I can’t put this on twitter (prime location of men who threaten me), so I’m using Substack, forgive me if I delete it. A running thread in my next book is a lot about the misogyny I experienced online, partly in connection with my last one. I want to leave the full force of my anger in. I want to leave a record too, of my rage at the silence that a lot of people respond to misogyny with or worse, tacit encouragement. It broke my faith in a literary scene as a community. But I also live in reality; I know reviewers are unsympathetic to these complaints or see them as “internet drama”. Especially when a book about living in a world about complicity and atrocity indicts them (and myself!) in the process. Part of me wants to withdraw, bulletproof the book into abstraction, play it safe. The other part of me, the furious part, will never let her. I’m staring at my draft with one section left just wondering if I can push this one out without breaking the pact with myself that I would always choose difficulty.

PS— for the women I know online who have experienced literary misogyny, how do you ever live with the fact that so many apparently decent people are silent? How do you keep going? I’m honestly asking in despair here.