Thanks to all the new subscribers! I did promise to do a writing critique for some folks when I hit 200 subscriptions. We’re getting close. Spread the word.
This week I had the lucky experience of talking to someone who uses my sociology of gender textbook in their class. That textbook was the first real book I wrote, the one that got me started down this path again. If I can write a textbook, I can write a novel, right? I said to myself.
When I’m tallying up my writing accomplishments, I often ignore the textbook, even though it’s the book that has both been read by the most people and has made me the most money. When I wrote it, I wanted to take all the best stuff from my own gender class and put it into book form. I wanted to raise questions rather than answer them, which is where the title comes from—Questioning Gender.
Textbooks are not seen as the most exciting writing, but I tried to make mine interesting. The person who used it in their class said the students like it, often making statements like, “Well, Robyn Ryle would say…” That is a delightful thing to think about (maybe a little scary, too), young people channeling me in their conversations about gender.
The writing life will give you many, many defeats and disappointments. As in life in general, it’s hard to hold on as tightly to the good stuff as we do to the bad. I will dwell for days on a rejection. But praise? I think about that for five minutes and then move on.
But here I am trying to do better. Trying to lean into feeling good about a textbook, which students enjoy and learn from. I’m trying to hold that sensation cupped in my hands for as long as I can, before it slips away.
Beautiful!