Okay, let me tell you about Pitch Wars and fees. I grew up poor. P-O-O-R, living in government housing, poor. My family is intergenerationally poor, which is a real fancy way of saying we been poor as dirt since we ran away from the Potato Famine.
We have 0 (ZERO) college graduates. We do have some union plumbers. But most of us have worked service industry jobs and scraped by and made do. I joined the Army to try to break that cycle of poverty. We didn't have the money for college, and I was afraid of loans.
(Borrowing money against money that doesn't even exist yet is fscking terrifying when you're poor.) So, no college for me. I got kicked out of the Army for being queer, and came back to my poor ass life with no prospects. I got a job at the same cafeteria where my aunt & grandma
worked, promptly got pregnant, got married, and set about being the next generation in my family that mirrored the last. But while I was working cafeterias and gas stations and check processing plants at night, I was writing. Wishing. Hoping.
I got divorced. I ended up homeless. Then, I lived in a trailer with no electricity and no running water and no plumbing, which at the time, felt vaguely bohemian and romantic. So did writing in notebooks by candlelight, oh, so romantic.
Eventually, my mother and her new husband invited me and my (now) wife to move in with them. They had the Internet and I had a library, and I wrote things and posted them online, and looked at books in the library about how to get started as a writer.
My budget allowed me to buy one (ONE) book of stamps a month. Once those were gone, then I was done submitting stories (to markets that I found, in the Writer's Markets, somewhat outdated, at the library.) At the time, a book of stamps was less than 8 bucks. But that was my
SPLURGE. I worked lousy jobs-- because that's all I could get with a high school diploma-- to support my eldest daughter, and I got 8 dollars or thereabouts a month to reach for that writing dream. I got my first agent by snail mail, using those outdated markets from the library,
I sold stories by snail mail (outdated markets) and essays and entered writing contests very rarely, because I didn't have the money for entry fees. I did everything the hard way. I knew no other writers. I had no network. I had no college degree. All I had was me, the library,
an Internet that didn't have the World Wide Web on it yet, and one book of stamps a month. What I did not have was money to apply for fellowships or contests; I didn't have money for the Nicholls Fellowship entry, even though I thought I had a damned good script. I couldn't
enter contests with an entry fee. I couldn't afford the sample copies that One Should Read before submitting. Also, I couldn't afford Self-Addressed Stamped-Envelopes to get my manuscripts back. I had to write, "Please discard rather than return" on them when I submitted.
There was finally e-mail and WWW once I got an agent, but my notes and such were still all hard copy until my second book. And I had to (shamefacedly) borrow money from my mother to afford sending the marked manuscript back to my editor.
I was so glad when it all went digital. But still so ashamed when it came to the first big event my publisher wanted to send me to, because I had to ask them to provide transportation for me to the airport because I didn't have any and I couldn't afford to take a cab and wait to
be reimbursed. And you guys, I've been publishing *steadily* since 2009 now. I have a *good* midlist career. I am very proud of how far I've come. But even though my wife and I finally managed to buy a house after living with my parents for *fifteen* years, we ride the edge.
I still can't afford to be reimbursed for a cab ride. I still can't afford to enter prestigious fellowships and what not. I cannot afford to mail my book out of the country for contest winners. And I would not be able to afford to enter Pitch Wars. Now, I will probably get some
flack for saying this, but I think my voice is an important one in YA. I write queer fiction. I write diverse, historically-accurate historical fiction. I write from a perspective we don't often see: my characters are not middle class, with a house, with a yard, with a college
fund. I was 13 years old before I ever read a book that had a neighborhood like mine in it (The Outsiders, if you're interested.) It was the first book that showed me that I WAS NOT ALONE. That my neighborhood wasn't the only one like that. That my family wasn't the only family
that was poor. That I wasn't the only kid who saw the cops come to the neighborhood only when someone died. That book was transformative for me, and I have had a LOT of kids talk to me about finally seeing themselves, poor and queer, poor or queer, in my books. I feel like I
offer a voice that often isn't allowed a megaphone in literature. And you know what? I'm still privileged in so many ways. I am a white, middle-aged mostly-lady in an industry that is packed to the gills with white, middle-aged ladies. I have had to deal with many hardships, but
among them has never been the intergenerational traumatic stress of racism and disenfranchisement. Among them has never been the sustained intergenerational violence experienced by so many people of color. $20 is a lot to me. And to them. And to so many voices who actually NEED
the leg up in this industry. There are lots of ways to monetize things that grow beyond their volunteer roots. But charging a fee for contests, fellowship entries, etc., further homogenizes the voices we find in fiction. Voices privileged enough to afford entry fees have
have multiple paths to success anyway. When we say we need diverse books, this is one of those times when we can make the path for diverse writers easier or harder. $20 doesn't sound like much, but in my opinion, it is too much. Consequently, I will be withdrawing my application
to be a mentor for Pitch Wars. I only have so much time, and that is not the way I want to pay it forward. I want to reach back and help lift the authors who need opportunities because they don't have the money, the education, the opportunities, the geographical desirability, to
step right up into this maddening career. There are other ways, better ways, for me to do that. And if you ask me, there are other, better ways for Pitch Wars to do that too.
