How Much (Gay)Trauma is Enough for a Novel?
Spork was written in the summer of 2014 by a teenaged author (and published the following year by DreamPunk Press under the pen name MxKnowitall). But first, this teen pitched it to an agent, who then asked for a full manuscript submittal. Needless to say, this teen was thrilled and excited — then came the back and forth with the agent: it wasn’t ‘traumatic’ enough.
Huh? I truly hope you are as confused as I was, and still am, actually.
This story is partly about a teen boy figuring out if he is straight, gay, or bisexual. And the teen author was told it wasn’t traumatic enough, that it needed more conflict.
The conflict in this story is mostly internal, and honestly, it isn’t about his sexuality. Figuring out his sexuality is a secondary conflict, something that is distracting him from what is really bothering him: why his parents almost divorced.
It is also about how, once a rumor starts about someone’s sexuality (there is a social media post from a fellow student that ‘outs’ him as gay, and everyone’s reactions to that — pro and con — start his exploration into it.) The story shows a bit about how other people’s reactions impact how a teen feels about their sexuality.
There is an English teacher who starts giving him A’s in poetry because she finally sees what he has been trying to say; his two sisters who start a whole support campaign for him (I mean, their are buttons and posters and everything); and his dad just trying to be supportive and his mom who thinks it might be ‘her fault’.
It’s a mixed bag of reactions, and none of them really help this kid to figure himself out; somehow, his ‘decision’ about his sexuality is impacting a lot of people. And he’s not sure why. (Honestly, me too. And this is where I think this story has a lot of value to readers —it’s a bit of an exploration of how much our private lives are not considered ours, that a whole lot of people feel entitled to our decisions.)
In the end, the main character finds out what happened in his parents’ marriage, and why they are trying to mend that relationship, and decides he doesn’t need to decide about his sexuality yet. That he has a lot of time to figure that all out, because he’s still just a kid.
And that, too, is something teens need to be told and to see in literature — a kid being allowed to slowly grow into the adult he (or she) will eventually become.
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And now, I want to write about what I think was going on (and is still going on) in publishing.
Society-at-large wants LGBTQIA+ folx to suffer. We’ve heard or read how so many people think sexuality is a ‘choice’, and very much a wrong choice. And because it is ‘wrong,’ those who make that choice are supposed to suffer. And so LGBTQIA+ stories need to include that punishment and suffering. The stories need to dissuade the readers from making a wrong choice.
[Inherent ‘christian’ values, eh?]
I think this is also one reason there are so many books bans right now: small publishers (and a few large publishers) are providing a few stories that also show the joy. Some include the trauma and pain, because that can be very real, but there is also joy in finding yourself and love and acceptance from others.
Because some parents don’t immediately kick their gay kid out and disown them; some truly just accept them and support them and tell society to mind its own business.
I truly believe that children, teens, and even adults, deserve to read the joyful stories, the stories that truly celebrate who they are. The ones where mom and dad accept them and fight for their right to just be themselves.
And some people don’t want that.
And publishers want to publish what people want, because that is what people will buy.
The squeaky wheel gets all the grease, as they say.
I think small, indie publishers and self-publishing authors recognize that there is a small audience of folx who don’t want the standard narrative, and are publishing the stories that those smaller audiences want. How many times have you, as a writer, been told ‘write what you want to read?’
And that is starting to happen.
