The genre has never taken to me. Fellow authors, editors, yes. Fans, not so much. I don't do something that they want or need. I don't think what I write, or was in later years pushed to write, fits the template or whatever it is.
So there's that. One of those writers who never quite found the niche. When I write what I really want to write, the syndrome is even more acute. Writers and editors love it. Fans give it a huge yawning Meh.
I don't mind being niche, at all. But the way the niche was carved and narrowed for me, especially the way in which that narrowing was explicitly gendered, is all too clear in hindsight.
Re: healing
The genre has never taken to me. Fellow authors, editors, yes. Fans, not so much. I don't do something that they want or need. I don't think what I write, or was in later years pushed to write, fits the template or whatever it is.
So there's that. One of those writers who never quite found the niche. When I write what I really want to write, the syndrome is even more acute. Writers and editors love it. Fans give it a huge yawning Meh.
I don't mind being niche, at all. But the way the niche was carved and narrowed for me, especially the way in which that narrowing was explicitly gendered, is all too clear in hindsight.