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Why Literary Journals Charge Online Submission Fees
Why does The Missouri Review charge $3.00 to receive online submissions? This practice is becoming more common among print journals that accept online submissions, including Ploughshares, Massachusetts Review, American Short Fiction, Southwest Review, just to name a few. TMR has had an online submission fee in place for many years, but the latest Poets & Writers (Nov/Dec) has just been released, and there are several articles on literary magazines, small presses, and what we’re doing to build community. Included in this issue is Laura Maylene Walter’s essay “Price of Submission” about why literary magazines charge for online submissions. It’s a good article – go read it! But there are a couple additional thoughts we’d like to add, some specific to TMR and some broader about our literary community.
One of the things worth recognizing is that the cost of submitting to a magazine is a fixed prospective cost: a cost that will be incurred and cannot be recovered. Submissions have never really been free. It’s simply that the cost (paper, envelopes, postage, etc.) has been paid to the post office, not the magazine. And I’m not saying that it necessarily should have. Freed up from (some) of the costs of submitting to literary magazines, has there been an increase in subscriptions? Has there been an increase in financial support of literary journals from writers?
No. Not at all.
Because of this, supporters of online submission fees, like me, tend to take a more realistic and business-centric approach: there is a revenue stream that we need to capture. It is, however, a pretty small revenue stream; we earn significantly more through subscriptions. There isn’t a print literary magazine that can be sustainable—even in the most basic sense of covering its printing and mailing costs (let alone paying its staff)—solely through online submission fees. Opponents of submission fees feel that it’s a tremendous burden on writers, who are overwhelming described as poor, noble, honorable (and so forth)(and, yes, I’m a writer, too), and that the practice is unethical and unlike any other business model. Further, opponents believe that it is an easy system to rig – solicit work from writers that the editors know, then charge writers we don’t know to submit – and that because of a greater need for transparency in our community, we shouldn’t do this.
Fair enough. I’m a big believer in transparency. So. Here’s what editors ask fellow editors when discussing charging online submission fees: Will this mean I get fewer submissions? Editors don’t even look at as a revenue stream. Editors look at it as a way of slowing down submissions.
In fact, submissions increase significantly. This varies from magazine to magazine, but the increase in submissions is somewhere between twenty to thirty-five percent.
Maybe editors are looking at this all wrong. Maybe writers have done the mental math that I’ve done above and said You know what, I support literary journals when I submit online and pay a submission fee so I don’t need to subscribe to journals if I spend $60 a year on submissions. Now, that would be really rational, so the thought appeals to me (I’m Mr. Roboto like that) but it would make sense.
Why, then, don’t we avoid the dreaded “slush pile” and just solicit work from writers we know? Good question. And it really gets to the heart of why literary magazines exist and why writers want to publish in them. It is all about discovering a new voice from a new writer. It’s about finding that one really amazing story or poem from a writer we have never heard of before, and then delivering that writer’s work to a larger audience. We can’t do that if we solicit work because, of course, we don’t know who that new voice is. That’s what we – and I mean all literary journals, not just TMR – are most proud of. Literary magazines are all about discovery. The response to online submission fees is that we receive more work to read and consider, but also more possibilities of finding a new, unpublished writer.
So, then: are writers doing the calculations of going to the post office and deciding online submissions are fine? Is it just way too easy to click a button? Do writers view paying online submission fees as “supporting” the journal, adding to our revenue stream, and therefore, they don’t need to subscribe to us? I don’t know. What I do know is that as a magazine editor, the initial idea of online submission fees was not to increase revenue but to decrease submissions. That hasn’t happened, and since submissions have increased, it is reasonable to conclude that writers clearly have no problem with submitting work to us this way.
It is also important to recognize that TMR continues to accept paper submissions. If a writer does not believe online submissions are ethical or fair, then he/she can mail work to us. We continue to, and will continue to, receive paper submissions. I think it’s crucial that we leave that option open.
So, yes, TMR charges for online submission fees. No writer has to pay this fee if he or she chooses not to. What’s important about is two-fold: 1. To be fully transparent with our audience and 2. Remain open to new ideas as to how to strengthen our magazine, which includes our relationship with our audience and the biz-side of publishing TMR. Through a slightly different lens – communicating with an unseen readership, and being open to trying new things – writers are working on the same problems. It’s the same struggle for all of us—how do I create something true and authentic while also bringing it to the widest audience possible?
When you’re ready, send us your work, online or hard copy. Either one works for us. We want to read it. We want lots of submissions. It’s what all of us are here to do: read, discover, then, finally, publish.
Follow Michael Nye on Twitter: @mpnye
The Dangerous Idea of Your Story
This semester, I’m teaching an introduction to fiction writing class, the first time I’ve taught an intro class in four years. Thanks to the popularity of creative writing classes, several sections of intro to writing fiction (or poetry or nonfiction) are made available, and this keeps the classes small: my enrollment is limited to fifteen, which I’m very lucky to have – I’ve heard of creative writing classes with an enrollment as high as thirty-two students. Yikes.
After several weeks of discussion about craft and close readings of short stories and a series of increasingly bizarre short writing assignments, we’ve started workshopping stories. Before workshops began, I gave my students a handout, guidelines for both the writers and the readers. These guidelines explain how to approach giving and receiving criticism, manuscript handling and formatting, how long their written critiques should be (one page, single-spaced), and so forth.
As we closed in on the first day of workshop, several students would linger after class and ask to speak to me. They wanted to talk about their story. The story they haven’t written yet and the story I have not seen.
Usually, the question is about the plot, and whether or not this particular plot – which I’m only hearing about right then and there – will work. Now, at this point, there isn’t really much I can say. In the past, I have given restrictions. Once, I said simply “No guns.” Another time I suggested they avoid dramatic albeit often cliched situations, such as abortion. But over a couple of years of teaching fiction writing, I’ve found that this is unnecessary. Ultimately, the problems with stories that end in guns a-blazin’ are discussed in workshop by the students, not me, which does a better job of reinforcing the idea that violence needs careful and deliberate consideration than any finger-wagging that I can do. And, now, I can just give them the article that Ben Percy and Aaron Gwyn wrote in Poets and Writers this summer (sadly, this link doesn’t give you the article but if you haven’t read it, you should know it exists and find it).
How, though, to discuss an idea? Could it be a good idea? Sure. Could it be a bad idea? Sure. Asking me “Does that sound like a good idea?” is always going to get “Well, it could be a good story …” followed by several caveats, and that doesn’t seem like a very useful answer. Telling a student “Write the story and see what happens” is probably the best of bad advice I could give, but doesn’t leave me feeling like I’ve done a very good job.
Where does this anxiety about an idea come from? Thinking back to when I was an undergraduate, I don’t remember worrying so much about an idea. Mostly, I worried that my stories were boring. I worried that the emotions didn’t come out, that people wouldn’t get how much my characters (read: the author) are suffering. But I don’t remember fretting about whether the story ideas were good or bad.
My best guess is that new writers don’t trust their own experiences, and feel that if there is An Idea that holds it altogether, everything falls into place. From somewhere deep in my memories of Things Writers Told Me, there is this: to write fiction, we have all the experiences we need by the end of our childhood. It’s one of those phrases that if you think about it to hard, it seems false or incomplete (sex, marriage, divorce?), and if you don’t think about it too much, it seems true (all the emotions that come out in sex, marriage, and divorce). Of course, like any pithy one-liner, it’s a bit cute and simplistic. Easy to remember, though.
Perhaps, then, the worry my students have isn’t about the actual writing. It’s about themselves. It’s the fear that they aren’t good enough, that they don’t have anything to say through the story, that there isn’t anything unique or interesting about their own lives. And, this too, gets answered with a simple answer: When first starting out, every writer – under all that enthusiasm and late-night writing and wordplay and happiness at writing the climactic scene just perfectly – feels that he or she is not good enough to write. It doesn’t stop us from writing our stories.
Here’s the rub. The fear never goes away.
Really. Even the author with ten books has that gnawing anxiety that the next project can’t be tackled, that the scene doesn’t work, that the characters aren’t right. And, just like the beginning writer, that’s a fear of self, a fear that we aren’t smart enough or sensitive enough. Being a little bit afraid, always, is good. Being a little bit afraid creates risk. Literature that doesn’t take risks, whether they are emotional ones within the characters or experimentation in the form of the writing (or the thousands of other risks writing can take), isn’t literature. Writing that doesn’t take any risks is the kind of writing we very quickly forget about.
My class has several goals that are factored into their grade because, hey, it’s a class and grading needs a criteria. There are stories to read and stories to write, writing exercises, participation, criticism, and so forth. But I also remember that despite everything stated on the syllabus, my goal for my students is simple. Keep writing. That’s it. I say more than that on my syllabus, but in the end, that’s all I really want them to do. And that will always be a scary thing, no matter how far down the literary road my students travel. Don’t worry about ideas. Be scared. Be afraid. Because that fear is what gets every writer to take the risk of writing the story that will be read, admired, and remembered.
Follow Michael Nye on Twitter: @mpnye
The MFA Degree: A Bad Decision?
Last week in TMR’s first production meeting of the new semester, a first-semester intern asked about MFA programs and whether or not the University of Missouri has one (it does not). Even though the fall semester is just beginning, writers are already thinking about the January 1st deadline that most MFA programs have for receiving applications. Everyone, it seems, has MFA programs on the brain.
The latest issue of Poets & Writers is out now, and the cover image is thirty-one people of a wide-range of ages and ethnicities. Titled “MFA Nation” this special issue of PW is chock full of information about MFA programs: Seth Abramson’s yearly MFA ranking system, complete with an explanation of his methodology; articles on the social value of these programs and life as a writer post-MFA; wise quotes from program directors and working writers on what to consider when choosing a program; and probably fifty pages of ads from writing programs throughout the country. There is even a small section on writers who never pursued an MFA, a list that includes Jonathan Lethem and Elizabeth Strout, and writing workshops outside of traditional programs.
Five years ago, I earned my MFA, and have since taught undergraduate and graduate courses in creative writing. I don’t believe MFA programs are inherently evil and have destroyed contemporary American literature. The majority of people teaching and taking creative writing classes are all trying to do good things. Nonetheless, I’ve begun to wonder if the MFA is, in fact, a bad decision.
The explosion of MFA programs in the last thirty years coincides with something else from about the same time period: US News & World Report’s annual survey of “America’s Best Colleges.” This survey is one of the most popular, influential, and powerful publications that comes out of this country every year. This isn’t really a hyperbolic statement. Given how important college is now to, well, everyone, and how much parents get involved in the decisions of the lives of their eighteen-year-olds, and how much money flows into universities, and how surveys like US News “measure intangibles,” and how much is at stake for everyone involved when it comes to money, education (where do our top doctors and attorneys and engineers go?), and, consequently, our overall economy, the US News annual report on colleges might be the most important document of our generation.
(Which kinda blows your mind, if you think about it too hard …)
One of the things that the US News rankings does not consider is MFA programs in creative writing. It’s a pretty glaring omission for our world, an omission that Seth Abramson and Tom Kealey have been working to fill. Abramson, through both his blog and Poets & Writers, is the dominant name; Kealey made a name for himself by criticizing underfunded programs, Columbia’s specifically. These two, and others, have done a tremendous amount of work to peel back the layers of MFA programs and get applicants to make informed decision about their decision.
The similarity between the US News and PW is striking: collegiate ranking systems that determine which program is “best.” It certainly suggests that MFA programs are about something much more than just “time to write.”
I’m sure we all want to say that any MFA program is for those two or three years where an emerging writer gets to focus on his or her craft. The MFA program is an arts degree. Time off from the world to focus on writing. The intrinsic value beyond the page. Making better readers. Etc. Still, one of the results of all these MFA degrees are, like it or not, the creation of an army of people that are asked to teach low-levels of composition, rocking four or five or six classes per semester for adjunct pay.
This post is not attempting to argue, at all, the merits of the creative work or the intentions of students, teachers, and administrators. MFA programs are academic programs and are not particularly difficult to graduate from – one would have to screw up to a remarkable degree to not graduate from a MFA program once you’re accepted. The writing workshop is still the foundation of MFA programs, even if there are programs that are much more rigorous about teaching pedagogy, literature and linguistics courses, innovative publishing technology and techniques. And I’m sure there are people that pursue an MFA in order to be just straight-up writers, or work as a literary agent, or some other publishing venue.
But let’s not fool ourselves about where program graduates end up. We cannot stick our head in the sand about the reality of the post-MFA world. If programs are aiming to work in universities – and while there are, of course, exceptions, that is what the bulk of graduates are aiming to do and encouraged to do – then programs need to be more realistic about what exactly they are preparing their graduates for. What if programs honestly told students that if they want to teach at universities, that MFA graduates are a dime-a-dozen? If MFA graduates truly want to work in a university, what if programs stressed the importance of a rigorous education in literature and all it encompasses – critical theory, comprehensive exams, a dissertation the size of a dictionary? What if we honestly ask ourselves: what does this degree actually prepare our graduates to do?
For a writer with the goal of teaching at a university, even teaching creative writing, a MFA might be a lousy choice. Most find that what MFA programs are really good at (besides time out from the working world, of course) is providing deadlines: workshop due dates, thesis or dissertation defense dates, and so forth. And being a writer has to come from within, from a need to write, a need to finish projects, a need to revise until the work is right. People pursuing a MFA probably know both of these things already – what, then, does the degree itself provide? Creative writing is rarely lucrative, in and of itself. Advice on what to do would, as always, depend on the person I’m talking to but I’m no longer so sure of the MFA is the best answer. Nowadays there are so many newly minted MFA graduates – and more every year, growing, it seems, at an exponential rate – competing for jobs in a bad economy where one or two books (which is hard enough to do) simply isn’t enough.
If a writer feels an advanced degree is the way to go, the MA/PhD track, then, might be the wiser way to go. Does it take longer? Sure: but one shouldn’t be paying for a liberal arts degree anyway; funding should be one of, if not the most, important criteria. Further, it is terrific exposure for anyone to study literature in its entire range, rather than the narrower focus on the last forty years that MFA programs typically focus on. This is good not just as a writer, but as a scholar and thinker as well. It also prepares the writer to teach a wide-range of courses that makes one a much more attractive candidate for a tenure-track position.
There are many excellent professors, brand spankin’ new and decades old veterans, who hold only MFA degrees. One could absolutely be a terrific professor and a write a dozen wonderful books: they exist now and probably always will. But if asked, I’d suggest taking a long, hard look at pursuing a doctorate at a program like Florida State, the University of Cincinnati, or any of the other thirty departments that offer creative writing doctorates. It might be the wave the next great shift in creative writing programs, and isn’t it better to be ahead of that curve?
Correction: As my mentor Mary Troy points out in the comments section, the MFA is offered in the UM system, one at Missouri-St. Louis and one at Missouri-Kansas City. It is not offered at Missouri-Columbia, the main campus, where I work. (added Sept 1st)
Follow Michael Nye on Twitter: @mpnye
On The End of Summer Reading
Last month, after four days in Boston and an unremarkable flight from Logan International down to North Carolina before hopping a flight to St. Louis, I ended up delayed at Raleigh-Durham International. First, the airplane was late arriving from Cincinnati. Then, one of the tires on the plane was damaged. I actually had the “Wait, changing a tire is really easy!” thought, as if 747s and my Civic require the same amount of time and effort. Next, the plane needed to be cleaned. Then, the airline was waiting on paperwork. Et cetera.
On most trips, I take at least two books: one to get me out there, and one to get me back. On the way to Boston, I read Inman Majors novel “Wonderdog.” The other book was “Candide.” Really. And after thirty pages of that, I decided I couldn’t read any more Voltaire, and headed off to the newsstand. I announced I was going to “buy trash.”
For me, trash translates into sports magazine or men’s magazine. Either one would be fine. Despite numerous pages of advertisements, GQ usually does have a couple of really good articles. Sports is sports, and I could read about the MLB trade deadline and a human interest story or three about an athlete from the 60’s who has fallen into obscurity, or drugs, or obscurity and drugs. No problem!
Instead, I bought Harper’s.
It was a long rectangular store, and the back wall was crowded from floor to ceiling with magazines. There were rows and rows of loud covers: half-dressed men and women, blurry photos of celebrities, ominous photographs of poverty or shadowy images of cities and highways, surrounded by bright packages of chocolate candy bars, bags of candy and pretzels and nuts and chips, coolers loaded with soda and fruit juice and water, a steady hum from the omnipresent televisions hovering in the corners.
My stomach growled and my back ached, and the thought of eating any of this food or reading any of these magazines frustrated me. Why did I have to consume – yup, consume, both my reading and my food – such garbage? There didn’t seem to be anyone else around me. And finally after ten minutes of dithering, I gave up trying to convince myself that there was nothing wrong with reading Sports Illustrated, shrugged and grabbed Harper’s, then reached the counter, and in the next second was back at my gate.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge I was tired and crabby: everyone is a little worn down by the end of a vacation, particularly a “vacation” that was a long weekend based on a wedding. Those aren’t relaxing. But I tend to have the same response when I hear the phrase “summer reading”: just sort of puts me on edge, for two reasons. One, it’s the idea of consumption (notice that the “summer reading” books all have basically the same three or four very similar cover images and layouts). Second, there is the feeling that the book industry believes that when it’s hot outside, no one can read anything other than The Help. Most summer reading isn’t as diverse and interesting and challenging as this guy’s vacation reads.
I’m in the middle of reading The Help right now (really) and I don’t think I have anything to say about that Roxane Gay hasn’t already said better. Maybe the film is okay. I wouldn’t know. In bookstores, there is often a section of “summer reading” that are the books assigned to local high schools. There are some duds in here too, of course (one year I saw “The Secret” was assigned), but on the whole, high school summer reading tends to be books that are sneakily better than you think. Or, maybe, more accurate, better than you remember. Last summer I re-read a pair of books that are often assigned to high school students, and found that they are much better than I realized, that there was in fact a pretty good reason why those books were read and taught and enjoyed every year.
We have to read what captivates us. Why wouldn’t we? Other than what might be assigned for classes – either classes we are teaching or classes we are taking – some writers will admit to feeling that they haven’t read enough. That they haven’t read enough “good” books or the classics or the canon and that, somehow, this makes their own writing ambitions premature, illegitimate. I understand that anxiety: I used to feel this way, too. But there is so much to read. So much great stuff to read. And once we let go of the worry about reading everything, we can take the summer to read one great big book, like Infinite Jest or Anna Karenina.
Summer has another month to go, but for those of us affiliated with a university, in many ways, summer ended this week with the beginning of the autumn semester. We all have enough worries: literary journals reopened for submissions, new students, new colleagues, why hasn’t my agent returned my phone call?, where’d the Borders go?, mailing costs, papers to grade, and so forth. Why worry about what you’re reading? Why follow a marketing trend?
Go ahead and grab that copy of Dostoevsky you haven’t read yet. Great books are worth reading regardless of the weather. And I’m sure Fyodor reads nicely with flip-flops and an umbrella drink.
Follow Michael Nye on Twitter: @mpnye
A Little Unfinished Business
Browsing through the pages of The Rumpus last week, I came across a link to Steve Wilson’s website called My Unfinished Novels. You can check it out here. It’s a pretty simple site: novelists write in, stating the name of their novel, how many pages or words were written, a synopsis of the novel, and an explanation of why the novel was abandoned. On the site, Wilson describes himself as a “six-time failed novelist” and he is also the author of a nonfiction book called The Boys From Little Mexico: A Season Chasing The American Dream.
My Unfinished Novels shows that there is not one specific reason that comes up repeatedly as The Reason that novels are left incomplete on a hard drive or in a desk drawer. Some writers just found that they ran out of steam and couldn’t think of anything else to write. Some had life get in the way – a new job, a new relationship, a child. Others found structural flaws, or tried to get it published and couldn’t, or couldn’t stop tinkering and never quite got it done. One writer found her closest writer-friend actually killed her interest in writing. Another had the only copy of her novel eaten by her computer and couldn’t sustain the energy to write it again. How far did these various writers get? It varied from ten pages to one hundred thirty thousand words.
Two things initially intrigued me about the site. First, that people shared all the reasons that their work failed, which is a fairly open thing to do, given how secretive many writers can be about sharing unfinished or in-progress work. Second thing: unfinished novels are called “failures.”
Thinking about it, I feel like I’ve written three novels, but only two actually spring to mind: the one that is currently out wandering the publishing world and looking for a home, and the one that I wrote in graduate school. My grad school novel had an ugly title – Oscillations – and was three hundred forty(-ish) pages long. I turned it in for my thesis and my advisers read the whole thing and discussed it with me for two hours. The shortest summation of the book is that it was the story of two men, a father and his son, told over a period of twelve years, exploring how they ended up at the fractured point the reader meets them in: the first chapter is the chronological end, so the novel goes backwards in time.
I read Charles Baxter’s novel “First, Light” and really admired the mosaic quality of the story of two siblings. I wanted to do that, but in my own way. I wanted to write the book in a linear fashion, however, and going backwards in time was a way of making it unique (to me, at least). So the book was based on An Idea and, unfortunately, the idea wasn’t all that interesting and, perhaps more importantly, I couldn’t actually make it work, a fact that my thesis committee pointed out in the kindest terms they possibly could, advice that I resented at the time that I now am very grateful to have been told. I spent about fourteen months writing the novel, then another three after my thesis meeting, before putting it down and writing a completely different novel.
My grad school novel cannot be saved. It does not work. A few years ago, out of curiosity more than anything, I flipped through that grad school novel, and found that I had no interest in trying to make it work. The story struck me as having flaws and problems that are so inherent to what I created that there is no fixing it. Even if I wanted to fix them. Which I didn’t. Maybe that was the biggest thing in the end: not just paying lip service to my committee and acknowledging the book didn’t work, but being able to truly see why the book didn’t work on my own.
That’s a good thing, and why I wouldn’t necessarily call my unfinished novel a failure. In writing, there aren’t really failures. I don’t think so, at least. There are books and stories that get finished, and there are ones that don’t. This could just be a bit of sunny-side up optimism, but the foundation for the novel that I have now can be found in the grad school novel that I never completed to my satisfaction. My grad school novel does have a complete story, a good ol’ beginning and middle and end. I did finish the book. Yeah, second draft finished, but still, finished nonetheless.
Failure in writing is pretty simple to me: you stop writing. If a novel or poem or essay stops you from continuing work on it or preventing you from throwing it aside and working on the next new thing, well, that’s failure. But discovering that something you’ve worked on, no matter how long you’ve been at it, doesn’t work isn’t failure. That’s learning. That’s apprenticeship. That’s writing.
I’m nitpicking a bit: after all, the My Unfinished Novels website is supposed to be (I think) fun, and leaping all over the word “failure” is a bit over the top. Still, I worry that when it comes to our writing life, we are too quick to self-flagellation when maybe all we need to say is that the process of writing is years of work that is frustrating only if you choose to see it as frustrating. Unfinished isn’t bad. Especially if you’re always willing to sit down and right the next one.
Michael Nye is the managing editor of the Missouri Review.
Violence of the Lambs; Or Why I Didn’t Write About That
There was more. I was going to write about book reviewing, and my general sense of discomfort with book reviewing, which stems almost entirely from a lack of confidence to write reviews in a coherent and intelligible manner that would be useful or interesting to anyone. I was going to write about James Frey, and teaching undergraduates, and the difference between reading a single essay and a collection of essays, and probably some other subjects that would all tie together neatly for a pretty good Friday read for you, our blog reader.
Here’s the thing. I couldn’t finish it. Or, I could, I guess – did, in fact – but I wasn’t pleased with the result. It was a colossal mess of tangents and half-baked thoughts, and it seemed like a disservice to publish it the way it turned out.
It’s warm here – frighteningly warm for Missouri in February – and I have my windows open, again. All morning yesterday I read manuscripts. I haven’t done that in a while. Downstairs, on the third floor, TMR has a few couches and a coffee maker, and I put my feet up on a table, tucked a pen behind my ear, and read fiction submissions. Away from my desk, away from my computer, away from my phone (both office and mobile, which I wisely left upstairs). Felt fantastic. Felt really great to spend the morning just looking for stuff for the summer issue, reading other writers’ work, stories about Russian dancers or out of work truck drivers or the daughters of war veterans and such, and not really thinking about our audience, our budget, our expenses and income, advertising, none of the other stuff that is often pinballing through my mind in the course of the day.
I felt all right, reading like that.
Someone close to me recently remarked that I never say anything personal in my blog posts. Note, even, how carefully I phrased that previous sentence. Of course, that’s now what my site is for. But this person was right: I’m careful about this blog. It’s been one of the most successful things we’ve done since I started at The Missouri Review—our staff has written several thoughtful, smart, engaging essays on this site in the past two years, and our mantra has basically been to not be negative; remain about publishing, editing, writing; and be interesting. Writing about Sullivan’s work, I worried that I was getting increasingly negative and incoherent, upset about who knows what about his work, and that my post would be the kind of vitriol that our readers don’t want. Morever, the kind of vitriol I don’t like to write.
I bring this up because for almost a year and a half now, my personal life, especially this past month, has been a bit tumultuous (to put it mildly) and sitting in a chair reading this morning, I became aware of how much better I felt. Just in general. No grand epiphanies or realizations or anything like that; dark clouds will certainly move in later in the day (or tomorrow, soon, etc.). Writing about creative nonfiction and its ticks and whirls and wearing a cultural critic hat—it just didn’t feel right. No, it was more than that: it was a recognizable state of discord, both in head and heart, that I wanted nothing to do with. I just wanted to read.
When I was at River Styx, our rejection letters all started the same way: “Look. We’re all writers too, so we know how it feels.” That’s true, of course. But, what was making me a boiling cauldron of frustration yesterday afternoon was writing: not just the act of writing, but the criticism of writing and the Big Ideas behind criticism and interpretation and connectivity. What made me feel calm was reading, just reading, nothing more. And, really, why did any of us start writing in the first place? Because we read. And liked it. A lot.
It would be silly, of course, to have a rejection letter say “Look. We’re all readers too” because that seems pretty obvious, ironic in a hipster way or something, and perhaps even a little snide. Nonetheless, it might be more true to what unifies as, editors and submitters alike, than calling ourselves writers.
If I was clever, if I had my writing cap on, I’d be able to come up with a really snazzy close here. But I don’t. Moreover, I don’t want to attempt to tack this together neatly. The messiness of this post is what’s most interesting to me, and how, by taking a little time to not think, to read without thinking beyond the story in my hands. And, for today, I think that’s all I really want to focus on. I’ll leave it at that.
Follow Michael Nye on Twitter: @mpnye