Anyone who has ever wanted to be a professional writer in their life knows that it’s no easy task. Trust me, as someone who always had dreams of being an author, it’s not easy to get your work seen, read or published. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things to do. Many times, writers end up writing for free or submitting their work to dozens of outlets just to get noticed. But, at the end of the day, they rarely hear back from any of them. Instead, writers usually start from the ground up, interning or working for companies where they are not writing. They bust their asses just to get a food into whatever door is slightly open. Writing is no easy job. It’s probably one of the hardest jobs to do – and, even harder to make money from. Author Roxane Gay, whose published works such as “Bad Feminist” and “Hunger” took to Twitter yesterday to share her candid insight on what it means to be a “writer” and how hard it was for her own career to take off.
Ok. I am not an overnight sensation. The media loves to spin things like that but I've been publishing for more than 20 years. When I was young, a kid even, I would buy the Writer's Market every year and submit my work to The Paris Review and the New Yorker.
— roxane gay (@rgay) November 23, 2017
I had no chance in hell but I genuinely believed that I was ready for those leagues. LOL. I didn't really understand what a literary magazine was until I went to @UNLincoln for my MA in Creative Writing. There I worked at Prairie Schooner.
— roxane gay (@rgay) November 23, 2017
I opened envelopes and sorted things and logged things. After a while I got to read submissions. And it was some of the best writing education I've ever had. If you want to grow as a writer, volunteer at a lit mag or small press!
— roxane gay (@rgay) November 23, 2017
I learned so much about where I stood as a writer, about what other people were writing about, about how I wanted to write and how I did not want to write. It was so formative for me. Then I graduated and my work still wasn't being accepted by literary magazines.
— roxane gay (@rgay) November 23, 2017
I legit decided that it was a conspiracy against me. One day, while browsing the internet I discovered the Erotica Readers and Writers Association (https://t.co/MvxGXjXfOz). I started submitting my work to erotica anthologies instead and it worked.
— roxane gay (@rgay) November 23, 2017
I have a whole other body of work under different names. While I nurtured my conspiracy theory, I kept writing and, I realize now, getting better. I started revisiting literary magazines in 2008 and my first publication was in Word Riot.
— roxane gay (@rgay) November 23, 2017
But, she dives deeper into giving writers some solid advice for their own lives and careers.