"Terrible and wondrous all"

I skipped my voice lesson this morning in hopes of preserving my voice for tomorrow night's reading at The Green Toad in Oneonta (7:00 p.m.), though I may try to sing with the choir later... Meanwhile I have scoured the internet, answered mail, read some depressing articles from VIDA that deal with the inequalities between men and women in magazine publishing and elsewhere (there's nothing like a blue-and-red pie chart to set out the facts with boldness!), felt reasonably cheerful despite them (because, well, nothing has changed, so why be depressed?), looked at my first Amazon reviews, dutifully read a bunch of marketing ideas (silly, mostly), and now am about to do a little rebounding. They say it "moves the lymph" around and helps you get well. I don't know if "they" know anything, but I shall move myself around and see what happens.

One of the most sweeping remarks from the VIDA-collected essays was Roxane Gay's summation: Here’s the truth. In this day and age, the publishing climate is rather untenable for all writers — men, women, writers of color, straight writers, queer writers. Getting your foot in the door doesn’t even mean what it once did. You may get a book deal, but then what happens? What’s an advance, again? Most publishing contracts don’t come with the necessary publisher support to adequately promote a book. It’s difficult to get books reviewed in major publications. Contemporary writers will probably agree that we’re all in this together — mired in the same depressing circumstance, quietly seething about our relative obscurity. Once in a while, we look up and see the bright twinkling star of a prominent, critically acclaimed novelist like Jonathan Franzen or Jeffrey Eugenides wearing his magnificent vest high above Times Square, and think, “When will it be my turn?” Most of us grudgingly accept that our turns may never come for any number of reasons that have little to do with the quality of our writing.

I must have gone through such thoughts and come out on the other side because I do not "seethe." I do not "grudgingly accept," either. While I may feel a flash of regret that I've never received the desired "push" from a big publisher that launches one into a wider readership, I am determined to live my life in light and joy, to go on making poems and stories, in thrall to the love of language. Yes, publishing can sometimes be difficult and discouraging and cruel; yes, it has broken writers who could not bear to have their work ignored, who could not endure the ways of the world.

But much of what writing is about is living a larger life, and I will live that life and not be like a flower that blooms and then cramps inward, brushed by frost. Besides, I've just published a new book, and you may go and take a nibble from it here, and you can learn more about it here. And I think you will like it. Although certain painful elements from generations of my family history streak the story, I wrote it with a sense of joy and good cheer to the world, despite all--despite and because of the terrible and wondrous all.