Ain't That a Shame

On shaming and being shamed in the literary world.

This is about shaming and being shamed, which is something I’ve been thinking about lately. Well, to be honest, it’s all day, every day, out there in the wild wild west that is the internet, right?

Some of the things I’ve seen people criticizing recently: celebrities going to space, celebrities writing books, and writers teaching writing.

I get it. I have my thoughts about these things, too. I am not sure I will ever be over the Blue Origin debacle. I was happy to see aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe and former NASA research rocket scientist and activist Amanda Nguyen have the opportunity to experience weightlessness and view the Earth from 62 miles above its surface. But much of the rest reeked of privilege, a lack of a true appreciation for the experience, and tone deafness. I don’t see how the flight was a win for women. Shame on them.

And I’ll admit, it’s hard to see celebrities like Reese Witherspoon and The Rock, both of whom are people I absolutely adore, get major book deals based on their names alone. The writers I know—such beautiful writers—have spent years honing their craft and beating their heads up against the publishing wall trying to break into an industry they’ve devoted their lives to. I have friends who’ve written incredible memoirs, but the publishing industry wants the safer bet of memoirs written by celebrities with big platforms. So yes, it stings when I see someone whose celebrity allows them to cut the line. I wonder how an actor would feel if Jesmyn Ward or Colson Whitehead were handed a film role they really wanted. (Also, yes please.) How much is enough? Give someone else a chance, you know? Stay in your lane—or at least put in the work to merge into the other lane.

But then I think about the years of work they’ve put into building their names and their brands. They weren’t just handed these opportunities, when you think of it that way. They’re savvy business people, and they earned them. How can I really begrudge them using whatever they’ve earned to reach their dreams? I certainly use whatever I have at my disposal in an effort to reach mine. Book publicist Kathleen Schmidt points out that, in theory, these big books help pay for smaller books, but she also notes that this likely doesn’t result in a publisher buying more books by debut authors, and it likely does result in a huge marketing budget for the big books that leaves a lot less left over to publicize the smaller books.¹

As a writer, I’ve had my own share of privilege. Virginia Woolf wrote, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” I am fortunate to have both of those things. I have a good day job. I have a nice office, and thanks to my oldest son, I have a really nice computer and a really nice laptop—he’s a techie and keeps me hooked up. I was able to go to university and then to graduate school, where I was able to devote two years to studying creative writing. I was privileged to be able to gift that to myself. I’ve been able to pursue post-graduate studies in writing, book coaching, and copyediting. When my book is published, I expect I’ll be able to hire a publicist to help me with marketing. Sometimes I shame myself—how dare I complain about anything?

Others shame me, too. Some shame MFA programs in general, and some shame writers like me for having an MFA. Some shame me for charging writers for my help. I occasionally see well-established writers I admire shaming me and others like me for trying to make a living in writing-related endeavors like coaching and editing. I see comments about writers like me hanging out a shingle and calling myself a book coach, inferring that it’s predatory. It stings, and the imposter syndrome starts rising up in my chest. But then I remind myself that I put in the hard work to get here, and I remember that they probably haven’t read my resume—they’re just guessing I’m not qualified because they’ve never heard of me. And then I remember that one of the reasons I do what I do is so that I can help writers who don’t have the time or the money to pursue all the writing education I have pursued, by sharing the things I’ve learned. I try to pay it forward, and I do a lot of pro bono work.

But sometimes, I’ll be honest, I quietly shame others who don’t seem to have put in the work. I do this as a knee-jerk reaction, when I haven’t read their resumes and don’t know anything about them or their lives. That’s not fair of me, and I quickly remind myself of that. I don’t know what they’ve been through. Shame on me.

There is a plenty of shame to go around.

When I became a paralegal, the profession was brand new. I came in on the ground floor 40 years ago, and I was involved in groups that helped shape the future of the career. I earned an Associate Degree in Paralegalism through a two-year program accredited by the American Bar Association. But back then, I didn’t need that education to get a paralegal job. Anyone could call themselves a paralegal then, just like anyone can call themselves a book coach today.

The next question was whether the State should require paralegals to be certified. The initial gut reaction was to require certification, to make it harder, and to, in effect, put up barriers for others who wished to become paralegals. Why? Well in part to build a good, quality reputation for the profession, but also because requiring certification meant less competition for jobs, fewer qualified paralegals, and better pay for those of us who were certified. My knee-jerk reaction was to think about me and myself, and that seems to be human nature, to act in self-preservation at first—I see a lot of that going on in the world today. But being part of a community requires going beyond that initial reaction. I realized those feelings came from a scarcity mindset, a fear that there wasn’t enough to go around. So, at that time, back in the 1980s, we collectively decided not to push for certification requirements. We decided to come at it from a desire to be inclusive, not exclusive.²

Back then, I was certified as a paralegal, but I didn’t have to be. Today, I am certified as a book coach, but I don’t have to be. Those were choices I made for myself because I feel a responsibility to do what is within my control to be the best I can be, but also because I love education—I’d go to school forever if I could. I wish there were a career that consisted of going to school. Now and then, I consider pursuing a Ph.D. in English Literature. So those were choices I made for myself, but they were choices I was able to make for myself because I could make those choices.

I struggle to make my point here, or to even know what my point is. In a way, I’m thinking out loud and processing it all as I write. But I guess my thoughts are something like this: I don’t begrudge celebrities using the names they’ve worked hard to build, in order to garner opportunities for themselves, but I hope they will use those opportunities they have to work with established authors to learn to write versus just putting their name on a book written by someone else. And if they don’t participate in the writing, I hope they will take into consideration what impact putting a branded product out into the world might have on the publishing industry and writers. Either way, I hope they will use their celebrity to support and lift up other writers who don’t have the same opportunities they have. These are things to consider.³

Are my feelings at least partly grounded in the fact that I’m querying my own book and not having much luck so far? Maybe. Probably. Perhaps I can’t be objective enough to consider the issue from all sides as an aspiring debut novelist without a platform, an agent, or a book deal. Perhaps it’s all sour grapes on my part. These are things to consider, too.

I’ll close by saying that I love Kathleen Schmidt’s observations in her piece “Do We Need Celebrity-Branded Books?” (1) that “it would be interesting to see a big publisher facilitate a collaboration between a debut author and a celebrity ….” (yes please!) and (2) that actor Sarah Jessica Parker (SJP Lit, an imprint of Zando) is “smart enough to know she’s a brand that matters without overshadowing the authors she supports.” More of that, please.

“Shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do,
not the circumstances that life puts on us.”

—Ann Patchett

NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

GOLDEN QUILL WRITING CONTEST
The Golden Quill Writing Contest is open now through June 30th for entries in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This year’s judges are Juliet McDaniel, whose debut novel Mr. and Mrs. American Pie is the book upon which the hit Apple TV+ series Palm Royale is based; Deanne Stillman, author of many nonfiction books, including Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave; and SLO County Poet Laureate Caleb Nichols, author of Teems///\Recedes.

CENTRAL COAST WRITERS’ CONFERENCE
Please join me at the Central Coast Writers’ Conference, September 26th & 27th, in sunny San Luis Obispo, California! I’ll be speaking on a panel about finding your writing tribe on Friday and presenting two sessions on Saturday, one on the who, what, where, when, and how of publishing short pieces and one on funding your writing career with grants, fellowships, and residencies.

“Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.”

—Anais Nin

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Ten Sleep (coming 6/24/2025)
This is the second novel by my friend Nicholas Belardes, author of The Deading. Here’s a little blurb from bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones: “Open these pages and fall into a cattle drive up in the high lonesome country, where it’s not just the cattle and the work that are challenging—here there be monsters, too.”

Absolute Pleasure: Queer Perspectives on Rocky Horror (coming 9/16/2025)
This anthology includes my friend Trey Burnette’s piece “A Rather Tender Subject.” The essays in Absolute Pleasure … explore … [the] complicated legacy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, along with queer and trans joy, sexuality, family, generational understandings of queerness, and what we do with our problematic faves.

Vicious Cycle: A Thriller (Corey in Los Angeles) (coming 10/21/2025)
The debut novel by my friend Jaime Parker Stickle. A former reporter gets a new spin on life in this gripping debut from author Jaime Parker Stickle, whose psychological roller-coaster ride set in sunny Los Angeles tackles motherhood and murder.

Only Way Out (coming 11/04/25)
A luckless thief’s wrong turn becomes a crooked cop’s fortune in a wild ride of a thriller by New York Times bestselling author (and my MFA thesis advisor and friend) Tod Goldberg.

“Shame and humiliation are self-imposed emotions,
and from here on out, I choose not to feel them.”

—Xiran Jay Zhao

SOME THINGS FOR READERS

Shame Is the Poison, Not the Antidote
(Karen A. Parker for Karen’s Letters)

Fading to Grey: On doppelgangers and facelessness
(Wendy Varley for Wendy’s World)

Book People Are the Best People: Some thoughts on a great bookstore in London
(Jennie Nash for The Art & Business of Book Coaching)

I Want You Back: On First Love and Michael Jackson
(Michael A. Gonzalez for Oldster)

“Shaming is one of the deepest tools of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist
patriarchy because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis.”

—bell hooks

SOME THINGS FOR WRITERS

Do We Need Celebrity-Branded Books?
(Kathleen Schmidt for Publishing Confidential)

Lean into the Lemons: How Detail Powers Scenes
(Allison K. Williams for The Brevity Blog)

The Rise of the Submission Industrial Complex: Chill Subs’ Benjamin Davis Looks into the Economics of Submission Fees
(Benjamin Davis for Literary Hub)

What Does it Mean to Be a Writer?
(Brian Gresko for The Lit Lab at Memoir Land)

“Grace means that all of your mistakes now serve a purpose instead of serving shame.”

—Brene Brown

Leanne Phillips
Writer | Book Coach | Editor
​leannephillips.com

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1. Kathleen Schmidt, “Do We Need Celebrity-Branded Books?” Publishing Confidential (5/16/25), https://kathleenschmidt.substack.com/p/do-we-need-celebrity-branded-books

2. We eventually worked with the California State Legislature to develop legal requirements for calling oneself a paralegal because the California State Bar started pushing for regulation of the paralegal profession. At that point, it became a choice between either participating in the process and having a say or allowing the California State Bar to impose regulations on our profession without our participation.

3. As I write this, Taylor Jenkins Reid, a real writer, recently signed a five-book deal with Simon & Schuster for $40 million. This, too, will impact the publishing industry and writers, and probably not in a good way. See award-winning critic and journalist Jan Harayda’s “Taylor Jenkins Reid’s $40 million book deal is bad for writers,” Jansplaining (6/13/25), https://jansplaining.substack.com/p/taylor-jenkins-reids-40-million-book