Not the Application Letter to Send to LLF
I like to write a couple of biographical statements when applying to residencies and workshops and such, to get up to speed, as it were. Here’s the first draft that I won’t be sending along.
Unless everyone thinks it’s great, that is. *wink*
Writer’s Statement
Don’t waste your time with this application. Just move along to the other ones. I’m the guy who comes in just below the cut, most of the time, anyway. See, I used the word “anyway” in the preceding sentence—what world-class writer would deign to do such a thing? I’m sure I earned that rejection from Lambda Literary last year. I’d bet good money, or the $8.27 in my pocket, that someone in LA actually laughed at my 2012 writing sample, but not in a good way. It’s like that time I lost in a talent contest in a Syracuse gay bar—I did my best stand-up act, and some drag queen with a goatee got the bouquet of roses. Heck, I failed to make the finals in the Lammys this year, even though my category only got four finalists when usually there are at least five—meaning that my memoir wasn’t even good enough for the darkened pixels on a screen to spell out “finalist.” And it’s hard to lose out to a book titled Teeny Weenies.
This is my longstanding tendency, after all. Twenty years ago I pissed off Mary Karr when I screwed up a vinaigrette at the English Department potluck and we all had to drink three liters of water because everyone was dehydrating from the salt level. English Department faculty do not like having their water levels wicked away by fucking salad dressing—that’s what alcohol is for. Mary was nice about it, at least, and of course I combed through Lit looking for a reference to my shoplifting arrest at the local Wilson’s Leather store while I was hanging out with her favorite poetry student, until it hit me that hey, this book isn’t about me.
It also wasn’t about me when I was passed over for that Interlochen scholarship when I was seventeen. Sure, it would have been a much more glorious senior year experience than the one I had at that moldy, underfunded Catholic school in Trenton, where I fended off sloppy kissers waiting for the afternoon bus. It spurred my creativity enough simply to pretended that the pleated, acrylic brown-and-gold kilt I had to wear wasn’t my mortal enemy. I may have transitioned to being a man just because of that uniform.
I get that the building blocks of literature, the writing workshop, isn’t about me, either. I’ve never stood out in a discussion of work, so I totally understand why the committee will pass over my application again this year. No hard feelings. I don’t have that Infinite Jest voice. I’m about as edgy as a microwaved marshmallow. I couldn’t even keep a nipple ring on my body for more than a year. There are sure to be more capable, hungry trans and queer writers out there who will apply this year who are writing about the LGBT experience in such fascinating ways that my stories about generations of trans people look pallid in comparison. The best advice I ever got in a workshop was from the drunk instructor who stopped reading my story after the second sentence. “Make it sound more real,” he said. Or at least I think that’s what he said. He slurred a lot. He was going through a divorce and it was a hard time for him. But to this day I ask myself if my words sound real enough.
Come to think of it, perhaps I’ll get enough out of applying again, even if all I’ll receive is a short form letter, misaddressed to someone named Richard. I know it’s not personal. I’ll keep writing stories and novels and a bit of memoir. I’ll keep fielding calls from queer and trans youth who got something heartening out of my words, and I’ll continue to respond to every email from them. Because at the end of the day, those people are why I work so hard to be an author. They’re why I publicize other writers’ work, and encourage reading in this community. It would raise my craft considerably if I could spend a week learning from Samuel Delaney, because shit, this manuscript about four trans folks who try to build a school for LGBT kids is pretty crappy so far. But I admit I’m going into this application ready for rejection.
My apologies for the time spent reading this. I know the committee will never have this time back, and I feel badly about that.
