “Every reader deserves to find themselves in a story”. As much as I feel like an asshole saying this… I just don’t agree. Authors, diverse a group as they may be, cannot possibly cover every facet of existence, because those are infinite. What if there’s a “diverse” reader, but no “diverse” author to match? Can this reader call up the diversity hotline and make a complaint? What is the remediation path for this situation? What if there’s a “diverse” author with no matching readers who share their experiences? Do they deserve readers the same way readers deserve to find themselves in a story?

To be clear, I don’t disagree with ensuring art made by people from marginalized groups is celebrated and recognized. To be even clearer, I can only speak for myself and my own opinions, and as someone who is part of one of these marginalized groups, or maybe even many (the ‘marginalized’ net is often cast very wide, meaning more people fall into it than outside of it, which is a whole other can of worms), I would still rather my work be judged on its merits than the boxes I or the characters within tick on some made-up scale of how diverse/marginalized/oppressed I/they are. It’s just a little tokenistic for my taste, which is always going to be the great gag of it all, because supposedly this is all meant to kill the idea of tokenism. I tend to subscribe to the school of thought that instead of everyone having the opportunity to succeed equally, we should all have the opportunity to fail equally. Cause it can’t all be good, no matter how marginalized or diverse you are.

It was the same while querying Don’t Worry About It. I saw the same “elevating X marginalized/underrepresented voices” line in so many agent profiles and wish lists I was starting to get the same vibe I get from those sun-bleached rainbow stickers businesses slap on their front door that assure you that the moment you step over their threshold, you won’t get beaten with a stick for being a dirty homosexual. Thing is, I wasn’t worried about that… until I saw the sticker. You’re telling me before you put the mass produced rainbow sticker from AliExpress on your window that I was fair game for homophobes at the grocery store? I have voiced these uncharitable rainbow sticker thoughts to gay and straight people alike and both have looked at me like I have two heads, so it is entirely possible I’m the idiot, here.

Theoretically, there is an argument to be made for making it clear that you’re interested in representing fiction involving same sex relationships or championing “diverse voices” or “underrepresented narratives”. The problem is that if everyone says that, then it either doesn’t need to be said at all anymore, or some of you are lying. I actually think in addition to that, it would be helpful to know which agents aren’t looking for “underrepresented voices”. It would actually be a big time saver for an agent to put in their profile, “I’m not the right person to champion your novel about a same sex relationship”. No one will do that, but I’m going on the record saying I would appreciate it. Then again, maybe I don’t want to know just how many agents, deep in their hearts, won’t give the time of day to a manuscript about lesbians.

Funny enough, with all I said above, “lesbian”, I think, is not considered the right kind of diverse. If I was willing to label this novel as QUEER or SAPPHIC or probably even WLW, that may give it an edge. All three of those descriptors still leave a little bit of wiggle room where you don’t have to go full lesbian, you know? Because you never want to go full lesbian. I feel like the closest I get to writing out of spite (not something I would ever recommend) is how often I use the word “lesbian”. Even though few women use the word these days, I will often trade off that branch of realism in my work to replace it with a world where everything else is the same, except now people actually say it. It’s not even close to the whole reason why my work doesn’t gain traction. But I do think it’s one of many little things about my writing that makes it unpalatable.

And the thing is, when I’m querying, I have to weigh my equally unpalatable options. It’s not like an agent reads my entire manuscript first thing. She’ll read the query letter first, and then maybe the synopsis and sample pages. In the query letter especially, not only have I already done all the work of writing the damn book, but now I have to market it, as well, and outside pornhub, the word “lesbian” doesn’t market well. But I use it anyway, because there are some things I’m not willing to concede on, and watering down my description of a lesbian romance into something more generic like “queer” or “sapphic” is one of them. I’m a writer, and despite my own personal tendency toward the occasional highfalutin prose, I believe in using efficient, clear, direct language when it’s appropriate, and “lesbian” is always efficient, clear, direct, and appropriate when you’re, y’know, talking about lesbians.

I wonder if I would’ve gotten more bites if I was less stringent on this with Don’t Worry. I’m no query letter expert, but I actually think Don’t Worry and novel 2’s query letters are pretty good. However, they do both allude to the fact that there is lesbianism contained within. My slight hope is that with novel 2, I was pretty cautious about how much a) unpalatable conversations about womanhood and b) lesbian sex it contained, again, keeping in mind the mainstream market, so, morally I feel unsettled, but from a marketing perspective, I am mutedly optimistic about my prospects. At least compared to Don’t Worry, which, based on how hard it flopped, isn’t actually saying all that much. “Lesbian” doesn’t even appear until almost the end of novel 2’s query, even though the f/f coupling is alluded to in the first sentence. Also, unlike my dear Wren Daley, the protagonist of novel 2 is not getting her pussy out every three pages, so I do think that can only help my chances, microscopic as they still are.

In my query letters, I have considered leaning more into the diversity hire aspect of it. But that’s just like… mortifying. And not the type of mortifying where I would feel like a better, stronger person for overcoming it. To even entertain the idea of sweetening the pot by suggesting I’m just a smol queer neurospicy bean 🥺 is deeply heinous to me. Hm, actually, even typing out the phrase “neurospicy” to make fun of it has given me hives. Either way, those things have nothing to do with the book! Or at least have nothing to do with the book beyond what Emma Donoghue or Tana French or Stephen King or Dean Koontz or Gillian Flynn’s personal hang-ups and identities have to do with theirs. It’s similar to filling out job applications that ask you probing questions about your identity. Like, sure, I suppose I could leverage that (and I have tried that in the past, and I’m pretty sure it has never once helped me get a job, lol, maybe this is all just sour grapes). Maybe I’m just crazy, excuse me, neurospicy, but does anyone else find that deeply condescending and infantilizing? Sure, I couldn’t have gotten there on my own merits before, but now that it benefits you socially and financially to showcase ~diversity~ in your industry, you have so kindly lowered the bar for me. Except for the fact that the only reason I needed the bar lowered in the first place is because you were holding it from the top rung of a ladder.

Between writing the previous paragraph and this one, I submitted a query referring to myself as an “underrepresented voice” because that was the only thing the agent mentioned in her bio that could feasibly be a reason she would be interested in my manuscript, and kind of the only thing she mentioned she was interested in representing at all. I could’ve not submitted at all, but unfortunately, I don’t really have the luxury of being picky. Querying is a volume game and a luck game, and I can only control one of those factors. And um, I hated it. Are there authors out there who feel no qualms marketing themselves over their story? In the real world, I would agree that a real live person is much more important than a story. In the world where we all want to tell fictional stories and that’s what we’re here to do, I’d argue the story is pretty important, and the author, if you want to get poetic about it, is little more than a vessel for that story.

I understand that condescension and infantilization was not the intent of the OWNVOICES and similar movements. Opening the doors for more varied viewpoints, in a vacuum, is something that should always be welcomed. The thing is, we conceived of this approach in a world that demands profit at the expense of everything and everyone else. When it’s no longer profitable to be “queer”, people and organizations will flee from the concept like a house on fire. Once “queer” as an identity becomes less sellable, and the pendulum swings once more, don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya. It’s kind of like the phenomenon where you are constantly sold How To Be A Good Woman by the world around you; make-up, empowerment, tampons, cleaning products, make-up, make-up, clothing, period underwear, sexy period underwear, skincare, lingerie, make-up, clothing, motherhood, make-up, skincare, razors, bikinis, make-up, mommy makeovers, jewelry, pregnancy tests, rape whistles, make-up, high heels, detox tea, essential oils, drag make-up, natural make-up, “clean” make-up, “sustainable” make-up, baddie make-up, coquette make-up, “it’s art not misogyny” make-up, and make-up. The funniest thing about this is how much of that list applies to “queer” people as well. They will sell womanhood to women until the sun explodes, because women aren’t going anywhere. “Queer”, as it pertains to a lifestyle and marketing ploy unattached to any actual same-sex relationships, is not inherent, and therefore will eventually be labelled a trend, and as all trends do, it will pass. In a way it’s good, because eventually, you will be left alone. Women are just fucked indefinitely, I think.

Hawking my art is a forever bad feeling, and it’s not just me who feels this way. Straight women, men, white people, black people, disabled people, minority or majority groups, anyone who truly loves their craft and wants to practice it and share it with others will eventually have to succumb, somewhere down the line, to a purse strings holder, whether that’s an agent, an employer, an algorithm, or even just the preferences of the audience they’ve already cultivated. An artist who wants to do their art for a living will always have their hands tied by this conundrum. If you are independently wealthy, you may get away with it. But even then, unless you finance everything yourself, including channels to share your craft with others, you are beholden to your audience’s whims. Like, maybe people just aren’t that interested.

More likely, you are a regular person who wants to spend your life following your artistic passion, and you can’t, unless you can make money from it. And to make money from it, you need to do what the people who give you money (or the people who make it possible for you to get your art into the hands of people who can sell it on your behalf) want you to do. And what those people want you to do is what will make money. And the way I, personally, can do this, is by telling all the agents playing this game that I am an underrepresented voice, regardless of what that voice says.

Except, we go deeper, because it does matter what that voice says. This will differ depending on which marginalized group badge(s) you carry, but for all of them, there is a script. You’ll see agents who are looking for unique and fresh stories and perspectives, while in the same breath asking for underrepresented voices. The problem with this is that it’s hard to offer unique and fresh stories when there is already a script in front of you. It’s not written down anywhere. No one will admit that to you. But it goes pretty hand in hand with how we discuss social justice issues today; do not step outside the party line. As a member of X marginalized group, do what you’re supposed to do and think what you’re supposed to think and say what you’re supposed to say, follow the teleprompter and no one gets hurt. It’s an exhausting, back breaking way to live, and we’re all swept up in it.

I am trying, in my own way, to leave this kind of thinking behind, and guess what? That’s also exhausting and back breaking, because the people you leave behind think you’re a traitor, and everyone else on the other side looks like an evil alien with an upside down belief system who may or may not say deeply inane things without an iota of self-reflection or shame or awareness, and the entire time you have to reconcile the fact that all of these dumbasses, the ones you left behind and the ones you’re now surrounded by, no matter how dumb or how ass, are the people you’re stuck with forever on this spinning rock hurtling through space. And at the same time, all those people are looking at you and thinking just about the same thing.

I am not on some heroic journey of reclaiming my individuality. I am on the deeply unheroic journey of a salesperson testing out the different ways in which she can psychologically manipulate people into purchasing her wares. And one of those ways, maybe, if everyone’s being honest, which they probably aren’t, which is infuriating and confusing enough on its own, is by selling myself as a smol queer neurospicy bean 🥺 devoid of any personality beyond what she sees in Instagram infographics, who will then go on, if she’s successful, to encourage others to do exactly the same thing; say what sells. do what sells. be what sells.

People are still making good art out there. I’ve seen it. It’s possible. The numbers are not in my favour, or anyone’s. But I guess that’s why you hear, anytime an author/artist gets interviewed, how they had to get rejected eleventy-million times before they got accepted. There are a lot of dumbasses out there, and only one you, who is also a dumbass, and we’re all trying, somehow, some way, to engage with the world around us in a meaningful and fulfilling way.

It’s a strange world we’ve built, or maybe not very strange at all, that we’ve managed to create a system where your marginalization is only as valid as the amount of profit it can generate for someone else. What a timely example as we push forward into June and all the retailers are stuffing their shelves with rainbow-themed garbage.

If I hear back from the agent who was seemingly solely interested in “underrepresented voices” I will let you know. Somehow, though, I doubt we’d be a good fit.