Gender and Writing

Guest blogger, Alexandra Chasin

Several commentators have recently redrawn our attention to the fact that women publish less literary fiction—are published less—than men writers. Leaving aside for the moment the obvious way in which the power differential that explains this fact also structures almost every other social zone, every market, every profession (even in the healing professions, elementary school teaching, and sex work, where women do the majority of the labor, the decision making is still vested in men’s hands)—leaving aside, in other words, the fact that the domain of literary fiction looks just like other domains in terms of gender and power, I would like to weigh in on the current commentary by suggesting that women writers may be able to rethink the matter, and may be able to act on a rethought relation to self, to writing, and to the market. Such action could add up to social change.

A couple of years ago, while I was attending AWP, the largest annual creative writing conference in the United States, I had an epiphany. I don’t generally believe in epiphanies, in either textual or extra-textual realms, but on that cold February evening, I felt that I suddenly re-learned something I have always known about gender and writing and publishing. And I determined, following this event, to change my relationship to my practices of textual production.

I was part of a group reading; as each reader approached the podium, the master (sic) of ceremonies gave a short bio of that reader. In one such bio, a fellow reader was noted to have written 17 books. I know this writer, at least professionally. I respect his writing and I respect the incredible labor he has put into helping other writers, particularly writers whose work is too challenging or heterodox to be easily publishable in mainstream venues, including me. He is smart and interesting and generous. And, evidently, he is terrifically prolific.

As he went up to read, and as I heard it said that he had written 17 books, I suddenly realized that I too had written 17 books, but that 15 of them were sitting at home in the darkness of what I suddenly came to call “the Emily Dickinson trunk.” I estimated that I had filled, over the years, 35 notebooks with journal entries; had written thousands of letters; had begun easily one hundred stories and three novels I never finished; had completed a doctoral dissertation that I threw in the round file; had completed about 100 poems I’d never shown to anyone; had written two novellas and a play that hadn’t yet gone anywhere, and several hundreds of pages of memos within the context of both non-profit and educational organizations. And then there was all that email. For the last several years, I have written a minimum of 200 emails every week in both personal and professional modalities. And yet, the total number of pages of published work of mine comes in under a thousand pages. But if I thought every little thing I shit was gold ingot, that number would be 17 times as great.

Or, to be more measured about the matter, while editors of all genders make sexist decisions based on consciously and unconsciously misogynist readerly values and assumptions, it is also true that women writers need to take our writing more seriously. This is not a case of sour grapes; I begrudge the writer above nothing; his success is well deserved and he is a gracious individual. In fact, I would guess that he would support my point here.

Be that as it may, I went home from that conference thinking I had learned something about gender and textual production—or rather relearned it, because it was not new news but a sad old set of realities that I needed to learn and learn again and, more to the point, act on differently every day. Back at home, I went straight to an old file in my Emily Dickinson trunk and pulled out two pieces I had drafted in writing workshops. (In my classes, I write along with students in response to prompts that they design.) These two pieces were written in pencil scratch, and would have languished forever inside a manila file folder inside a metaphorical trunk. But, following up on my epiphany, I typed them up; I tinkered with them a bit; I sent them out to literary journals. They were published immediately.

Maybe women write more than we think we write. Maybe we write “better” than we think we write and/or our pieces are closer to being done than we think. Maybe they are perfect enough now—and I say this as a total perfectionist. We cannot imagine that we have failed to internalize the locks on the doors of the publishing market, but maybe we could keep cutting and trying new keys instead of shivering outside. Maybe pushing the doors open, flooding or storming the gates with our work, is likelier to gain us entry than waiting until those doors open from the inside—social movement history would seem to point this way—even while we keep up the commentary….

And speaking of the history of social movements… I notice that although serious structural change is called for with respect to gender and writing markets, at least a conversation about gender is taking place. Can we open a conversation about writing markets and race? Surely the numbers are far starker, the tokenism more entrenched, the readerly values that tend toward discriminatory editorial practice more unconscious. Can we comment on the politics of race in the world of literary fiction? And what can we do differently?

Alexandra Chasin is the author of Kissed By, a collection of short innovative fictions (FC2, 2007). Her creative work has appeared in print in AGNI, Post Road, Unsaid, Denver Quarterly, Hotel Amerika, Chain, Phoebe, and online in Exquisite Corpse, elimae, htmlgiant, Diagram, among other places. Previous publications include Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market (St. Martins, 2000). Chasin currently serves as co-chair of the Literary Studies Department at Lang College, The New School.

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