The Emotional Knife Edge
There is definitely a personal emotional stake when you write about yourself, about what happened to you, and then make it available to others. It's different from writing fiction. I mean, you can have a significant ego investment in being the author of a work of fiction, and it can leave you vulnerable to dismissive or hostile opinions of readers and potential publishers and whatnot, but at least what's being rejected is your creation, your art. When it's autobiographical, it can also come across as a rejection of you personally: that what happened to you, what you went through, isn't interesting or important. Or that you, as the main character, are not interesting to read about.
That vulnerability is heightened when the specific portion of your own story that you're trying to share is a segment involving psychiatric hospitalization and diagnosis. There's the general shadow of being examined and found to be mentally out of order, to be not processing things as a healthy stable person should. That sort of raises the stakes -- or at least it can, depending on whether you agree that you were indeed in a deteriorated state of mind during that segment. I don't. So in Book #3, Within the Box, I'm inviting the reader to weigh the evidence and think about whether I was the person in the story whose mental processes were worrisome or if, instead, I'm the person in the tale who makes the most sense, whose reactions and behaviors were the healthy ones.
Querying a book -- trying to get a literary agent interested in it, so that it could perhaps get placed with a mainstream publisher and end up being read by a lot of people -- is by its very nature a vulnerability-making prospect. No matter what you've written, putting it out there in hopes of getting a rare thumbs-up isn't a particularly pleasant experience. It isn't a seller's market, at least not for unproven / unknown authors. Your query goes in a big pile and the people to whom you sent it will accept only the tiniest handful of prospects and reject the rest.
I am out at work. Both as a genderqueer person and as a person with a history of psychiatric diagnosis. I've nearly always been so, wherever I've worked, refusing to be silenced or shamed. Since I was out in my private life (which was as public as I could make it), there was always the risk that an employer or colleague or coworker would encounter that, so I preferred that they know in advance. It was my litmus test for whether the venue was a place I'd want to work: if you can't deal with it, hire someone else!
My current employer is the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which is actually involved in psychiatric intervention and treatment of people, which makes it a little trickier if someone were to develop the opinion that I'd been quite rightly diagnosed and perhaps have a brain that processes things in a less than ideal fashion.
I'm seeking early-reader opinions and feedback on the book, and among the other places I've sought them, I have made such an announcement at work. Three colleagues I know fairly well from ongoing interactions asked for a copy of Within the box. That was in December. Having not heard a peep, I sent a follow-through email to the three of them on July 6, "Checking in with folks who requested a copy of Within the Box...If any of you would like to discuss the book, shoot me an email!". No reply so far. It's a bit hard not to imagine them reading and going "holy shit" and developing a rather worrisome new view of their coworker Allan. I mean, I am kind of putting them in a position where they either need to set aside some conventional assumptions about institutional behaviors and professional behaviors or else reconsider whatever opinions they'd previously developed about me. What if that went the wrong way?
All of this vulnerability is quite predictable, very much "you opted for this situation going in" stuff. Including the likelihood that if I get upset about any of this, or depressed about any of this, or worried or angry about any of this, that my less-than-cheerfully-stable response to it could get interpreted in a light that other people's behavior generally doesn't. Yes, I did know all that going in. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe it needs doing, and I also wouldn't be doing it if I didn't have a lot of confidence in my ability to cope with it.
In fact, to be honest, I'm actually a bit too close to arrogant about it. Picture me staring at you sardonically and laughing and telling you, "After what I've been through in my life -- including the events from the tale I'm hawking in the form of this book -- there's not much that the world is likely to dish out to me that doesn't leave me saying 'I've survived worse', ya know?', so bring it on!"
Maybe that arrogance needs to get reined in now and then. I'll admit, it does occasionally get intense for me.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. I was going to start echoing it on Substack as well but we're not off to a good start. Anyway, please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
That vulnerability is heightened when the specific portion of your own story that you're trying to share is a segment involving psychiatric hospitalization and diagnosis. There's the general shadow of being examined and found to be mentally out of order, to be not processing things as a healthy stable person should. That sort of raises the stakes -- or at least it can, depending on whether you agree that you were indeed in a deteriorated state of mind during that segment. I don't. So in Book #3, Within the Box, I'm inviting the reader to weigh the evidence and think about whether I was the person in the story whose mental processes were worrisome or if, instead, I'm the person in the tale who makes the most sense, whose reactions and behaviors were the healthy ones.
Querying a book -- trying to get a literary agent interested in it, so that it could perhaps get placed with a mainstream publisher and end up being read by a lot of people -- is by its very nature a vulnerability-making prospect. No matter what you've written, putting it out there in hopes of getting a rare thumbs-up isn't a particularly pleasant experience. It isn't a seller's market, at least not for unproven / unknown authors. Your query goes in a big pile and the people to whom you sent it will accept only the tiniest handful of prospects and reject the rest.
I am out at work. Both as a genderqueer person and as a person with a history of psychiatric diagnosis. I've nearly always been so, wherever I've worked, refusing to be silenced or shamed. Since I was out in my private life (which was as public as I could make it), there was always the risk that an employer or colleague or coworker would encounter that, so I preferred that they know in advance. It was my litmus test for whether the venue was a place I'd want to work: if you can't deal with it, hire someone else!
My current employer is the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which is actually involved in psychiatric intervention and treatment of people, which makes it a little trickier if someone were to develop the opinion that I'd been quite rightly diagnosed and perhaps have a brain that processes things in a less than ideal fashion.
I'm seeking early-reader opinions and feedback on the book, and among the other places I've sought them, I have made such an announcement at work. Three colleagues I know fairly well from ongoing interactions asked for a copy of Within the box. That was in December. Having not heard a peep, I sent a follow-through email to the three of them on July 6, "Checking in with folks who requested a copy of Within the Box...If any of you would like to discuss the book, shoot me an email!". No reply so far. It's a bit hard not to imagine them reading and going "holy shit" and developing a rather worrisome new view of their coworker Allan. I mean, I am kind of putting them in a position where they either need to set aside some conventional assumptions about institutional behaviors and professional behaviors or else reconsider whatever opinions they'd previously developed about me. What if that went the wrong way?
All of this vulnerability is quite predictable, very much "you opted for this situation going in" stuff. Including the likelihood that if I get upset about any of this, or depressed about any of this, or worried or angry about any of this, that my less-than-cheerfully-stable response to it could get interpreted in a light that other people's behavior generally doesn't. Yes, I did know all that going in. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe it needs doing, and I also wouldn't be doing it if I didn't have a lot of confidence in my ability to cope with it.
In fact, to be honest, I'm actually a bit too close to arrogant about it. Picture me staring at you sardonically and laughing and telling you, "After what I've been through in my life -- including the events from the tale I'm hawking in the form of this book -- there's not much that the world is likely to dish out to me that doesn't leave me saying 'I've survived worse', ya know?', so bring it on!"
Maybe that arrogance needs to get reined in now and then. I'll admit, it does occasionally get intense for me.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. I was going to start echoing it on Substack as well but we're not off to a good start. Anyway, please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts