by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m just a smelly, middle aged CIS white male with a looming 50th birthday coming at me at an alarming rate and, as such, I worry about my ability to get traditionally published. I worry about this to the point that I sometimes idly muse that I should concoct a new identity that fits the agenda of the “woke cancel culture mob.”
I’m well aware that, in real terms, CIS white men as the Youngs call people like me, continue to dominate the publishing world. Ok, I get it. And, yet, I’m an old white man in the middle of nowhere struggling to get traditionally published for the first time. It sure would be nice to suck at the teet of the orthodoxy of the “woke cancel culture mob” with a personal story that they found appealing.
If I was a 24 transgender Latino, I suspect my novel would be a lot more warmly read than it would be as me coming at them from my sad reality. I can’t help how old I am and I need all the help I can get to get published traditionally. The more I know about what it takes to get traditionally published, the more alarmed I grow.
And, yet, I have made it my life’s passion to be wilfully delusional. Acting like I might actually have a chance of getting traditionally published given how much delusion that is going to require, is kind of my thing.
When it comes to how easy or difficult it is for people like me to get traditionally published a lot of it comes down to perception. Leftists point out the cold hard reality that old white men tend to get published, while it “feels true” to Right wing nutjobs that CIS white men simply can’t get a fair shake in the deep Blue publishing industry.
Lulz. Who knows. With me luck in my active, wilful delusion.
