Someone said I might be able to be popular on Substack
I am incredibly doubtful though--not gonna lie.
Plus, I hate spamming my work. "Hey, read my substack! Please? Anyone?" No hate for those that do. And I prolly will actually will read it if you ask me to, cuz I love reading, understand writing doesn't sell itself, and self-promo is the logical nature of the writing beast unless of course you have a mass marketing team behind you. I say this as someone who once sold thousands of indie books years ago, which is thousands more than I expected. (I mean, I would have been happy with a few hundred.)
Anyway, a little about my ‘approach’ to writing if you want to call it that….
After the Club Q massacre, I cried, then obsessively spent like four days and mostly nights writing a 3,000-ish word article about my feelings on it along with my own experiences being targeted with all sorts of violent threats by the Christian right and even Nazis for being a visible Indigenous trans woman activist with stylish flair.
I was away from Montana on a writing fellowship for my novel in Las Vegas, and I was finally able to open up about the truama I'd gone through from a literal safe space.
I really threw my heart into that piece, and it's prolly my most fav non-fiction piece I've ever written, but I honestly I don't think hardly anyone I know has read it except maybe three people and a few Facebook friends I've never met in real life.
There's algorithms and all that I can blame for such low engagement, but then after a second and even third posting of it just looking for a response or reaction and getting none, I just felt like I was trying to guilt people into reading my work, you know? And it feels like a chore to do so especially after I'd ended up doing the piece for an indie newspaper for free anyway after writing so many rejected or ignored queries. So, that was enough labor of love for me.
I can only take solace in knowing that at least the piece exists for future historians of what life was like in red state America as queer person in the 2020s, and I am mining it's contents deeper for my novel.
While my real life experience is undoubtedly unique, truth is I'm kind of restricted in who will even be open to reading my work as far as publications and agents go.
Even well-meaning Native writers are like, "I know an editor who will love your work!" but they’re of course wrong. And yes, I am kind of cynical, and I do write with chip on my shoulder ala Mary MacLane, but I am also not naive to the notion that if most readerships are middle and upper-class white folks, a transgender Native goth who grew up amongst working-class tough rednecks in a trailer in Montana is like a fucking savage alien to them.
In these contents are not the Indians you are looking for.
People are surprised to learn my work used to be more readily accepted before I transitioned because now I'm even more pigeonholed by editors.
It's like, "I’m sorry, we already will have this generic feel-good piece about the transgender experience written by our reporter who is totally not trans thag we are going to run in Pride Month in June!" and it's like... fucking October. Because queer people only exist in June, I guess?
And, “We need to listen to marginalized voices!" is s-o-o 2020, don’tcha know?
If someone lists that they're looking for BIPOC LGBTQ writers, it’s probably performative. But you know, I honestly can't expect some upper middle-class white girl agent or pencil pushing numbers dweeb to feel where I'm coming from if she or she doesn’t want to empathize with the art in the first place.
But you don’t write to placate that audience.
You write because you still catch yourself still telling rugged jokes to your little brother who was murdered on an cold Indian reservation prairie who was a year younger than you, and maybe these words here are like talking to him, too.
You write because it's been over five years since you transitioned and your daughter's mom kept you from seeing your baby of whom you were extremely close with.
You write because people telling you "someday" your daughter will want to see you again offers no comfort when now her mom says she doesn't want to see you on her own accord as she ages into her teenage years.
You write because her birthday is coming up on February 24th, and you remember the first time you saw her and you kissed the top of her head, and it’s been a habit ever since. You imagine doing so as you write this, and begin to tear up. You write because you cannot afford a gift for her, so you feel like an ashamed failure. Parents want better lives than what they had, and you can't help but write how you're making her life more difficult by being you.
You write because you felt so fucking alone that time when instead of having your back or dealing with any sort of public controversy, the Native organization you were working for—in a political job you loved doing—unceremoniously shitcanned you right when anti-LGBTQ “religious freedom” rallies were being held with your picture on the fliers throughout the state.
You write these words here about having ended up in a psyche ward because you didn't want to grow old if the next day, week, month, and years felt like that day all the time.
You write because if no one else reads this or heard you, at least writing this did.