The Gate Was the Product

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700

Nobody anointed this. No imprint vouched for it. No agent shopped it. No editor at a masthead you’d recognize read it first and decided I was worth a slot. I wrote it, I published it, and the only gate it passed through was the one between my draft and the internet, which is to say no gate at all. I mention this not as a sovereignty flex — plenty of unvouched-for writing deserves to stay unvouched-for — but because it’s the vantage point for everything that follows. I’ve spent a working life making things — books for publishers, apps that shipped under other companies’ names — plenty of it the kind of work that gets anointed, none of it under my own name. I’ve been in the rooms; I was just never the one they stamped. That’s a useful place to stand when you want to ask what the anointing was ever actually worth.

Gatekeeping on Michael Morrison

The Gate Was the Product