Liz Kay's Blog, page 2

The Conversations We Can't Have

I went to a very progressive high school. It was Catholic, yes, but in Utah, and so it served as a counterbalance to the more conservative LDS culture. My Sophomore English teacher taught only banned books, and across my four years there, we didn’t just read the standard Catcher in the Rye variety. We read Lolita. We read (and hated) D.H. Lawrence. The school has always been small with a tight alumni community, and so it wasn’t surprising that they reached out to me shortly after my book sold, a good year before publication. The school had a new community project, a reading and conversation series focused on issues of environmental and social justice.

My novel, Monsters: A Love Story, while it masquerades as a fast, fun beach read, tackles issues of gender disparity and sexual power dynamics. The book specifically questions why women are held accountable for behaviors that don’t seem out-of-bounds for men, whether it’s drinking, or swearing, or promiscuity. The protagonist, Stacey, like all women, has internalized a lot of these judgments, and as the narrator, she brings her own flaws sharply into focus while usually letting her love interest, Tommy, off the hook. It is “button-pushing” as my agent calls it, and in some ways, it’s difficult to find the right readers. It is both fun enough to not always be taken seriously, and dark enough to not be an easily consumed and forgotten read.

And I warned them; I did. I sat with the school principal and a member of the board and told them there was a lot of profanity, that the book was pretty sexy in parts. They were excited though. They thought it sounded fun. “It is fun,” I said, “but it’s also a deeply feminist examination of rape culture. It might be pretty controversial.” But aren’t all conversations worth having controversial in some way? Isn’t the mission of social justice to question the world as everyone blindly accepts it? Yes, yes, yes, they agreed.

But it turns out that there are some issues they’d prefer to turn a blind eye to. When they discovered that the topic of abortion comes up for a total of about a half a dozen pages, I was summarily disinvited. Though, to be fair, this implies a forthright conversation that certainly never occurred. Long after the school-sponsored reading had been supposedly confirmed, it just wasn’t anymore. There was no explanation of who had decided this or why or when. Later, a close friend on the board filled me in. A fellow alum, he was as baffled as I was. He’d fought hard to keep me on the calendar. “It’s a novel,” he’d said. “There are so many conversations to be had,” he’d said. But in the end, the conversation they didn’t want to start was the one about abortion.

“Were they equally offended by the sexual violence?” I asked, but they hadn’t noticed any sexual violence which tells me just how thoroughly enculturated they are. They are the people I’ve written the novel about, rather than the people it’s written for. I’m offended partly as an author who’s been sort of rudely handled, but truly, I’m offended as an alum whose eyes were first opened to questions of feminism and social justice in that very institution. My book is absolutely not for everyone. It pushes a lot of buttons it’s true, but if the most offensive thing to come out of the book is Stacey’s drinking, or the use of profanity, or a three minute conversation about abortion, then frankly, we all have a lot more work to do.

So you're going to give a reading, advice for writers

I've talked before about readings, about getting people to your readings, about drumming up a crowd, but I want to talk now about what to do when you have them, specifically about not punishing the people who were kind enough to show up.

I've been to a lot of readings, a lot a lot of readings and I have seen some spectacular performances but I've also just seen a ridiculous amount of crap. Often, I'm at a reading populated mostly by students who are there for extra credit, and the author or authors reading basically ensure that those students will never go to a lit event again. I've watched those students and other first-timers trying to stay polite. They keep their eyes open, but if you watch closely, you can see their attention just click off.

There are so many kinds of bad readings, some forgivable, and some not.

There are the nervous readers, which is understandable. If you haven't done it much, it is intense to have to tackle both general public speaking fears combined with the anxieties that come with the presentation of your art. Often these readers are too quiet or too fast. They're in a hurry to get it over with without being noticed, which is obviously not the best approach. This kind of reading, while not riveting, is entirely forgivable and audiences tend to be more patient than not, but in terms of earning future readers, this won't get you far. The only way to get over the fear is to do readings a lot, but maybe try to work out your nerves in a more low-stakes setting like an open mic. If you're thinking for example that you might like to be a novelist, for god's sake don't make your debut reading at your book launch. (And actually, if you are a novelist, it is completely okay and often preferable to not read at all. Give a talk or do an in-conversation.)

The less forgivable readings are those in which the writer displays a complete lack of regard for the audience. Sometimes, they do this by picking a passage that is hard to follow or simply dull. Why, dear god, would you want your listeners to think your work is dull?

Sometimes, the readers simply go on too long. There are poets who step up to the stage with a stack of loose pages and I just think, oh fuck. Audiences really don't have the best attention spans and listening takes effort. And the thing is, no one owes you their attention, but people tend to be polite. People tend to sit there and endure it, and writers, so many writers for some reason are okay with being endured. 

There is a performance aspect to a really good reading that not everyone can master. But every writer can pick a good passage--not some experimental poetry, or pages and pages of exposition and backstory. Pick something funny, dramatic, sharp. Pick something you're good at reading.

For god's sake, pick something short. 

 

Last week was Mother's Day. I have mixed feelings about it.

When I was little, I loved Mother's Day which felt like an inverted Christmas or something. I liked picking out flowers and making cards and the look on Mom's face when we surprised her with scrambled eggs in bed. I was sure that she never saw it coming, that she slept through all the noise of us bickering over breakfast-making in the very nearby kitchen.

Like most of the things that seemed magical when I was little, Mother's Day has lost a little of its glow for me. This is in no way a reflection on my family who are delightful. We're pretty good at holidays in general, and they spent the day properly devoted to me. 

We've continued the tradition of handmade cards, and while my three sons lean toward straight printer-paper and pencil (my sisters and I were all construction paper and elaborately colored designs), the sentiments they express are pretty fantastic. There are the standard love yous and thank yous and you're a great moms, but then there are often gems like this one from a few years ago: Your life was pretty great until...three babies came along and ruined it! 

For the record, my life is so much better with them, in part because those babies grew into the most delightful and funny young men, but the position of "mom" is still all-in-all a pretty shit one, and it makes me happy to have the kind of kids who acknowledge that.

The word that's never appeared on one of their cards, and this should come as no surprise, is selfless. I've said before that David is the more generous parent, but he's not selfless either, and I don't think any parent should be. That's the word we use though. That's the word for moms, that's the fucking pinnacle for mothering and it's on every card and Facebook post and ad. Maybe you wrote it of or to your own mom (and you should call her and apologize if you did). 

Dear Mom, the collective culture says, thank you for not having any goals or hopes or desires. Thanks for not being an actual person but more like a shell of a person who exists only to serve us. That's swell of you. That works out really well for us.

It's true that mothers make a lot of sacrifices for their kids. Mothers give up careers and school and money and opportunities and free time and just about everything you can think of. Some mothers don't give up some of these things (or not completely) and for everything of their own that they hang onto, we give them the gift of making them feel like shit. She's only thinking of herself, we might say, and god knows, mothers aren't supposed to have one. 

We really don't even have to acknowledge their sacrifices because they aren't really sacrifices when all moms care about are their families. 

And the truth is, I don't think most of us really buy into that. I think we see how hard it is for our mothers. I know in my family growing up, our favorite stories were always variations on remember the time Mom lost her shit (or Dad, but this is holiday-themed after all). Those are the favorite stories for my kids too. Inside our homes, we don't really want to have relationships with selfless entities. We want the people we love to be human and flawed and honest. Next year, let's be fucking honest. We take things from our mothers, and she might act like she doesn't mind, doesn't even notice, but we take. We ask and then we take. Let's at least be clear about that.

My kids brought me breakfast in bed last week. They do every year. When they were little, they'd bring the tray and then huddle around me, eyeing the food till I shared. They're bigger now, and I've raised them to be frank. They brought me breakfast, it's true, but they also brought their own forks. I love it even more that way. It just seems fitting.

 

 

So You've Written a Novel, Now What?

In the spring of 2013, I sent a desperate email to a friend to say that I'd made a terrible mistake and written a novel and now what the hell was I supposed to do? Since I'd never intended to write a novel, I'd never bothered to find out. I mean, I had fiction-writing friends, but when they talked about submissions and agents and "pitch sessions," I just tuned them out. My ability to simply not listen when people are talking is impressive. But the other thing that's impressive is that when there's a skill I need to know? I will learn the fuck out of it (as evidenced by the fact that I did get an agent and then she sold my novel and now I'm writing this so as to avoid hitting refresh every few seconds to check the count on the Goodreads giveaway because Oh my god, what if we can't even give this thing away.)

In the time I was looking for an agent, I tracked down so many interviews and query letter examples and sales announcements that I could make a career out of query-coaching. But that sounds like a nightmare. Anyway, I learned a lot, and now I don't need it, so here you go: 

Step 1) Understand your book. You have to know what you've written, and not just so that you can explain it (though you are going to have to explain it, and in concise and interesting ways), but also because you need to know where it fits in the marketplace. What kind of readers would buy this book? What imprints/editors reach those readers? What agents sell books to those editors? If you can't trace this line, you've got a very tough road ahead of you. 

When you think about where your book belongs, one of two things should become clear to you: 1) You’ve written the sort of book with mass appeal that a big, advance-paying house will be interested in, and therefore you need and can attract an agent (generally this has to do with the premise and not the quality of the writing, which is going to have to be good either way); or 2) You’ve written a finely crafted piece of literature (or god forbid a short story collection) that lacks the marketable appeal a big house is looking for, but will likely be much appreciated by smart editors at an independent or university press. Sadly, there will be no advance (or not much), and you probably don’t need an agent and will have a tougher time attracting one. (Keep in mind, that some of the bigger indies like Tin House Books don’t take unsolicited unagented submissions, so if you’ve written something really really good, like award-winningly good, you should probably still try for an agent first, even if the premise is on the quieter side.) 

It is really important at this moment to pick the path that is right for your book. You should not be approaching agents and also sending your novel to University presses and contests. This is in part because you don’t want to burn out opportunities at presses your future agent would be better equipped to approach on your behalf, but it’s also because a scattershot approach tells us that you have no clue where your book belongs and you’re not in a good position to advocate for it.

I have zero experience approaching independent publishers about fiction, so let's just assume that you’ve written a smart interesting book with a marketable premise, and you need an agent. 

Step 2) Research agents. I’d recommend a combination of 2 sites, Querytracker and Publisher’s Marketplace, followed by a Google search. You should read whatever you can find on the agents you’re considering. Interviews are especially great. Poets & Writers does an interview series that is phenomenal. Read the guidelines agents post on their websites. Often, they’ll tell you what they’re looking for, and they generally mean it. Some agents will have minimal information on their website. The less information they have available, the less aggressively they’re looking for new clients. 

Querytracker is a great starting place. Search for agents by genre and start digging through that list. It includes links to interviews, websites, etc, and it will also give you some stats on how often they request manuscripts, how long they take to reply, which is interesting and fun to obsess over. (Does it actually probably matter? No.) They will also tell you whether an agent is open to queries. Generally speaking, I would ignore a “closed to queries” on QT because it’s unreliable. If an agency website or Publishers Marketplace page lists an agent as closed to queries, don’t send them any queries. There’s probably someone else at that agency you can try.

Publishers Marketplace is a goldmine of information. Do keep in mind that the sales reports are voluntary and incomplete, but in general, you can see who is making real sales to the imprints where you think your book belongs. It is absolutely worth the $25/month fee during the time you’re actively researching agents. Beyond that, it is a mindfuck. You will make yourself crazy studying other people’s six and seven figure deals, and you should know that very few people get six or seven figure deals. The average advance on a first novel is something like 15,000 dollars and they pay it out in thirds, fourths if you’re lucky enough to get a hardcover. So… be careful with Publishers Marketplace. In a perfect world, you could do all the research on every agent before you start querying and then shut it off. Sadly, querying doesn’t really work like that.

Obviously some agents are powerhouses. They've sold books you’ve read by authors you love. This is exciting and you should submit to these agents, not because the agent is A-list, but because there’s probably a reason the books they’ve sold resonate with you. But what if the agent you’re looking at isn’t a powerhouse? What are you looking for? First and foremost, the agency. Is the agency reputable? Are there experienced agents there who are likely to give advice and encouragement to your future agent? Has this new agent worked as an assistant to a really strong, experienced agent? What kinds of sales has the agent made? What other industry experience do they bring to the table? New agents at good agencies can be great options because they're still early in building their list.

Step 3) Write a query letter. Your query letter needs to do 3 things. One, indicate that you know who they are and have good reason to think they'd be interested in your book. Two, describe your book in an interesting way. Three, introduce you to the agent. Your query letter will look a little different depending on whether your novel is literary or genre fiction. There are lots of examples online, but here's the general idea.   

Step 4) Once you’ve polished and perfected the query, send it to 10 agents. Choose a good mix of established and newer agents. 

For email submissions, the subject line should read Query: Title (Genre) unless of course, the agent specifies otherwise.

Unless the agent’s guidelines specifically state “Query Only,” include the first 5 pages pasted below the signature. Often agents will ask for the first 5 pages (or some other number).

Possible responses:

None, nothing, you’ll never hear from them

Form declines

Personal declines (rare)—love the premise, but the first 5 pages were too slow for me.

Requests for more material:

They may want a partial (100 pages, 3 chapters, send whatever they ask)

They may want the full manuscript. “Thanks for thinking of me. Please do send.”

They may want you to include a synopsis which is a 1-2 page dry walk through the entire plot including the ending and they are horrible to write. Good luck. There are examples on-line.

If out of 10 queries you don’t get at least 2 requests for more material, 1 of 2 things is happening: 1) your query isn’t really working and you need to go back to the drawing board and rewrite it from scratch; 2) you’re sending your query to agents who are not right for your book. Both of these problems are an indication that you need to spend more time thinking what kind of book you've written.

Let’s assume though, that you’re getting a 20% or better request rate. Keep going. Do not wait on responses to fulls as they may never actually materialize much less turn into an offer of representation. 

If at some point an agent replies with feedback you could use to make the book stronger (and the advice resonates with you), stop querying and revise. Any requests you get from outstanding queries, just reply with “Thank you so much for your interest. I’m in the middle of a revision based on recent agent feedback, but I will send you the manuscript by X date.”

Other possible things:

An agent asks for an exclusive. If the timeline is short (2-4 weeks) and no one else is already reading it, and the agent is a total rock star, you can go for it. I’d generally recommend against it. Hopefully, you have to reply, “I wish I could grant you an exclusive look, but the manuscript is already being read by several other agents. I do hope you’d still be interested in reading with the assurance that I would not make any decisions regarding representation without giving you the opportunity to respond.” They will almost always still read.

Revise and resubmit. The agent liked your book. They didn’t like some things though. They want you to make changes and they’re not going to sign you until you do (and maybe not even then). If the suggestions resonate, go for it. Not every “I liked it but didn’t love this” is an invitation to resubmit. Sometimes it’s just specific feedback, though it wouldn’t be wrong to requery in this case.

General Querying Rules:

Can you requery an agent with the same book? No.

Can you query a different agent at the same agency? Usually. Unless their guidelines say a no from one is a no from all.

How long should you wait before assuming a no-response is a no? Unless their guidelines say otherwise, 8 weeks. This is important because you may want to query another agent at that agency and you can’t while the first is considered active.

When should you nudge an agent on a query? Never, unless they say otherwise in their guidelines, i.e. “I try to reply to every query, so if you haven’t heard from me in X weeks, please resend.”

When should you nudge an agent with a full or partial? After 6 months unless they indicated they’d reply sooner (and "Can't wait to read! I'll get back to you soon!" doesn't count.)

Some people will tell you that you have no chance of getting a decent agent without a personal referral. This is just not true. A personal referral and a great query will get you the same thing: a read on your manuscript, nothing else.

Other people will tell you that if you’ve written a great book, any agent will sign you. This is not true either, so don’t take the declines as an indication that your book is not good. Agents specialize. They have very specific tastes and specific relationships with specific editors who have their own specific tastes.  You are probably going to face a lot of rejection.

Eventually, you will get an email that says something along the lines of I loved reading your book, but there were aspects that could be stronger. Are you open to revisions? And you’ll say yes. They’ll ask for a phone call. The agent will say lovely things about your book and your writing. They will have ideas for making it better. In addition you’ll want to ask them questions like:

What’s your approach to revisions?

What imprints do you envision sending this book to? (They will already have a list. That’s why they want your book. This is your chance to see if you have the same vision.)

What’s your submission plan? (Not just where, but how?)

What happens if we can’t sell this?

Do you use an agency contract? What’s in it? What do I need to know?

This conversation will be a blur, honestly. You can always follow up with more questions via email. You can ask for the names of clients to email for recommendations.

Generally speaking, it is poor etiquette to accept an offer if other agents are reading your manuscript, so you don’t have to give the agent an answer over the phone. You do have to give them a deadline. 1-2 weeks at the most.

The minute you are off the phone, you need to email all of the agents who have the manuscript. Reply to any previous correspondence, but change the subject line to read “Offer of Representation re: TITLE.” Let them know that you have an offer (don’t say who) and that you have a deadline of X date. Some of them will step aside at this point because they’re too busy to read it in that time frame. Some of them will finally start reading the manuscript they asked for 7 months ago. It’s not a bad idea to send a note to agents with outstanding queries from the last month. Some of these agents will immediately ask for the manuscript. This week or two will be really exciting. Hopefully, you’ll have more phone calls and then you’ll have to make a decision. You will probably like all of the agents you’ve spoken with, and you’ll feel stressed out. In the end you’ll accept someone’s offer and then let everyone else know. You may or may not have to do revisions with your agent at this point, and then eventually they will submit your book to editors. It’s all going to be completely awful and you should talk to your doctor about anxiety medication and sleeping pills.  

 

Be your own center of gravity

Sometimes I think I should write a book about marriage and parenting, about how to be a woman who lives inside a family without losing her goddamn mind. My husband would likely not recommend this book. If asked to blurb it, he would write "Liz is incredibly selfish," and that would be fitting because chapter 1 would be titled "Be Fucking Selfish" and not just in the "affix your own oxygen mask first" variety which is the only kind of selfishness that women seem to be allowed. 

I think every woman I know is struggling with balance, and no wonder because it's impossible to find balance when your center of gravity is somewhere outside of yourself. Even the language we use as and for mothers is problematic, like when a child or children is/are "the center of my world." 

Clearly this lack of balance is a problem in marriages too, though I think for most of us it's more about mothering than wife-ing. Everything in the culture primes us for self-sacrifice, for putting our children first and ourselves last, and then we look across the table at our husband to whom it would never even occur to not take the most appealing slice of pie, and we think "I hate you. I hate everything about you. You're crushing my life." 

(I should pause here to say that my husband is, at least at this stage in our lives, much more self-sacrificing than I. He is lovely. The children and I really like him.)

I don't think it's unusual or problematic for any of us to make sacrifices for the people we love. That's how society works. It's what keeps us from being lonely. It's how little groups of us can come together and build some kind of life. And at some points, in certain stages, little children are incredibly demanding. It's labor-intensive, the day-to-day of keeping a small person alive. And maybe sometimes we just get caught up in that, we get so used to the dependence, we forget that the goal is, if you raise your kids successfully, eventually you break up. They leave, they get their own lives and you get to go back to yours, and if you've spent all those years not building it into something that will make you happy? And it doesn't matter if that's work, or marathon-running, or reading lots and lots of books, because that's the whole point, it's different for everyone, you have to figure it out, and if you haven't, if you've spent years not thinking about what you want? 

"Be your own center of gravity" is what I would tell my daughters if I had them, though I don't. I have sons, and so I don't have to tell them. They already know. Everything in the culture has been telling them from the day they were born.

MONSTERS: A LOVE STORY galley giveaway

Galleys (if you aren't familiar) are advanced copies, so these are not actually for sale. They're sent to reviewers and other media contacts for the most part. You can't buy one, but we are giving one away.

I'll be drawing one name at random from my list of newsletter subscribers, so use the sign-up at the bottom of the page if you want in the running. You have till February 15th. 

If you like reading official-looking rule things, you can find them here.

**Just a quick update to say that we have a winner. Liz R., your galley is in the mail.

 

I have this thing about eggs

Fried eggs in particular. I always think—when it’s last minute, and we have no other plans for dinner—that I’ll just make fried egg sandwiches or something and then it never, ever goes well. I mean, in theory, fried eggs are easy enough. They’re so easy that there’s no excuse for getting them wrong—except for when the pan is too hot, or maybe it’s just getting old.

And really, I like for everyone to eat together. We have a rule about not eating until everyone is at the table and with fried eggs that doesn’t really work. And then of course, one person likes them runny, and another likes them over-hard, and one of the kids can really only stomach eggs that are scrambled, so could I just…?

I’m not saying that I can’t make good fried eggs; I’m just saying that in the process I end up losing my shit. I can’t bear, for some reason, to serve an egg with a broken yolk, or an overcooked edge, and David can’t bear to watch me throw them out. Please, he winds up begging, I’ll just…it looks fine…really, I’ll eat anything, he says, which feel condescending when all the eggs in the pan are clearly fucked up.

Maybe you’ve been there. Or maybe you’re thinking, This has nothing to do with writing. And you’re right of course, but you’re also wrong. Because if I get this stressed about not screwing up eggs?

We have galleys of Monsters now, and at some point, I’m going to have to read one—a last chance to make corrections before the book is officially, finally, uncorrectably out. They came on Friday. They are beautiful. I can barely bring myself to look.

We have to take down the tree today.

It's mid-January,and we've yet to take down our tree. This is not because I enjoy the tree so much, but more because I despise it. 

I often say I hate everything about Christmas, but that's not true. I like the break that it offers, not just from work or school, but from routine, from expectation. I like the time spent with family. The one tradition that matters to me is that every year the boys and I put together a puzzle. This year, we managed to keep the dog from eating a single piece (last year he managed to swipe a good 10%), and it was oddly less satisfying, much like the year that our eldest opted out of participating. 

In the days before we put the tree up this year (which I delayed as long as possible), I started pitching an alternative: "Let's take the money we would have spent on gifts, and spend it on a trip instead." I thought it was brilliant. The boys agreed. David looked at us with disgust, and the tree went up. It has yet to come down. I'm dragging my feet on that part too. 

I resent the tree's presence in the living room, but not as much as the hours it will take out of my day to get all the ornaments carefully packed away. We have, unfortunately, a lot of really nice ornaments. And really, that's the part I hate, all the hours and hours of meaningless work that goes into "making a holiday"--the shopping, the wrapping, and the goddamn decorating. 

In a little while, when the last kid wakes up, we'll start the process of taking it all down. I will, naturally, complain the whole time because much like my 14 year old, I feel like it's important for people (David) to know what a terrible time I'm having. Also, I only have 11 months to convince him that we should never ever do this again, and judging from the look he gave me the morning when I revisited Wouldn't it be so much nicer to just spend a week or two on a beach? I can't waste a minute.

 

 

 

What should I say to a student who wants to give up writing?

A friend of mine posted a variation of this question recently. Most of my friends are obviously teachers and writers. It surprised me then that very few of our mutual friends spoke up with a truer answer for that student, which for me would be something along the lines of Congratulations. Good for you!

There’s something strange about writing in that it’s one of the few fields in which we conflate interest and talent with the ability to hack it as a professional.

A friend of mine makes a mean lentil soup. I mean, this soup is amazing. She’s a fantastic cook in general, but this soup. I dream about this soup. Every time she makes it, I say something like You should open a restaurant. What I mean by that is You should make this soup and invite me over more often. If she actually said, I’m thinking of opening that restaurant. We’re looking at locations soon, I would sit her down with a group of restaurateurs and they would say to her, Are you fucking insane?

Because most restaurants fail. Most restaurants never get into the black. They open, they lose their owners’ life savings, and then they fail. Even those restaurants that make it? Ugh, what kind of life is that? Cooking until 11:30 and then scrubbing a kitchen and then worrying about payroll? It sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it?

Writing is very much the same—though with admittedly more flexible hours and your hands are in better shape and your clothes don’t smell like grease.

But most writers fail. Most poems and stories and novels never make it into print. And those that do are unlikely to sell well.  

And along the way? If you want to be a professional writer? It’s a lot of work.

There’s the writing and the revising and the proof-reading, and there’s more of it, a lot more of it, than most people know. Imagine, every time you make soup, you make a huge, huge pot of it, and you have to start over thirty-seven times, and then you carefully ladle one perfect bowl and throw the rest of it out. (And then no one wants to eat that one bowl anyway.) It’s not that much fun.

And of course, before you can even make that soup, you have to eat lots and lots of other people’s soup, and then you have to try their recipes and spend a couple of years thinking about what you like about soup in the first place.

The truth is, most people who think they want to write, don’t actually want to work that hard at it. That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to work that hard at writing. You just don’t get to be a professional writer. You have to find a different dream.

Some people, lots of people actually—many, many people that I personally know—do want to work that hard. They spend years laboring over that one perfect piece. And when they’re finished? Jesus, it’s beautiful. It really is.

It’s the next part that kills them. Because the next part is trying to publish that piece, and it is excruciating.

There are query letters and submissions and so many of each that you have to build a spreadsheet to keep it all straight. There is a ridiculous amount of rejection and it will come as form rejections and brutally worded critiques of your work and very often as silence and it would be hard for me to tell you which of these is the worst. It depends on the day. Some of that rejection is a comment on the quality of the work you’re submitting. Some of it is not. It’s impossible to tell which is which.

I don’t know many people who want to do this part, and I know even fewer people who do it well, or who can keep doing it without losing their will to live. It is truly, truly horrible, and it’s okay to not want to do it. The truth is that very few people can and the people who can do this part are very often not the same people who can spend years and years and years making the beautiful art.

There are people who will tell you that publishing is a racket or that it’s impossible to break in, that there are too many gate-keepers, and that the system is fucking rigged. None of that’s true. Well, there are a lot of gate-keepers. And if you want to be a professional writer you have to be both a person who wants to spend hours and hours making the art and also the person who likes trying a lot of gates. No one is going to come and find you and show you the back entrance. There is no secret back entrance. Sorry.

But truthfully, that’s for the best, because the good thing about how hard it is to get published is that it forces out the people who just don’t have the drive and endurance for what comes next. Because the work doesn’t stop, and the criticism doesn’t stop, and the self-doubt and rejection don’t fucking stop. And the harder you have to work to get published, the better prepared you are for that.

If someone gave my friend a restaurant tomorrow, she would run it into the ground. We all know that. So if you do want to be a writer, a professional writer? What I wish for you is that it’s hard. Really hard. I hope you can take it. It’s okay if you can’t.

New Journals: How to Know Whether to Submit

I was involved in a conversation the other day about new journals. It’s a tricky thing for writers, submitting work to an unknown journal. On the one hand, there’s the possibility of finding a great new home for your work. On the other, there's the possibility of seeing your work displayed amateurishly along with a few dozen other pieces that indicate the journal’s driving aesthetic is “whatever the hell people send us” and then a few months later the journal will fold. This is a very real danger, and it’s not just a question of pride. More than likely, the piece you’ve published is, or will one day be, part of a larger full-length work looking for its own home. Having your acknowledgements page littered with publications you’d be embarrassed about is not just embarrassing. It actually hurts your odds of publishing that full-length.

That said, I started a journal once, and I have many editor friends who have done the same. I fully support new journals and have deep admiration for the writers who launch publications in both editorial and contributor capacity. As a writer, you have to find the right balance between protecting your work and promoting the work of others, but the best way to support the work of a new editor is to send them your poems (or stories).

So, when do you take the risk? The truth is sending work to a new journal should never be a leap of faith. As with any journal, you do your research. Obviously, research is easier when there are past issues. But, even without issues to look at, there’s a lot you can learn from studying the following things:

1)      Presentation: There’s a website, yes? Does it look professional? Have they kicked in for the rather small investment of a domain name? Have the editors written something about their aesthetic goals? Their launch plans?

2)      Standards: We can’t judge aesthetic quality at this point, but is there an indication that they’re following publishing standards? Are their submission guidelines the 5-6 poems/1 story, no previously published, simultaneous allowed guidelines? It’s not that this is the most perfect submission standard for every journal, but it is an indication, especially for a start-up, that they know the landscape and lingo. Are they using Submittable? Bonus points for that.

3)      Editors: Who are they? If they aren’t listed, this is a no-go. You will not send your poems and stories to anonymous editors. If they are listed, check out their bios. Do they have credentials? Previous editorial experience? Graduate degrees? Where do they publish their own work? If the editors are publishing in reputable journals, they’re likely going to aspire to create something much along those lines. If the editors’ last publication was Crazy Joe’s French Toast and Poetry Page, we have a little problem here.

One thing to not do is to send them your lesser poems or stories. Oftentimes writers will think to themselves, Huh, new journal. I guess I could send them something, but I don't want to waste anything really good. I’ll send them my ‘C’ work.

As an editor, I say, Don't be an asshole. Don’t insult editors with your ‘C’ work, especially when they’re new. A first (and second and third) issue is so critical to establishing both the aesthetic and quality of a journal. Send the work that will help this journal be the sort of publication you’d be proud to send to in 10 years.

And as a writer, I say, Don't be an ass. You shouldn’t be publishing your ‘C’ work. You shouldn’t be sending it out at all. You don’t build a reputation on ‘C’ work. If it’s not good enough to send to Beloit or Ploughshares or Missouri Review, don’t send it to anyone. I’m not saying you should only send to these types of places or that their response should be the final word. I’m saying if you wouldn’t proudly put the poem in an envelope and drop it in the mail to them*, crossing your fingers and hoping they’ll say yes? Then don’t fucking send it to anyone.

 

*I kid, of course. No one’s using envelopes anymore.