oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh hell yes
SO HEY so i’ve been thinking about this and discussing this all morning (s-o to @perscitia and @catechism for keeping me honest) because my feelings, they are so strong and so complicated.
the reason i react so strongly to this comment is due to the larger picture of sf/f publishing and how it contains, constrains, comes from, and avoids queerness, and how that relates to the intersection with the fic-writing community. there are a lot of pro fic writers who started out writing in fanfic, who still write fanfic, who will write fanfic, a lot of it queer ship fic, a lot of it m/m fic. some of these writers are queer themselves, some aren’t. some have pro fic that has canonically queer content, many don’t. some people will happily ~admit to writing fic, and many, many won’t.
there are several totally legitimate reasons to keep your pro writer and fic writer identities separate. there’s the general popular distaste for fic writing as “not real writing”, an opinion held by plenty of publishing gatekeepers, editors, reviewers, agents, etc. there’s the possibility that the non-con or underage or otherwise dubiously legal fic you’ve written could case you trouble. there are the properties whose copyright holders are very anti-fic-of-their-works. and then there is the association of fanfic with queer romance and erotica, which is to say: there’s homophobia.
all of which means that it’s still extremely difficult to make a buck in pro writing with queer content. it’s getting better! but it’s not great out there, and it’s especially not great if you are or want to be signed with one of the big, generally-accepted-as-respectable publishers.
m/m fanfic is marketable in fandom, by which i mean that you can attract a lot of readers and fans. m/m pro fic is not marketable in pro publishing, by which i mean that you will find yourself pointed towards less lucrative and lower-profile markets and avenues. you’ll find yourself in the corner of the bookstore, on the Gay Fiction shelf, not in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section where you might have imagined your time travel romp belonged. this won’t happen to every book, but it’s a general trend that is ongoing. (it won’t happen to every author, either, especially if that author became established with a few not-so-queer books before dropping their queer content into a 2nd or 3rd or Xth book.)
SO OK THEN LIKE: yes, i do feel a certain salty way about writers who spend years in m/m fic writing, honing their craft and building an audience, then turn around and publish mainly-straight pro fic. but, christ, do i understand the reasons that might be behind that choice.
ok then so WHAT DO??? WE DO???????
here’s a thing:
Support queer writers of queer fiction. This is the “fuck you, pay me” answer, okay. Buy queer books, and be aware that they might be hidden away on a different shelf than where you’re usually looking for SF/F. Buy queer fiction mags online and offline. Contribute to author patreons. Writers are broke and queer writers of queer fiction and likely extra broke. Their publishing houses are broke and when it comes down to it the only thing those publishers need, at the end of the day, is sales. Put your money where your tumblr is, pals.
and here is one that I am doing myself, but idk, I can’t demand of anyone else, but I do feel it’s a small helpful chip away at things, but idk idk idk consider: If you are a fic writer who publishes pro fiction, then talk about your gay-ass fanfic publicly. this is a choice I made that is very important to me, personally, because I learned to write in fandom, I learned my taste in fandom, I learned so much from fandom, and at my worst times, fandom has kept me alive, and at my best times, fandom has been there with me, glad for me. I came to my own queerness in fandom, through fandom, through fic. I want not just to normalize fic writing, but to affirm that it’s worthwhile. if there’s some queer kid out there who needs a queer community, I want fandom to be there for them if they need us, and I want that kid to know it’s not laughable.
anyway, that’s what i’ve got right now. there are other things you can do! those are the big ones. or, the one big one (GIVE QUEER FICTION YOUR MONEY) and one smaller one.
THIS. SERIOUSLY THIS. The audience for queer anything is getting a lot bigger, but SF/F has a serious diversity problem on all fronts, and when Novik was first starting out, it was a thousand times worse.
Did it occur to OP (who, seriously, you went in and calculated the percentage of her fic that was m/m? who has time for that?) that the reason she writes m/m fic is because she can’t tell those stories in her job? If I have a reputation as a writer for writing one thing, my publisher, if I want to continue working with them, is going to expect more along those lines. She can’t just go “HEY I’M GONNA WRITE EXPLICIT M/M SEX NOW, FUCK YOU IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT” because then she’s not gonna be able to pay her bills.
You want more queer stories? Help create the market for them. Otherwise, we can’t sell them to anybody.
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