I have promises to keep: On editorial professionalism

Not long ago, a friend reported to me that he’d been the victim of a literary switcheroo.

A well-established journal accepted his poems and even sent a contract to make it official. Before press time, though, my friend received an e-mail informing him that there had been a communication snafu, and his work was actually slated to appear in the online edition of the journal, rather than the print version.

Now, after giving the matter much thought, I’ve actually grown to prefer online publication. I like sharing the work easily with my friends via social media, and I also appreciate the unlimited number of potential hits. The most prestigious journals in the country may only print 3,000-5,000 copies, and I suspect precious few of those copies are read cover to cover. Actual potential readership in a print journal is minute—although it’s true that the feel of paper in the palm is hard to beat.

But this isn’t about me. My friend had been excited about this acceptance, and he had worked for years to break into that particular journal’s pages. He didn’t want his work to be featured in an online issue; he wanted what he considered to be the real thing. And according to his communication with the journal, this “real thing” was exactly what he deserved.

Is it just me, or do things begin to fall apart when editors and writers fail to act like professionals? A writer should send a normal amount of work (about three to five poems) with a polite cover letter or electronic note. She should follow the established guidelines, or else submit elsewhere. She should wait until the end of the announced response time before querying. She should not follow up with an immediate submission unless specifically asked to do so. And under no circumstances should she write to the editor and argue about the decision or ask for an explanation. (The simple explanation is that her work wasn’t good enough. The expanded explanation is that the editor doesn’t remember her work because it wasn’t good enough.)

But a professional attitude is even more important on the editorial side. (Submitters aren’t going to fall in and act rationally; they’re too diverse, and anyway, diversity and a little attitude are what make journals good.) Editors have important work to do. They have to give submissions a fair read and a prompt response, and they always have to keep in mind that their real job is nothing less than to contribute to the life of letters.

More and more editors seem to be adopting an attitude of the writer as a nuisance—or worse, as a mark. So many times submissions go unacknowledged for months or more than a year, or forever; a few magazines have even taken to telling submitters simply that no news is bad news, and if they see a piece they want, they’ll be in touch. Submission fees compound the problem. I can think of several magazines that openly admit to getting most of their work from solicitations but still charge a reading fee for regular submitters in what may well be the crappiest lottery around. Additionally, some journals have deliberately offensive rejection notices that are designed to chase away submitters they deem unworthy. Luckily, this bad behavior is not the norm—but it’s also not uncommon.

These ugly practices by journals and presses put literary publishing in a bad light. They don’t seem to spring from well-meaning editors; instead, they seem like the behaviors of brats and snobs. With my friend and his presto-chango publishing arrangement, I don’t sense any ill will. Rather, I think an overworked editor probably went overboard with acceptances for a print issue and had to come up with a way to remedy the problem. More work means more pages, and in a print journal, that means more money. The Internet remains commodious, and more work there is no big deal.

But again we come back to the idea of professionalism. A letter of acceptance is an editor’s word to a writer. An affirmative response from the writer is, likewise, the writer’s word. Written agreements can have the strength of a contract, under the law, and often an actual contract is also exchanged. My friend experienced a breach of contract when he learned that work he had submitted for one journal was being shifted over to another, different journal (which is exactly what that online edition is). The only reason editors ignore contracts on a fairly regular basis—withdrawing acceptances, shorting payment or contributor’s copies—is that writers aren’t going to take a case to court over contributor’s copies or a $50 honorarium. Editors know they can do what they wish with impunity, or with a week or two of social media shaming as a worst-case scenario.

I could write a whole post about the problem with having separate online and print issues and putting the better work in one or the other. That’s more of that disrespect I was talking about. But the problem here is more fundamental. One of the parties is not keeping his word—something ethical professionals just do.

Go easy on yourself

I’ve become convinced that, in writing and in life, there are two rules. One is to hold yourself to a high standard. The second is the opposite: Every now and then, go easy on yourself.

This blog is a good example of those principles in action. I set a goal this year to have a regular blog, one that covers issues related to writing and creativity, and I enjoy the project so much that it has become a daily blog. But yesterday, I worked from the time I woke to the time I went back to sleep (late). I had a packet of job application materials due, and some pressing tasks in an online class I teach, and a few other looming deadlines that could no longer be put off.

As a result, I forgot to write a blog post.

The great benefit of a blog on writing is mostly personal. While I’d like to encourage conversation and build community and help other writers—all very high-minded aims—my very favorite part of blogging is the insight I get into my own beliefs and values when it comes to writing and editing. Even as I’m consciously writing for an audience, I’m speaking to myself and clarifying my views. This has been a surprisingly contemplative activity, one that has helped me to find my center.

It’s only January, so it’s early to have broken a quasi-resolution (although the original goal was just a regular blog, and not a daily one). I was genuinely enjoying the energy of an everyday product (reminiscent of my newspaper days), and of course the readership grows through predictable publication. Pushing myself to do something important for my own writing was a great decision.

I missed a day for important reasons. I actually need a full-time job, and I spent almost the whole day yesterday updating my vita and choosing and polishing support materials (including some blog entries, as it happens). Taking time out to fashion a blog post would have been a distraction from rather urgent work, and really, if I’m going to take a break, I should probably think first of my family.

That’s where Rule 2 comes into play. There’s only one of me, and although that math seems easy, I’ve spent most of my first forty-seven years miscounting. There is one me, one finite life, and I do what I can to make things happen for myself and my community and the people I love.

I’ve decided that’s sufficient.

Prompt: Overheard words

Here’s an old standby: the eavesdropping prompt.

When I start to feel as though I’m writing the same poem over and over, I like to blow the dust off this prompt and see if it can point me in a new direction—whether in voice or form or topic.

There are two ways to do this exercise. My preference is to go to a crowded place, like a restaurant or a hotel lobby or a playground, and park myself right in the middle of it to listen to the voices around me. This works best with people who are dissimilar from me in some marked way; maybe they’re children, or they’re men, or they’re crazy rich. When I hear a fascinating sentence, I pluck it out of the air and park it in my notebook, and then I see what comes from it.

The other way to do this is to sit at home and turn on the TV or radio and again listen for an intriguing line. I wrote a poem once that came from a bit of local news fluff; it was a story about a museum (I don’t remember the particulars), and the reporter began the feature by saying, “It’s not your typical museum.” The result was a poem of mine called “The Museum of Things You Can’t Fix,” and my museum included lost spelling bees and failed relationships and blown job interviews. I would not have written the poem had I not stumbled over that line.

They’re infrequent, these moments when the television or a crowded room can pull me out of myself and into new creative possibilities. But the point of this prompt is to get my own voice out of my head. New cadences and different word choices, when assigned to a poem, become a challenge—sort of like building an outfit from your closet around a weird pair of shoes that aren’t your own. So good luck with those cowboy boots or clown shoes or Dutch clogs or goldfish heels. The task before you? Make it work.

Prompt: Keeping a half-assed dream journal

For the past week, I’ve been trying to remember my dreams.

I’ve formalized the process, actually. I have a dedicated dream notebook that I keep near my pillow, and each night I write the next day’s date at the top of a page and say three times, “I will remember my dreams.”

I never remember my dreams. Not much of them, anyway. Working moms don’t always have the option of waking naturally with a yawn and a stretch. Sometimes some small person screams your name. Sometimes a cat bites your hand. Sometimes the alarm is set for the latest possible moment you can sleep and still make it to work on time. Reflecting and recording are not always in the morning plans.

Still, I’ve found that my dream notebook is good fodder for poetry. I try to remember something every morning, and when I can’t get immediately to the page, I at least dredge up a scrap and invent a little. (I can remember dreams for precisely the length of time it takes to arrive at the toilet, unless I check Twitter on the way.)

My first poetry teacher told me something crucially important once, and I’ve taken it to heart for nearly three decades.

No one cares about your dreams.

Dreams, qua dreams, are of interest only to the dreamer. That makes sense; the people in our dreams are basically other versions of the self, and what happens to them seldom has any rhyme or reason. Thus, keeping a dream journal is a dubious prompt, but I offer it anyway, if only for the midnight rambling that sometimes shows up.

I’m so determined to grab a dream and pin it to the page like the body of a moth on a corkboard. Sometimes I wake to find that I’ve done some recordkeeping when barely conscious—or not conscious at all. Here are some actual records from my dream journal:

In early room (a

food thing like this

took mugs—each one

grounded—washed in lonely

places

Someone has a pie to give me

Those errors are in the original. My waking self would not tolerate a single parenthesis alone, without its opposite fellow.

I feel inspired by the fact that the early room is a food thing. Is my night brain describing a kitchen? And I like those grounded and lonely-washed mugs. And I really love the phantom figure chasing me with pie. I don’t remember the dream, and I don’t remember the writing of this nonsense—but it resonates in my imagination. I could make something of this.

I do recommend giving a dream journal a try. The interesting parts aren’t the dreams themselves; they’re the juxtapositions and word combinations and odd symbols and midnight gifts. I’m finding that scraps from the night mind can provide a useful starting point for work.

Risk and the word

In my undergrad days when I tried on the poet mantle, conversations would often turn to the question of how best to live a writer’s life. Is it necessary to do notable things to in order to write out-of-the-ordinary work? Does a writer need adventures to keep from being dull on the page?

At the time, I was lucky to have professors and mentors who dismissed that notion. By college, all of us have already witnessed enough of human nature for a lifetime of writing, and we keep on observing—honing those observations because we use our writer’s mind. And the imagination gets us the rest of the way. Anyone who wants to be a writer already lives an imaginative life, and the beauty of much writing is in making stuff up.

That’s not to say that I didn’t do risky things—accept rides from dangerous strangers, try recreational drugs, walk along a narrow outcropping while hugging a high cliff wall, root for the Cincinnati Bengals. But I came back every time, and I realized that those risks may have been important to who I was at the time, but they were not necessary for my writing.

I had friends who took things further than I did. I remember well when my friend George took off with a backpack to hitchhike across the country. He made it, too—all the way out West and back—and he came back with a deeper understanding of people, as well as with arcane knowledge of hitchhiker-specific details. (Example: If you’re only going a short way and can’t offer a ride, you hold up your fingers an inch apart to communicate that you would if you could but you can’t.)

The understanding of how people operate in different situations is invaluable to a writer. The super-specific intel about different ways of living is, too. But a lot of this accrues just from living observantly. The person who serves your coffee is not significantly less complex and fascinating than the one who parasails. They may even be the same person.

So, I offer a belated thanks to my mentors for that good advice when I was younger. On rare occasions I took it, and it may have saved me. It’s the same advice I give to the writers I know, and I am certain it’s the right thing to say.

But here in the relative privacy of the Internet, and in the buffer of middle age, it’s OK to raise some doubts, right? I actually think risk and adventure are both great for writers—and for humans. Today is my forty-seventh birthday, and my best memories from life aren’t of clocking in steadily at work and enjoying my quiet scrutiny of the people around me. I jumped a train once, for heaven’s sake. I once threw everything I owned in a Volkswagen and drove as far away from the Bengals as I could get on the three tanks of gas I could afford. I kissed lots of people. I wore lots of hairstyles. I ate cow brains and sheep balls. I streaked.

My standard advice to students is going to remain the same: You do not need to live a risky life to take risks in your writing. This is the advice that keeps them around for another day, another semester. It can keep them from sketchy pharmaceuticals and Russian roulette and any number of truly stupid decisions—risks I would never sign off on. But some risks become lifelong memories and fodder for writing forever.

Those emerging writers who are serious about the word are going to take risks anyhow, on the page and in their lives, and silently, I cheer them on.