I was young when I first started using words to avoid reality. The earliest examples can be found in my teenage journals which, while not quite fiction, display a decidedly ambivalent relationship with the truth. I wrote around the subjects of my sexual orientation and gender identity as if I were doing an intricate dance through a field of landmines whose existence I was refusing to acknowledge. I wanted to be like everyone else—a girl who was into boys—so I wrote copiously about being a girl who was into boys. Any indication that I was the exact opposite is notably absent from the thousands of pages I wrote. Scribo ergo sum. If I didn’t write it, it couldn’t be true.
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I stopped writing in my journal a couple of months before I got married, concerned that if I wasn’t careful I might write myself out of the happy ending I’d so meticulously orchestrated. Ten years, one marriage and four children later—just after I told my therapist I might be a lesbian—I opened up my journal and started writing again. I was about to voluntarily step on the first of the landmines, and I was fully aware that I wasn’t the only person who was going to get hurt.
I wrote this new journal in the third person, as if I could only cope with the unfolding events by pretending they were happening to someone else. After a while I began to wonder whether it had the bones for a memoir. I had no idea how the publishing industry worked, but I thought if I wrote a good enough manuscript someone would publish it, and I would make enough money to support myself while I wrote the next book, and the next, and the next. I wanted permission to write everything I’d never been allowed to say, and in my naivety I believed the easiest way to get it would be by turning my hobby into a career. I’d like to justify this level of credulity by saying I was young and foolish, but unfortunately only the second of those adjectives is true.
I joined a local writing group. My new teacher advised me to write as if I were talking to one person, but I wanted the book to have universal appeal, so I ignored this advice. He also told me that it takes the average author around five years to write their first book, and that book almost never gets published. Nonsense, I thought. It’ll take me a couple of years max, and I have a killer story: married mother of four comes out as a lesbian, divorces husband, meets woman of her dreams. It would be deeply harrowing, but also full of wit and humor. It would expose everyone who’d ever wronged me, and I’d triumph as the heroine who found her happy ending. Who wouldn’t want to publish that?
As it turned out, everybody. The manuscript was virtually unreadable, a long-winded, pity-party full of righteous indignation and purple prose. It was so bad the couple of agents to whom I sent it didn’t even personalize their rejections.
I had spun a story around myself that had allowed me to achieve everything I thought I wanted—including my new happy ending, this time with a woman.
I started revising. Occasionally I’d bump into an agent at a party, or be introduced to one through a friend, and I’d send them my latest draft. I became increasingly familiar with replies that started with “I very much enjoyed reading your manuscript, but…” or “While there is much to admire in your work…” It didn’t take me long to learn that this was a generic rejection, a polite formality which meant the agent hadn’t read past the first page.
A little late in the game, I wondered whether it might be a good idea to find out what readers were looking for in a memoir, and after a bit of research I discovered it was full access to the writer’s soul. Providing this didn’t sound like a very appealing prospect. I had spun a story around myself that had allowed me to achieve everything I thought I wanted—including my new happy ending, this time with a woman—and I wasn’t going to give it up without a fight.
But somewhere deep down I knew I had to make a decision about whether I wanted to write lesbian romance or memoir, and although I didn’t want to look at myself with the degree of scrutiny a memoir clearly required, I also didn’t want to write genre fiction. Somehow I had to figure out how to take my readers into the parts I’d never even been into myself.
Just as I reached this crucial stage, Roxane Gay published Hunger. She’d alluded to her childhood trauma in earlier essays, but while promoting Hunger she talked about how she’d forced herself to write directly into the experience, rather than skirting around it. I recognized I was bumping up against the same problem myself, and so I started to study the way Roxane wrote, searching for a new approach.
One morning, sitting at my keyboard with my eyes closed, I forced myself to relive an early scene in the book, this time allowing myself to embody an unfiltered version of the experience. Then I wrote fast, without thinking or giving myself time to manipulate the words into a format that would fit my female-protagonist narrative. When I re-read what I’d written, what I saw staring back at me was the possibility that I might be a man.
I briefly wondered whether I could confine this revelation to the page, but writing this way felt like rising up to the surface of an ocean and taking a gulp of air before sinking back down again. The underwater world felt heavy, thick and muffled, and I began to understand why I’d always felt like I was on the verge of drowning.
Surfacing out of denial didn’t come without consequences, and my happy ending disappeared as quickly as the relationship around which it had been written.
I started to notice how often I used language to disguise the truth. I was a master at writing cryptic sentences that alluded to or hinted at what I was experiencing without telling the reader anything directly. And this wasn’t just on paper, it was in life as well. To break this habit, I started to write not only about my darkest secrets but also my most shameful traits: my weakness and stupidity, my cowardice and fear. Soon this method of writing began to feel as elemental as breathing. Every time I burst through the surface of the water the air tasted sweeter. Like an early amphibian, I was writing myself out of the sea.
Surfacing out of denial didn’t come without consequences, and my happy ending disappeared as quickly as the relationship around which it had been written. I took some time out to recover from the heartbreak—and to transition—and then got back to work. I threw out the old manuscript and started again from scratch, this time focussing on my gender identity rather than my sexual orientation. Starting anew was a surprisingly easy decision to make, not least because it meant I’d passed a significant milestone as an author: I’d just spent five years writing a book that would never be published.
I continued writing for another three years. In time I started to receive more encouraging agent rejections, with actual editorial feedback. Because I had no formal training in writing I was largely teaching myself, so these comments were useful in showing me where the manuscript was still falling short. Every time I felt my confidence drop, I reminded myself that it just meant the manuscript wasn’t ready yet, and every personalized rejection gave me something new to work with.
I knew at some point I’d have to bite the bullet and send out the manuscript en-masse. I also knew this would be a do-or-die moment. You only get one shot with each agent, and if everyone rejected my manuscript, then it would be game over. After eight years of writing I now had more confidence in the quality of my work, but I worried about quotas. Several agents had responded to my query by telling me they already had a queer or trans author on their books, and my writing might be in direct competition with theirs. It was my first experience of the perils of being a marginalized writer.
One agent I kept returning to was Malaga Baldi. She was an old-school lesbian who’d been in the business for over forty years, and most of her authors were counterculture or queer, so I knew the quota issue wouldn’t be a problem with her. I also knew she wouldn’t want me to simplify my experience into a more traditional trans narrative, which I was worried a more commercial agent might ask me to do.
I sent Malaga a query, but got a brief message in response telling me her slush pile was as high as her ceiling, and I shouldn’t hold my breath: if I was lucky, she might get to it sometime next year. I finally decided to go all-in or bust. I queried over fifty agents, and for the most part was greeted with either generic rejections or silence. I knew I needed to follow every connection I had, but I’d used up the few contacts I had in the publishing industry during those early years, and I was running out of ideas.
You need to get over your fear of asking people for favors. If you want this book to be published you’re going to have to rise above your British reserve./
When I shared my problem with an old friend, Janet, she came up with a plan that at first I flatly rejected. Janet had introduced me to Liz Gilbert’s late partner, Rayya Elias, when I first came out. Rayya was one of the most creative and charismatic people I’d ever met, and although our differing lifestyles kept us from forming a real friendship, she took to sending me regular messages of encouragement through Janet. I was touched and grateful for her support, and a little heartbroken when she passed away a few years later.
Janet reminded me that Rayya had promised to introduce me to her agent when the manuscript was ready, and suggested I reach out to Liz, who had the same agent. Absolutely not, was my first response. I’d never met Liz, why on earth would she do me a favor like this? Janet pointed out that Liz spent a large part of her time promoting the work of other writers, particularly marginalized ones, but I still couldn’t bring myself to do it. You’re being too English, Janet said. You need to get over your fear of asking people for favors. If you want this book to be published you’re going to have to rise above your British reserve and start being a little bit more bold.
So I tentatively reached out to Liz, who—as Janet had predicted—immediately agreed to honor Rayya’s promise, and suggested I send the manuscript to her agent. By this point I’d discovered who her agent was—Sarah Chalfant, the God of the publishing industry—so this felt like a somewhat ludicrous thing to be doing, but I figured Janet was right: if nothing else, at least was an exercise in courage. A few weeks later Sarah responded by saying she loved the manuscript, and while she couldn’t offer me representation (obviously, because she’s God) she thought it might be a good fit for Malaga Baldi. Funny you should say that, I thought. Because I thought so too.
By this time my mass send-out had started to pay off, and I was getting interest from other agents. Some were too big and I worried that I’d get lost among their more famous authors, some were too small and I worried they didn’t have enough experience. If we’re comparing agents to bowls of porridge (which we probably shouldn’t) Malaga felt like the agent who was just right. Her agency was small enough for me to believe we’d be able to develop the kind of personal relationship I wanted, but she’d been in the business long enough to know exactly what she was doing.
I forwarded Sarah’s letter of recommendation to Malaga, and she replied within the hour asking me not to sign with anyone else until she’d read the manuscript. The following week I got an email that began, “Oliver, I am very interested in the memoir, but…” My heart sank—I was way too familiar with these kinds of opening lines by now to know they didn’t lead anywhere good—but it turned out she’d fallen off her bicycle, was in ER waiting for an X-ray, and hoped I could wait until she got back home for us to talk. That improbable fantasy where the person who’s ghosting you might be in hospital, for once happened to be true.
As soon as Malaga got out—plaster-cast and all—I signed with her. I admit there was some dancing around the room and singing jubilantly. For the first time, I began to believe this book might actually have a fighting chance.
Just as I was starting to lose hope, I woke up to a press release announcing that Roxane Gay had started an imprint at Grove Atlantic.
We spent the next year editing the manuscript down to a manageable length. I worried that it wasn’t quite done, but Malaga reassured me that all writers felt that way. You just have to let it go, she told me, and so I did. She started submitting it to editors, and I counted the rejections as they came in. We’re not sure how to market it, they said. We don’t know who your audience is. I couldn’t argue with that, because neither did I. Writing to a universal audience had left the manuscript too broad and unfocussed, and I was still writing from a defensive position, worried about being rejected, judged or misunderstood.
Just as I was starting to lose hope, I woke up to a press release announcing that Roxane Gay had started an imprint at Grove Atlantic. Almost instinctively I knew what I had to do. If I imagined I was writing for Roxane—and Roxane alone—I could not only push through the fear response, but also tighten the manuscript into something that felt clearer and more sharp. I called Malaga and asked her to pull the manuscript from submission. I was going to re-write it one last time, and this time I was going to go there, wherever there was.
This final draft took nine months to complete. My friends thought I was crazy. I wasn’t even sure myself whether I still believed this book would ever be published. I was an unknown, middle-aged, recently-transitioned man with no formal training who had sat alone at his desk for almost a decade writing into the void. But at some point during the process I’d stopped writing for a future outcome—a published book, a royalty check—and started writing purely for the rush of endorphins I got when I constructed a sentence that managed to convey something that felt like the truth. I was bringing myself to life on the page, not only for other people, but for myself as well.
Half way through this revision I took a break to go to the theater in New York. When I took my seat, I realized—incredibly—that Roxane was sitting a couple of rows in front of me. Go and say hello to her! my companion, Lev, urged. Introduce yourself! Make an impression! I resisted—I’m not the sort of person who tends to accost total strangers in pursuit of personal gain—but Lev all but pushed me down the aisle, until I found myself standing in front of Roxane. Aware that the power dynamic between us was all wrong if I was standing and Roxane was sitting, I got down on one knee and put my hands over my heart—which was beating fit to burst—at which point I realized I looked as if I were about to propose. Aware of how ridiculous this must seem (particularly since Roxane’s wife was sitting beside her) I babbled incoherently about wanting to put a “name to the face” on the manuscript I was about to send her, rather than a face to the name, neither of which would have been terribly useful since I was wearing a mask at the time. Roxane, however, was remarkably gracious, and said she looked forward to reading whatever I’d written.
Eventually I turned the manuscript in to Malaga, finally certain it was complete. I didn’t believe Roxane would actually read it, but I was grateful for her help in getting it where it needed to be, however oblivious she might be to the part she played. A few weeks later I was driving back from the grocery store when Malaga called to say Roxane had made an offer. I yelled an unprintable expletive so loudly I almost crashed the car. This is not a dignified response, I know, but dignity was one of the many things I gave up in my quest to become a better writer.
In trying to educate myself about the machinations of the publishing industry, I read a lot about how getting published is a combination of hard work, perseverance, contacts, and good luck. It had taken me almost ten years of hard work to get the manuscript into a shape that was publishable, so I knew I’d developed the necessary perseverance, but without the kindness and generosity of all the people who used their contacts and experience to help me, it might still have ended up collecting dust in a drawer.
I also discovered that this process takes courage. I had to figure out how to learn from every rejection rather than take it as a personal failure, to use each piece of criticism as a way to improve my work, rather than as an excuse to throw in the towel. I had to find the strength not to be discouraged, to believe my work could be good enough, even if it wasn’t yet. And I had to step outside my comfort zone, to ask people for help and to trust that if one person couldn’t help me, sooner or later—if I didn’t give up—I’d find someone who could.
I don’t believe in manifestation, or that I might somehow have willed this book into being through sheer force of determination, but I do believe that focussing religiously on a specific outcome can sometimes produce seemingly miraculous results. In this case, I could only achieve the focus I needed by narrowing my audience to one person. Without Roxane Gay, Frighten the Horses might never have been published, not only because she’s my publisher, but because without her I might never have written something worth publishing.
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Oliver Radclyffe’s Frighten the Horses is available now from Roxane Gay Books.
