Nine Ways to Judge a Literary Journal

Pretend the literary journal you're looking at is a person, and ask yourself if this is the sort of person you would like to befriend.

1. How does it look? Healthy, artsy, sloppy, folksy, ritzy? . . . . and do you like its looks?
2. Does it seem able to appreciate people (writers) like you?
3. Does it seem to refer constantly, not to say obsessively, to things you have had enough of, such as Greek myths, old barns, eating disorders, famous dead writers, or graphic depictions of meaningless sex?
4. Is it trying hard to be something it's not?
5. Does this journal let you know, through its form or content or list of contributors, that it doesn't care to associate with your kind?
6. Is there something in this journal that intrigues or stimulates or impresses you?
7. Do you like this journal enough to see it again? To sit down and have lunch with it?
8. Do you two have anything in common?
9. Would you like to be associated with this journal?

Full disclosure: At this time I am a longtime subscriber to just one literary journal, and that's the quarterly Creative Nonfiction. I keep up with Natural Bridge. Not long ago I gave up The Sun and The New Yorker, because they arrived so often that reading each issue felt like a job.

Rejection at 50

My first published poem appeared 32 years ago. Rejections stung only a little. (There was still time to win a Pulitzer by age 25.) Then, around age 40, when I expected more rewards, my fragility increased: Call it osteoporosis of the soul. This forced me to systematically, ALPHABETICALLY, read through literary journals and submit only to those that published poems like mine. This HATEFUL activity forced me through jungles of jealousy: "She's younger than I! And he writes better! And that's a great poem! And she's published four books! And there's my former student in a journal I failed to get into!"

Actually, I was doing the smart thing, business-wise, because publishing is a business, but it only increased my fragility. Approaching age 50, I dreaded those S.A.S.E.s even more. Now I'm ever so careful to:
1. Send only my very best poems.
2. Make sure my poems have a a ghost of a chance at that publication. (Next blog will be about that!)
3. Avoid contests, no matter how tempting -- the chance of winning, about 1 in 1000, is too remote.
4. Take long, long breaks in between bouts of sending, sometime six months or a year.
5. Keep working on more, and when those S.A.S.E.s or E-mails come back, curse or cry, feel grossly ashamed of my "arrogance" and "presumption" in thinking the world might want my poems -- and then get over it, and put poems right back in the mail.

See that list of five things? That's my new backbone.

And yesterday: **Good news! ** A long, risky poem, perhaps the longest and riskiest yet, accepted. How long has it been since a poem got accepted? Three years? Five?

Joy? No. Forehead on forearm, and a sigh of Relief.

Emily Dickinson's Computer

Computer was in the shop all weekend; still is. So I had idle moments. Let's download something different, I thought. So I took up the book of Emily Dickinson's poems, the one that's shabby, fingered, nicotine-stained.

Forget YouTube, virtual worlds, et al. . .this blew my circuits:

Like Brooms of Steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street,
The House was hooked,
the Sun sent out
Faint Deputies of heat--
. . . .(1252)

Her poems -- her metaphors -- her capitalizations, even -- shocked me back to life. I'd forgotten -- I'd forgotten!*@!!&!! what life felt like, and looked like:

They called me to the Window, for
"'Twas Sunset" -- Some one said --
I only saw a Sapphire Farm--
And just a Single Herd--

of Opal Cattle--
. . . . (628)

I do need my computer. But it had encouraged me to settle for "cool" or "informative" or diverting mental "noise," -- no, no~! Mental comfort food! -- & that all that together is not worth one Emily Dickinson poem. Aftershocks went on the next morning in the form of a richer outlook, with sudden (get the pen!) ideas. . .

Authors, Put Yourself on Amapedia

Amazon.com has a new feature called "Amapedia." You can write an encyclopedia-like entry on anything you like, and for us that's books. Others may add to this entry (as with Wikipedia), and you won't get paid but you don't have to pay for the privilege either. Easy:

1. Locate the book of your choice on Amazon.com.

2. Scroll down until you find "Product Information for the Amapedia Community."

3. Click on the link that says "Be the First Person to Add an Article" to compose an entry. Or you can add TO an existing entry. Registered Amazon.com users can start writing on the spot.

Amapedia wants facts, not opinions, and they don't want you to "cut and paste" quotations or material from other sites. If you can live with that...

Start with your OWN books or those you love!

The Optimist's Club

The St. Louis Publishers Association (SLPA) is a bunch of people who publish and promote their own books. They all get together once a month, a diverse and lively crowd, rainbow of colors, rainbow of ages; and man, for a bunch of writers, are they ever CHEERFUL.

I went to my first meeting in July and liked the energy. They print a catalog of members' books, a great range from homeschooling manuals to fiction or fashion advice ("Dressing Nifty After Fifty" -- why doesn't an NYC publisher snap that up?*). Networking is scheduled before the program begins, and there's a brag session -- anyone who's accomplished or sold anything stands up and tells everyone (it's a packed room) and we all applaud -- sincerely -- and then there's the program: "Promoting Your Books on the Internet" was the last one; the link takes you to part of that program.

I can't see a single reason NOT to join. Yeah, I'm different, I'm literary (there's one other poet I know about); I don't write how-to books (the HECK I don't! Sweatin' blood trying to sell a publisher our group's Writing Group Handbook!!); I want money but have shied away from thinking about how to make some. But I feel so REFRESHED after every meeting. They're so generous! They know stuff! They share what they know! I got people!

*Meanwhile, the author makes money on her book without an NYC publisher taking 8o percent as middleman.

Response to "A Nation of Artists"

Poet Helen Eisen writes:

The information you give us about the T'ang Dynasty reminds me of a wonderful story by Suzette Haden Elgin, "For the Sake of Grace" in the Norton Anthology of Science Fiction, 1993. I first read it in 1969 when it was first published. And I planned (in my fantasies) to read it aloud at a podium as I accepted some grand lifetime achievement award for my own writing, of course on behalf of all women writers the world over. If you've already read the story, or read it now, you'll know what I mean.

A Nation of Artists

I think the creativity I see all around me is getting to critical mass and we are about to become a nation of artists.

The Internet has its users making their own films, posting their own writings and music and art, organizing and collaborating, and sharing ideas, opinions, and new software. But the Internet is only part of the arts revolution. The postal carrier does crafts; the doctor paints; the street kid makes up poems; the stay-at-home mom does Japanese-style gardening; the teenager designs and sews her own clothes; Grandma writes and publishes her own cookbook.

Somewhere I read that "The M.F.A. is the new M.B.A." and I believe it. Employers used to shun "creative types," thinking them too dreamy or weird to become compliant worker bees. Now these companies are clawing the walls to get creativity.

During the T'ang Dynasty, if a man wanted a high-level job he had to go to the regional capital and take exams. One of the tests was whether he could write a good poem.

I Gave Up Cleaning and Lived

It isn't like me, but I haven't cleaned house for four months while manuscripts, queries, synopses, proofreading, job, etc. took up all my time. But the cobwebbing doesn't look that bad. And three books got done while I spent March through June lying flat (axing cedar trees, I tore a ligament or something). Vacuuming caused pain. Bending. Opening the oven. Washing sink. Bedmaking. Pulling clothes from washer into dryer. Just sitting up was an ordeal. Sorry, Mom (she's Polish, and the only people scrubbier than the Dutch are the Poles), but I couldn't do anything for longer than 1 minute but write. From the bed I used a wireless keyboard and mouse.

This is the longest time I've ever gone without housecleaning, and the most productive writing time of my life so far. Coincidence? V. Woolf advised writers to "kill the angel in the house." Who knew she meant: "Don't clean"?

I'm mobile and pain-free now, thanks to Laura Self, physical therapist at SSM in Eureka, MO. (When we met she asked agonized, skeletal me if I'd like to sit down. I told her, "Oh, no ma'am. I don't sit.")