I was talking to a friend, & I have some thoughts in the context of the #PublishingPaidMe conversation...

I think that as writers, we are often told to not respond by saying that we had good luck, good fortune. But there *is* luck. For some of us, we need luck PLUS skill. Because luck is only unimportant in a meritocracy, & we should know by now that we don’t live in one of those.

Did I have luck? Oh fuck yes I had luck. Do you know why I talk so much about why I had 41 rejections for my first book? Why I talk about how my then-agent told me that we should give up on it? Because that’s the system of meritocracy for you, that’s what it is. it said no.

I was LUCKY that I sent the book myself to Unnamed Press and they were a young press and they said yes. And I was LUCKY that Granta chose me as one of their Best of Young American Novelists based off of that novel, alongside some of the biggest names you will see around.

At one event that I did for that recognition, I was with some white authors, bestsellers, big names. An audience member asked what the recognition meant, and one of them said nothing, it was the work that mattered.

On the way home, C said, “Thqt recognition was important to you because you're not a white writer with a huge publisher who had a bestselling book.” I don’t know if anyone at that event was there to see me, or would’ve known my name otherwise. LUCK.

I was so lucky. I also worked hard. And I see so many of my other friends who are writers and who are BIPOC, who are otherwise marginalized, who have any semblance of success, exist with anxiety that it could be taken away. Because if it can be given in a moment, why not?

I am glad these conversations are happening, and I want to see change. I’ve seen suggestions for change to happen; I will share them when I see them. Thank you to everyone who has supported my work, because I can’t ever quite believe I’m here. I almost wasn’t. /end

AHEM! not the end. the point of the #PublishingPaidMe hashtag is to discuss the disparity of payment between Black authors and non-Black authors. all of what I have said is all the more true/complex in the case of Black authors, of Black authors with multiple identifiers

part of what inspired this thread was a thread that Brandon Taylor (I don’t want to mess up his mentions!) made about how he was extremely sensitive to every decision made about his (EXTREMELY GOOD) debut Real Life bc “Black authors only get one chance” (para)

The rest of this thread is what I was thinking about: https://twitter.com/blgtylr/status/1270737495056166913?s=21 https://twitter.com/blgtylr/status/1270737495056166913