"Dear Grom" author's notes

In the tradition of posting an anecdote or notes about writing a story when it’s released, here’s a thing that happened to everyone writing between 2016-2022.

Note that this post CONTAINS A SPOILER for Dear Grom. If you wish to go in entirely unspoiled, read Dear Grom first. Now is not a bad time!

So, Dear Grom itself was an absolute joy to write. I got to romp around in my childhood and teenage TTRPG stomping grounds, I got to play with the epistolary format, I had a lot of fun with cheesy jokes, and I went back to my roots of the repressed self-hating gay character which is an archetype near and dear to my heart. Writing process was great, no notes.

My writing group was supportive and had good criticisms of the first draft, as always. Except for one piece of advice that was good professional advice, but awful artistic advice. The advice was roughly ~‘I was super onboard the whole time until I realized Kragnor isn’t trans, he’s just a repressed gay guy. That’s the last generation’s struggle and no one cares now, get with the times, this story would do much better if he’s trans.’

So, first of all, I was a little bit offended to be given advice that boils down to “chase the market.” Authors are constantly told to never chase the market. By the time you’ve finished writing your novel chasing the hot new trend the trend will have moved on and you’ll be left holding the 100th Hunger Games clone when the hot new thing is Dragon Bondage. We’re always told to write what is important to us and trust that the passion will win over audiences. Here I was being told to sacrifice my artistic soul in a mercenary chase after money. What’s worse, the money in writing is so pathetic that you’re selling your soul for less than minimum wage!

But in addition, his repression is a key part of the story. “I may be gay” is not a conceivable thought to him. Taking away that repression would mean changing the person this story is about, it wouldn’t be this Kragnor, it would be someone else with the same name. And to make Kragnor trans would, in addition, require an overhaul of the society he came from as well, because ain’t no trans folk coming out of his rigid barbarian society short of a full Drizzt Do'Urden arc. There is no way to make Kragnor trans and unaware of his transness. To change that fact would entirely change every aspect of the story. It’s literally a different story.

But the worst part is the suggestion wasn’t to replace Kragnor with a different character and rewrite the story. It wasn’t to start over the world building and forge a barbarian society that is softer and gentler and could allow for this type of character. It was to just alter a few lines to make it clear to any reader paying attention “ooooh, Kragnor is trans!” Which is just insulting. It’s either insulting to trans folk (cuz it apparently doesn’t mean anything to be trans) or is insulting to any reader who cares about narrative arts (cuz they are presented a world that is incoherent because the author thought chasing publication-favors was more important than making a story that feels true).

Yet this was not only in all seriousness what was being suggested, and the thing is, my fellow author was absolutely right. And I knew it. Everyone in the industry knows it. Everyone in our critique group knew it was happening every day, and that we were quite a bit less likely to be published if we didn’t follow suit. If you want to be published then including the appropriate social messaging makes a huge difference. It’s not a secret, it’s explicitly asked for, and you can see the filtering process at work in what gets published in case you had any doubts. My fellow author had first hand experience and some clout in our group, as she had a two-book deal that was represented by an very hot literary agent. She had gotten that agent and that contract in part by writing a decent novel, and in part by embracing the favored social agenda with wild abandon.

Thus the honest, actual advice I was given. The most effective way to be published is to destroy the soul of the art we claim to care about.

I toyed with the idea. Being published in the hot venues getting all the awards is really seductive. I wrote a draft that would let the reader think “oooooh, maybe Kragnor is trans!” if they really wanted to and didn’t think about it too hard. I reread it several times. I tried adjustments and minor edits. I wanted to think I could just throw in that uncertainty and let people think what they want. What could it hurt?

I took those changes back out. It felt too dirty.

In the end the story stayed what it was. If it’s not cool, well that’s fine. I’m a nerd in my 40s now, I don’t need to be cool. The main result of this incident was that it accelerated the growth of my then-nascent revulsion for the SF publishing industry. Turns out that trying just a little bit of baby-sacrifice to Moloch leaves a really bad taste in the mouth. I advise against it. If you really feel the need, try it out with just a few baby-toes, where no one will see and where you can easily reverse it. Giving up your soul publicly makes it very hard to reclaim, and in this industry the riches you get for it are non-existent and the friends you get… they weren’t ever actually here to make friends. :/