Social media will kill your motivation
BIPOC author rant. Querying is hard enough as it is without the demotivation. Is it me?
Author Life
Social media will kill your motivation
It's crucial not to take it personally when your story doesn’t resonate with a literary agent. Remember, it’s subjective.
This is true.
I appreciate literary agents who show interest in non-European settings and BIPOC characters and are open to diverse stories. However, it's disheartening when author pages for agencies are a wall of caucasian faces. On one website, the only person of colour was a famous actor-comedian.
MOST literary agents are white. The ones who are BIPOC are few and vocal in wanting to amplify work that resonates with their niche.
What if I don’t fit that niche? Can this agency represent me? Can they understand my writing? How subjective is their selection process?
Don’t get me wrong—I'm all yours if you like my work and want to represent me. I’ll jump through hoops to edit and revise my work. I’m all in.
On Threads and the scary platform is now called X, where are my BIPOC authors? I struggle to find people of colour.
When I do, I read their posts. It’s disheartening.
‘My agent dropped me,’ reads one. ‘You have to be more than perfect to pass.,’ reads another.
There are horror stories of authors who have been set a bar too high to cross while they feel their white counterparts are being given lighter loads.
I have not read your work. I don’t know if one’s story was better than another's or if it required less editing. It’s all subjective.
“I’m colorblind,” says my white immigrant friend. “Plus, if we scrap names, genders, etc, the work stands independently, doesn’t it?”
Well, it does, and it doesn’t.
What if the work features characters of non-white backgrounds in a non-American or European setting? What then? Is it relatable to one of European or American origin? I can count a few million Asian and African immigrants who would find it relatable, but they may not be my intended agent, editor, or publisher.
Agents and editors who are BIPOC, I see you. Your struggle is the same, except now you’re trying to raise up all the rest of us. Just like the Women in Engineering initiative, Women in STEM, and all BIPOC initiatives. We can only get so high. You see, it’s subjective. Is it about the work, or is it about the opportunity? Which authors are easier to get published? You still need to represent the creme de la creme.
All authors feel this way, whether they’re BIPOC or not.
The same white-immigrant friend who is trying to publish her memoir looks at my work and says,
“Your genre and niche are trending; you’ll have no problem getting published.”
Successful black fantasy author Phenderson Djèlí Clark describes his journey, beginning with writing short stories to get noticed. He set his stakes high; if he won an award — he might be offered a publishing contract.
Do BIPOC authors have to jump through hoops to get noticed? We consume American Fiction (Erasure by Percival Everett) and Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. Yet, does this mean I’ll have success because there are authors illustrating the problem? Must we all meet the expectations of the uninitiated?
The Truth
A YA fantasy writing mom of three kids. Do successful fantasy authors even have kids?
I write YA Fantasy the older generations would appreciate — limited violence, limited swearing, flirting, but no graphic sex, little to no swear words.
My scenes can be scary as hell, with palm trees, demons, and mythological creatures bearing names different from those in the West. My world follows the civilizations that existed on the Indian subcontinent before the Christian era. There isn’t a whole lot of JR Martin-esk killing and anarchy going on—nature itself is powerful enough to kill you—unless you count a demon-induced plague. Civilizations rose and fell within generations as the jungle or a monsoon sweeps in to erase all traces. Emphasis on unspoken laws, polite society, and karma that will hold you accountable for your actions in the end.
Is there an audience for me? I’m no Instagram model. My hair is full of grays, and I don’t care. I take after Terry Pratchett. Except in my case, I’m female, overweight and brown.
Limiting fears
I need to write literary prose, have a social media following, and win multiple literary awards.
Confronting my fears
I need to believe in my work and in the process that will get me published. Having a literary agent and a developmental editor will help my work be seen and successful. These folk come in all shapes and sizes and from ALL backgrounds. They know how to back what they love.
Yes, it’s subjective, but it’s not exclusive.
Facts to build confidence
When Russel Peters came on the scene in the 90s, brown folk rarely saw someone like them standing up and making comedy they could relate to. We all hit record on our VCRs and forwarded those tapes around like mad. There were millions of us, I realize. We, the Canadian brown folk, were so starved of representation.
Today, we see a few faces representing brown women in entertainment. Mindy Kaling has risen to fame and attempts to change those stereotypes that plague us with Never Been Kissed. Lilly Singh is another to watch. Here’s an essay by Rozina Jessa on her experience.
Here are published Canadian authors of Asian descent. More links:
https://www.cbc.ca/books/10-canadian-books-to-read-during-asian-heritage-month
Dr. Rishi Singh
CONCLUSION
Even a perceived limitation to entry will deter a person. For example, women are taught to ‘stay safe’ by not going out alone at night. This would lead to fewer women venturing out at night. The ones who do have to be confident or in groups for safety in numbers.
Social media and our implicit biases favouring the negative… will lead us all down the rabbit hole of thinking the barriers to success are too high. Why even try it?
Posting the negative data loudly is not a call to action. I’m sorry, my BIPOC friends. No amount of quoting that only 30% of girls enroll in engineering will raise those numbers. It just keeps that prejudice alive that girls aren’t welcome in engineering. That there’s a bar to climb. Let’s go where the enrollment is higher.
Instead, celebrating the wins and seeing the support of the entire author community encourages the next author to persevere through the system. (I see this already on threads.)
There is hope for all of us. There is room in the forest for all the trees, bushes, and plants.
Successful BIPOC authors have made it. They’ve proven that there’s not only a market for what we’re writing. The market is not drawn along the lines of limiting entry to BIPOC.
Don’t let the negatives pull you down. Persevere and rise to the top. The universe will have your back.
