Will a writer’s stories be noticed, or on the off chance, will one or two be published? In a literary journal? Or maybe a magazine?
What magazines? By last count the only ones left running short fiction are The New Yorker and The Atlantic. And The Atlantic doesn’t even run a piece of fiction in every issue any more. Maybe Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene can straighten that out now that she owns a chunk of it. Meanwhile, somebody check with GQ. Are they still out there? And what about Esquire? At this point, what’s the point.
So, the golden age of periodical publication is over. Oh, you say, what about publishing online? You want to slave over this kind of stuff for a nickel per word, or whatever it pays to publish a piece online? Go give your work away to get noticed. I’ll have mine digital-printed in a dark building full of robots and automated forklifts. Give books out for Christmas. Stocking stuffers. Or something like that.
I’ve got the picture. Writing for most writers, gifted or not, is avocation. Sacrifice. Why would anyone want to do it anyway? Well, there are some attractive things about it…
Ask any editor, “Fiction writers never have to leave their desks, do they?”
“Well no. Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?
“They have to get up to vomit.”[1]
My wife of 35 years asks, “Honey, what did you do today?”
I answer honestly, “Productive day today, produced fifteen hundred words.”
She says nothing.
It’s the medium that counts, flagellant. Content’s close to worthless.
Log on. “Post” whatever you like. Whenever you like. Wherever you like.
[1] Frontispiece, Friday Calls – A Southern Novel by E. Vernon Glenn. Copyright 2018, the author.