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ellenkushner"Who reads this shit?"
OK, in the actual joke it's "Who wrote it?" - but that's not my punchline for this post. See, it's like this:
On Saturday we went to a new play at Vital about the loving relationship of two adult sisters, one of whom gets cancer, and the other has to decide whether or not to pursue her mid-life dream of being a Writer, which involves taking a grueling grad school degree from a Bigshot Writer. She works hard, even beating out the hipster guy who wins prizes for stories that essentially come down to "Will my protagonist get laid?" (which, having now read a ton of submissions to various places, I am here to tell you is what a shocking percentage are about. Yawn. But that's another post....) . . . and her reward, her big marker of success, is that her mentor recommends her stuff to a prestigious literary Little Magazine. Which, after many edits & revisions, publishes her story. I suspect only the dying sister reads it. Though possibly she dies first.
The next day, Guy Kay (an old pal from our mutual Struggling Writer days) sends me this from Harper's (read it and laugh so hard you'll snork. I particularly like "This sentence is short, not because it is brief—which it is—but because it has few words.") Very cheering. But.
So here's the thing: What made me - and most people I know - want to be writers is that we loved to read. We read a lot. We wanted to write the kinds of books we loved to read.
Schools are full of grad students whose highest goal seems to be getting published in small literary magazines with minute circulations. But have they actually read those magazines themselves first? Did they love reading them?
I'm probably being an idiot here, but I've already written the post, and it seems a waste of time to delete it now. Also, it gives me a chance to offer you the link to the Colson Whitehead piece.
OK, in the actual joke it's "Who wrote it?" - but that's not my punchline for this post. See, it's like this:
On Saturday we went to a new play at Vital about the loving relationship of two adult sisters, one of whom gets cancer, and the other has to decide whether or not to pursue her mid-life dream of being a Writer, which involves taking a grueling grad school degree from a Bigshot Writer. She works hard, even beating out the hipster guy who wins prizes for stories that essentially come down to "Will my protagonist get laid?" (which, having now read a ton of submissions to various places, I am here to tell you is what a shocking percentage are about. Yawn. But that's another post....) . . . and her reward, her big marker of success, is that her mentor recommends her stuff to a prestigious literary Little Magazine. Which, after many edits & revisions, publishes her story. I suspect only the dying sister reads it. Though possibly she dies first.
The next day, Guy Kay (an old pal from our mutual Struggling Writer days) sends me this from Harper's (read it and laugh so hard you'll snork. I particularly like "This sentence is short, not because it is brief—which it is—but because it has few words.") Very cheering. But.
So here's the thing: What made me - and most people I know - want to be writers is that we loved to read. We read a lot. We wanted to write the kinds of books we loved to read.
Schools are full of grad students whose highest goal seems to be getting published in small literary magazines with minute circulations. But have they actually read those magazines themselves first? Did they love reading them?
I'm probably being an idiot here, but I've already written the post, and it seems a waste of time to delete it now. Also, it gives me a chance to offer you the link to the Colson Whitehead piece.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 10:54 pm (UTC)When I was reading Clarion submissions, we had more than one applicant who was in a competitive MFA program but wanted to spend 6 weeks in an environment that was more receptive to genre. I hope you don't feel similarly straitened.
I'm a big enthusiast for fanfic - don't read much, but what I've seen can be truly impressive. Writing is writing. Bless you for trying to make a bridge! I'm all about crossing boundaries.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:12 am (UTC)Though now I've been thinking about it longer...one of the things that frustrated me about the whole literary fiction path was just that: that the magazines (however excellent their contents) seemed to exist mainly for the *purpose of providing publication credits, since they weren't very well-read, and that *even so*, it was so hard to get a story accepted. I decided I'd just as soon submit to zines, which were less prestigious and also read by few, but were friendlier and faster to respond.
In Canada, where there are more govt. grants, it's even more straightforward: a couple years ago I sat in on a writing workshop for teens, wherein a relatively successful Canadian YA author advised them to submit, submit, submit to literary magazines--Canadian ones, specifically. She said something like, "No one reads them, but do it for the publication credit. When you have six publications you qualify to apply for a Canada Council grant, and then you're off and running." I thought this was FASCINATING.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 05:38 am (UTC)thread at Television Without Pity (this was in early 2002,
before LiveJournal). The community there was very vocal and
supportive -- the feedback I received was tremendous.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 05:20 pm (UTC)I must do a kind of book review thinggy on my f-list - no that sounds pretentious, I'll just gush, I'm good at gushing. :D
I'm sure most of them would love his work.
I have very few books that I read and re-read for year upon year, his are among them. I call it the top shelf, and most of the books look like recycling material. XD
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 05:39 pm (UTC)I would like an MFA because it's the terminal degree in my field, but I have come to realize in the past few years that 1. I am probably never going to go get an MFA, because it would interfere with making money as a writer, which I've been doing just fine without one, and 2. that actually, yeah, I suspect I'm more interested in reading and discussing literature than I am in taking any more writing classes...
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Date: 2009-02-01 05:43 pm (UTC)That was the first book of Kay's I read. My sister brought it and discovered it missing the next day. If a book is missing it is always me.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 06:02 pm (UTC)Could it be the LitFic career path, littered with those magazines few read, is just a shadow of the past? Once upon a time, many magazines published short fiction and that's how much of the population got their fiction fixes. It's not true anymore. Most magazines publish very little fiction. Short fiction isn't how most people GET their fiction fix. I'm not sure what the answer actually is, but I'd say the current situation ain't it. Like so much of publishing, it's clinging to past times.
I had a professor who recommended to us, instead of running down all the "little" magazines, picking up the current year's "America's Best Short Stories" to check the list of magazines in the back, and to submit only to those magazines. Why? Because we wanted our stories reviewed by the book's editors, so why submit to something those editors would not look at?
I'm going to go eat some cookies and think about my novel now.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 07:30 pm (UTC)Good luck with your applications!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 08:23 pm (UTC)