Four Books into the Publishing Game, My Best Writing Tip is to be a Feminist
Four Books into the Publishing Game, My Best Writing Tip is to be a Feminist
In 2014, when my first book came out, people would ask me how excited I was. While I certainly was thrilled, I was also mostly relieved, because no longer would I be a writer without a book. That year was a slow slog of trying to, as debut, understand how to promote my own work. Things like doing spin off articles—of which this is one, for my new book WHAT IF WE WERE SOMEWHERE ELSE—felt out of reach, even though at my dayjob, I worked in marketing. I had a better handle on how PR works than an average debut, but I still struggled to do it for myself.
I did a small tour, which was mostly me standing nervously at a podium in independent bookstores, sweatily clutching my slim volume of short stories and trying not to have a panic attack.
That changed when a writing friend, proposed a joint event. That might seem like a small thing, but it was actually radical to me at the time. It was so different, to share the space with another writer. It took so much pressure off.
When my third book came out, the novel If the Ice Had Held, I had some experience under my belt and also was embarking on an elaborate tour schedule that I’d designed to start months before the May 2019 publication date and wouldn’t end until April of the following year. I cancelled the last events because of COVID lockdown in March, and had to skip one because my job wouldn’t let me out, but it was mostly a success.
What changed between the first book and the third, was that at each tour stop, including those that were local to me in Denver, I had other writers along with me, based on my friend’s advice. Some with new books, some with older books, but all women who were interested in having conversations about what it means to create, and who were up for doing it in public. Those PR skills I had from the dayjob? It finally started to click when I was able to think about how to pitch us as a group—when I stopped thinking about just myself.
It’s strange, actually, that this was not a more obvious choice from the beginning, to join forces with other women.
It’s especially strange when I think about how strongly I identify as a feminist. I came up in the third wave. I remember being an undergrad in my first feminist theory classes, and feeling like I finally had a language to explain how I’d been feeling my whole life.
The third wave, and the X-er women who mostly comprise it, have different touchpoints. We believed Anita Hill, for example. For some of us, she was the 9-11 or the Kennedy assassination of our time—feminists remember where they were when they heard Hill testify. Many of us will never forget nor forgive how then Senator Joe Biden treated her. Of course, Clarence Thomas was confirmed, and no one was surprised.
Today, we have Dobbs v. Jackson Mississippi Health Organization with Thomas still on the bench, sitting beside three new ultra conservative judges.
I was not born until after Roe was decided, but I fear I will live to see its end. Certainly, the stakes of my writing life and any current or future book tours are not even close to as high as those of Roe, and I’m not necessarily trying to conflate the two. What I am saying is that taking a feminist perspective—a perspective that is cooperative, inclusive to women, and generally prioritizes that we are in fact, actual diverse people, is typically is a good way to operate.
This goes back to how we think about writing and the arts, and how we conceptualize what it means to do the work. Writing gets styled as solitary, and while there is certainly much of the creative process that happens on our own, with our own asses in our own chairs, there’s so much more to it. I can’t help but think about how Amy Coney Barrett spoke from the bench about how safe harbors make abortion a moot point. As if pregnancy and childbirth is too, a solitary act. As if the only way to define women is via a uterus. I mean, it’s a good time in America to not have a uterus, but please. That’s always been true.
So, what do we do? We can “make art in the face of fuck,” as the glorious slogan from Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing Center encourages us to consider. We can band together for access to women’s healthcare. We can show up in every day ways for women, whether it is reading a draft, liking a post where she shares part of her story, or supporting women in whatever they are trying to do. That might be just getting through the day, it might be finishing a draft of a novel, it might be something that is private between friends.
What we have to reject, however, is this idea that we are going about it alone. What I learned on book tour was how much smarter it made me to be in the company of other women, when we were all supporting one another. It’s not a question of PR, but rather an answer of community. That’s what we can actually get excited about.
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Wendy J. Fox is the author of four books of fiction, including the novel If the Ice Had Held and the recent collection What If We Were Somewhere Else. She has written for The Rumpus, Buzzfeed, Self, Busine
WHAT IF WE WERE SOMEWHERE ELSE
Author of the award-winning IF THE ICE HAD HELD, THE SEVEN STAGES OF ANGER & OTHER STORIES, and THE PULL OF IT, Wendy J. Fox’s WHAT IF WE WERE SOMEWHERE ELSE is a tragicomic new collection of linked short stories that follows the turbulent lives of office workers, from strip clubs to booze cruises, through failing marriages and poor management, and even on a journey to the moon…
“Reading these powerful and poignant stories, I ached for the characters… With her delightfully quirky style, Fox captures them at their best and worst moments… Grab a copy of What If We Were Somewhere Else. Fox’s distinctive characters and their tumultuous journeys will stay with you long after you finish the book.”
–R.L. Maizes, author of the novel Other People’s Pets and the story collection We Love Anderson Cooper.
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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