How I’m Informed is a look into the reading and learning habits of people from all walks of life.
Alana Massey is a writer who covers identity, culture, technology and relationships. Massey's work has appeared in publications like NYMag, The Washington Post, Vice and will soon be publishing her first collection of essays. She tweets regularly on these topics as @AlanaMassey.
What is your daily reading habit?
I read the highest volume of quality work when I keep only three tabs open in my browser: and those usually default to Gmail, Twitter, and one article when I'm in reading mode. I choose the people I follow on Twitter carefully and there are a reliable set of thoughtful users from across a diverse range of professions and literary interests whose reading recommendations help me cast a wide net. This means that I get the most important news of the day but will also experience writing that is artful, inspiring, and surprises me. I bookmark these recommendations and then read them throughout the day, one at a time. I make it a habit not to toggle back and forth between the story and my inbox or social accounts because I want to be carried through an argument, story, or experience uninterrupted so that I can be more immersed in the world the writer has created, whether it be engaging in a particular politics related to our modern crises or in a fictional setting that magnifies an existing reality.
I read books on the subway where my phone has no service or in the evening with electronics physically away from me. Some might see this as an environmentally unfriendly habit but if a piece is over 5,000 words, I print it (double-sided of course!) and put it in a folder and label it. This is especially true of stories I’ve been instructed to read over and over again because I anticipate wanting it as a reference, an object I can hold. I’m sentimental on this point and feel that if a writer has put that much into a work, it deserves to live in the world as more than digital ephemera.
What tone or mood best reflects our generation's literature?
I think there is a chronic, almost compulsive self-awareness permeating much of our generation’s literature today that I’m not sure how I feel about. It is valuable when executed well and absolutely tiresome when done poorly or for its own sake. In both fiction and literary non-fiction, I see writers inserting sometimes explicit and long-winded caveats about the limitations of their perspectives or through narrative flourishes that are meant to acknowledge that the writer knows who they are and what it means for them to be writing in the space that they are. In some ways, it inadvertently just says, “I am totally not qualified to be writing this.” If a writer feels the need to trip over their own feet to make it clear that they know they are merely human and come from a particular history or perspective, then they should reevaluate whether or not they are the person that should be writing this essay, book, etc.
How would you explain the current literary climate to tomorrow's young aspiring writers?
I feel like there is not a single climate so much as there are climates: many overlapping ecosystems within the literary world are in conversation with one another but remain distinct so to take the temperature or pulse of the industry is almost impossible. Since I am really put off by all the cynicism and discouragement that comes from so many established writers, I want to say this to young writers: the industry is not dead and there is absolutely hope for your voices to be heard, for your labor to be compensated, and for our world to be made bigger for having your words in it. All that good cheer aside, if you were not born to hustle hard and hustle shamelessly, writing is not for you as a career. You can’t just be a genius, you have to be a prolific genius with a massive digital footprint.
I started at smaller websites with low rates that were part of an emergence set of alternative literary and media outlets. These places mean that more people are breaking into the literary and media worlds but the problem is that they are not being paid enough or at all and they aren’t being seen by the audiences they deserve so getting published in the magazines, papers, and sites that can pay them fairly and give them an audience remains difficult. So I wrote at an extremely high volume without sacrificing quality in my early days while also working at a strip club and copywriting to make ends meet. I would never have made it as a writer without all three.
There is also an entrenched establishment that is still in the infant stages of recognizing that we need not only diverse voices and people who are saying something new among authors but in publishing houses, among editors, and at the management level of the institutions that have influence because of their size, age, and reputation. I am encouraged by people outside of this establishment calling it to task but I also think that those of us who are inside it – people with attractive book deals and contracts, editors, publishers, and critics– have the greatest responsibility to hold ourselves accountable and that people are really unwilling to do that because they realize it will make us less special or even obsolete.
Can you share a challenging moment you experienced while drafting your latest collection of essays? How did you solve it?
I realized fast that writing essays that will live together in one collection is very different from writing essays that will stand as their own independent pieces of art or criticism in magazines and websites. When thinking about this book as a single unit that needed to add up to more than the sum of its parts, I became acutely aware of my reliance on a very particular vocabulary: one that is heavy with superstition and magic. It is language to which I am drawn as a reader and that I am confident using because it is a natural articulation of a worldview that draws heavily from religion and fantasy. As I read through the essays, I saw that I had overused variations on things like kingdoms, phantoms, and shadows in a way that felt like a gimmick covering over a lack of versatility.
I felt a momentary panic that I was a fraudulent one-trick pony and went Googling for solace and found an article on the repetitions in Lana Del Rey's lyrical universe. I adore Lana Del Rey's music and the persona she has created so realizing how certain colors and characters appear over and over again in a way that builds a world that is no less textured or dynamic because the same images reappear made me feel like there was a way of maneuvering within my worldview that could do the same thing. I went back through and thought about how effective the use of these words really was, asking myself "Are they building the world and establishing the worldview you want to create?" I removed or replaced them when they were crutches I was falling back on rather than bricks that were building upward. The result is that despite it being several distinct essays, it is a collection with a thematic string tying together a recognizable style and texture.
Anything else you'd like to add?
I worked maniacally and am comfortable calling myself a talented writer and these things certainly helped me get where I am. But I also know that I landed in the institutional arms that I did in large part due to the advantages of whiteness, thinness, education, etc. I feel that too many people in the same position stop their activism at acknowledging these things, pat themselves on the back for their self-awareness, and keep going on their merry way. The reality is that those of us who have had success need to be evaluating our necessity in this space and really considering what role we should be playing in the literary world. If we are honest with ourselves, sometimes that means that we should stop writing about one of our signature topics because writers of a different race, national origin, generation, or gender identity are now better qualified. This is why I stopped writing as much about feminism and sex work: I said my piece and my continued writing on it resulted in someone else’s silence. Some people are scared that this is a call for our own extinction but I see it as a call for our evolution, we can shift into areas where our voices and skills are not tired or obsolete. When I started realizing this and passing on these jobs and suggesting more qualified, newer writers to my editors, it massively expanded my opportunities. Too many people fear that facilitating in the careers of other writers cannibalizes their own when in reality, it forces them to immerse themselves in new ideas and ways of thinking that make their worlds bigger than they could have imagined.
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