Within a week, we received an email from an editor in the UK asking us to turn it into a book, and within the next month we got a literary agent, wrote a book proposal, secured a US deal as well, and started writing the book. We wrote the whole 12,000 words (of jokes!) book from the end of March to June, then edited in July and August, and then promptly turned to marketing.

For comparison, a book usually takes 1.5 to 2 years from acquisition to going to market, and we are doing it in 8 months. So it’s been happening almost faster than we can reconcile it, while also all working full-time and running The Belladonna together! But given that we already collaborated and spoke every day for the site, we had our rhythms and strengths locked in. The book is satirical feminist erotica and meant for feminists and those who love them…who are hopefully also feminists.

Basically, if you believe that there are inherent inequalities in society that need to be addressed, and you want to both laugh and fume at the same time, we highly recommend this book. We think the jokes and situations we satirize will be familiar to a lot of people, whether the twist is having a doctor finally believe your pain, or a version of the Genesis story where Eve doesn’t listen to a talking snake, or just that someone breastfeeds in public and no one cares.

You know, things that are currently fantasies. In fact, the entire US title for the book is New Erotica for Feminists: Satirical Fantasies of Love, Lust, and Equal Pay.

We will be touring with the book from November to February, working on expanding the site, and teaching some workshops. So I’m going to be stepping back from teaching for a bit to focus on my own writing for a few months. That feels great!

How do you decide if something you’re writing is good?

I love this Ira Glass quote, because I think developing your taste level is as important as developing your writing chops. It’s always hardest to teach people who aren’t sure what they are trying to do, or who can’t tell when they’ve hit the mark or not.

I’m VERY critical of my own work, and now the metric I use for evaluating it is: 1) Is it clear what I am trying to do? 2) Have I been specific and pointed throughout? 3) Have I been honest with myself about the amount of work I’ve put into this, or am I just desperate to be done? That last one is really where I feel I’ve come a long way–now, I don’t try to lie to myself when something is done or good, I can objectively evaluate it and know. Once I feel the draft is strong, but not completely done, I almost always send it to a friend or one of my sisters to do a final read and get feedback on it. Then I polish it up from there.

I know you were based in Portland for a few years. Any marked differences between Portland and Brooklyn?

Yes! There was a huge lack of diversity in Portland in so many ways–racially, culturally, and in terms of conflicting viewpoints. I found it very stifling creatively to work in a place where people all agreed on the same things, and where there wasn’t a lot of patience for viewpoints that made people feel uncomfortable or made them question their beliefs. For a satirist, that is death!

Coming from Chicago, where so much satire focused on the problems the city was facing, it was very strange to me that audiences couldn’t find any humor in laughing at themselves and admitting that the city had some real and very big problems. There are just so many more voices chiming in in Brooklyn and New York–I enjoy the feeling of talking to someone and knowing they don’t agree with me.

What are you reading?

After a long period where I was reading creative “self-help” style books like Essentialism and Deep Work, I’m now back to reading a lot of fiction and non-fiction. I just reread Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp, which is one of my all-time favorite memoirs. For my book club we read Lolita, A Suitable Boy, and Swing Time in the past few months. I’m about to start The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon, and All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung. Now that I’m done writing a book I can read again!

Are there any ideas you wish you had time to act on but haven’t yet? Do you think it will become possible to act on them in the future?

I always wanted to write a book, and now through a very strange and fast way, that came to be! I would love to write more short humor books like this, and I still have the dream of writing a longer comedic novel some day. I have one I’ve been working on for a few years, but it’s not my forte! So I would need to take a class. It’s a satirical look at the self help and wellness industry. I think about it and take notes a lot, so I do think in the next few years I’ll be able to crank out a first draft. It’s percolating!

Do you consider yourself an artist? Should artists starve?

Yes, I consider myself an artist. No, artists shouldn’t starve, but I do think it’s unrealistic to think that you will be able to make a livable salary freelancing without any experience behind you. The work I did in offices, fundraising, teaching, copywriting–all that taught me a lot about deadlines, dealing with clients, handling workflow, etc. And at the end of the day, SO many things that come your way as an artist are from the people you know. So working a full-time job for several years and building your contact list can be incredibly valuable in the future as your cohort all starts to rise at the same time. I do think after gaining some contact and experience, people can start to dip their toe into freelancing and making more money from their art and see if they can come up with a sustainable source of income from it.

Having been a part-time professor at a college, I don’t think being a professor is a full-time job anymore for anyone but a lucky few. I think I will probably hold more full-time jobs in the future, but when I return to freelancing I will always be patching together income from a variety of different sources. Almost no one I know who is an artist makes their living exclusively from their art, and that’s fine–the metric for being an artist in my mind isn’t if you make $100k a year doing it, but if you’re DOING IT.

Willow Paule is a documentary filmmaker and photographer.  She shares monthly interviews with insightful creative people on her blog, Willowpaule.com, which includes practical tips and insights into their workflow and creative practices. She also writes about creative risk-taking, which she believes can change our world in small and large ways.

She received a BFA with a concentration in photography and a certificate in Southeast Asian Studies from Arizona State University in 2004. She is a Fulbright alumna and teaches in the US, in Asia, and on the web.

The original text of this article can be found here, https://willowpaule.com/new-erotica-for-feminists-interview-with-a-satire-writer-caitlin-kunkel/