Salty Little Miss: On the Power of Writing Out of Spite

I’m never more talented than when I’m working out of spite.

As a collegiate debater, I was at my most eloquent only when my opponent was bringing the heat. As a dog owner, my pup and I only started earning ribbons to clap back at the shade we were getting from a white couple and their Labrador named for a Disney princess.

(I Got 8 Agent Offers; Then, My Book Died on Sub.)

And as a writer, I wrote a revenge book after Pitch Wars rejected me.

The first time around, I’d gotten a request for the full, and though I knew I shouldn’t (and actively told myself I wasn’t) I developed expectations. I read the request email again and again, mulling over how to tell my husband the good news—where should we go to dinner? What should I wear to the speakeasy-themed cocktail bar, the one where you have to whisper your reservation to a tinny voice on a rotary phone in the back? Should I dress sexy or mysterious?

Ultimately, I ended up telling him about my failure in pajamas. They were not sexy pajamas. I paid $400 for a guy on Fiverr to tell me what was wrong with the book. I skimmed his notes, flinching at a red comment: “You’re better than this.”

I stashed away the novel and scrubbed bird crap off my patio furniture, blinking hard, feeling like a salty little goblin. I scanned the list of Pitch Wars mentees that did not include me and set up shop outside, tucking a blanket underneath me because the patio furniture was still damp from the sponge.

Starting a new book inside by the warm glow of a little wood stove was also an option, but salt goblins enjoy the drama of making things difficult. Winter in the Pacific Northwest is wet and dark, and I enjoyed that too. The plume of steam from hot buttered rum. Numb toes. Rain dotting an oversized sweatshirt. Explosive barking as the dog chased rats off the porch. Throaty howls from an obnoxious neighbor who barked back.

If only those Pitch Wars mentors could see me, I thought, squeezing out a new story through cold-chapped fingers. It was an attractive line of thought, like telling myself my exes remember me as the one that got away or the dentist who only admired my bottom row of teeth must’ve realized the rest of my mouth was beautiful, too.

This pettiness kept me warm through drafting the book that would become Listen To Your Sister. This pettiness got me selected for Pitch Wars in 2021.

My mentor was a horror aficionado and my first-ever fan. We talked movies with the fervor of die-hard devotees. We argued if an Irish film was a feminist triumph or trauma porn. That energy translated to revisions, where I manifested her wouldn’t-it-be-fun suggestions into reality. She’s the expert and I’m just a baby, I reasoned. If this wasn’t the right direction, wouldn’t it look wrong on the page? Wouldn’t it feel wrong coming out?

My mentor’s advice was sound. Her critique was kind. Enthusiastic. I was working hard, making the most of the opportunity I’d been given. So why did I feel a little lost?

In middle school, I took dance class to get out of gym. That was the wrong call. Gym class consisted of stretching and mat kickball—the bases were long blue mats and you were safe as long as you fit. The dance teacher recorded our choreography then berated each girl by name where we went wrong. “Neena, you’re off beat,” she’d say, circling my fuck-ups with a red marker, and I wished I was crammed on the blue mat in gym class and safe.

Pitch Wars was a similar sense of exposure. Dancing in a group, the mirror amplifying my step-ball-change and insecurities. A camera recording. A red marker.

Under my mentor’s guidance, I began to see how this skin-crawling vulnerability could elevate my story. It’s a Final Girl’s weakness becoming strength that separates her from an extra, someone that could die off-page in the woods and you wouldn’t care. For the thrill to be genuine, I would have to set conditions where the characters have to give everything. Moreover, my mentor’s influence and delighted horror-movie chatter reminded me that the descent into fear was supposed to be fun.

I re-wrote half of the book—inside this time, I’d earned the right to be warm by getting into Pitch Wars—and bit my nails to the quick through the agent showcase. My husband and I celebrated and I wore dark red lipstick to the speakeasy with the rotary phone.

When I reflect on my time in the program, I linger on the generosity of the community, the overwhelming talent and expertise in the cohort, but mostly fixate on my malleability. I didn’t think for myself. I was too motivated by my mentor’s approval, by the dopamine boost that came with her crying-laughing emojis on Slack.

Listen To Your Sister came from failure. It was a maelstrom of anxieties from a time when I felt unmoored and stressed and rosy with love. A time when I faithfully followed the recipe, but the chicken didn’t look right. When I tried convincing tech bros to care about philanthropy and ended up raging in the car instead. My stockings always had holes and my texts were glibber than I felt. When you’re better than this applied to so much of my life.

I reviewed the edit letter I received shortly after Pitch Wars started, but this time, I implemented my own solutions. I re-wrote the same half of the book again. It was terrifying and exhilarating, like dancing in that mirror, but this time I was alone. This time, I had space. I wrote outside again and I was warm. Tingling even, as I sent the revised novel back.

There. Reject that.

I’d felt lost in Pitch Wars because I was lost. Somewhere along the way, I’d stopped writing for spite and started writing for validation. Writing this way earned me an agent.

But writing for myself earned me an editor.

In Listen To Your Sister, mid-twenties Calla Williams is overwhelmed after becoming the guardian to her teenage brother, Jamie. She counts on her middle brother, Dre, to help, and is disappointed. The siblings are marked by their many failures to tend to themselves and each other. They pay for it. The tension explodes when they escape to a remote cabin, and it’s here that I kept the best of what I learned in Pitch Wars: vulnerability and fun, hold and release.

Now, I get crying-laughing emojis from readers on Instagram. I’m nervous as hell in a way that makes me understand my middle school self a bit better—pirouetting in a group was still less anxiety-inducing than teeing up the kickball alone. Maybe my inner goblin liked the challenge of the dance teacher, the next-level bitch who power-tripped over children. Maybe it takes a grudge to tease out my best.

I don’t always like this part of myself, but this salty little miss is necessary to keep me from losing my shape in the subjectivity of the publishing industry. 

Check out Neena Viel’s Listen to Your Sister here:

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