to ask anyone who knows about books or publishing if this will be a dealbreaker

[myavatareatsveganpasta]

I've written a book. It took me about a year of drafting, revisions and research and I'm quite proud of it. I know how hard it is to get an agent and accept that the odds are against me though I've started to send out a few queries.

A couple of friends have well meaningly said the same thing to me though and it's got me wondering whether this could be an issue.

I am a middle class middle aged straight married woman and my main character is a gay man. He is portrayed sympathetically as a character who lives in a time and place where he cannot be out about his sexuality and ends up having to marry a woman with whom he finds a kind of happiness though obviously lots more happens in the story than that, and that's only one of the plot lines.

Friends said that they thought that in today's climate a straight woman writing about the LGBTQ community would be poorly received by agents and readers - are they right? Will agents discard my book without reading it because I'm writing about a community I'm not a part of?

Also, there is a character in the book who is very homophobic though she is clearly portrayed as a villain and comes to a bad end. Would that also not be ok?

Any advice welcome.

Thanks Simplyfedup and well done on your success! It's definitely an option I'm considering.

Publishing is about selling, who is your target audience for this book? The plotline from your brief description appears to be more problematic than than who you are. Though of course who you are has fed onto writing something where a gay man finds some kind of happiness married to a woman which is not gay friendly/positive.

I'm a novelist. People are jumping the gun a bit with the whole 'woke mob' Twitter response thing.

An agent will only agree to represent you if they think they can sell the MS you've sent them, and that will be based as much on their judgement of the current state of the market, what editors they have connections with are looking for in different genres etc, as much as on the quality of your writing -- their decision will be made on their perception of whether they can sell what you've written.

And for various reasons, not just the 'own voices' issue, it's a tough time, especially to be starting out. My own agent is having difficulty selling new work from established novelists, some of whom have been on major prize shortlists in the past. I know, unofficially, of one woman of extraordinary talent, whose 'big name' agent has only been able to place her fifth novel with a small press for a derisory advance.

But worries about authenticity and how something will be reviewed and sell are part of those considerations.

Someone I used to know has just published an autobiographical novel about navigating being gay in Ireland in the 80s, coming out while being an illegal immigrant in the US, AIDS, queer activism, up until the Irish marriage equality campaign etc - I haven't yet read it, and can't speak about its merits or otherwise as a piece of writing, but you can see why marketing something based on the rich details of lived experience, from someone who will also command a considerable authority (and audience) from her activism, is appealing.

Ask yourself why an agent or editor might choose to try to sell or to publish that novel rather than one by someone with no access to the life experiences that will have fed the detail and plotting of that novel?

Out of interest, why were you so drawn to telling this story? A querying letter to an agent would normally cover this (I was drawn to this story because it's based on my grandfather's diaries/ I visited X years ago and came across Y in the little local museum etc etc), and an agent would often want to use this type of backstory as a marketing strategy in a pitch letter to agents eg 'This riveting story is based on X's years working as a forensic pathologist in the former Yugoslavia' etc.

So basically you are saying that you can not write freely in a western democracy? I think you should be able to be whatever and write about whatever and not be policed for your own orientation etc.

I'm not saying anything of the kind. I'm saying that an agent agreeing to represent a novelist and an editor wanting to buy an MS and pitching it to sales and marketing before s/he does so, will be thinking primarily about whether it's sellable, regardless of whether it's highly commercial space opera or niche literary fiction written in a single unbroken sentence from the POV of a drystone wall.

Excellent posts, @Annipeck.

I would add, for those outraged at the supposed idea that we ‘cannot write freely in a western democracy’, that actually we can, as much as we have ever been able to. There have always been filters applied during the publishing process and, as an editor, I have had many conversations with authors about them from which we both learn.

The fact that we are now looking at ways of avoiding potential harm or distress is a positive thing. Clearly it can be a difficult path to navigate and there will be disagreement about the extent and about the role of sensitivity readers. But let’s applaud the fact that we are trying to be a kinder society in balancing one set of people’s rights with another’s.

This.

OP, I don't have any advice other than good luck to you. I believe we will look back on this time as one where not many good books were written, because writers were too put off pouring their blood, sweat and tears into something only to be cancelled by the angry pitchfork mob for inadvertently offending people looking for things to be offended by.

I'm gay. I read books with LBGT characters written by straight authors, and have no issue with that.

I admit that I winced a little bit at your summary. What I'd be concerned about is whether, without the experience of compulsory sexuality, your story would read as less a nuanced depiction of a gay person who cannot safely live as themselves and finds some form of peace through marriage to someone of the opposite sex, and more...

A gay person who decides that it's the behaviour that makes one gay, that you can make a choice about sexuality, hate the sin love the sinner, etc. etc. etc.

I'm not saying that it's impossible for a straight author to write the former, but I think it's far easier for a straight author to end up falling into the latter. Lived experience is a really key factor if you're writing about a homosexual person who enters into a heterosexual marriage and finds happiness there.

Definitely get a sensitivity reader. Preferably not one who's emotionally close to you as they'll not be impartial.

Compulsory heterosexuality, that should read!

I believe we will look back on this time as one where not many good books were written, because writers were too put off pouring their blood, sweat and tears into something only to be cancelled by the angry pitchfork mob for inadvertently offending people looking for things to be offended by.

Wow. Pure Daily Mail and without a shred of truth.

I, too, am a published novelist. This is a great post, perfectly summing up what you need to think about.

I think you would have a problem getting it published, tbh. There doesn't seem to be much issue of men writing women, but women writing men is tricky although as others have said A Little Life was written by a woman.

On the other hand, the premise is great.

Would you consider re-writing from the point of view of the wife? I don't feel that story has been told a lot.... although there was a movie about it set in the 1950s I vaguely remember.

I know that would be a big move but it might not be as much work as you think given you already have the set up/plot/characters and it would be another way of telling the story you already have rather than starting from scratch.

I haven't read the whole thread but, like some pps, I just hope some of this stuff is a woke nightmare from which we'll eventually wake up. If you are only allowed to write about your own lived experience then W. Shakespeare could only have written plays about being a jobbing actor from a small market town in Warwickshire.

The same madness has infected the theatre and cinema too. It seems only gay actors can play gay people etc etc, yet oddly women can play men and men, woman. Actors of colour can play anyone, but presumably there could never be a white Othello. Yet what if a brilliant white actor was burning to interpret this great role?

No - I'm not seriously suggesting a white Othello, or that POC can't play any part (I've enjoyed many a production which is either colour-blind or wholly acted by POC). I'm just aghast at the craziness and Stalinist diktats which seem to govern the interpretation of the arts these days. Where are they coming from? Many pps have explained what the new rules are, but as always with these things (decrees from on high) WHO is actually making these rules? And surely we should rebel and not be dictated to by small-minded idiots.

Or is it just that everyone is terrified of social media and its enormous power?

@CoffeeCantata , please point me to the ‘Stalinist diktat’ that says you can only write about your own lived experience. Because Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, George Saunders, Hilary Mantel, David Mitchell and countless others certainly didn’t get the memo and it doesn’t seem to have done their careers any harm, does it?

You only have to look at the range of books being published to know that it is nonsense.

As for white actors playing Othello - the point is that white actors have done this for centuries, while actors of colour haven’t had a look in.

All we are looking at is working to ensure that publishing and similar industries are more inclusive and more representative. That’s not ‘woke’; it’s good manners.

I'm an author.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a publisher tbh. Of course writers don't only write what they know, but it's problematic in areas where authors with certain lived experience have been marginalised- for example, non-white people, gay people, trans people. Especially as main characters. The focus is on supporting and enabling authors with those backgrounds.

Was going to say "In Memoriam" but others have pointed it out - good luck!

This isn't the point, but it's not a week before publication; it was scheduled to publish in Feb next year, the anniversary of the war (one of the objections raised).
I have yet to see a statement from Bloomsbury on it and suspect it was very much her own decision, not theirs.

Elizabeth Gilbert made the decision to pull the book after Ukrainian readers expressed disappointment and anger at its setting. She hasn't said it won't be published, just that now is not the time. I think that's fair enough and I respect her for responding in the way she did. I doubt that many novels set in Germany were published during the war, for similar reasons.

You can write whatever you want. Agents can represent what they want. Publishers can buy what they want. Bookshops can stocks what they want. Readers can buy what they want. Twitter woke mobs can tear down what they want. TikTok can send viral what they want.

Yeah just imagine a world where a load of Stephen King's main characters weren't successful writers living in New England.......

I know she's said it's only postponed, but I don't think that's the point. I think responding to (some people's) concerns by censoring or self-censoring is the top of a very slippery slope.
But that's for another thread, really.

Thanks everyone for helpful advice, this thread has been surprisingly constructive for Mumsnet!

Imteresting what the poster who winced at my very brief description of the plot took from it - of course the book is not about forced sexuality. But many gay men were forced into marriages with women in history and although it wasn’t what they would have chosen some of them did find companionship with a wife, though it was far from the happy ending they’d have had if they’d lived in a more tolerant time. This is only one aspect of the plot anyway. There are other threads with LGBT characters who do find a happy ending with their own sex despite the odds.

Not going to out myself by saying why this story is important to me but it was inspired by two people very close to me.

Will keep trying with agents but am under no illusions that self publishing will be my most likely route - I have a decent following on social media already so hope this will help to promote it. Thank you!

I know nothing about the circumstances of EG's decision or what kind of novel this was (mainly because I view Eat, Pray, Love as an abomination, and have never read another word by her), but remember Chris Cleave's Incendiary?

It was a much-anticipated first novel about a terrorist bomb in London, narrated by a woman who lost her son and husband and was writing a letter to Osama Bin Laden. It was advertised by posters of a smoking London skyline with the caption WHAT IF?, and by a horrible coincidence it was launched the day before the London tube/Tavistock Square bombings of July 2005 killed more than fifty people. Which meant that the adverts were cancelled or pulled down, his book tour cancelled, many UK booksellers withdrew the book from shelves etc etc.

Obviously, it was just a horrible coincidence, but if the bombings had happened a few months before the book was due to appear (after it was announced, anticipated, and had its place in the publisher's schedule etc), then presumably CC would have been facing a similar decision about other people's real-life sensitivities...?

Books get pulled for all kinds of reasons, and not that infrequently.

I don't think Incendiary is comparable, really. What I know about the Gilbert novel is that it's about a group of people in mid-20th-century Russia who retreat to the Siberian forest to live outside society, in protest against Soviet rule and the push for industrialisation.

First my comparisons are absurd and now I have completely missed the point.

My comparison was more to do with Rowling not being a teenage boy than a wizard. So not absurd to suggest that she has not lived the experience of a teenage boy. One who lived eleven years of poverty in an abusive household as an orphan before the revelation that he was a wizard. The point, which I didn’t miss, was if people (mainly from Social Media because that’s how the international population communicates) are allowed to restrict what is written as works of fiction to “lived experiences of the author only”then creative writing will cease to exist and all that will remain is Non-Fiction aka Autobiographies instead of stories. So my advice to the Op was to listen to Queen Camilla and write about whatever they want.
The barriers you have listed preventing underrepresented communities having a voice do not apply to self-publishing which is where Authors are currently making money for themselves (instead of for the publishing houses) and where many publishing businesses are scouting for talent. Self publishing also leads to other opportunities as access requirements for grants and support include evidence of previous work of sellable quality.