Rejection is definitely difficult. It's not just the instinctive gut reaction to having someone close the door in my face; it's also the strangeness of seeing what gets published and wondering what my own work is lacking. I feel like there's some sort of unspoken standard that has nothing to do with whether a piece of writing is "good enough" or "original and creative," and it's crazy-making to attempt to figure out what that entails. I can't help but wonder if the key ingredient of the secret sauce involves proving that you're "serious about writing" by means of a degree, or at the very least correctly performing the identity of a writer on social media.
I recently saw a tweet that complained about magazines being a bunch of people from the same MFA programs scratching each others' backs, which is why a lot of published short fiction feels oddly samey and unspecific. That really resonated with me. If I had the time and money, I'd love to create my own digital magazine that specifically publishes the work of people without a writing degree.
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Date: 2024-09-24 12:40 pm (UTC)Rejection is definitely difficult. It's not just the instinctive gut reaction to having someone close the door in my face; it's also the strangeness of seeing what gets published and wondering what my own work is lacking. I feel like there's some sort of unspoken standard that has nothing to do with whether a piece of writing is "good enough" or "original and creative," and it's crazy-making to attempt to figure out what that entails. I can't help but wonder if the key ingredient of the secret sauce involves proving that you're "serious about writing" by means of a degree, or at the very least correctly performing the identity of a writer on social media.
I recently saw a tweet that complained about magazines being a bunch of people from the same MFA programs scratching each others' backs, which is why a lot of published short fiction feels oddly samey and unspecific. That really resonated with me. If I had the time and money, I'd love to create my own digital magazine that specifically publishes the work of people without a writing degree.