Bye for Now

For the past couple months I’ve been texting myself articles from the news that I think might be useful for a book-length project. This document has three main categories: AAPI, Black Lives Matter, and voting rights. Of the three, the voting rights section has grown the fastest. At first I was interested only in the Republican voter suppression tactics in Georgia following the January run-off election, but in the past couple months there’s been similar legislation cropping up in Florida, Texas, and Michigan. It’s clear that the Republicans’ new strategy to win elections is by making it harder for Democrats to vote rather than, you know, having popular ideas or values.

I’ll get back to this in a minute, but I also didn’t want to bury the lede: This is going to be my last article for a while. I started this blog almost three and a half years ago. Back in January 2018 I wasn’t doing much writing, so I got a Squarespace site to exercise those long-dormant writing muscles. This is my 166th blog post, and I’ve written around 258,000 words — about 4 books’ worth of words. I’ve written many articles I’m really proud of, some that were silly and fun, and others that were just throw-away posts so that I could say I wrote something that week. In many ways, I consider this blog a success.

But of course I was secretly hoping that one of my posts would gain traction and lead to some kind of exposure. I hate promoting my work, so I didn’t do nearly enough to try to send these articles out into the world, but I always thought that maybe if a post was good enough then I wouldn’t have to resort to those shameless social media tactics. I have no idea how anything ever goes viral, but I feel like the story we hear most often is that someone just keeps plugging away, doing their own thing, and then suddenly they write something that catches a lot of people’s attention and that leads to a book deal. Ta-Nehisi Coates had a blog for a long while, and Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race began as a blog post with the same name.

There were a few times when I was hoping this moment would happen for me. Last year’s post called “Everyone Is a Nazi” was one of my favorites, and it had the kind of title that’s ripe for going viral. More recently the first “Major Feelings” post saw a lot of traffic after I shared it on Twitter, Instagram, and on Slack with some work colleagues. Still, as much as I liked those pieces, they never made it big the way I was hoping they would.

Then I found out about a year-long writing residency offered through a local visual arts center. If one of my blog posts wouldn’t get me that book deal then this residency would be the next best thing — I’d have time to step away from the blog and work on a book. At the end of the residency I’d even be able to meet with a literary agent. I put together my application over a weekend and felt really good about it. Fast forward to a few weeks ago: I received a blanket rejection email.

I’ve never been good with rejection. It’s a large part of the reason why I stopped sending out my work for publication. I don’t know how other writers cope with this, because I can’t help but take these rejections personally. The writing residency rejection was particularly hard because I wanted it so badly — and because I legitimately thought I had a good chance at it. I’ve noticed recently that as the quality of my blog posts has increased, I’m feeling more and more discouraged that no one is reading. I spend an average of 4-5 hours every Sunday writing around 1,500 words, and while I love the five or six of you who read these posts every week, it’s just not enough. I could use this time better, even if it just means watching a movie by myself.

So, what does this sabbatical mean, and how long will it be for? Great questions! The answer is: I don’t know. Obviously it would be great if I could keep to a Sunday schedule and work on a book. I have an idea for what I’d like to do, but A) it’s daunting to write a book, especially when I only have myself to motivate me, and B) once I’m done and have something resembling a manuscript then I still have to face the inevitable rounds of rejection. It’s honestly enough to make me not even try, since what’s the point?

But that kind of thinking is defeatist and won’t ever get me what I want: a published book. So we’ll see. Maybe for the next month or so I’ll just completely veg out on Sunday mornings and reclaim that time. Or maybe I’ll keep working. And if anything big or major happens, I might even write a blog post. I don’t envision this being the end of the blog forever, but posts will become much less frequent than the once-a-week schedule I’ve established prior to now. (If you haven’t already, please scroll to the bottom of this page and enter your email address to subscribe — that way you’ll receive an email the day I add a new post.)

Before I go, I just wanted to remind everyone to keep voting. Vote in every election you can, not just the big ones that happen in November. Vote in primaries. Vote in special elections. Because it’s clear that Republicans don’t want you to vote. Iowa State Representative Bobby Kaufmann admitted that there were no problems with the November 2020 election in his state, yet he favors a bill that narrows the window for early voting, closes polls an hour earlier, and limits the number of ballot drop-off boxes to one a county. It’s a bill that looks remarkably similar to the many, many other ones that Republican-controlled legislatures are passing across the country. The thing is, these are unnecessary solutions to problems that don’t exist.

This quote by Kaufmann from the article I linked to above says it all: “The ultimate voter suppression is a very large swath of the electorate not having faith in our election systems. And for whatever reason, political or not, there are thousands upon thousands of Iowans that do not have faith in our election systems.” Yes, hmmm, I wonder what that “whatever reason” is that people might not have faith in Iowa’s election systems? They’re creating false boogeymen to scare or instill doubt in people, then swoop in to offer a proposed solution.

Now here’s the thing: I get it. I’m totally in favor of having secure elections. But guess what? We already have secure elections! It turns out our current system is incredibly effective at preventing things like ballot tampering and voter fraud. We don’t need new measures on top of what we have. Any additional restrictions only serve to make it harder for certain types of people (particularly Black people and people who live in cities) to vote. I wrote a post back in January 2020 highlighting a few of the big takeaways from Carol Anderson’s book One Person, No Vote. If you haven’t already read that book, please do. Anderson does a great job of illustrating why these voter restriction laws disproportionately affect POCs. My only real criticism of the book is that if you are more conservative-leaning, I can see how Anderson’s writing could turn you off. Her tone is very much like she’s preaching to the choir, which isn’t the audience I think she should be aiming for.

Anyway, the main reason I want you all to keep voting as often as you can is that we must continue to fight the good fight. November 2020 was great, and I’m so happy that Trump lost, but the work isn’t over. There’s so much more that needs changing, and the only way we’re going to do that is to keep voting. I might be going away for a little while, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up. I hope that you, too, don’t give up, even in the face of discouraging or demoralizing news.

Stay well, friends, and I’ll talk to you later.