Okay, so, my last post has gotten a really surprising amount of traffic and comments here and elsewhere. So now I have further questions for people:
If you don't want MFA students to have the ability to judge and reject your work, are you also not comfortable with people who have never studied at an MFA judging and rejecting your work? (This is happening at many excellent journals all the time.)
If you are okay with being rejected by people who don't have advanced degrees or any degrees at all, why are you not okay with being rejected by people who have completed part of an advanced degree or a bachelor's degree?
If you are not okay with being rejected by people without specialized degrees in writing, are you okay with it when someone without a degree in writing chooses not to read one of your stories or poems?
If you are not okay with them choosing not to read your stories or poems, why are you publishing in venues where they will have the opportunity to do this? Do you want to be read by many people? Do you understand that being read by many people requires being rejected and ignored by many other people, some of whom have no real education at all -- in fact, some of whom can barely read, or cannot read at all?
Does that make you angry?
Have you submitted to Uncanny Valley? Does it make you angry to know that I read roughly one paragraph of most submissions before rejecting them? That sometimes I don't even get that far?
How much of your story or poem does a person have to read before it is okay to reject it? How many people need to read that much of your poem or story?
How much do they need to think about it? (About you?)
Do they need to write you personalized comments about how you can improve? About what you did well, and where you could have been better?
Is there a reasonable expectation of fairness in publishing? Of transparency?
Who told you this would be fair?
What are you owed?
When did you realize that you were owed these things?
How does it feel to be special?
Have you always been special, or did you earn it somehow?
Do you tell people that you are special when you introduce yourself to them, or do you expect them to work it out for themselves?
What kind of education or life experience is necessary to understand your specialness?
When will you be happy?
While it's certainly possible to be a superlative *writer* at a very tender age, I think it is far more difficult to be a superlative *reader.* You, Mike, at the age of 25, very likely have not read enough, deeply enough, widely enough to have a formed a fully mature aesthetic. I think that this is increasingly likely the younger a person is; a well-read 22 year old is simply not as well-read (emphasis on "well") 35 year old. Or 45 year old. And so on up the scale.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, even if you have spent most of your time locked in rooms reading books, at 25, and 22, and 18, and 15 (you get the idea), you lack the requisite life experiences to steep what you have read in.
This is why the best books and stories are new experiences every time we come back to them - because we bring whole new synapses of experience (reading and real life) to them each time. Over enough time and if you are persistent enough, ideas and understanding will begin to emerge from the muck, new ones each year, until you have a vast storehouse of understanding form which to draw. And then you die.
Last night I finished reading Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? for the first time. I was immeasurably poorer in reading experience before last night. I think you have to have that happen to you many many times before you can lay claim to some genuine aesthetic, as a reader. And this simply takes time. It cannot be hurried, it cannot be rushed. So don't be impatient about it.
Not that you can't have opinions along the way. Just don't get attached to them, or think that you've reached any final answers. The reading opinions I had when I was 25 seem pretty juvenile to me today. Although maybe you're a lot smarter now than I was then.
Then, you know, go ahead and reject stuff.
For myself, I don't really care if MFAers read / reject my stuff. The thing about developing a reading aesthetic is that yours may not mesh with my writing. That's what god invented google for. Click away. Anyway, students have to learn somewhere, right? Slush pile reading should probably be a required MFA class.
I don't really care what the educational status of an editor is or how old they are. It seems really odd to me that it's an issue. That is probably because I'm not college educated so all of these discussions about MFA's and whatnot mean nothing to me in the grand scheme of things.
ReplyDeletePersonally I'd rather have an editor read as much as they need to and be open about that when they reject something. It does make me angry when an editor is trying very hard to be nice but the rejection makes it clear they did not read the whole piece.
I don't expect fairness in publishing or anywhere else. It's a non issue. Lots of things aren't fair and I just have to deal with it. I don't really expect editors to be thinking about me and whatever I've sent them. It stings and kicks my ego when I am pretty sure an editor really didn't like what I sent but I don't have the expectation that they ruminate about it.
People like what they like and editors are people so it follows that some or a lot (lately) of them won't like what I do. As they say thems the breaks.
As for specialness, I am not special. I like to write a lot of shit. Some people really like reading what I write, some people think it's stupid. That's okay. It's frustrating sometimes and I do want to be read and heard but it's not necessary for anyone to think I am special.
And no I haven't submitted to Uncanny Valley.
PS..sorry if I rambled/didn't make sense. I am really tired.
Hi Court,
ReplyDeleteWant to reply to a few things you said...
"You, Mike, at the age of 25, very likely have not read enough, deeply enough, widely enough to have a formed a fully mature aesthetic. "
I might not have! I'm not sure what a "fully mature aesthetic" is, though, or why I would need one to edit a magazine. I'm not in the literary appreciation business here (note how rarely I attempt to write formal reviews of works whose authors aren't at the beginnings of their careers) -- I'm in the business of curation. All I have to know is what I love. There seems to be an idea out there that literary magazines and presses have to publish the best writing out there. That's not really the job, as I see it. We have to publish *what we love the most* and what we *want people to read.* There might be a lot of overlap there with great writing, but it's not something I worry about. I would happily publish garbage if it was garbage I loved.
"I think that this is increasingly likely the younger a person is; a well-read 22 year old is simply not as well-read (emphasis on "well") 35 year old. Or 45 year old. And so on up the scale."
Okay, but how well-read do I have to be to know if one of your stories is something I want to publish? THAT is the million-dollar question here and it's one no one seems to want to answer.
"Furthermore, even if you have spent most of your time locked in rooms reading books, at 25, and 22, and 18, and 15 (you get the idea), you lack the requisite life experiences to steep what you have read in."
I do? When will I have it? (Not saying I have it; curious to see if you're willing to define some terms here.)
"For myself, I don't really care if MFAers read / reject my stuff. The thing about developing a reading aesthetic is that yours may not mesh with my writing. That's what god invented google for. Click away. Anyway, students have to learn somewhere, right? Slush pile reading should probably be a required MFA class."
Agreed. Reading slush was easily the most educational part of my degree. (And yes, I did hell of reject things as a student.)
I agree with you, Shannon! Especially this:
ReplyDelete"I don't really care what the educational status of an editor is or how old they are. It seems really odd to me that it's an issue. That is probably because I'm not college educated so all of these discussions about MFA's and whatnot mean nothing to me in the grand scheme of things."
Most people don't have college degrees. A tiny percentage of people go on to get graduate degrees in creative writing. I have no patience for anyone who wants to leave the majority of potential readers, writers, and editors out in the cold. Outside the our weird little community, the very idea is laughable.
I'm not sure what a mature reading aesthetic is, because I couldn't say for sure I myself have one; I just feel fairly certain that a 25-year old doesn't.
ReplyDeleteAs for the requisite experience, you will know it when you have it. I have no idea when that will occur, but your asking indicates that you haven't. (Sorry to get all zen on you, but like my grandpa used to say, If I have to 'splain it to you, I can't.) But it's not just having the experience, it's having the time afterwards to reflect and genuinely grow (or refuse to grow from it). And that, in my view, is a process that simply can't be rushed.
As for your ability to curate what you like online, that's simpler. A matter of taste. Everyone has taste, for which there is no accounting, and in your mag, you publish what suits yours. I guess I don't think there's anything particularly interesting about that. I thought in your posts you were talking about something a little more debatable.
So you know enough to know that I suck, you're just not sure how or why or what I could do to stop?
ReplyDeleteYour condescension has gone from deeply silly but kind of entertaining to just plain boring.
*shrug* Post on this again 10 years and a few thousand books from now.
ReplyDeleteSort of a logorrheic litany of questions, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteIf your goal is to bombard folks with an overwhelming set of questions--many that could be read as non-sequiturs--instead of taking a nuanced stance beyond “get over it, life’s tough, deal with it, be happy” then you’ll likely succeed and exhaust dissenters.
Congrats, you win.
Let me add something more substantial...
ReplyDeleteIt’s insincere to respond with “questions,” especially ones that are irrelevant to the topic. The “if you don’t like x, how do you feel about y?” rhetorical tactic is disingenuous. Everyone knows writers must possess a tough skin. Throwing this commonly-accepted knowledge in a writer’s face when she voices a concern about editorial practices is eh, insulting…maybe even “condescending,” to borrow your own word.
Why are you talking to us like we can’t handle rejection because we question a systematic issue with college literary journals? I can handle rejection and still question it at the same time. The brain is complex like that.
How about this:
When I was in my early to mid-20s in the late 90s, early 00s, the literary blogosphere and online publishing hadn’t yet exploded. We weren’t in a hurry to be known, whereas today, I sense that’s changed: folks are in a hurry. You’re talking about entitlement? Geeze. How about the implication in your posts that it’s beneath a 22-year old, first-time intern at a literary magazine to admit his inexperience as an editor at a literary magazine?
That’s the very definition of entitlement.
And I agree with Court on the age issue as it relates to reading. A well-read person is more than someone who has read Time Magazine’s Top 100 Novels of All-Time under lock and key: she’s a person who has read widely, deeply, and lived long enough to reflect on those reading experiences. I’m 100% certain I’ll be a lot smarter ten years from now, at 43, if I continue my current reading pace, and have no problem acknowledging this publicly. Time is a writer’s best friend.
For instance, I recently completed my doctoral comprehensive exams. Passing was nice and a great relief, but most enlightening was how it exposed major gaps in my reading. So, yeah, I’m perplexed why you resist the idea that you’ll be a smarter, more astute reader ten years from now, or why you assume others saying such is simultaneously saying that 20-somethings are stupid or dumb.
Dude, you're talking past me. Your comment is nowhere near my post, and it's not addressing anything I wrote. I never said anyone shouldn't admit inexperience. I never said I won't be smarter ten years from now (I would like to be). I never said, as many people seem to believe I did, that students should never defer to people with more experience. Of course they should, sometimes.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that people continue to misconstrue my argument as one that experience and wide reading won't help a writer write or an editor edit is absurd. Of course those things are beneficial -- I wouldn't be doing them if I thought otherwise. My point is that it doesn't take any kind of special knowledge or training to reject a story. It would if we were responsible for making final and definitive statements on quality, but we're not: we're deciding what will work for our publications. Writers who want to pretend we're doing the former only have to do that if they can't handle the latter. Which is another way of saying they can't handle readers, which is another way of saying they're wasting their time.
But if we make that into an argument that experience, reading, and education can't improve you as a human being -- an argument I certainly never made -- then we can fight straw men all day. We can take as our premises the very ideas that I'm trying to question (that a particular set of qualifications is necessary to reject a story, and that an MFA student will necessarily not have them whatever they are) so that we don't have to talk about the thing that makes us uncomfortable. Instead it becomes a referendum on whether I personally am young and inexperienced. (I am, by the way! It's not much of an argument when you have my agreement. But it's beside the point.)
Really what I'm saying is that if your response to rejection is to look for problems in the process and persons behind the rejection, you're an entitled twit.
If your response to rejection is to post a mean, reactionary status update on Facebook or Twitter about the "moron kids who rejected your story at ____Review," then yes, "you're an entitled twit."
ReplyDeleteIf your response is to rationally question the relationship between rejection and the preponderance of unchecked 20-something year-old readers at major literary magazines, then no, you're not an "entitled twit."
You seem to be lumping everyone in group 1.
"Which is another way of saying they can't handle readers, which is another way of saying they're wasting their time."
ReplyDeleteYep, that's it--a writer questioning editorial processes is proof he "can't handle readers."
Next, you'll tell us that reasonably questioning workshop feedback proves a writer "can't handle readers."
So, to summarize: regardless of the ever important matter of context, writers who "question" are thin-skinned, weaklings who can't handle readers, because an editor's job is no different than a "reader's," which is why it takes no special skills to be an editor. After all, editors are merely "readers"--anyone can do it...
See what I did there?
I strongly suspect that a "fully mature aesthetic" is a myth, and it's not surprising to me that no specific terms were set out in defense of the idea. It's comforting to model our creative growth as artists in ways we're very familiar with (credentialism--where each book we read is another entry on our reading/writing resume), but is there any evidence to suggest that this is useful at all?
ReplyDeleteFurthermore I don't think that mastery generally follows such a steadily incremental model, where with each year you age you gain identical levels of competence in your chosen field. Usually it consists of extended periods of no improvement with sudden, brief spikes of large competence-gain separating them.