What Would You Say... You Write About?
You’ve heard of an elevator pitch, right? Whether you’re pushing an invention, a business idea, or a book you’ve written, an elevator pitch is supposed to be a sentence or two that accurately describes your idea in a compelling manner — in a way that makes the listener want to learn more and then throw money at you to make your dream a reality. I have been failing at writing an elevator pitch for years.
If I’d had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter.
~ Not, apparently, Mark Twain. Also, not a lot of other people. I had no idea I was delving down an Alice-In-Wonderland-sized rabbit hole when I googled the origin of this quote.
A writer friend of mine often classifies my work as “female empowerment.” He’s an expert at marketing and branding, an area at which I am remedial at best. It’s definitely one not-incorrect way to read my first novel, The Way It’s Supposed to Be (out later this year from Yard Time Publishing). This is how you find people with whom you can partner to further a shared cause — with succinct recognizable phrases that get them excited. But I’m uneasy with this classification; it doesn’t cover everything.
It’s a conundrum.
I want to accurately describe my writings, but accuracy often leads to rambling vagueness that understandably loses people.
My friend has rightly picked up on my interest in gender issues. And I have realized that, even though I may be telling a funny story about my sister knocking over the Christmas tree or bitching about gratitude, there is always an element, a part of the mood, that addresses gender roles.
Though I talk about gender roles in the context of household responsibilities — who’s expected to do the laundry or mow the lawn — it goes beyond that in scope and subtlety.
For instance…
Sometimes I’ll realize toward the end of reading an article that the gender of the author is not what I expected. (Nice reference to the name of this newsletter, April. I didn’t do that on purpose, I swear.)
I’ll have assumed, for instance, that the writer is male without consciously realizing it. It’s only when I discover the writer is female and surprise myself by being surprised that I realized I’ve made an assumption.
Side Note:
I really wanted to provide an example here, but in searching, I instead found this irrelevant but hilarious McSweeney’s article about school COVID policies in the first months of 2022. A woman wrote it. I guess. I mean, the author’s name is Karen, so…Yeah, I’m still making assumptions. Well, at least now it’s relevant.
There’s never a concrete reason for my gender assumptions in the content of the article; it’s always the voice of it. If the sentence structure and tone are more assertive, action-driven, casual and humorous, I tend to think the writer is male. If there are more emotional words in the text and the writer is more self-reflective, I assume female. I have been wrong both ways.
To help eliminate my focus on a writer’s gender, I consciously try not to “write like a woman.” Or a man, for that matter. I neither want to stay in my lane, focused only on the touchy-feely, using qualifying words and phrases like…
If that makes sense?
Nor do I want to write reactionarily (Spell check says that’s not a word. Fuck spell check.) and turn into a word bull in an internet china shop.
I want to write like a person.
I don’t want to pull back because I’m afraid of seeming too brash, and I don’t want to plow ahead and ignore nuance and feelings for fear of seeming too…. girly, I guess. And I’d like to stop assuming the gender of the writers I’m reading. It’s a process. These ways of thinking are well ingrained in our cultural fabric. We all grew up with them.
Through all these mental meanderings, I still haven’t come up with an effective elevator pitch for what this newsletter is about. A person asked recently, and I said, “It’s about lots of stuff, whatever’s in my head, you know…” Not a ringing endorsement; she’s probably not going to subscribe.
What it’s about is myriad.
Side Note:
In tenth grade, I cheekily defined myriad as “a plethora.” The kid behind me grading my quiz asked the teacher, in front of the whole class, if that counted as correct. She rolled her eyes and said, “no.” Her definition was “a lot.” I blushed in embarrassment.
She was one of my favorite English teachers, and perhaps I needed to be taken down a notch off of my show-off vocabulary pedestal, but in the interest of correctness, I call bullshit. This article proves my case. Suck it, Ms. Manning. (No, I’m not bitter about this one quiz in 10th grade English 32 years ago.)
Sorry, what was I saying? Oh yeah, the content of this newsletter has a PLETHORA of meanings. It’s about…
the fact that life is rarely what we expect;
the things we don’t talk about when we run into each other at the grocery store;
prompting people to reflect on why they think and act the way they do;
what’s underneath the pretty cover of social media we present to the world.
And yes, it is about gender roles and gender expression. Even when I’m not writing about it, I am writing through it.
Person-First Thinking
That’s my goal for all of us. It would solve a lot of problems in households, neighborhoods, countries and across the planet. Maybe that’s the umbrella under which all of this mess I write about lives. I’m trying to point out how we are all, in many senses, the same. How we can relate to each other’s feelings and motivations no matter our gender expression or any other differences.
We don’t have to pretend to be perfect or to have all the answers in order to be heard, respected and accepted as part of our communities. But I also don’t want to erase those differences as we did with the well-meaning but deeply flawed colorblind approach of my school days. Differences ought to prompt curiosity and listening instead of judgment or ignorance. (a bit on the colorblind approach in education and what it lacks)
It’s always hard to see the forest for the trees.
I am so enmeshed in my own writing — my writing, in a sense, is me — so how can I really pull back and take a panoramic view of what it’s about? I’d love some input. I know I have a handful of longtime readers. How would YOU describe the content of this newsletter and its predecessor blog, Riding the Wave? Little help?
Thanks, y’all. Happy New Year.
You’re welcome for not bombarding you with another article about how to make resolutions and keep them, entitled “New Year, New You.” In case that WAS what you were looking for, here are the thousands and thousands of Google results for articles with that title. But IMHO, your old you is lovely.
Your writing is funny, witty, thoughtful, introspective, and timely. It causes discussion, and introduces other links that I, otherwise, would not find.