Literary community: Paying for what we value

Today’s post is the third in a three-part series. You can see the first part, on how reading factors into literary community, here, and the second part, on how regular local literary happenings cement community, here.

***

The currency of community is friendship, common aspirations, goodwill.

But the currency of community is also currency—money, that is—and members of a community should strive to keep it flowing to support the things they claim to care about.

When a friend scores a book deal, congratulations flow, both in person and on social media. We tend to be happy for our fellow writers when they get a book contract, even if we’re also a little envious, because success for one suggests the possibility of success for others. At an even more basic level, a book contract means that there’s going to be a new book in the world, and that’s a beautiful thing.

So the currency of goodwill flows, even if some of it looks counterfeit. But the currency of money doesn’t move quite as freely, and it really needs to if the community is to thrive.

After the announcement of the book contract comes the post with a link for pre-sales. Literary titles rely heavily on advance sales, which help to determine the number of the initial press run. If all of those congratulatory friends put their money where their mouth is, a release gets a promising boost at the start, and the publisher can have a bit more confidence in the project it is investing in. But if congratulations end at the word, “Congratulations!,” and pre-sales don’t follow, a publisher may be more cautious with an initial order, and perhaps more cautious about promotion.

As a writer with three chapbooks and a full-length collection, I’ve received many kind words, and they really do warm me. But nothing feels quite as good as seeing my book in a friend’s hand, or hearing that a copy has arrived at someone’s doorstep. I was out of town recently and I met a friend for dinner, and at one point he pulled out my book for a signature. The friend is a voracious reader, but he doesn’t ordinarily gravitate toward poetry, but the book looked as though it had been read—the pages were fluffed out, the corners were curled. Nothing makes a writer feel more loved and appreciated than seeing a clear sign that someone has given time to her.

Friends should buy their friends’ books. Friends should read their friends’ books. And friends should spread the word about their friends’ books. That’s all pretty basic, and the reasons are obvious. When those friends are writers, too, the favor is likely to be returned at some point, but my own friend is not a guy with book aspirations; he’s just someone who cares about me, and this is how he enacted that care.

My friend is part of a community—one that includes him and me, our spouses, our mutual friends from our college days. And the people who celebrate each other’s accomplishments in person and on social media are also part of a community; they interact and communicate; they cheer and debate and share their indignation.

But beyond these specific communities is a larger community that is composed of readers and writers of new work. The members of this larger community may never meet or speak, although there is an instant kinship when we do encounter one another. This community is larger than our personal ones, but probably smaller than the community of, say, Star Wars aficionados or gun enthusiasts.

For the literary community to flourish, we need to fund it. It’s not crass to have this discussion; rather, at a time when the National Endowment for the Arts is targeted for elimination in the proposed federal budget, it could not be more urgent to talk about how we support a literary culture that is threatened by loss of public support.

Presses need our dollars if they are to produce the books we love to read. Likewise, literary journals, the proving ground of new writers, have to cover their expenses, and so do festivals, reading series, and the other literary institutions we love.

Today, like most days, I’m supporting the literary community by contributing to an ongoing conversation about what it means to live and work as a writer and a reader. I’m also starting to think about ways I can put my money where my heart is and support the presses and journals that carry the community on their backs.

And maybe after I’ve launched this post, I’ll head out to my local bookstore for a bit, or I’ll preorder a book by a friend, or I’ll just sit down outside on a beautiful day and I’ll read. 

NEA funding wee for nation, gigantic for writers

Photo by U.S. Air Force

I hit “submit” on an NEA grant application this week—an annual exercise in optimism. 

I like to picture myself with a big wad of cash—specifically that $25,000 literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. What would I do with it? I vacillate. It’s roughly what I make as an adjunct, so maybe I’d just take a year off from teaching. Or maybe instead I’d pay off my bills—a move that would be joylessly practical. Or maybe I’d go to Europe, buy a boat, remodel the bathroom, learn to fly. The practical ideas are satisfying; the impractical dreams are sustaining.

It was hard to do the work of submitting this year, for a couple of reasons. 

First, the website for applying, grants.gov, has implemented a new system called Workbench, and most writers I’ve talked to found it less than intuitive. Workbench is used for grants all across the federal government, and it exists mainly for those organizations that have multiple people working on a complex application. So your average poet—the most solitary of solitaries—is not the user they had in mind.

The collaboration features of Workbench are ill suited for NEA literature fellowship applicants, as I discovered after mucking around in it. But then I noticed that for this transitional grant year, the NEA offered its classic environment as an option—the same platform that was available in years past. The old, familiar version was easy for me to fill out, although it still took a couple of hours to get everything just right—the right sample, an updated publication record, an accurate cover page, the required supplemental info, all formatted as required.

It was also hard to submit because of the gloomy future prospects of the NEA under President ICANTBRINGMYSELFTOWRITEHISNAME. This figure has proposed cutting the budget entirely, perhaps to begin to cover the staggering costs of his weekly Florida golf vacations. 

The NEA’s 2016 budget was $148 million—a quarter of the cost of manufacturing a B-21 bomber. (Northrup Grumman is currently at work manufacturing a hundred of those for the Department of Defense, which had a $1.1 trillion budget in 2016.)

But the pen remains both cheaper and mightier than the bomber. After all, it was a bunch of writers who founded our nation—they stood up for liberty and even happiness as our enduring values, and they penned a system of government that is a model (on paper) for the world. The U.S. wouldn’t exist without writers, and what our founders put down with quill on paper remains one of the greatest contributions ever offered to humanity.

The amount of money given to writers by the NEA is grand to someone like me, but it is a pittance to the federal government. I think the way conservatives sway us against essential programs like arts funding is by throwing large numbers at us—and $148 million is a very big number to me. But I’m used to dealing with a household budget: a $425 car payment, a $1,200 house payment, a few monthly credit card bills. As staggering as the NEA funding amount seems, it’s only .012 percent of federal discretionary spending. The amount of money it takes to run the ship of stage is immense, and people who make $40K per year have a very hard time wrapping their minds around it.

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches toward Washington to be born?” That would be my grant application—a study in hope not just for me, but for our nation, which ought to be about higher values than raining down destruction from the sky.

Surprise donation offers assurance: Your work matters

The meaty heels of my palms are resting on a sleek, cold MacBook Air as I type this post. I’m not used to the keyboard yet—its new dimensions. The letters are a little closer together than on my old machine, but the keys are springy and responsive. I can type the letter “O” and an “O” will show up, without the gape-mouthed, stunned surprise I’m used to from that will-it-or-won’t-it vowel.

Where did I get a new MacBook? It was an unexpected gift from a benefactor—a patron of the arts, my own private Medici.

Recently I tossed up a throwaway social media post about my dying keyboard and finger pad, my laggy cursor, my overheated case, my spinning rainbow wheel. Instantly, I received a private message from a Facebook friend, asking what kind of computer I was looking for.

I wasn’t sure why my friend was asking me this, but I answered honestly: I wanted a simple laptop, preferably a Mac, and a small one that would be easy to carry around with me. My friend asked for my address and then sent me a link to track delivery of my very own brand new laptop, due to arrive at my home within days.

There was just one condition: I wasn’t to reveal the name of the donor. This is something the person enjoys doing from time to time—covering the needs of a literary artist, merely because the benefactor is in the position to do so. The person was quite adamant on one point: public credit or thanks were not wanted. 

In return for this stunning gift, I committed myself—and still do, permanently—to passing the kindness along to artists, and specifically to writers (the benefactor, too, is a writer, and a talented one). As an adjunct college instructor, I’m not in a position to buy anyone a laptop, so I’m going to have to be creative to do justice to this amazing boon I’ve received—but I am creative, and that’s why someone chose to support my work in this way.

I’ve been brainstorming for some ways to be a better member of the literary community, and I’ve fixed on one plan above all others: starting and sustaining dialogue about writers and writing. 

Regular readers will note that I’ve picked up the daily blogging practice again, and each day I post two things: an appreciation of a contemporary book of poetry and an essay on writing. This is no accident. It’s how I’m starting the process of giving back to the literary community—to share the insights I gained as an editor for a couple of decades and to begin conversations about (and, I hope, to build readers for) books of poetry.

After each book review post, I go straight to Amazon to post my appreciation there, because I think it’s really useful for writers to get reviews. I’m always asking my own readers to post a review—good, bad, or indifferent, although I hope good—to my Amazon listing for No More Milk (Sundress, 2016), because buzz is helpful for building a readership. And just imagine the conversation we could get going if more readers shared their opinions about the books they were reading. I would love to see more conversation about poetry in the culture.

There are a lot of other ways I can contribute to writers and the writing community:

• Share favorite poems on social media.
• Write book reviews for journals and magazines that publish them.
• Take advantage of local opportunities to build “offline” relationships.
• Volunteer to teach workshops for populations that could especially benefit, like homeless teens or prisoners at the correctional facility in my town.
• Offer to provide feedback for fellow writers who need it.
• Support nonprofit presses and publishers with donations, contest entry fees, and subscriptions.
• Stay observant for smaller financial needs of writers that I am able to cover.

I take away a key message from my large, unexpected gift, and that is that I’m worthy of support. My writing matters. I really want to “pay it forward” in a tangible way—to help other writers in the spirit within which I have been helped—but the support I received communicates to me that I need to keep writing as a priority. Someone thinks my voice is important; someone thinks I’ve got the stuff.

It’s not always easy to see our own worth; it feels cocky to believe that poems have their own value. But the backing of a donor forces me to confront the idea that my writing itself is a meaningful way to serve. I’m going to choose to look at it as a mission, and to keep it up—to devote the best part of myself to my work.