Reading While Becoming a Writer:
A rather disturbing post from my friend Carolyn about what her fellow MFA in fiction classmates are reading. You know reading, right? Its what you do with the stuff that people write…
So we’re sitting in class tonight and our teacher asks something like, How do you find the fiction that you read?
First, the class says _nothing_. This isn’t unusual, though. The dozen of us in class have been little more than bumps on our chairs tonight. Eventually, someone speaks up.
– I read what my teachers tell me to read.
and then
– I find books I like on Amazon and see what other people have bought.
No one says “I read the Sunday book review from the newspaper.”
No one says “I read litblogs.”
No one says “I read award-winners and nominees.”
No one says “I read the New Yorker.”
No one says “I read literary magazines.”
When I snuck into AWP last year a couple of the literary magazine folks said that MFA students wanted them to run their stories, but they didn’t want to subscribe, even read the magazines. I said bosh and poppycock. I was wrong. Sigh.
Reader interactions
4 Replies to “Reading While Becoming a Writer:”
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I get emails all the time to the effect of: why would I read your magazine if you won’t publish my work? people even laughed at the idea of subscribing.
it makes me want to tear my hair out. hope you got back safe and it was good seeing you.
xoxo, f.
I get emails all the time to the effect of: why would I read your magazine if you won’t publish my work? people even laughed at the idea of subscribing.
it makes me want to tear my hair out. hope you got back safe and it was good seeing you.
xoxo, f.
Well, yeah. One of the primary reasons I founded the late, lamented Inkblots in the first place was out of a distinct lack of anything that I wanted to read in the primary literary journal market. Everything I found was either too dry, too pretentious or too flat-out bad to keep my attention. Even settling down in the magazine section of Borders or Barnes and Noble became a painful experience.
If literary magazines want to be more widely read, they need to be more widely readable. Until then, most writers will continue to treat them as little more than a necessary exercise on the path to “real” publication. And lemme tell ya — it’s damned hard to break into the literary market when the primary “entrance” arena is so blantantly uninspiring.
Well, yeah. One of the primary reasons I founded the late, lamented Inkblots in the first place was out of a distinct lack of anything that I wanted to read in the primary literary journal market. Everything I found was either too dry, too pretentious or too flat-out bad to keep my attention. Even settling down in the magazine section of Borders or Barnes and Noble became a painful experience.
If literary magazines want to be more widely read, they need to be more widely readable. Until then, most writers will continue to treat them as little more than a necessary exercise on the path to “real” publication. And lemme tell ya — it’s damned hard to break into the literary market when the primary “entrance” arena is so blantantly uninspiring.