I have debated how to say what I want to say here, and it might not be as clear as I would like. However, a friend said that the objective discussion was helpful and enjoyable to cut through a lot of the drama in some of the discussions and debates. If you read my blog posts on encountering people who circle the publishing industry, I review and share for others to learn problems that are ubiquitous - I talk about differences in experience and maturity that contribute a lot of factors into the less valuable or correct responses to one's writing. I observe these things as a well educated, privileged white woman, and so when writers in different groups than that belong to say that the same kinds of feedback or rejections are because they belong to a different group, it does not read as accurate as one might like.
There are issues to discuss in publishing that impact marginalised groups more than others. It helps to be more accurate to identify solutions. Since publishing is motivated to make changes, and some people are listening, then the wrong approach is to create blanket generalisations about problems that exist for everyone, because it doesn't help accurately identify where the issues do need to be addressed. It does make people weary if there is a lot of crying wolf or trying to use guilt in appropriately as a weapon. Generally, I try to avoid drama, but I saw the tail end of one discussion this week.
I want to focus on the topics of feedback and rejection, as well as areas that present inconsistencies with published authors. The conversation would be helped if there is understanding of context of differences that happen because of OTHER progress in one's writing career. There are inconsistencies that look a bit ridiculous, outside of the topic of race, where publishing needs to do better. That is where I'd like to start.
Recently, a piece of very unhelpful feedback about my novel was "make it more like Game of Thrones" from someone who had not read the books. He brought up the topic of plot and threat introductions in opening chapters, so I went back to refresh my memory what plot pacing Martin used. I also have Samantha Shannon's Priory of the Orange Tree, so I thought I would compare the two. Because Shannon's writing is so bad, I wound up comparing opening writing instead. Here's what I found, and this applies to feedback I have received, as well as a question a writer asked about a rejection or feedback on her manuscript this week. I responded to her without noticing her ethnicity, because it's not the first thing I notice. She happened to be a writer of Asia Pacific ethnicity, so she, a minority writer, received the SAME points of feedback I received.
Here's what I noticed about the writing at the beginning of these two books:
1) Martin opens the prologue with dialogue, and the first chapter with a description of weather. 2) Samantha Shannon opens her book with three similes in the first two sentences, and seven bad, gratuitous similes or metaphors on the first page. That's what makes it unreadable to me. Between the two, Martin's "do nots" are at least readable. As a reader, I do not get hung up on either of those things that publishers love to tell writers not to do. My criticism of Shannon is that it might not be entirely her fault. While I think perhaps she bit off more than she could chew with her book, in her acknowledgements she says that the editors at Bloomberg let her do whatever she wanted with the book. Therefore, the problem is actually because the publisher decided she was a best selling author and people would buy the books and read them even if they didn't do her any favours by not editing her writing and making sure it was GOOD. I have looked at opening pages of her other series and she doesn't start her other books making me want to shut them because the writing is so bad.
If you're a writer, it's less work for you, but do you really want a publisher to release things that make you look like you are a bad writer? The lesson here is not "why do authors of color have higher standards?" The lesson here is "Why would any writer want a publisher to not give a crap about how bad their writing was?"
Martin's errors, however, are related to the question the woman of Asian Pacific ethnicity had asked about, because someone gave her feedback that starting a book with one of these elements was a red flag. Because it's a novice mistake, so if an unknown writer starts with something such a common thing, it can point to the less sophisticated writing to come. There is one agent in particular who gave me feedback about the first draft of my novel on one of these issues, that I want to bring up because one of the writers he represents just released this book this week:
He doesn't start his book with either of these "don't do that." However, the first thing I noticed is that he doesn't write in limited third person, and that made me gleeful based on the ridiculous things I've encountered from people who can't recognise third pov that isn't limited. He is a very experienced writer in his career, and he is working with a very experienced agent. Who you work with makes a big difference in this industry, and not all members of the industry are created equal. This industry and writing career is built on collaboration and trust, but a lot of writers trust inexperienced or less knowledgeable members to teach or lead them the correct things, and frequently they are not. How do you know the difference? Read really good books by really skilled writers and see that there is a LOT of flexibility about what you can do, and if you are talking to someone who is telling you there isn't, they probably do not know the answers themselves. They cannot impart knowledge they do not possess themselves.
In publishing, an unknown writer presents the most risk. Once you have a book published, particularly if it sells well, things get easier in terms of the hoops to jump through. This is why Shannon had this free pass on bad writing from her publisher. This brings me to another example I saw this week. There was an agented, best selling published writer who happened to be a white woman. She posted that her agent was getting pretty desparate because the writer wasn't producing new creative content. For the agent, this means she doesn't make any more money from this creator. This does not mean a publisher is telling the writer that if she writes the book they want her to write they will publish it. The agent will still have to sell whatever book she is trying to push the writer to write, and if it's that poorly constructed, I can't imagine what kind of result it will be.
This summer, I read the sequel to Jordan Ifueko's best selling independently published book. It had a lot of similar problems with writing that Shannon's book did. Not the start of the book. But there was a LOT of redundancies. There were scenes about one character where there was an over embellished description of his eyes in every or every other sentence. I got to the point where I was like "if she tells me about his amber eyes one more time, I am going to punch something." In HER acknowledgements, she talked about how rushed and hard it was to write the book while she was struggling with mental health issues and loss in the family during the pandemic and racial unrest. She said the book had to get finished in nine months, and the end result feels rushed as a result. Rush to publication just to meet a deadline. So there's a bestselling published author whose book was published with errors more time editing really would have helped. The quality of the writing of this second book was not as strong as the quality of the first book, though the ideas and storytelling were great. Jordan, you probably don't read my blog, but next time ask the publisher for an extension and take care of yourself! This is an example that as an already published author, there are more free passes, for people of all ethnicities.
The discussion that erupted around this situation with this white woman devolved into unhelpful territory. It came across to me as an observer that the people trying to raise issues about inequality picked the wrong example, and the result was that they didn't look like they understood how things work in publishing, some of which I've mentioned above. It did look a little like they were blaming this one writer for every rejection minority authors receive. That's why I compared the specific example of the Asian Pacific writer with my own. In one of my writing groups, there is an entire thread on discord for rejections, almost to celebrate them. Do you look at all of the white writers on Twitter sharing that they received 100 rejections?
From my perspective, it was not identifying a specific experience which a specific minority writer had experienced. It was incorrectly comparing this published writer with novice writers who are told their beginnings need work. What would be more helpful for me is if a published successful writer like N.K. Jemisin said that she was struggling to think of any creative inspiration for a new book and her agent dropped her instead of tried to help feed her ideas to spark some inspiration. That would be a directly comparable situation where a minority writer was treated differently. Those kinds of specific and accurate complaints help identify where there are actually problems and how to talk about them. What the example this week looked like was like shooting at shadows, which I personally don't think is helpful to anyone. That is why, despite my own uncertainty how to share context I thought might be a helpful or constructive contribution, I made this attempt to do so.
