Dear Reader, Hello.
It’s Monday and summer is slipping away. School is getting ready to start back up again soon—has already started back up in some places. I keep thinking I need to get on some sort of schedule because school is about to start, even though I won’t be going. There’s just something about the end of summer that makes me feel like making lists. What are you planning for this Monday?
This morning I worked on making a list of potential writing residencies and conferences and workshops to apply to. I’m on a pretty strict budget these days, so I’m not going to be able to apply for all of the ones I would like to, because the applications all cost money. I also don’t even know if I will be able to go even if I get accepted into any of them, because some of these things expect participants to pay to attend as well as paying for their own travel and expenses. Some places give some financing, others less, others give via fellowships that are only for one or two people, and the rest have to pay.
This is all just kind of how things are done in the writing world. We’re just supposed to keep going to residencies and conferences and workshops as often as possible to keep meeting and networking with other writers and getting feedback on our work. Having attendance at these places listed on your CV and in your bio is part of what people look for when they look to see how accomplished a writer is. It shows that you have rubbed elbows with other fancy writers in famous writing places like Breadloaf (now I’m making fun of myself, really, because I’ve been there).
I just keep thinking about how this is such a narrow view of success. How much this idea of success privileges writers with generational wealth and lots of free time (more often than not, these are white writers). Writers who can take a month off from work (or go in the summer if they are academics—already higher status than writers outside of academia). Writers who don’t have children or other family members to care for. If I’m having a hard time going, imagine how hard it is for other writers with fewer resources. Historically marginalized writers. It’s a kind of gatekeeping.
It’s all kind of a system where you have to buy your own success. The more you spend every year to attend these things, the more successful you will appear on your CV and in your bio, and the more elbows you will have rubbed up against. This translates to actual success.
If you are a student at a University, you might have funding available for these kinds of things. Faculty at Universities also often get funding for these kinds of things because they are important for “professional development.” So, these measures of success tend to privilege academics in general. People who have already “made it.”
Here I am, having just graduated and thinking that I don’t ever want to set foot in a University again in my life, making lists of places I probably can’t even afford to go to, getting ready to spend money to apply to and, more than likely, be rejected for. Is this really what we are going with, writers?
What does it mean to make a budget for attending writing workshops and residencies in a capitalist world, while trying to dismantle capitalism? What does it mean to make this budget and simultaneously call out how problematic this model is? How does making a budget hold me back and keep me dependent on capitalism? How does going along with this model of writerly success perpetuate it? Why am I still doing this? Because I still want success? Is this really the success I want?
Prompt: What does success look like in your field, and how much of the “professional development” side of it is related to attendance at prestigious events? What kinds of gatekeeping are there that privilege white people? What other kinds of success can you imagine?
Action: Imagine a different kind of success. Make a list of things to strive for that don’t depend on capital that are also measures of success in your field. Work toward those.
I’m thinking about creating more accessible spaces for learning and networking and sharing work, spaces that don’t cost so much money to apply to or to attend. How can we make these kinds of spaces hold the same kind of weight that prestigious residencies, conferences, and workshops hold?
I’m thinking about how one measure of success in writing is simply the writing itself. The feeling when a thing is I wrote is finished. That accomplishment. I’m trying to focus more on that. I’m finished writing this post for today. Look! An accomplishment!
Until tomorrow,
Gwen