Really Bad News for Aspiring Writers

[AuntShecky]

Just what we need, right? More bad news (http://motherjones.com/media/2010/01/death-of-literary-fiction-magazines-journals)!

I don't need to tell you how difficult, if not impossible, to "break in." Some of us have been experiencing decades of frustration. Unless one specializes in specific genres, such as Young Adult fiction, SF, and Romance, no respectable publishing house will accept "unsolicited" manuscripts. Since there are practically no mainstream magazines which publish fiction--and now, as the Mother Jones article states, fewer literary journals--it's nigh impossible to establish a track record, required by most literary agents who seem to be legitimate (i.e.without upfront reading fees.)

Despite the fact that the rise of desktop publishing has managed to expunge a little of the stigma attached to the option formerly known as "vanity" publishing, this is not a choice for those of us who are financially bereft.

So what is an aspiring writer to do? Please read the article and weigh in.

It's okay to commiserate-- I'm with you 100%-- but what we really need are
solutions!

[MystyrMystyry]

On the surface it seems disastrous, but the reality is that we're already swamped with so much to read that for the reader-writer it doesn't make a tot of difference. For the writer who thinks that their 'masterpiece' deserves to put them on the literary map and everyone's lips at the Saturday cocktail party, it was always a struggle unless you were a devout secret misanthropist who would rather promote (first to the publisher, then the readership at large) than write, or one of the rare few that luckily caught a gap in the market and seized it.

If your purpose in writing is money then there are easier, more efficient ways to make it (like the lottery or Bingo for example). Most writers I've met do it as a meditation or personal therapy, not as their main (dependable) income - but there are exceptions, like columnists and now some Bloggers.

The trick it would seem is to first define your demographic, and then target your words at them. Call it genre writing, but it's the case that Harry Potter will never appeal to the majority, just a sufficiently large base to make the author a lovely sparkling bundle after the chance hit of the first - but later there was anticipation for what was to come next, and odd little leaks, and also a movie, and seemingly unlimited advertising budget. And for what? A load of, in essence, tedious crap!

Better for everyone not to aim to be that successful really.

Anyway, very few literary works are The Great One, rather some become popular by word of mouth, and others by being genuinely 'novel. As for short stories, writers who became successful at it always had to write (and submit, and rewrite, and resubmit) a ton of them - masochists for sure, but we're all thankful for their die-hard attitude :)

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

So what is an aspiring writer to do?
Write while also working another job and keep pushing their work until it gets somewhere, maybe? Isn't that what writers have been doing for decades, if not centuries?

[Hawkman]

The trick is to get a good publicist. Don't bother to write until someone knows your name, as unless your name is in the public consciousness, no one will read you anyway. If you are female and have an enormous bust, a few photographs displaying it in the paper on a regular basis will probably make you marketable. Success in some sporting endeavour may aid the physically gifted male, but there is always crime. Commit some terrible atrocity and make a big splash, then sell a story. Over here there is some kind of law which prevents a fellon from benefiting financially from his crime, but you could always write something fictional when you get out and your name will be a passport to fortune, or at the very least, an agent.

Make yourself famous and it won't matter how badly you write; you will have an audience.

[MystyrMystyry]

Ah yes! The modern cult of looks, celebrity, notoriety, and/or personality! I completely forgot about those attributes!

[YesNo]

The problem the article is describing is that literary publications at universities are not likely to be subsidized in the future. They will have to make a profit to survive which means they will have to have a paying readership which means that writers they publish will have to be interesting to those readers.

This is not just a problem for writers, but also for editors and others producing those magazines. They can expect to be replaced if they don't produce something that sells.

I don't see anything really wrong with what is happening and the author of the article, Ted Genoways, provided a solution to the problem at the end of the article: "write something we might want to read".

[MANICHAEAN]

Dear Lord, what am I to do? I have neither an imposing bust, nor newspaper headline cover.

The answer. Keep plugging away. Don't insult your intelligence, but most of all your creativity to public opinion poll tastes. You might be six feet under, when first "discovered."

Having said that, it is perhaps easy for me to pontificate, having made my dough already.

[Jack of Hearts]

Yep. Don't do what you love to do because it's too hard. The most important thing is to be comfortable, even if it makes you oddly sad in a quiet way.






J

[Darcy88]

Work a day job like the vast majority of other artists do. Write in your free time and write for the pure enjoyment of writing, not for the accolades. If you're good and you put your stuff out there eventually some amount of recognition will come. Writing is a big part of my identity, but I've finally reached the point where I have accepted the necessity of an uncreative day-job or career and am content to write 2-4 hours a morning or night and plug away however long it takes until I achieve literary success, even if it takes decades. Ultimately I write for myself alone. I know when my stuff is good and when its ****. Writing something good fills me with a warm sense of accomplishment regardless of whether or not it is ever going to be read by anyone.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Or you can just self-publish, like a certain LitNet poster.

[PMLondonderry]

leak a sex tape of yourself with some celebrity or politician and then, in the 15 minutes of fame, mention that you write books.

[AuntShecky]

OMG! (as the kids tweet and text.) I've spent the last four or five decades pursuing a profession that is as passé as vaudeville!

Getting one's manuscript read and accepted has always been an extremely difficult endeavor, even in earlier decades when a mainstream market for short stories still existed. The odds of one's byline ever appearing in The New Yorker are even slimmer than winning $100 million in the lottery. Now with increasingly numbers of academic journals folding, --as explained in the Mother Jones article -- yet another possible option has been lost. (Not that there was in any way easier to find placement among the young editors who can be more discriminating than William Shawn ever was.)

There are a few "little" or "literary" magazines still around, but if you're thinking of submitting material to them, I can't remind you enough how important it is to be familiar with the publication. I don't mean just the "submission guidelines" --such as not sending anything in the summer months-- I mean in the type of fiction that the journal publishes.

Read the back issues. Few of us can afford to subscribe, but we can try to look for "free" stories on line or bound volumes of past issues in public libraries. You might find that the majority of selected stories are quite different from the kind of stuff you write, in choice of subject matter, if not in quality. You'll save a lot of time, postage money, and heartache if you decide not to submit your stories there.

Read The other night I finally caught the film, Quills, on cable tv. The movie was rough to watch; understandably so, since it was about the Marquis de Sade and his obsession for writing porno amid (perhaps justifiable) censorship and confinement to a mental institution during the Napoleonic Era. Despite its stellar acting, the movie was shocking, but I learned something from it. The "Abbé" in charge of the mental hospital looks at the extensive book collection which the Marquis had been allowed to keep in his cell and remarks: "Yet you never read them. You write more than you read--the mark of a true amateur."

We may (we hope) not be sadists or degenerates, but are we "amateurs"? Besides the unfortunate definition as non-professional, the word literally means "one who does what he loves," as Jack of Heart's comment implies. A popular mantra of the 1980s was "Do what you love. The money will come." After all these years, we're still waiting, just as we're waiting for the 1980-style "supply side economics" to "trickle down."

In the meantime, those of us with a compulsion to write fiction have no other choice than to follow the VQR editor's advice: "Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood. And for Christ's sake, write something we might want to read."

Finally, the title of a documentary about the jazz trumpeter and Schoolhouse Rock star, Jack Sheldon, is Trying to Get Good. That's what we aspiring fiction writers should do -- try to "get good." Even if it takes 50 years. Keep writing, keep posting --for free -- on sites such as this one on the off-hand that the cream might rise to the top (if it doesn't curdle in the meantime.)

[MystyrMystyry]

A mate of mine who used to be a professional stand-up is now teaching comedy writing at university. His students (still studying) are experiencing no problem having their work accepted by television and radio, some are getting their plays performed, and so far two this year have signed book deals (I don't know the previous years ratio).

When this year's crop were asked if they dropped his name, they all said no (they didn't want to sabotage their chances at a career).

I expect the way it works is that he's an infectiously funny and enthusiastic bloke who just automatically puts you in a good mood if you were otherwise not feeling up to much.

My advice to young writers would be to seek these sort of people out rather than crappy internet articles about hard it all is, and how we're all getting ripped off, and going to Hell etc

New jokes and one liners never go out of fashion - in fact the one thing the world craves is humour.

Would you rather your blurb to read:

'A serious and penetrating discourse on the machinations of the current political landscape' - the Publisher

or:

'Hilarious! I laughed until my head fell off!' - the Author

[MANICHAEAN]

Spot on MM.

[BookBeauty]

I agree wholeheartedly that writers have a tendency to write more than they read. And reading is likely as important, if not more important, than the writing itself. I have certainly been guilty of this crime.

The sad fact that fiction seems to be dying out is a symptom of a much greater issue.

Everything is becoming increasingly about profit, and entertainment. People's attention spans fade faster than they can keep up with their Facebook pokes, and Twitter feeds. The line drawn between the appropriate, and the downright crude and perverse, continues to fade as well.

The global economic crisis is likely the root of the problem, which can only be made better if the economy were to be made sustainable, instead of its continual growth, making it a necessity for everyone to sell-sell-sell, buy-buy-buy, at an increasing pace-- An eventual impossibility, and an inevitable crash.

[JCamilo]

Apparently, lots of people are publishing in this site every single day, anyways...

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

And I wouldn't be surprised if there's a veritable plethora of students out there skillfully using their computer's copy and paste function to republish those pieces for their teachers.

[AuntShecky]

A mate of mine who used to be a professional stand-up is now teaching comedy writing at university. His students (still studying) are experiencing no problem having their work accepted by television and radio, some are getting their plays performed, and so far two this year have signed book deals (I don't know the previous years ratio).

When this year's crop were asked if they dropped his name, they all said no (they didn't want to sabotage their chances at a career).

I expect the way it works is that he's an infectiously funny and enthusiastic bloke who just automatically puts you in a good mood if you were otherwise not feeling up to much.

My advice to young writers would be to seek these sort of people out rather than crappy internet articles about hard it all is, and how we're all getting ripped off, and going to Hell etc

New jokes and one liners never go out of fashion - in fact the one thing the world craves is humour.

Would you rather your blurb to read:

'A serious and penetrating discourse on the machinations of the current political landscape' - the Publisher

or:

'Hilarious! I laughed until my head fell off!' - the Author

Aw, nobody likes your auntie's jokes (or so I thought until they stole 'em!)

[MarkBastable]

Write better. And put as much time and effort into getting your work published as you put into getting it right. If those two endeavours aren't taking up every moment that you're not earning a living, if that commitment isn't damaging your marriage, distancing you from your children, alienating your friends and ruining your health, then you're not doing enough of it.

And even if you do enough of it, you're still very likely to fail.

This isn't a new phenomenon. Writing has always been like that.

[JuniperWoolf]

Write better.

Hahaha, that's really the crux of it.

[AuntShecky]

"Write better." That's a succinct way of stating exactly what the editor of the VQR said in the last line of his article.

But he's also right in his assertion that we should consider writing our "lifeblood" rather than our "livelihood." On the other hand, Mark B. is not wrong when he says we should make an effort to get published; the problem is-- as this thread attempts to show -- is that there are practically no "markets" left to submit our mss, compounded by the fact that the number of wouldbe writers competing for the hypothetical slots has--to use the favorite word of newscasters--"skyrocketed."


Despite all the seemingly insurmountable barriers, some of us continue writing not only because we lack the ability to do anything else, but because there's nothing else we can do! It's more than an inclination--it's a compulsion with all the delusion and dementia the word implies. Einstein's oft-quoted definition of insanity undoubtedly applies to yours truly: "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

Take for example, jazz musicians of the present day. Not all of them are octogenarians uttering the name of Coltrane and Bix with devoted reverence. Even today we have in the US a number of young musicians studying jazz in Juilliard and prestigious universities. Don't think for a moment that they haven't heard Miles's famous prophecy that jazz is destined to become "the music of the museum," nor are they unaware of the fact that making a living through a career in jazz is overly idealistic, if not quixotic, in the light of the cold fact that seems that recording companies sell even fewer jazz works than classical ones? Should we tell these future jazz artists that they're wasting their time? I hope not.

And with jazz, I again mention Jack Sheldon's "Trying to Get Good." Although I know that it takes years -- in my case, a lifetime!--learning the craft to a point where I can begin to think I might be on the right path toward that end, it's extremely disillusioning to contemplate that by the time I approach the exurbs of the realm of "good," the world has long since past the point where it cares. Once again, irony rears its unsettling head. I still care, though; I'm too damned stubborn to let it go.

"I can't go on; I'll go on"
--Samuel Beckett

[Jack of Hearts]

Write better. And put as much time and effort into getting your work published as you put into getting it right. If those two endeavours aren't taking up every moment that you're not earning a living, if that commitment isn't damaging your marriage, distancing you from your children, alienating your friends and ruining your health, then you're not doing enough of it.

And even if you do enough of it, you're still very likely to fail.

This isn't a new phenomenon. Writing has always been like that.

'Failing' is for the rest of you bums. See you on top.


Mark B. is not wrong when he says we should make an effort to get published; the problem is-- as this thread attempts to show -- is that there are practically no "markets" left to submit our mss, compounded by the fact that the number of wouldbe writers competing for the hypothetical slots has--to use the favorite word of newscasters--"skyrocketed."

Why publish? Writing probably does need to honor its social element (ie, being read by other people) but Robert Henri said it best; if you start the piece while thinking of the judging panel you're already doomed. Best thing, maybe- find a writer's group. Find a workshop. Try to avoid academia for the most part.

The idea of competition seems absurd, the idea of making a living out of writing without sullying yourself impractical.

Live like a rat, write like a god.







J

[MarkBastable]

'Failing' is for the rest of you bums. See you on top.

I'm not sure whether that was sarky, or supposed to be in my voice, but I'll address it anyway and, perhaps more helpfully, touch on one or two other aspects of the effort to get published.

Getting published is not actually an end in itself. The buzz lasts for about a month. The real goal is to be read - and that means selling books. Both my published novels did okay - they sold their print run - but by the time they had, I'd realised they weren't going to sell in the quantities I'd hoped, and I'd lost interest in them anyway. There's a long time between writing the book and seeing it in the shop, and a lot of writers find that it's really difficult to rekindle enthusiasm for something you wrote two or three years ago, especially if you're working on something else by then.

Me, I wanted to write a novel very different to the two I'd had published. In fact, I sold most of my assets to give myself a couple of years out of the dayjob to do it.

What I didn't do was put as much energy into selling it as I had into writing it. I was lazy about that. Really, it was a complete waste of two years. So, in my own terms, I failed.

But when I went back to work, I decided that I wasn't prepared to sacrifice evenings and weekends with my family, or to ditch my friends, or to work till two every morning in order to write another book. It just wasn't worth it. I decided to stop - at least until I started to want to again. I quit, one day at a time.

Because - and, here, not for the first time, I disagree with Shecky - I don't think that writing should be a compulsion. I lose patience with people who say, "I just have to write. If I didn't write, I'd go mad. I'd burst!"

To which I reply, "If you just had to arrange the towels in straight lines, or you just had to sing the the Hallelujah Chorus every day, or you just had to scribble down the names of all the cheeses you can think of each night before you go to sleep, someone close to you would suggest that you seek professional help. And, really, if you just have to write, what you have there is not a creative drive - it's a psychiatric disorder. You might be able to deal with it, but you don't get any points for it."

On the subject of the difficulty of getting published in the current climate, I think it's worth looking at the economics of traditional publishing. The books that represent least risk are those that have something going for them besides the words on the page. So - established authors with a track record are a good bet to cover production costs and make a few bucks for the shareholders. And so are books with a celebrity name on the cover, because people will buy those books regardless of what's inside.

The books that suffer are the mid-list stuff - that's the stuff that does okay, but not spectacularly - and I know many very good mid-list authors who've been dropped over the last few years. The other victims tend to be new, previously unpublished authors, who represent a significant investment risk.

However, it's a mistake to think that were it not for Paris Hilton and Joan Rivers, the publishers would be investing in me or you. They don't think, "Man, none of the editorial staff have an idea that we can hang on the Kardashians, so we'll plough this spare million bucks into ten completely new unproven authors." No - they just keep the million, and wait until a surefire celeb wanders past the window.

Moreover, it doesn't matter - to you and me as aspiring authors - that they do that, because to a publisher we don't fall within the same advances budget, on account of the books we write aren't aimed at the same market. It's a rare bookbuyer who wanders into a bookshop and, failing to find a kiss-n-tell by an ex-Aerosmith groupie, thinks, "What the hell - I'll pick up a novel I've never heard of by some writer I've never heard of, because this ten bucks is burning a hole in the pocket of my fake chinchilla."

No. The only way that unknown or mid-list writers get published, the only way to convince an agent or an editor that you're worth a shot despite having little or no record of spectacular sales success nor any claim to have been slapped by Charlie Sheen, is to write something irresistible.

It's not easy, but it can be done. I personally know two people who've done it - one an unknown writer whose first published novel won just about every prize going, and another who, when the house who'd published her first two books told her they didn't like the third one much, ditched them because she believed in it. She found another publisher who believed in it as much as she did - and she won just about everything that the other guy didn't win.

The books in question are Finn (http://www.amazon.com/Finn-Novel-Jon-Clinch/dp/0812977149/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330464181&sr=8-2)and Water for Elephants (http://www.amazon.com/Water-Elephants-Novel-Sara-Gruen/dp/1565125606/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330464274&sr=1-1). They were successful because their authors found a way to write exactly what they wanted to write that was also what people wanted to read.

In short, they just wrote better. Better than they had before. And better than anyone else whose manuscript hit the editor's desk that year.

That's what we're up against.

[AuntShecky]

Best thing, maybe- find a writer's group. Find a workshop. Try to avoid academia for the most part.

J

Jack, I hope your career takes off in a big way. Mine has been stuck on the tarmac for decades. To publishers, your old auntie is like kryptonite to Superman. Maybe it's time I got the hint.

For me, the LitNet is my "writer's group." I post my (ahem) "stuff" here --not really to seek praise because if that were my only motive, I'd feel really uncomfortable-- but to be assured of having at least a couple of readers or two.

As far as workshops go, they may be a little late for yours truly. If I haven't learned about how to write in four decades, I most likely never will.

Maybe that's the problem.







Me, I wanted to write a novel very different to the two I'd had published. In fact, I sold most of my assets to give myself a couple of years out of the dayjob to do it.

What I didn't do was put as much energy into selling it as I had into writing it. I was lazy about that. Really, it was a complete waste of two years. So, in my own terms, I failed.





Please don't for one tiny second think that I don't admire you for that. I for one --maybe more painfully than any other LitNutter-- know how excruciatingly difficult it is to get an editor even to read one's work, let alone see it into print.

For me to say that it was just a matter of "luck" would be pretty facile, doncha think? Although it might have been a confluence of felicitious coincidences that jumpstarted the careers of the two authors you mentioned.

Since you do indeed have a track record -- two published novels plus appearances in Esquire et al.-- I wonder why you don't have an agent doing the "dirty work" for you. That way the time you spend trying to sell your stuff can be better spent on creating new novels.

And as far as saying I "have to" write, I really do. Part of it is sheer stubborn perseverance, another part is the fear that giving up after 4 or 5 decades would amount to a horrifying waste,
but really, really, a part of it is that I literally can't do anything else. It's not the same as folding sheets, or counting cars, or any other OCD type of behavior.

PS I really do admire your success and wish you lots more of it.

[BookBeauty]

Jack, I hope your career takes off in a big way. Mine has been stuck on the tarmac for decades. To publishers, your old auntie is like kryptonite to Superman. Maybe it's time I got the hint.

For me, the LitNet is my "writer's group." I post my (ahem) "stuff" here --not really to seek praise because if that were my only motive, I'd feel really uncomfortable-- but to be assured of having at least a couple of readers or two.

As far as workshops go, they may be a little late for yours truly. If I haven't learned about how to write in four decades, I most likely never will.

Maybe that's the problem.

From what I have seen, you are of the best writers on Litnet, and it's always an honour to get your opinion and constructive criticism on my own work, because getting your advice is a surefire way to improve.

I truly think that if you shmooze enough and get the right connections, you'll get the big break you've been searching for. It takes a while. Writing's a cutthroat biz, unfortunately.

[Jack of Hearts]

I'm not sure whether that was sarky, or supposed to be in my voice, but I'll address it anyway and, perhaps more helpfully, touch on one or two other aspects of the effort to get published.

It wasn't intended as a personal shot at you, who this reader has a good amount of respect for (hopefully that's evident from his appreciation of your stories and biting wit on display in the general forum).

This reader didn't read the rest of your post. It was just too long and full of the boring crap that led him to make his first remark anyways (well, it was one of three reasons). Read that in the best possible way; you aren't preaching to the choir with this particular poster is all it means.


Jack, I hope your career takes off in a big way. Mine has been stuck on the tarmac for decades. To publishers, your old auntie is like kryptonite to Superman. Maybe it's time I got the hint.

For me, the LitNet is my "writer's group." I post my (ahem) "stuff" here --not really to seek praise because if that were my only motive, I'd feel really uncomfortable-- but to be assured of having at least a couple of readers or two.

As far as workshops go, they may be a little late for yours truly. If I haven't learned about how to write in four decades, I most likely never will.

Maybe that's the problem.

Auntie, some of the stuff you post in here is better than a lot of the junk in that collection of Pushcart Prizes that this reader is trying to work through. The fact that you aren't published and living the 'life of glamour' that some authors are might just be a statement about the cruel randomness of the universe or a bastard called destiny. And this reader didn't mean to imply that you needed a workshop, it was just all he could think of in terms of honoring the social element of writing. It's clear you can't just share your writing with just anybody, we've all learned that lesson by now (hopefully), and finding an appropriate demographic seems important. Sometimes it's good to air a story out. Sometimes it needs the life.

Thanks for your good wishes, and your kindness as usual, but there is no 'career' here. This reader will try to relate it by example. One of this reader's other hobbies is fingerstyle guitar. The technical term for his level of play is 'awful,' maybe. Right now he's working through Leo Kottke's arrangement of 'Corrina, Corrina'... and not intending to ever play it for anybody, really. Just getting it right, just trying to figure out how Kottke imbued it with such magic and wanton sadness- well, they're just strings. It's just a wood box. How does it add up? But the moments, while trying to play it, when it does come together might be the only truly good thing that this reader is interested in pursuing. Being heard by anybody else, being thought of as 'good at the guitar' by people who don't even understand, or being thought of as 'awful at the guitar' by people who think they do understand doesn't even matter. Rinse and repeat for the idea of writing. There are some people who read this poster's work and don't understand it. There are some people who read it and think it sucks and could never be published. They're allowed their reactions. The work's not being done 'for them,' even if it wants to communicate with them on some level.

If it lived forever in a shoebox (and a lot of it does for Jack of Hearts) it'd still be worth doing because the process up to completion is the best thing there is. The introspection, the self-development, the feeling like you've said something genuine and elegant and personal, etc.

And, as an aside, this whole post is hilarious if you're peeking through Jack of Hearts' archive right now and thinking 'This moron can't write worth a ****.' Just a funny thought.








J

[WolfLarsen]

This is the best time to be a writer!

You don't need the traditional publishing houses! You don't need the traditional literary magazines! You don't need the bookstores!

Before the Internet you were a slave to the publishing houses. Now you are free of them! And you don't need a literary agent because you don't need a publishing house, and since you don't need a publishing house you don't need a literary agent.

I worked in Alaska on a seasonal basis for 12 years. I worked on fishing boats and then on the docks working about 100 hours a week twice a year. For about eight months a year there was no work in the port, so I was FREE! For eight months a year I did whatever I wanted to, I wrote whatever I wanted to write, I traveled to wherever I wanted to go!

As far as literary magazines go there's a literary magazine for everyone! I've been published in over 40 of them. And if my wild and crazy stuff can get in literary magazines, then your stuff can get into literary magazines too. There's lots of literary magazines, some are more open-minded about unconventional writing than others, some are going to be more sympathetic to whatever you write than other literary magazines.

And traditional publishing and vanity publishing are not that different. Traditional publishers are often looking for someone to put down a whole bunch of money for "marketing". That's just vanity publishing in disguise! When you don't pay for it, you still pay for it! A few years ago a traditional publisher published a book that was nothing more than a glorified oversized sales pamphlet for a major department store in New York City.

You don't need any money to get self-published. Amazon.com has a free self-publishing service. Pretty soon publishing as we know it won't even exist. Those books on your shelves will soon be antiques, just like CDs!

Fellow writers! You've got a zillion options that you didn't have before! Open your eyes! Posting boards didn't exist before! There's more literary magazines than ever thanks to the Internet! You've got more ways to publish your book than ever before! And you don't even have to kiss Murdoch's *** to get your book published (he owns one of the six sisters).

This is the best time to be a writer than ever before! It's hard, but it was harder before!

[Jerrybaldy]

just write if you need to. Or not. Banking is a proffesion apparently. writing is freedom.

[YesNo]

What literary magazines do people recommend?

[WolfLarsen]

What literary magazines do people recommend?


What literary magazines do you like reading? The ones you like reading, the ones that are closer to your tastes in writing, are the ones that are the best for you.

Some people will try and tell you that the Paris Review, the Chicago Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Ploughshares, and others like it are the best. They are wrong.

The best literary magazines for you are obviously the ones that you enjoy reading the most.

Forget about the Pushcart Prize. No one is going to be reading that stuff 100 years from now.

Personally, I think the best literary magazines are those that publish the most creative literature. What happens sometimes though is that some literary magazines will publish mostly conventional fare but publish perhaps one creative work per issue if you're lucky.

It will surprise you to know that one of my favorite literary magazines of all time was called **** Diary. It was very unpretentious. That helped a lot. They published excellent writing, both conventional and creative. They specifically liked to push the envelope, whether in the area of creativity or in assaulting the puritanical "good taste" of the literary world. The stuff in **** Diary was better
than anything in the prestigious literary magazines.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

What literary magazines do you like reading? The ones you like reading, the ones that are closer to your tastes in writing, are the ones that are the best for you.

Some people will try and tell you that the Paris Review, the Chicago Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Ploughshares, and others like it are the best. They are wrong.

The best literary magazines for you are obviously the ones that you enjoy reading the most.

Forget about the Pushcart Prize. No one is going to be reading that stuff 100 years from now.

Personally, I think the best literary magazines are those that publish the most creative literature. What happens sometimes though is that some literary magazines will publish mostly conventional fare but publish perhaps one creative work per issue if you're lucky.

It will surprise you to know that one of my favorite literary magazines of all time was called **** Diary. It was very unpretentious. That helped a lot. They published excellent writing, both conventional and creative. They specifically liked to push the envelope, whether in the area of creativity or in assaulting the puritanical "good taste" of the literary world. The stuff in **** Diary was better
than anything in the prestigious literary magazines.
This is also one of the best things you've written on LitNet. Very well put, Wolf.

[Alexander III]

Write better. And put as much time and effort into getting your work published as you put into getting it right. If those two endeavours aren't taking up every moment that you're not earning a living, if that commitment isn't damaging your marriage, distancing you from your children, alienating your friends and ruining your health, then you're not doing enough of it.

And even if you do enough of it, you're still very likely to fail.

This isn't a new phenomenon. Writing has always been like that.

This ^

If you are not getting published write better. If you have written better and still are not getting published that means your better is not good enough. Thats life, don't make silly excuses for it. It has always been this way, it ensures that the good stuff gets recognized and the bad stuff does not.

All I see in this thread are people complaning about a system based on mostly meritocracy.

But none of this means you cant just write for yourself and have fun.

[AuntShecky]

It has always been this way, it ensures that the good stuff gets recognized and the bad stuff does not.




Some of us are baffled by the fact that the reverse is often the case.

[Alexander III]

Some of us are baffled by the fact that the reverse is often the case.

When is the reverse the case?

[JCamilo]

Really, what amazes me is that writting often had nothing to do with publishing. It is not surprising that a system that produce professional writters raised on school of writting (which are nothing but a cliche teaching, for an industrial model, a near-sighting form of literary production which nearby infinite insignificance on the overall history of literature) discover it is hard to enter in the market just like the flood of recent-graduated lawyers that will end working with hot dogs. Mostly, they are just more of the same.
It is a system that lasted just a few decades, it is getting over because it was based on industrial production and very localized. Do not be sorrow with a magazine read by a hundred if just in this site you get thousands of potential readers. And not in limited scope of some region in USA.

[AuntShecky]

When is the reverse the case?

Much of the fiction posted online, with the exception of the LitNet, of course.

Paperback racks in airport gift shops.

The scripts of 90% of American box office hits.

The New York Times Best-Seller List (fiction)

http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/combined-print-and-e-book-fiction/list.html

Do you see any descriptions similar to the type of novels that Bellow, Roth, and Updike wrote? Possible excepting George R. R. Martin and P.D. James--who are master craftsman within the realm of genre writing--and I don't know if we can make allowances for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, since the sales may be spiking as a result of the movie's release-- who is writing quality fiction these days? More to the point, who is publishing it?


As the article in the OP says, mainstream magazines which formerly published fiction no longer do so. Very rare to find it in Esquire or the Atlantic these days. (I don't know if Playboy still publishes fiction. When it did, most of it was really quality stuff, not the prurient subject matter one would think judging by the pictorials. The old joke in which a kid would tell his shocked mother:"I only read it for the stories!" wasn't too off the mark.)

Women's magazines used to publish fiction --Woman's Day, McCalls-- but the latter doesn't print short stories these days and the former went out of business some years ago after Rosie O'Donnell got ahold of it. (If I remember correctly, the fiction in women's magazine wasn't really "literary" fiction, either, but rather stories with which the typical readers could "identify.")

But even if there were still a number mainstream magazines publishing literary fiction, if you weren't a subscriber (either print or online) , where would you find them? Not too many newstands have a big variety.

Go to a CVS or a Walgreens or your favorite supermarket. Look at the magazines displayed. How often do you see a New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper's etc. on those racks?

[MarkBastable]

Some of us are baffled by the fact that the reverse is often the case.

Why does it baffle you?

All the fiction that's published is not published for the same reason. All novels are not intended to do the same thing. Some are literary. Some are throwaway ephemera. Some are aimed at people who aren't interested really in writing. Some are aimed at highly-literate bibliophiles. Some are aimed at men. Some are aimed at women. Some are aimed at film fans. Some are aimed at cat lovers.

All these books might be sold in the same bookstore, and might share the same distribution mechanisms, and might look pretty much like each other, if you just flick through the pages. But when people buy them, the same thing is not happening, even if it looks like it is.

Take the analogy of food. Someone shopping for a snack is going to look much the same in the aisle as someone shopping for a banquet and another person shopping for a romantic dinner for two. But they're not there for the same reason, and they're not buying the same things.

Now, you may think that the Pot Noodle the first person buys is crap, but it's a product appropriate to its purpose. That's why it's in the shop at all. And - here's the kicker - it's not there instead of a larger stock of ribeye. If Pot Noodles didn't exist, or were unavailable, the store wouldn't stock a greater quantity of steak. They'd simply look for another fastfood MSG-laden two-minute snack to sell.

If you want to get your homegrown cuts of meat into the shop, it's no good chafing about how crap Pot Noodles are, and how they're taking up the shelf space. You have to produce a ribeye better than the one produced by the store's current provider of dead cow.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I don't think writing better has much at all to do with it. Herman Melville wrote one of the greatest American novels ever, and while it got published, it was brushed off and discarded until half-a-century later. Good writers don't get published--I'm not sure how this can be disputed, or confirmed, I guess, but I think it's true. Bad writers do get published. Just look at Twilight.

The key, I think, to getting published is writing what people want to read. What people want to read rarely has much to do with quality. Therefore, to think that being published is a good measure of quality, as Alex seems to be suggesting, is a poor measure.

[MystyrMystyry]

Or try writing in different styles.

Give yourself a serious limit on the amount of rejection slips you'll tolerate before it's time to wrap the manuscript in silk and place it in the bottom drawer - say twenty - and then try something new (or just keep trying something new anyway, and submit the old over time)

If non-fiction is the new black, well, become a buff (nothing wrong with learning something new is there?), and submit an authoritive work of scholarship - with photographs, illustrations and diagrams as necessary.

Or keep writing fiction and wait til the tide turns (which it shall, as sure as night becomes day), and remember that Moby Dick is a work of fiction about as much as it is also a study of enormous aquatic mammals. It's always healthy practice to be able to reference something factual amongst the suppositions.

I must confess I don't really understand the need to have something bound in leather (or cardboard or cloth) to prove it's my work or exercise my ego. That part of the production will be done by someone else anyway, unless the author takes on a bookbinding sideline. If it's the thrill of seeing your name in solid letters, well there are easier ways to achieve it, like stencils and texta or letrasets.

One of my favorite people in the world who unfortunately hasn't published much (but easily could have), found a piece of wood about the size and shape of a Penguin modern classic, scrawled on one side A Piece Of Wood by..., and it's still sitting on his bookshelf twenty years on, so it must be a good one - at least to him.

There are examples of using the modern technology to promote a work whilst it's still in a state of progress - like Metro 2033, which was a website with subscribers and the author put up the occasional chapter when he felt like it. Anyway it went on to become a best seller, and was then converted into a game - all good for the personal coffers. Steven King tried something similar I believe - haven't read that one, but the fact he gave it a go should say something about marketing possibilities.

[Darcy88]

I kind of agree with what Alex said. If you are not going purely for pulp success and fame, if you want true literary success, then the trick is to work hard and write better. I'm sure it still happens that good writers do not get published, but more often than not a lack of success can be attributed more to a lack of talent than to any fault on the part of the publishing world.

And if the writing is so good the writer could post it in a place like this and enjoy having people rave about it, even if for whatever strange reason no publisher will accept it.

I've read a lot of stuff, from creative writing classes to forums like this, and it seems to me that the best writers almost invariably get published at some level.

[WolfLarsen]

Write whatever you want to write! And if the general public, literary magazines, and the publishing conglomerates hate your work so what! Just keep on writing whatever you want to write!

Remember the publishing houses are owned by people like Rupert Murdoch, that slimy reptilian oh nevermind! People like Hemingway were turned down a million times by literary magazines, thank goodness he didn't give up, or change his writing style just because literary magazines didn't like his stuff! And my experiences with a certain literary board (LOL) is that the more creative the story is the more people hate it.

People hated the Impressionists. They hated the cubists. They rioted at the symphonies of Igor Stravinsky and Gustav Mahler. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Write whatever you want to write. Everyone else be damned!

[MarkBastable]

People hated the Impressionists. They hated the cubists. They rioted at the symphonies of Igor Stravinsky and Gustav Mahler.


True. But they also hated a huge amount of complete crap too.

[AuntShecky]

I don't think writing better has much at all to do with it. Herman Melville wrote one of the greatest American novels ever, and while it got published, it was brushed off and discarded until half-a-century later. Good writers don't get published--I'm not sure how this can be disputed, or confirmed, I guess, but I think it's true. Bad writers do get published. Just look at Twilight.

The key, I think, to getting published is writing what people want to read. What people want to read rarely has much to do with quality. Therefore, to think that being published is a good measure of quality, as Alex seems to be suggesting, is a poor measure.

I agree with every word.

Thank you!

I guess what I am saying is this: Why can't a good writer, who writes what he wants to write,
make a living?

And to borrow a phrase from William James: Why in this "moonlit world" is this so much to ask?

[MarkBastable]

I agree with every word.



I guess what I am saying is this: Why can't a good writer, who writes what he wants to write,
make a living?



Because no one ever got paid for writing what they want to write. They got paid for writing what someone wanted to read. If it also happened to be what the writer wanted to write, that's terrific for the writer, but not important to anyone but him.

And in that aspect of the thing, I agree with you, and Mutatis, and even Wolf. Of course one should write what one wants to write. And if that's why you write, you're happy, yeah? No reason to complain.

If, on the other hand, what you really want is to be read, then you've either got to get lucky enough that what you want to write also happens to be what people want to read. Or you've got to work out why no one wants to read what you want to write, and do something about it.

[Calidore]

I guess what I am saying is this: Why can't a good writer, who writes what he wants to write,
make a living?


I think the point is to write what you want in such a way that the people who publish will think that it's something people will want to read.

Now that I've written that, it's a horrible sentence (sounded fine in my head), so let me try again.

I think of it like poetry, where you're trying to fit ideas into a certain form, which does take skill. I think getting published is the same thing, only not as concrete. You're trying to plug want you want to say into a form that professional publishers and editors think people will be willing to read. That's the skill. Saying "crap gets published, while good stuff is overlooked" is making it overly simple. Crap that's written correctly and well enough for an agent to sell a publisher on it will be published, while brilliant stuff written to please nobody but the author will be seen as selling to nobody but the author's supportive family and friends. And vice versa.

The published writers aren't automatically the good or bad ones, but the ones who best understand how, not what, they need to write to be published, and manage to fit what they want to say into the correct form.

And then, of course, there's the crapshoot of finding the right editor on the right day in the right mood, but you control what you can.

[tylerdf]

This is the same reason that the radio blares idiotic garbage while real music lives in dive bars and underground venues. The masses need uninspired nonsense to fill their minds and allow them to live without thought.
This truth transcends all mediums (Hunger Games, Nickelback, Twilight, FoxNews).
If you want to become commercially successful creating something, know with a grim certainty that you will have to compromise your art. If you want to stay true to your passion, know that your chances of commercial success are slim to none.

[MarkBastable]

If you want to become commercially successful creating something, know with a grim certainty that you will have to compromise your art.

Depends on your art. I don't think the Beatles compromised much. After about 1966 they didn't compromise at all. But they were pretty commercial.

[MystyrMystyry]

A good point to be made Mark

There's nothing wrong with being commercial provided the art improves. I've read the unreadable fiction, heard the unlistenable music in dive bars, seen the uncompromising art.

Very occasionally, for something different, it has its place. But not all the time.

There is a good reason why some things become popular and other things don't - ugly is really easy to get sick of.

And if an ugly story becomes popular it's most likely that it has other redeeming qualities and isn't actually as ugly as it could have been.

Alex and his three droogs would just be any thugs at any train station anywhere if it wasn't for the writing style and that to make his point Burgess gave Alex a brain and a (misguided) taste for classical music and art. It's not a particularly easy read, not least for the subject matter - and its success may have had more to do with the movie's easier accessibility and the director's fame and style.

But it should also be remembered that Burgess himself disowned the novel and Kubrick later regretted ever filming it.

So many examples of things that perhaps shouldn't have become popular but doing so, that I guess a form of comfortable familiarity takes hold. Perhaps humans just naturally seek out the shallow? But that doesn't account for the good stuff with resonant depth which deservedly takes off.

I suspect that a lot of stuff to skyrocket into the bestseller and blockbuster lists (later) surprises the authors. Realising they've more or less accidentally stumbled on a successful style which didn't take a zillion rewrites and reworkings over thirty years with feedback from a team of specialist academics, but was hacked together over a spare weekend from a few bits and pieces with a vague hope it might cover the months utility bills - and suddenly it's the must read book of the Summer everyone seems to be yacking about and wanting you on their television program - woo!

Bashing popular stuff that isn't to your particular taste won't make it go away. Better to try to create popular that is to people's taste - even better if you actually have something to say (and it doesn't really matter what, it seems), or create for own pleasure and satisfaction.

Looking at the Beatles again: sales of their records at the the height of their popularity in 1970 when it was impossible to not know who they were, indicate that across Britain 1 percent of households must have owned at least one (note: not 99 percent) - more likely it was 1 in two hundred with two records or 1 in three hundred with three etc - far from the close to universal popularity they have today.

[MystyrMystyry]

I was just brewing my morning cuppa when it suddenly dawned on me that I don't actually have any stats on the sheet music sales (which were probably huge), on how many times the songs were played and requested on radio (again), or the rampant piracy to cassette tape that undoubtedly occurred.

So yeah - pretty enormous popularity whichever way you look at it.

[MarkBastable]

Looking at the Beatles again: sales of their records at the the height of their popularity in 1970 when it was impossible to not know who they were, indicate that across Britain 1 percent of households must have owned at least one (note: not 99 percent) - more likely it was 1 in two hundred with two records or 1 in three hundred with three etc - far from the close to universal popularity they have today.

That only means anything in terms of their market - the area in which they were intended to be commercial.

If the Stones or Englebert Humperdink or the Tijuana Brass were hitting, say, one in four hundred households, then the Beatles were not only a commercial success, they were a commercial phenomenon.

At that time, they had sold more records than practically anyone ever. That's commercial success, however you cut it.

But if you want to do it in terms of percentage of penetration, then you have to have some measure of what success is - so, who was producing anything at the time - music, novels, paintings - that were in more households than the Beatles? What, in other words, could be considered a success, if not that level of uptake?

I'll tell you, if I wrote a book that was on one in a hundred bedside tables, I'd be pretty pleased with myself, artistically and commercially.

[AuntShecky]

No offense, guys, but what does Beatles' music have to do with aspiring writers?

[JCamilo]

It is a great example of keeping artistic integrity while being pop/commercial, which is an obvious path to some writers to find room in big publishing house: write according the market.

[Jassy Melson]

A serious writer will write regardless of the benefits or lack thereof. I have been a serious writer for more than forty years. I found that to make a living and stay somewhat close to writing it was necessary to work as a journalist for more than thirty-five years. It never bothered me that I wasn't able to make a living from writing fiction. I worked as a newspaper writer to make money to live as I continued to write serious things. I actually sold some work, and had a number of things published. Did I blame anyone or anything on the fact that it's virtually impossible (unless you're Stephen King or Rowling or Tom Wolfe) to make a living from writing fiction? No, I did not. It's just the way things are. I don't think it's getting much worse. Times have always been hard for serious writers.

[MarkBastable]

If you're not happy with the Beatles as an example of achieving commercial success without compromising artistic intent, then let's use Dickens or Wodehouse as examples.

[Jassy Melson]

I want to expand an earlier post I made on the serious writer.

What do I mean by serious writing? I mean writing that goes beyond self-expression and self-analysis and tries to find some meaning in this life and/or time. (I do not exclude science fiction or horror or erotic writing.)

No one told me to become a serious writer. No one forced me to seriously write. It was a choice I freely made.

I learned that if I wanted to be serious about writing, nothing else would matter very much. (It was nice to occasionally receive payment for writing and to be published. But it didn't change anything. I continued to seriously write.)

I have been a serious writer for more than forty years. I have received rewards for writing, and payment. But I found it impossible to make a living from serious writing. So I chose a profession wherein I could stay as close to writing as possible. I became a newspaper writer and a journalist. The rewards were there. I had things published that were serious and rose above the mundane. And I was making a living at the same time.

I worked as a journalist for more than thirty-five years. Sometimes I enjoyed it, sometimes I didn't, because I found it expedient to occasionally write silly "realistic and newsworthy" articles about mundane subjects--which newspapers and the publishing business in general thrives on.

But all this time, I stayed a serious writer, and I wrote a lot of fiction. I didn't change, and neither did the publishing business. It continued to cater to what it thought the public wanted. It still does this, and it always will because that's the way publishing works.

I finally retired, having worked long enough to collect social security and a monthly disability payment which I won't go in to. It's enough to give me a satisfactory life (my wants and desires are few and I live frugally) and time to seriously write what I want. I am sixty-five, and if I'm lucky I will live twenty, even twenty-five years more. I can and will write a lot of fiction in that time. I average a fictional work about every month. So I should be able--if I live long enough--to write more than two hundred works of fiction (or nonfiction or whatever I want).

In all this time--forty years--I never blamed anyone or anything for my decision to become a serious writer or that the rewards would be relatively few and far between. I knew in my heart and soul that what I wrote was serious and good (yes, good, because one doesn't practice a craft for more than forty years without becoming good at it--unless one is an idiot).

I will continue to seriously write till the day I die because I chose that path more than forty years ago, and I haven't deviated from that path, and I know I never will.

The rewards (including payment and being published) do not really matter. They are nice when they come, but they are not why I seriously write.

I want to leave something behind that is serious and good and tries to find and communicate some meaning in an indifferent universe.

[xtianfriborg13]

That's really sad.

[manuscript]

"To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist." - Jasper Johns