Why AWP is Worth it

So we at Blue Earth Review will be in Seattle this weekend, exercising our “literary citizenship.” It’s easy to be skeptical and critical about what’s going on this weekend; there are plenty of people who attend only out of a selfish desire to further their own “career”. But what good reasons are there for participating in events like AWP?

1)      Market Comprehension. The writing world can be daunting to even the most experienced veterans of the market. It’s always shifting. AWP and similar conferences allow us to see the types of work that are being produced around the writing market. Knowing what markets there are for the type of work you’re producing is incredibly valuable and is one of the biggest reasons to attend.

2)      Networking. Again, it’s easy to be critical about the level of brazen self-promotion that can happen sometimes. However, the proponents of networking acknowledge that there is plenty of outstanding work being produced that has little or no audience. Networking, at its best, isn’t about promoting an individual: it’s about promoting work that needs and deserves a boost. So consider your own position as you walk around this weekend; are you in a position to help work that needs it? Are you in the position of befriending other like-minded authors to help each other improve at the craft? If you are only out to get your career ahead, you are only hurting yourself and the level of work you might produce through helping others first.

3)      Geeking out. Let’s be honest. We’re all fans here. There’s a great opportunity to brush elbows with the literary giants who got us started or who continue to inspire us. And for those who have produced the level of work that deserves to be praised, this is an opportunity to see some of the impact your work has had on those in the business of writing.

4)      Community. Writing can be an incredibly solitary lifestyle. We spend huge amounts of time in our own heads. But there’s value in talking with like-minded people (as long as we don’t surround ourselves with them). Why? For one, it validates what we are doing. In my previous post, I talked a little about what outsiders tend to think about us. Knowing that other people doing similar work struggle in the same ways we do validates our experience and makes us feel less alone in a lonely profession.

Growing up as the son of a preacher, I remember hearing the Greek word “koinonia” being used regularly. The word translates loosely as communion, fellowship, a shared participation. If there’s something most Christians are good at, it is this (sometimes to the exclusion of the outside world). It also implies some sort of spiritual connection to each other and something larger. Being in a room with people like myself often feels this way for me; there’s a connection and an expanding that happens when we gather and break bread together (or drink copiously). So feel free to experience some species-recognition and share some drinks with the curious animals that are like you.

-Jake Little, Managing Editor

You Have Better Things to Do

Stop reading this.

Really, if you want to get anything done, I don't know what you are doing here. Most likely, if you have come across this, you have been scouring the internet for some time.

You have better things to do, I am sure of it.

Unless you don't write—which if you don't write you have other very good reasons to read no further—you should get offline. Close your browser. Shut off your wifi. Turn away from the noise.

Do it.

I won't presume to know your browsing habits (nor will I share mine). In any case, they are detrimental to you are writing. I am fairly certain of this. Whatever these habits may be—if you watch cat videos and clap when they are through, or if you stare at your Facebook page, waiting for something to move—just stop.

Your project is waiting for you.

Count your pronouns. Scan your stanzas. Tighten your management of time. Write by hand if it suits you. Whatever you must do to advance your writing.

If the internet is central to your existence—which it very possibly is, it is likely that you are terrified when your access to it is limited or revoked—be aware that you browse. Study your own habits. Write about them, possibly. Your browsing is your fodder.

Go on. Get to it. Go ahead and write.

-Eric Blix, fiction editor

Getting Up

Whichever term you prefer –becoming known, getting yourself out there, the road to glory and fame –the writer’s lifestyle is, as I see it, like my adolescence as a graffiti artist. (I’m the knucklehead in the navy blue cap and white t-shirt waiting my turn.) Though even now, at times it’s like I’m back on the roof of a building at one in the morning with a backpack full of Krylons and tips in my hand, helping a buddy climb up.

            Allow me to compare illegal artistic activity to academics. There really is little difference as far as practice towards success.

No one knew me or cared who I was, and the same goes before a first (or any) publication, right? You have to “get up”.

“Getting up” refers to the amount of production a graffiti artist puts out. For writers, getting up means publication credits.

            I had a crew back then. That’s my cohort; the program I’m in. Minnesota State University, Mankato’s MFA.

            Getting up in the streets works like publishing: not easy. For now, nevermind cops; we had rivals. Rivals for us are all the other writers out there in the literary world. On the street, if you get crossed out or painted over that’s the equivalent to a rejection. It’s another writer beating you out to a publication because his or her craft was tighter.

            Back then the only ones that knew about me and my crew were me and my crew, so of course we wanted to be known. But no matter how good we thought we were we had to do it –well and often– to prove it. There were at least two key elements that.  

Consistency

I drew all the time –on backpacks, textbooks, T-shirts, my bedroom walls. My hand got steady. I got better.

Practice. Discipline.

An artist cannot amass too much work. After you finish a story and you think it’s done put it away and start another.

Persistence

Whenever any of us got crossed out or gone over by another artist we always had the same idea: go back.

We went back and kept going back. If you get rejected, take it for what it is, but don’t call it quits.

My crew made me better because I wanted to be as good as them. I consider my cohort a solid one. We push each other to produce more and often.

            Utilize your cohort. Swap stories, poems. Critique to improve. Pull each other up and get published.

-Michael Torres -Poetry and Operations Editor, Blue Earth Review Crew

Writer's Guilt

I have writer’s guilt. Or anti-writer’s guilt. Anti-writing guilt?

If you’re someone who writes from time to time, you already know, there are spaces between those times. I mean, there are times you are not writing. Occasionally, those times take up the most space in your day, week, month. And I, for one, feel the guilt. The guilt that I am not writing, not creating, not sending work out for publication.

Why the guilt though? Maybe I think if I am not currently writing, I can never/will never be considered “a writer.” I’ve heard that concept before. I’ve read it in articles and essays from well-known, respected, published writers. To be a writer, you write. When you stop writing, the moment you stop writing, you are no longer a writer. It’s as if, the moment you stop, your love for language, for sound, your fascination with the search for the perfect word must stop too. But is that true?

I had many phenomenal undergrad professors; I was lucky in that way. One such English professor, when faced with fifteen eighteen-to-twenty year olds, made a comment about writing and age that seems to have stuck with me all this time. She said, and I’m loosely paraphrasing as it was years ago, You will be better writers when you’re forty. You might not be great now, even good. And that’s okay. She was a better writer than us. Not a vain comment. Surely she was – she was the teacher, after all. It was an age comment. She’d lived longer. The longer you live, the more you see, the better your writing.

I’m not sure how I took this comment back then. Maybe a little foolishly insulted for my generation. How could she possibly know what we’d seen by eighteen? Maybe a little unsure if this seemed true, especially since we were in a fiction class. Maybe I didn’t think much of it at all, but it sat and stewed in the back of my mind. I’m not too far off twenty-eight now. It’s been only ten years, but oh, how right she was! I see it now. How much more I have to say because of how much more I’ve read and seen and done. Now, I’m not insulted; I’m not unsure. I’m impressed. And when my creative writing students look at me, certain that they will never be writers because their poetry doesn’t sound anything like Tony Hoagland or Sharon Olds, I tell them to keep writing. But, just as important, to keep living.

This past week, here at MSU, we had two visiting poets. One was Sarah McKinstry-Brown, who said something during her craft talk that I’ve had in my mind ever since. She said the poet Jaime Sabines once said or wrote, “Live, then write. In that order.” What a thought! And I was back in Professor Loomis’ class listening to her tell us to be forty. To keep experiencing and writing. To work those shit jobs and struggle through those breakups. And then, to write again. That we couldn’t control it, but that (thankfully!) we’d be so much better at this in twenty years.

One of my best-of-all-time teachers was my college dance instructor, Toni. She was tough, challenging, kind. I made a lot of close friends through dance. The closest, Megan, made a comment on Facebook sometime after our graduation. She said that she missed dance. I missed it too. And I wondered then, did this make us not “dancers” anymore, if we weren’t still choreographing for hours in a mirrored studio?

Toni replied, and again I paraphrase, You will always have dance. It’s in your soul. I think, dear Toni, that was the greatest thing you ever taught me. When I’m not dancing, when I’m not writing, I’m still moving, living, taking in the world. We live first, then write. We age and we see the world in new ways. Then, we write. No, those spaces, those breaks, despite my lingering guilt, are nothing to worry over. Those spaces don’t make us less writer-ly. Those spaces are where we live. I’d argue, you can never/will never be “a writer” without them.

-Poetry Editor, Debbie Ernie