Each online lit magazine should be viewed, in my opinion, with the thinly veiled contempt we reserve for the sex offender in our neighbourhood, the friends we have who make twice as money as ourselves, or the entire media.
An illuminating article in PANK, who are no strangers to the casual brush-off treatment, but who make more of an effort to liaise with their writers than most, highlighted for me the problem between editor vs. writer.
First of all – editors are merely frustrated writers with one quarter of the talent of the writers they publish. To assume that these people have the right to sit in judgement of a piece of your spectacular writing is not only a hideous mistake, but an affront to the good name of your writing.
This is not to say they can’t have a constructive opinion on your work – far from it. The question is – how much trust are we supposed to put in the opinion of someone whose role it is in life to pour over 1,000,000 short stories per annum and keep some semblance of what qualifies as publishable and what as unpublishable? Surely, an editor's talent radar cannot continually remain sharp, unbiased and completely focused?
No. So, because the world of lit mags is impersonal, runs on pot luck, and is woefully understaffed, these people are the enemy. Submit to them, but on no accounts read them. Don’t give them the satisfaction. For unless it was their job, there's no way they'd ever read you.
An illuminating article in PANK, who are no strangers to the casual brush-off treatment, but who make more of an effort to liaise with their writers than most, highlighted for me the problem between editor vs. writer.
First of all – editors are merely frustrated writers with one quarter of the talent of the writers they publish. To assume that these people have the right to sit in judgement of a piece of your spectacular writing is not only a hideous mistake, but an affront to the good name of your writing.
This is not to say they can’t have a constructive opinion on your work – far from it. The question is – how much trust are we supposed to put in the opinion of someone whose role it is in life to pour over 1,000,000 short stories per annum and keep some semblance of what qualifies as publishable and what as unpublishable? Surely, an editor's talent radar cannot continually remain sharp, unbiased and completely focused?
No. So, because the world of lit mags is impersonal, runs on pot luck, and is woefully understaffed, these people are the enemy. Submit to them, but on no accounts read them. Don’t give them the satisfaction. For unless it was their job, there's no way they'd ever read you.
No comments:
Post a Comment