The Write Stuff
Tavi Gevinson is just delightful and thoughtful in this interview by Lauren McCarthy over at NYLON. To wit:
In your last editor’s letter, you spelled that all out pretty clearly, including the business end of things. Do you regret being so open with the public about the backend of it all?
It was a relief. As a writer, it helps me to be able to imagine the future me who will be writing about whatever horrible experience and being able to find the aspects of it that were unique or funny or excruciating and knowing that other people will see it and connect with it. I feel like the luckiest person in the world that for years I have had some stable of people who, when I write something like that, they're listening. So it was actually a relief to be able to be transparent and have some kind of control about the way the end of it would get told as a story.
…The irony is that I never made money from Rookie. I lost money from Rookie, and in a way, after a certain point I was bankrolling Rookie with money I made from influencer gigs where my job was to look like a successful girl boss. I had a lot of shame about that, but now I'm also able to see, well, that's the world we live in. Of course, it would be a lot harder for an independent women's media publication to survive than it would be for a 20-year-old skinny, white girl to be in an ad campaign.
Anyways, I was not a good business person, and that needs to be said.
Since I decided to do this site, I have been having a blast reading other writers’ takes on their own work and brand (blech). I felt so intimidated for so long at all the talent out there, no joke. But what Gevinson and all other contributors did with Rookie, and as a teenager! no less, it’s the coolest. She loved that work, it ran its course, Gevinson is still having a few runs with it, and good on her for doing so!
I hope to have the same poise going forward with my own labors of love. Not only does it take some gumption to share one’s work (writing, painting, whatever), it also requires an equal amount of gumption to acknowledge a “walk away” point and of course actually doing it.
