Roxane Gay tweeted yesterday where are the lists of the bad literary men?
I kind of laughed to myself when I saw that. Not, of course, that the tweet was funny; it was anything but. The reason I laughed is because I wrote a short story a few years ago that was precisely about that; a bad literary man, the women whose lives and careers he impacted, and their revenge on him. The story was called “Death and the Handmaidens,” and it was, of course, a crime story. And it should come as no surprise to anyone that the story was rejected by every single place I submitted it.
Now, of course, it’s entirely possible that the story itself was bad; badly written, badly constructed, unoriginal, didn’t deliver on its premise, etc etc etc. That is, as a matter of fact, not at all beyond the realm of possibility. I have always acknowledged my difficulties with writing short stories, and this one is no different. I struggled with the story, with my main character and getting inside her head, with whether she seemed absolutely realistic or not, whether the tone was right, whether the voice worked…and also with whether I was too close to the story to see its flaws and what was wrong with it. So, after several rejections and several rewrites, I consigned it to the File Drawer of Obscurity thinking maybe someday I would try to work on it again, or see if it worked better as a novel, all the things I think when I put something away because it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Lately, tho, will all of the harassment/assault victims coming forward….I am wondering if maybe I shouldn’t revisit this story again? I don’t know that anyone might want it still, but at the same time it can’t hurt to revisit it, reread it, maybe figure out where I want it to go. I’d been thinking I should move it out of the literary world…we shall see. *adds to to-do list*
And my awesome friend Lyndsay Faye, whom I admire more than I can ever express, posted this experience yesterday:
https://goo.gl/iTbMiV
We’re kind of seeing a societal shift, I think, and one that has been a long time coming. There are still, of course, going to be rapes and sexual assaults and sexual harassment, but I also don’t think it’s going to be looked at and treated the same way it has been in the past. Lisa Levy also wrote this interesting piece that I read this morning, and of course, as I have mentioned before, I’ve been reading a lot about toxic masculinity and rape culture for the WIP (which needs another revision). It’s been an eye-opening experience, because even as I have read about it and have listened to women for many years, I had no idea how deep and pervasive all of this was–and I thought I had a handle on it, you know?
Yikes.
And now, back to the spice mines. Here’s a Tuesday Calvin Klein underwear ad for you, Constant Reader.
And yes, I am aware of the irony of posting about objectification while posting pictures of scantily clad hot men.
Share this:
