Notes on Publishing

Publishing can be an incredibly daunting, and mystifying, process - and often a soul crushing one. I've known too many talented writers who've been discouraged from writing for years, sometimes even for life, because of the trauma of rejection. What writers are not told is that publishing is not just ridiculously competitive, it's also incredibly subjective.

For one thing, editors skew in very particular ways - for example being disproportionately white, middle class+, and highly educated - and though different kinds of people are finally forcing their way to the table, the disparity is still very real. For another, publishing is not free, and even the most nobly intentioned journals and presses can't escape financial concerns. What this means is that, consciously or not, editors will lean towards writing that is marketable, and so writers who don't fit trends of the day or established forms can find themselves struggling to get their work picked up. (Ironically, it's more often that not those writers who end up leaving a much deeper impact. How many National Book Award winning books are read even five years later? On the other hand, Madeline L'Engle took 13 years to find a home for A Wrinkle in Time.)

Something I've come to terms with in my own writing life and practice is that, despite all messages to the contrary, publishing is not the measure of a writer's worth. A work is not finished when it's published - it's finished when a writer is truly happy with it. Sometimes that work is never published; sometimes the writer finds out that the published version is not its ultimate form.

A writer that deeply reshaped my perspective was J. Otis Powell‽, a writer, mentor, and teacher who had a profound impact on many writers, artists, and more in the Twin Cities, MN, and beyond. For all that J. Otis was a phenomenal writer, J. Otis was not published widely, and yet I don't think J. Otis cared much. I was privileged to be in one of J. Otis's workshops shortly before J. Otis's death, and at one point J. Otis pulled out a little hand made chapbook with J. Otis's poetry in scraps of paper glued there. And it struck me how amazing it was that here was a writer who knew their audience and had little care for fame beyond. It is true that not many beyond the community knew J. Otis, but those that did were changed in far greater ways than by hundreds of award winning writers.

This isn't to say that publishing is worthless, but more to say that you get to determine your worth as a writer, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. For me that meant embracing what I see as the root of writing: the village storyteller who had an important function, but no more than the blacksmith or baker. Never in a million would storytellers have been expected to be trailblazers of progress, philosophers and psychologists, movers and shakers in society. Some writers have those gifts, but many don't, and forcing them into those roles just leads to elevating the words of people who really don't have much to offer and/or putting pressure on writers to fake expertise because it's expected of them to always be a source of wisdom. As someone who struggles with more than a dash of a messiah complex, this pressure on my writing was suffocating.

It's been a relief and a joy to see myself as nothing more than a storyteller with a responsibility only to the villages I travel between, trying to provide the pleasure of escape, a way to encode our narratives beyond and apart from "objectivity" of history, and some insights to help people get through their lives a little easier.

This isn't to say that publishing is something unbecoming to a writer, just that it's for every writer to decide how much importance it holds for them, if any. For those who want to pursue being published in journals, here are some general thoughts:

Don’t feel pressured to research magazines. That may have worked once, but the reality is that there are so many good writers that many people submit a piece to 10, 20, 30 journals before getting an acceptance, and there’s just no way to read the 50+ journals it would take to find 10 that would be a “good fit”
- “Fit” is also a vague concept. Editorial staff change often, so what was a “fit” a year ago might not be appreciated now
  - And even if the editors maintain a consistent aesthetical preference, you’d probably have to read 3+ volumes to figure that out (especially for prose, since there’ll only be an average of 4 pieces of fiction and nonfiction per volume)
  - There are also many times the same editorial staff might decide to change things up, so a piece that would have been perfect for the last three volumes would be out of place for the next one
  - And if enough people figure out the “fit”, your piece might be drowned out amongst the other pieces that “fit”
  - Thinking about fit does work if a magazine has very obvious preferences, especially if it’s a journal you’ve been following for a while and have a good idea of

Rant # 1 ——————————

When journals talk on about how writers should “do their homework” to find out what the journal’s tastes are without offering a single hint about those tastes, I think about what would happen if a job posting said that “Candidates should have certain sets of skills and commitment to specific goals of the company, which can only be determined by buying our guides that won’t actually lay out what goals and skills we value, but if you read enough of them, you might figure it out”

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A piece being rejected says very little about its quality
- A lot of good pieces are screened out by 20-23 year-olds, and many have been turned down because of readers who can’t understand the themes/situations/characters because of their lack of experience or exposure and so assume that it’s not realistic.
- Many a good piece has been rejected because an editor had a headache or the lead character is a little too much like an ex (lapses every editor admits to privately)
- It is in fact impossible to truly give each piece the same amount of consideration. Most editors are unpaid and squeezing in readings when they can, and often times this means reading through scores to even hundreds of pieces in a day or two
  - The first few pieces read are always going to get the most attention, before fatigue starts setting in. And if there are two or more pieces that are similar, the first read is always going to feel the most fresh

Pro-tip: Submit as close to the beginning of a reading cycle as you can

And even if a piece has found the approval of all, I’ve found that the pieces that were regretfully rejected always outnumber the ones accepted, sometimes by three-to-four times. The fact is journals don’t have the space (physical or virtual) to host even half the great pieces they receive
For all the talk of “only choosing the best work”, the fact is there are classes within the writing community
- Many journals solicit work from celebrated writers regardless of the quality. The fact is “New Fiction by Famous Writer” is going to sell many more copies than exquisitely crafted stories by an emerging writer no matter what its quality
  - Some editors even admit that if they have four slots for fiction, they’ll solicit three and then read through the pile until they find one they like before discarding the rest
- Even when work is read “blind”, well-known writers can often be recognised by their style (especially poets)
  - It’s also the case that even if most of the readers don’t know who the authors are, managing editors and editors-in-chief have been known to put thumbs on the scale when they see a big name in the list or when they’re contacted by their buddies (the writing world can be pretty nepotistic)

Rant # 2 ——————————

Some years ago, the winner of a big contest by a big journal that was read “blind” somehow just happened to be a writer who has published a dozen or more novels and has been the editor of anthologies

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Journals used to be the place where new writers could cut their teeth or established writers could try crazy things, but that landscape is long gone. Many big writers feel pressure to publish in journals. The amount of writers being published means that having even 2-3 books with a publisher isn’t a guarantee that the next will be picked up, and for those seeking tenure in universities, publishing quotas can force writers to place half-baked pieces
- Which basically mean less and less for the rest of us
In short, acceptance, shortlisting, and personalised rejections are good signs, but the lack of them tells you next to nothing about the quality of your piece