Tag Archives: publishing

Form, Meaning, and Semi-Precious Weapons

October 21, 2010 by Michael | 2 Comments

How conscious are we of why we publish what we publish?  Let me unwrap that convoluted English: why do we write in the form of a poem  Or a short story?  Or a novel?  Not in terms of the need for artistic human expression, but a question of craft and choice: why do we decide to go with a long narrative as opposed to, say, free form experimental poetry?

This is a question we’ve been tossing around like a football at a tailgate (oh, does this remind you that Gameday is coming to CoMo?): flipping the rhetorical pigskin back and forth, enjoying the exercise, but no one is examining our throwing motion.  So to speak.  Patrick Lane explored the role of publishers in a digital age, and on our Facebook page, Rob Foreman asked why anyone would publish in an electronic format.  What’s the benefit of all this?

Rick Moody wrote his story “Some Contemporary Characters” on Twitter, each sentence in 140 characters, for several weeks.  I didn’t read the story on his feed but in the pages of Electric Literature, one of the best new literary journals.  Moody’s story wasn’t very good: the story was reprinted with each tweet as its own paragraph and the experience of reading it in a hard copy was, at best, choppy.  Did the EL editors or Moody consider editing the piece, pushing the tweets into paragraphs, or adding anything to the original “text”?  I have no idea and I would guess not, but I’m not sure how much it would have helped.  The story read like what it was: a series of short feeds conjured day-by-day.  It didn’t have much coherence or rhythm.  The reading experience was like reading someone’s experimental writing exercise: one can see the ideas at work but that doesn’t make it greater (better) than the sum of its parts.

In writing, form and meaning are always closely linked.  To oversimplify my answer to Rob’s question, I like electronic publishing for writing that I need to digest quickly: news and such. Literature?  Not so much.  The form doesn’t, to me, help the meaning, the experience.  But that’s me.

Let’s bring this back to good old fashioned hard copy.  I was recently chatting with writer Nicholas Ripatrazone about basketball and literature.  Baseball and boxing have been long time staples of American literature.  Football?  Basketball?  Not so much.  Searching for something basketball related, I came across John Edgar Wideman’s book Hoops Roots, which is a “genre-defying” book that is sparked by Wideman having to, at the age of 59, end his pickup basketball days.  The book is a series of meditations that go from memoir to non-fiction to fiction to who-knows-what-else, comparing basketball with writing, memories of his Pittsburgh childhood; his marriage and his children; African-American music, a little bit of everything.  I’m not exactly sure what “genre” the book is, or even if it matters what we call it.  And I’m not sure if it even works: I’ve only read the first “section” (not that reading the whole book has ever stopped me before from commenting on it).  But it’s definitely not just a sports book (which, as a rule, generally aren’t very good).

And in the opening section, Wideman writes:

Different pieces come from different places–read them in sequence or improvise.

I’m guessing this book isn’t like Cortazar’s Hopscotch (what is?) or even that the form chosen here is necessarily meant to be a pleasurable challenge for the reader.  I could be wrong.  I’m often wrong.  Wideman is a writer who has shown a willingness to experiment and play with form, not just as a writer, but as a publisher, too.

Wideman experiments on the micro level, too.  In the first twenty pages or so, I’ve noticed that Wideman eschews questions marks at the end of his interrogative sentences.  Why does he do this?  I have no idea.  But I find it frustrating.  I don’t know if there is a good reason, or even any reason, behind this choice, but reading Hoop Roots, I remembered that I’ve noticed this in Wideman’s stories before, and never quite understood the point.  Best guess?  The lack of the question mark forces a pause and consideration of the sentence by, strangely, not using the question mark at all.

Recently, in my composition class, we read George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language.”  Orwell writes:

Correct grammar and syntax … are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear

Big Brother watches everything except your commas.

I disagree.  I disagreed loudly until my students nodded their heads in agreement.  Form and meaning: the lack of correct grammar and syntax, deliberate or not, has meaning, has suggestion, and one that the writer (and, consequently, reader) should be paying attention to.  How the sentences are structured is what helps to make the meaning clear.  Done right, grammar and syntax can work seamlessly to make the reading experience smooth, rhythmic.  All of our choices as writer’s matter.  Even if that choice is one of style.

Which is what I think Wideman is after.  One of my favorite writers, Andre Dubus, used semi-colons.  Lots.  Probably too many.  Nonetheless, I dig semi-colons, and like using them.  Do I use them correctly: linking two “closely related” independent clauses?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no, I’m sure.  But I’m always using them for an intended effect, a purpose, not some random choice that I toss into my work just for the hell of it.  Whether it means the actual physical delivery of the work or the actual labor of putting our thoughts into our stories and poems, form and meaning are always going to be intertwined.

Michael Nye is the managing editor of The Missouri Review

Panel

October 18, 2010 by robertlongforeman | 2 Comments

I participated in a panel on Thursday, in which I was to read some of my work and talk for a little while, with the audience and the panel’s two other writers, about how to publish one’s writing. This took place at a small local college, and the turnout was good; the room was small, but it filled completely, which means at least fifty people attended. That’s not bad, for a relatively small town.

I always feel funny giving publishing advice to young people. This is in part because I am young myself, and I am nobody, to boot. It’s also because I’m wary of encouraging anyone to publish who hasn’t been writing for a while. Some people say that one should experience life and the world before writing and publishing – I say, forget life and the world, which will harass you and make you a reluctant part of it whatever you do; worry instead about sending a piece of writing out before it’s really finished – something I’ve done at least once, to my ultimate dismay. Years ago, I worked at a dog food company, wrote about it, published the resulting work, and looked at it again, months later, only to realize I could have written it much better with more time. Listen to me complain about something good happening to me – my signature move.

The Q&A was the part of this panel most worth blogging about, because the questions were all very good, and in most cases difficult to answer. Here are some: How do you know when something you’ve written is ready for publication? Is there a venue for publishing part of a screenplay? Is self-publishing a more viable option for an aspiring writer than it has been in the past? How does one negotiate the need to sometimes let a piece marinate in neglect, to be judged with fresher eyes later, with a pressing deadline, or the simple need or desire to publish sooner than marinating would allow for? We panelists struggled to do justice to these queries, and as we did I tried not to make a fool of myself, because everyone was watching.

My big question, in the wake of helping my fellow panelists field these questions, is, where does one go to have questions like the above ones answered, if one is not part of a writing program, or is not closely acquainted with an editor, or some such person, or does not have access to panels led by three graduate students, whose knowledge is inevitably limited? Surely there are resources – blogs, and publications like Poets and Writers, The Writers’ Chronicle, etc., to turn to, but what if you’ve never heard of those magazines, and a writing program is out of the question? What if you’re writing in a vacuum?

I suspect there is a very good and obvious answer to that question, but it’s not coming to me right now, and the other night I encountered a few people who appeared to be in the same boat.

Robert Long Foreman, The Missouri Review’s Social Media Editor, is available for publication panels, social events, and weddings, though he has been busy with some things lately.


The Grimy Way

October 4, 2010 by Michael | 2 Comments

Last week, I finished reading Tom Grimes’s new memoir Mentor about his twenty-year friendship with writer Frank Conroy.  Beginning with Grimes living in Key West and meeting Conroy right before he applied to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the student-teacher relationship becomes one of admiration and respect, and then love and friendship, as both men deal with the falling short of the tremendous expectations for their books (Season’s End for Grimes, Body & Soul for Conroy).  Along with his relationship with Conroy, the narrative focuses on the writing, sale, and publication of Season’s End, and how what appears to be a guaranteed success ends up slipping away from Grimes.

The part of Mentor that was most riveting to me was when Grimes and his agent Eric Ashworth, who worked in Candida Donadio’s agency (she represented Mario Puzo, Thomas Pynchon, and Robert Stone, and Joseph Heller’s, to name but a few), sold Season’s End.  Grimes and Ashworth accept an offer from Little, Brown: $42,000 for the North American rights.  This happened while Grimes was still in the Workshop.  Season’s End was reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly, admittedly a mixed review, and a feature was done on Grimes in People.  Meanwhile, on the west coast, Grimes’s play, Spec, was going to be the first planned play in the revival of the Hollywood Met Theatre.

Oh, almost forgot: Grimes’s first novel A Stone of The Heart was reviewed by the New York Times Book Review and named a Notable Book of the Year.

So, approximately one month after the release of Season’s End, it’s strange to read that Grimes believed that he was a “proven failure.” He writes:

A year after Season’s End’s publication, its paperback edition was nonexistent. Twenty-two hundred hardcover copies had sold.  Thirteen thousand were remaindered. And Little, Brown had recouped only forty-four hundred dollars of my forty-two thousand dollar advance.

Does anyone else find this amazing?  This wasn’t that long ago: 1992.  How, exactly, did this happen?  Grimes explains.  Keep in mind that he’s from New York, lived for years in Florida, and was based in Iowa City:

Little, Brown arranged a brief, odd book “tour.”  I would read in Dayton, Columbus, and Toledo, Ohio. Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Iowa City, Iowa. And Madison, Wisconsin.  Also, the novel’s publication date coincided with major league baseball’s opening day, meaning it would be released with fifty other “baseball” books.  Little Brown’s marketing strategy seemed to involve keeping the book a secret in large cities, and confusing reviewers by having it arrive for reviews along with Timmy of the Little League.

Weird tour plan, isn’t it?  Here’s a big reason way: the editor that championed Grimes’s book, Pat Mulcahy, left Little, Brown shortly after Season’s End was acquired, leaving the book without a vocal supporter within the publishing, which can be a death knell for a writer.  But, along with all this, what really struck me, both with Grimes and Conroy a few years later, is how critical it was to get a glowing review from the New York Times.  The failure to get Season’s End review at all devastated Grimes, a fixation for both men that bordered on obsession.

Here’s the thing.  Reading all this, I kept thinking how quaint and old-fashioned all of this was.

Think of all things Grimes couldn’t do.  There was never any discussion in the book of hiring an independent publicist on commission.  Grimes didn’t do any other touring if Little, Brown wasn’t paying for it.  Grimes couldn’t use the Internet, still in its infancy, to generate buzz; this was even before AOL sent you discs to your that physical mailbox at the end of your driveway so you could dialup for $19.95 for a month.  He couldn’t engage his audience because he couldn’t find his audience.  Think about it: the hotshot rising star at the most prestigious writing program in the country, whose play attracted Ed Harris and Holly Hunter, whose first novel was a Notable Book of the Year, whose new book was on Little, Brown, could not find an audience.

That’s amazing.

I don’t know if the Internet could have saved Grimes’s novel (or that Grimes’s novel even needed to be “saved”).  After all, it’s not gone: you can find it on Amazon because, with online stores, books aren’t really out of print and unattainable anymore.  For all the hits publishing has taken the last two decades, for all the bad news that has been dumped atop the heads of editors and writers, let’s keep this in mind: some of these changes can be a tremendous benefit to us.  Living in today’s age, Grimes would have a great website, have a blog (and post to others), a Facebook page and a Twitter account, maybe Digg or ReddIt, too, along with, I dunno, a GoodReads account and Grimes could bang out a couple of podcasts with his Iowa buddies.  He’d have a pretty good email list, maybe even a physical mailing list, of people interested in his work.  Thanks to Google, he could find independent bookstores in any area of the country.  He could even make a book trailer.  This isn’t a good thing.  This is a great thing.

None of this completely replaces the fullcourt press from a major publishing house.  Nothing can or will, but unless you’re J.K. Rowling, those days are over.  The Hollywood hype machine has taken over publishing, and with all the books released each year, a number that increases exponentially, we get a gargantuan amount of noise about really mediocre—if not outright bad—books.  And distinguishing yourself as an author in all that noise is a big challenge.  As authors, though, we can do it.  If we can finish writing a good book (note: this is the most important thing), we absolutely can find an audience that wants to read our stories.

And the tools to do so our already literally right in front of you.

Michael Nye is the managing editor of The Missouri Review.

Unearthing The Bones

September 22, 2010 by Michael | 5 Comments

Yesterday, I came across a quick post on The Bark, the energetic blog of Willow Springs.  Kathryn Houghton posted briefly about Philip Pullman’s scathing response to the heavy usage of present tense narration in three of this year’s Man Booker’s Prize nominees.  Kathryn asked a pretty simple question: So what?

I started to write a response in the Comment section, realized I had to go to teach class, bolted, and have been chewing it over ever since.  Usage of the present tense can be found in literature going back to the Greeks; it’s not a brand new phenomenon that has recently been unearthed in the Nevada desert (though that would have been really cool).  But the present-tense has become more commonplace in short fiction over the last couple of decades and gained popularity in the novel.  If nothing else, it is certainly a trend, and when writing moves in a generally accepted direction, we should take notice.

In fact, others in the literary world already have.  Subtropics, the literary journal out of the University of Florida run by the writer David Leavitt, has this on their submission page:

A preponderance of the stories coming our way are written in first-person present tense; we are starting to grow weary of this perspective. Please keep this in mind.

That’s been up there for at least two years now.  Why do we see so many of these present tense stories, and why are they making magazine editors cautious?

Let’s first get this out: it does matter.  In literature, form and meaning are intertwined, and the choices a writer makes are significant.  Everything in a story is the writer’s decision; nothing is preordained.  A story’s setting, point of view, protagonist’s gender, narrative voice, and any number of other nuts and bolts (or bricks and mortars) of a strong story should be chosen with deliberate intent.  All of it matters.

So it would be nice to be able to safely assume that present-tense, then, is a choice.  But in the present-tense stories coming across my desk, it rarely feels that way.  Instead, it often feels like a short cut.

In the fiction writing classes I’ve taught, present tense seems to be the default when the story lacks narrative drive.  Present tense, my students say, creates immediacy, makes the action more visceral, keeps the reader in the moment, and add tension because the narrator does not know how her/his story will end.

All true perhaps, but more often than not, present tense feels gimmicky.  Take the last example of the narrator’s knowledge of the story’s events: the idea is irrelevant in the third person (the third person narrator of course knows how things end) and second person is often nothing more than first person weakly disguised.  In the first person point-of-view, a character that knows the outcome has an amazing strength to focus on things that seemed irrelevant in the moment, but with hindsight, are quite significant.  Great memoirs seem built, at least in part, on this idea.  Instead, a present tense story makes me feel as if I’m reading a play.  And, fiction isn’t a screenplay: writing for the stage or film is an entirely different form, one that is interpreted by the actors and director, with minimal prose other than stage direction.  Why would fiction want to replicate this?

Present-tense seems to be a default mode for someone who isn’t carefully considering the style choices being made.  It flattens the story.  It flattens emotional and narrative distance and lacks the sense of shadowing, the illumination and darkening of a character’s world that strong narratives can create.  The narrative choice suggests that there is nothing to remember about the past (and the past, to badly paraphrase Faulkner, isn’t ever really in the past) and nothing to expect of the future.  There’s a smoothness to this flattening of time and distance that leaves whatever has transpired before page one of the story as wholly irrelevant.

Further, the present tense restricts the narration and, consequently, the writer.  This restriction is deliberate, I’d argue, constipation from tackling bigger and broader events by eliminating the possibility of there being anything else that the characters (and, consequently, the narrator or the writer) must be conscious of other than the Here and Now.  Opening up the story to the past takes courage and confidence, a writer’s willingness to chisel back into the past for the bones of the story.

Perhaps it’s indicative of our modern lives.  As Americans, we love saying “That’s history”, a ridiculous dismissal of knowledge and tradition because as an American, we know what we know, and don’t need all those books and all that schoolin’ (or something like that).  This modern age-ism also highlights what might be the biggest influence on writing: the silver screen, which might be one reason why the present tense has become the popular default.  Films taught us how to quick grasp shifts in time and place, leaping from one character to another, one era to another, experience non-linear events rapidly, and encouraged us to demand media to entertain us rather than engage us.

Can present-tense stories work?  Of course, they can.  The Missouri Review has published plenty of them.  Good editors can’t be dismissive of a story (or poem or essay) because of some preconceived notion of what stories should do or must do.  Breaking expectations is one of the aims of good art.  But when we choose a form, we must choose wisely.  Otherwise: well, here’s your silver screen moment.

(We really aren’t obsessed with Indiana Jones.  Honest!  We just dig his hat.)

Michael Nye is the managing editor of The Missouri Review

An Incomplete Narrative (Or, Mutiny On The Bounty)

August 25, 2010 by Michael | 2 Comments

In the literary world, the past few weeks have been filled with stories about Virginia Quarterly Review and the suicide of its managing editor, Kevin Morrissey.  Not only has there been a flurry of inaccuracies, but also a damning indictment of the University of Virginia, VQR, and its editor, Ted Genoways.  Our marketing director, Kris Somerville, printed out the original story published in The Hook, and even in small type, the pages were the size of a phone book.  You also might have seen that this story reached The Today Show (who oddly called VQR a “campus magazine.” Um, actually, no, it’s a wee bit more than that …)

Tom Bissell, a regular contributor to VQR and author of several books, has a different and thoughtful response to the entire situation:

“Here is a different narrative of the VQR tragedy: Mr. Genoways, in elevating what had previously been a respected but quiet literary journal into one of America’s best magazines, revealed the basic incompatibility of the sinecure model of university employment with the high-pressure, emotionally tempestuous imperatives of commercial publishing. Mr. Genoways’ staff, including Morrissey, did not agree with the direction in which the magazine was going and moreover believed Mr. Genoways was spending too much money. Crucially, Mr. Genoways was bound by one extraordinary quirk of a university- and taxpayer-funded literary magazine. Morrissey, along with the rest of Mr. Genoways’ staff, were state employees first, VQR employees second. While Mr. Genoways could hire staff, he could not easily fire staff, which is the right and prerogative of, say, the editors of The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine and The Atlantic, against whom VQR was attempting to compete in terms of content (if not circulation).

“Mr. Genoways was thus forced to run his magazine in what were essentially and increasingly mutinous circumstances. Paradoxically, as the magazine pulled in National Magazine Award nominations and critical acclaim, Mr. Genoways’ relationship to his staff became increasingly toxic. Job productivity suffered and resentments accumulated, even though Mr. Genoways, Morrissey and Waldo Jacquith (the former Web editor of VQR, who told The Today Show that “Ted’s treatment of Kevin in the last two weeks of his life was just egregious”) were drawing a combined compensation of $320,000.”

Read Tom’s entire piece here, and if you haven’t, The Hook’s original story is here. Also, lots of interesting comments at HTML Giant, too. Tip o’ the cap to TMR pal Tayari Jones for the link to Tom’s story.

Michael Nye is the managing editor of The Missouri Review.

The Postman Didn't Even Ring Once

August 23, 2010 by Michael | Comments Off

Recently, we were having a quiet day in The Missouri Review offices.  It was one of those Missouri days in August when your vision gets hazy from the heat rising off the concrete and once inside, you still don’t stop sweating for at least an hour.  With a stack of manuscripts in front of us, editorial assistant Sara Strong and I were reading carefully for poems and stories for the winter issue.  There’s a good-sized conference room that is a little bit cooler than our other offices and so it took us a little while to realize there was a person hovering at the door.

When we finally did, I said hello and asked how I could help him.

“I have a question about my subscription,” he said.  “I didn’t get the last issue yet.”

He was serious.  I directed him to our office manager, gave Sara a really? look, and didn’t give it much more thought (I was reading a pretty good story at that moment).  But, it turns out, he was sticking around for a bit.

The subscriber, Brian, had just driven his friend Ari from Tempe, Arizona all the way to Columbia and the good ol’ University of Missouri, where Ari will begin as a PhD candidate this semester.  (Note: that’s a long drive and a good friend!).  Since they were here and had some time, they figured they would swing by our offices and check things out.  Ari meet Speer, who showed him around the offices and talked a little shop about The Missouri Review and writing workshops.  And, then, yes, we got a copy of the summer issue in Brian’s hands.

It was strange, harmless, and kind of fun.  How often do we get to meet our subscribers face-to-face?  Other than the AWP conference, it’s probably rare for a magazine to meet one of its readers in person.  I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that this doesn’t happen too often at Time Magazine or Tin House.  However, I’m not suggesting that any readers should just swing by our offices and knock on our doors and say “Yo. ” Even if we are pretty friendly and we’re centrally located in deepinthehearta-Missouri.

One of the challenges of publishing a literary magazine is that we can’t give the reader exactly what he or she wants.  If you’re reading a news magazine—let’s say The Economist—what you want is relatively clear: what the Obama Administration is doing, what Congress is doing, the cleanup of the Gulf Coast, and all sorts of world news.  Like us, The Economist editors have a style, taste, and focus particular to their magazine.  There are decisions to be made about every issue and how it is examined, but for the most part, the content is already provided by world events.

It’s not that easy for a literary magazine.  Art is subjective.  The taste of our editors varies greatly though there is probably an aesthetic to The Missouri Review.  One of my close friends recently asked why we keep exchanging book recommendations when what we like varies so much: for example, she loved Being Dead by Jim Crace (meh) and I raved about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (she didn’t even get halfway through it).  With our readers, each and every person has a different literary aesthetic: how can we make everyone happy?

We can’t.  Which is why the emails, letters, posts, and comments we receive are so valuable.  It’s great to hear how much Rachel Riederer’s essay “Patient” affected you.  Or M.C. Armstrong’s moving essay about Ken Kesey.  Or how engaging Fiona McFarlane’s prize-winning story “Exotic Animal Medicine” was to read.  All of which are just a few of the pieces that I’ve heard wonderful things about during the last few weeks.  The editors of literary magazines and the writers of all those stories, essays, and poems really need to hear from our audience.  These things aren’t being written and then printed to be stuffed in the back of a desk.  They demand to be read, and when they engage you, we want to hear from you.  We need to be reminded how much it matters to you.  Because discovering the literature that engages and moves our audience is the most important thing we do.

Michael Nye is the managing editor of The Missouri Review