It's a pill to swallow, but check out Ted Genoways' article in Mother Jones, "The Death of Fiction?"--note the question mark--and gird your loins to ask the tough questions we need to ask about the future of literary writing. Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quaterly Review, offers up a tidy history lesson, tracing the rise (and current decline) of academic literary journals in the United States. He doesn't have much to say about the rise of lively publications--both online and in-print--that have little or nothing to do with academe but are doing much to keep the Internet an interesting place to read and enjoy fresh writing right now; but he does offer this stringent advice to anyone trying to find an audience in today's competitive literary market:
"Stop being so damned dainty and polite. Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood. And for Christ's sake, write something we might want to read."
To read the full article, click here. And check back with the Octopus later this week, when I'll be punchy about literary survival, the rise of Young Adult fiction, and what we can ALL learn from ANY kind of writing that runs red instead of yellow.--MD
"Stop being so damned dainty and polite. Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood. And for Christ's sake, write something we might want to read."
To read the full article, click here. And check back with the Octopus later this week, when I'll be punchy about literary survival, the rise of Young Adult fiction, and what we can ALL learn from ANY kind of writing that runs red instead of yellow.--MD
Comments
I think the last literary work I finished was Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book back in 2008.
Any other suggestions, BtO Ladies?
So much of what I read when I read literary magazines just seems like the same old stories trumped up again. Where's the breath? The life?
You should have seen the look on one of my professor's face when I said "but I just want to tell a good STORY." I might as well have grown three heads.
A good story, well told. To me that's what it's about. But don't even whisper that in creative writing programs!
Mine was a straight English PhD program rather than a creative writing program. I loved it, but I never breathed a word, the whole four years, and certainly not in any theory class, that I was going to use everything I learned there to write novels. Tee hee.