Privilege is often called luck
Yesterday, I sat down to read Zoe York’s Romancing Your Brand: Building a Marketable Genre Fiction Series, and she impressed me immensely with one of the most incisive opening salvos ever included in a writing book. To whit: The truth is, writing is hard, and publishing is a brutal business—and not always a meritocracy. To survive, and thrive, you need to be tough. You need to believe in yourself and trust your gut. You need to see through smoke and mirrors. You need to shut out all the noise, and find your own path. But it’s just not that simple, because that takes resources and support. You need a solid platform in life in order to get a really good leap. I know that. I struggle with the reality that there are a lot of asterisks on good advice. Mental health, physical health, financial stability, access to opportunities—they all factor into our ability to do what someone else has done.
