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Thimblina – Flash Fiction

June 10, 2023

Mother has a thimble sitting on a windowsill in her sewing room. It’s old, grey metal. It sits alone like a solitary soldier on guard behind the sewing machine just watching. I’m not allowed to play any of mother’s things so I leave it be. Mother sews day and night, and the thimble never moves.

It was her grandmother’s. I feel like it has always been in that spot, that if you moved it you would see a dust ring in it’s place. I wonder if my great grandmother ever used the thimble. Or did it sit on her windowsill watching out the window as the seasons went past just to sit at my mother’s sill and watch the squirrels build nests in the tree.

I would stand in the room looking at the items I couldn’t touch and wonder such things. When I grow up, will I move the thimble or let it sit there in solitude? I think I shall paint it bright red.

Advice from an Anthropologist:
#OwnVoices and Why It Matters

January 24, 2023

What is #OwnVoices?
The site Unherd has a well-researched article, “Publishing Will Never Be Fair,” that explains the movement, but, the shorter answer is that it was a catalytic moment in 2015, along with the We Need Diverse Books occurrence in 2014, that actually changed the business of writing.

The #OwnVoices movement started with the main statement that representation mattered—women mattered, Black Lives Mattered, and the LGBTQ community mattered. Jane Friedman says in her Hotsheet Newsletter, “The Twitter hashtag #OwnVoices started in 2015 as a means of recommending books authored by people who shared the identity of their main characters.” The result of the movement was that the publishing spotlight shifted away from white cis male marketing, and the publishing industry as a whole made public statements of commitment to represent everyone.

Why should a self-publisher care?
Because industry trends affect sales.

The worst offenders are often those authors who (whether unknowingly or not) have not updated their writing styles since the movement began in 2015. Do you know if you are using outdated clichés involving women, sexuality, or people of color (POC)? If you don’t know the answer to this question, then you are treading dangerous waters. I was recently asked to review a self-published book that offended all three categories, and I had to return the manuscript and suggest a sensitivity reader.

What are some examples of outdated tropes? Search TV Tropes for a rabbit hole of every trope imaginable and those that are considered old or culturally on the outs. If you want to avoid clichés of gender or POC, Writers Helping Writers has a great article to help called “Avoiding Stereotypes in Fiction: People of Color.” But in general, it’s a good idea not to kill off the only POC in your story, have your women throw themselves at men willy-nilly (and especially not after a traumatic event), or assume it’s cool to make the only POC in the story also a gay person.

What should a self-publisher do?
First, you should educate yourself on current clichés to avoid and which tropes are trending, so your work is on par with popular books being sold in stores. Second, if your work involves countries or cultures other than your own, consider investing in a sensitivity reader. You should also do this if your beta readers feel that your characters are off (meaning not quite accurate to real life).

Even though I am an anthropologist, I’m not qualified to be a sensitivity reader. The University of Alberta defines such a reader in the following way: “Someone who reads for offensive content, misrepresentation, stereotypes, bias, lack of understanding, etc. They create a report for an author and/or publisher outlining the problems that they find in a piece of work and offer solutions in how to fix them.”

Jane Friedman says that sensitivity readers are more than just subjective readers, they are educated professionals. Having one of their reports on your work of fiction or nonfiction greatly improves your odds of good sales and reviews. I am of the opinion that people and audiences generally like to feel they are part of the solution and not part of the problem. If your work reflects this perspective to the reader, then it’s likely they will have more satisfaction reading your book.

What caveats should an author watch for?
Trying to hit all the trends in one book, or worse, in one character should not be an author’s goal. Yes, know the trends, be aware of them, but don’t shove them all into one work. I have seen this happening a lot in both book and TV media. Don’t check some boxes and call it a day—don’t have the main character’s best friend be a gay person just because that’s what many books and TV programs have done. Do your research and understand the demographics. Then create your own unique characters and situations keeping diversity in mind.

Male vs Female Authors: 10 Myths and Facts

November 5, 2022

Have you ever heard these rumors? Men run the publishing industry, and women can’t get in (even with the industry’s new diverse public face). No one reads women authors unless it’s romance novels, so they should use a male sounding pen name. White males still make up the majority of published authors even with the #OwnVoices movement. I’ve heard these rumors in my writing circles, and I bet you have, too. While many of these statements used to be fact—do they still hold water in today’s world?

I looked at some current information available on statistical analysis sites and from other authors and bloggers to help answer these questions. As a female MFA student, myself, I wanted to know (and I mean really know) what I was getting myself into. Where will the publishing industry be next year when I finish my first fiction novel, and where is my place within that industry?

The following are five myths and five facts I gleaned about men and women in the industry:

Five Myths:

1) All editors in charge of picking manuscripts (i.e., managers) are male and that is why women authors can’t get published.

or

2) All editors are male, so women in the industry must become literary agents. (Reword)

These broad blanket statements are linked in the beliefs that created them and also in the evidence that disproves them. The beliefs most likely come from decades of male dominated workforces, management systems, and academic settings. However, the Statista analysis site paints a different picture, especially for Myth #1. It shows a survey of employees from Publishers Weekly broken down into graph form. The chart states that women employees average 84% of editorial staff, 83% of sales and marketing, 79% of operations/production, and 59% management.

In the UK, the Publishers Association states 64% of the publishing workforce is female, which is further calculated as: 78% editorial, 83% marketing and 92% of the publicity staff (“How Women Conquered the World of Fiction”). Therefore, women actually dominate the industry at the current time (since these two surveys were published in 2018 and 2022, respectively). I believe this demographic change has to do with facts written in Myth #3, so keep reading!

As for Myth #2, the Zippia statistical site shows only 58.5% of literary agents are women, and that number has stayed steady for the last nine years. With women trending (UnHerd) in social media, which is especially influential, there is a push to increase women’s appearance in author representation and in the publishing industry in general. Demographics may change soon because of this aspect, but currently agents are fairly even with a 60/40 split women to men.

I’m curious if the confused belief for Myth #2 comes from, what I would call, the ‘incoming crowd’ and the ‘social face crowd,’ i.e., social networking, internships, and assistant positions (which were all 75% women or higher according to Zippia).

3) Young male authors can’t get into the industry because literary agencies and MFA programs are overrun with women.

I thought my brain was going to melt after trying to research this subject on the internet. There is a ton of misinformation out there on this particular topic and many heated debates. Luckily, the site UnHerd came through with a well researched and cited article, “Publishing Will Never be Fair.” The basic gist, like with other movements I’ll mention in this article, is that there was a catalytic moment in 2014 with the We Need Diverse Books movement that changed the business of writing.

#OwnVoices started the year afterwards. The main statements being made by these movements were that representation mattered—women mattered, Black Lives Mattered, and our LGBTQ community mattered. The spotlight shifted away from white cis male marketing, and the industry as a whole made public statements of commitment to represent everyone.

In light of this information, are young males being systematically cast out? No, they are still the majority of writers for various media formats, see Fact #4. For more evidence, the article “Why are Great Women Writers Still Adopting Male Pseudonyms?”from the Stylist site states, “In 2017 [the organization Vida] found that The New York Review of Books featured 677 men but only 242 women, while the London Review of Books was even worse with just 151 women on their pages compared to 527 men.” Even with women trending the shortlists elsewhere, the above quote shows us how the overall effect of current marketing is male leaning.

4) Men and women authors can’t write opposite sex characters.

The Atlantic posted an article in 2013 saying the debate is still raging even though authors have been experimenting with gender writing for years. The author of “The Mixed Results of Male Authors Writing Female Characters,” Michele Willens, further says there are examples of authors of both sexes writing the opposite sex well…and writing them poorly. She believes one big issue is whether the author is writing the character in third person or first person. The point of view change makes a difference between just describing the opposite sex verses channeling their inner thoughts.

Moreover, Willens says it’s not that authors can’t write opposite sex characters—but often when they do it well, they tend to get awards for doing so. In other words, it may not be easy to do, but the effort will earn one critical acclaim. I believe the myth of poorly written characters is a result of what my MFA instructors call lazy writing—where one leans too heavily on clichés and stereotypes, and it shows.

5) Women read more than men.

This is a tricky one—in some cases, yes, and in some cases, no. It really depends on the type and category of the media. Graphic novels, western novels, car magazines, and newspapers? That goes to the men. But if you were wondering about books in general—the Stylist article says, “women are responsible for buying two-thirds of the books sold in Britain.” So, for books, and ‘content reading’ in general, women do read more, but because there are some caveats to my answer—I placed it under myths. Why does reading make the list? Because readers are our audience and who our publishers seek out. Thus, every author should know their own readership and the demographics that lead their genre.

Five Facts:

1) Authors shortlisted over the last five years for prizes and debut features have been 75% women in Westernized countries like the UK (The Guardian).

Women and minorities are trending with #Me Too movement and the #OwnVoices movement. I personally applied for several internships with some of the Big Five publishers, and their internship pages are filled with pictures of young, diverse women. Not a man to be seen…of any shape, size or color, which speaks volumes.

2) Don’t quit your day job (for either men or women).

According to a survey from Statista with 34,000 (participating) authors in the US, 66% were ‘Emerging Authors’ who made less than $500/year from book sales and worked ‘day jobs.’ The total number of US authors who make their income from book sales was estimated at 45,000, so adjusting the above percentile it still averages out to at least 50% being considered emerging authors.

3) Women earn less than men in the industry.

Unfortunately, this is still true across the workforce. For the publishing industry specifically, most women made 15-20% less than their male counterparts (except for ‘production/operations’ roles where the opposite was true for the study used by Statista). For authors in particular, women authors have been traditionally assigned to particular genres (romance, drama, lifestyle, women’s lit., etc.). According to the Book Written site’s article, “Are Female Authors Paid Equal to Male Authors?” these genres are sold for less or en masse (think cookbooks).

4) Men writers dominate most media industries.

While men novelists are not currently dominating the debuting author lists or contest shortlists, they are dominating other media industries, namely: journalism, film and network, and newspapers. So, it is easy to see where the confusion of Myth #3 comes from, since all other writing categories are still male dominated (Statista).

5) Using a pen name can net women authors more money.

The answer falls back to Fact #3. Since women are traditionally assigned to write in certain genres, audiences have come to have expectations, like ‘only men can write’ sci-fiction, fantasy, horror, and epic sagas. The most common modern example I see time and again of using both a pen name (Robert Galbraith) and initials is J. K. Rowling (Book Written and Stylist).

A fact that surprised me is that men will also adopt gender-neutral names, or use initials, to write romance novels or publish in other traditionally female genres (Stylist). I didn’t realize pen name stigmas, and thus the strategies needed to circumvent them, were used both ways.

However, there is still ‘unconscious bias.’ Author Catherine Nichols gave her manuscript to fifty agents under her name in 2015 and received only two responses. She tried again using a man’s name—she got seventeen responses (Stylist).

  • Male vs Female Authors

  • Advice from an Anthropologist

  • How Does Social Media Affect Book Sales?