We're All Writers Too

Part I

You’ve taught Creative Writing at University of Missouri and now, you are the managing editor at TMR. Which role do you like better?

I actually still do both: one of the job duties of the managing editor is to teach one class per semester. Typically, I teach freshman composition in the fall and our internship in publishing class in the spring. But this semester, I’m fortunate enough to teach an intro to fiction writing class, which will be a lot of fun: I haven’t taught fiction writing in two years and haven’t taught a beginning class in about four years.

But, overall, I do prefer being a managing editor rather than a writing teacher. There are two big things for me that really have nothing to do with the job. First, TMR has provided me with a stable work environment and the chance to publish writers. After years of being an adjunct, what could be better than that? Second, working on a literary magazine frees up my mind to think about my own writing. Editing the magazine is my day job, and writing my own stories and novels happens on my own time. That’s been invigorating for me; teaching writing at three separate campuses—which was what I doing in St. Louis before I moved here—became exhausting. I’ve worked on two other literary magazines, Natural Bridge and River Styx, and to be lucky enough to make editorial work a full-time job has really been wonderful.

It's been a long time since TMR's first publication in 1978. What changes have you seen in the quality of submissions in the recent past?

To be fair, I’ve only been with TMR since January of 2010, so I’m not sure that it’s appropriate for me to try to answer this question. From what I’ve seen, the quality of the manuscripts is always high. I’ve seen many stories that we’ve argued about, and ultimately declined, show up in other literary journals just a few months later … and we knew that was likely even when we passed on the work. We publish approximately twenty stories each volume year; undoubtedly, we get more than twenty stories each year that are not just publishable, but are excellent stories. I expect that high quality of submissions to continue for a long time as more and more people turn to writing.

Does TMR adhere to an aesthetic or does it depend on its editors at the time of publication?

No editor likes to say what his or her aesthetic is because once that happens, there is a sense that we are closed-minded to something that might push the boundaries (or completely shatter) that given aesthetic. Most editors will say that they want good language, a compelling voice, something they haven’t seen before, which is, after all, pretty general. But if we could say what writing, what art, could or should do, then it wouldn’t be artful anymore: it would just be a product. And no editor wants that.

We’ve had the same editors at TMR for a long time. I’m the newest member of our staff, and I’ve been here less than two years. But the other senior staffers – Speer Morgan, Evelyn Rogers, Kris Somerville, and Dedra Earl – have worked together for over twenty years. That is rare, and it has created a tremendous amount of trust and confidence in each other and the work we do. The quality and respect that The Missouri Review has earned over the last three decades has everything to do with the work they’ve done together.

Could you tell us about your submission process? What role do you play in the final published content?

Once we receive a submission, we enter all the contact information into our database system. We bundle manuscripts, either online or in print, in bundles of ten, which we then give to our interns during our weekly production meeting. Interns read one or two bundles each week, and after the production meeting, we split into genre groups. Led by a senior staffer, the genre meeting is when stories get passed around for a second or third read. Because we are at the University of Missouri and teaching is a significant component of our mission statement, we teach the students about what to look for, discuss the story’s strength and weaknesses openly, and so forth. One thing we always tell our interns is that we look for reasons to accept a story, we do not look for reasons to reject a story. Consequently, many of the manuscripts we receive get read multiple times. Stories (or poems or essays) that don’t make the cut are sent back, often with a note to the author about aspects of the work that we admired.

The manuscripts that make it to the senior staff are usually passed around amongst all of us. We write comments to each other about what works, what doesn’t work, our concerns, aspects of the piece we admire. The manuscripts can go around quite a bit before we come to a consensus, and then we reach out to the author and ask if the story (or poem or essay) is still available. We try to respond to all work within about twelve weeks, but often, we’re a little bit faster than that.

My role is as a senior prose reader. During the spring semester, when I teach the internship class, I lead the genre group in prose. Then, and during the rest of the year, I read prose manuscripts—primarily fiction—that have been read two or three times and been endorsed by our interns; these are the manuscripts that are under the serious consideration of our senior staff. How many manuscripts I read each week varies with the calendar; some weeks I don’t read a single manuscript, and other weeks, I might read three dozen.

Is the first page (or first sentence or paragraph) critical for a story to be published? Do you recollect a TMR published story that did not have a stellar opening but gradually picked up pace and exceeded expectations?

Yes and no. Stories that are inherently flawed usually show their flaws on the first page. Stories that are really good but might have problems later in the piece might, maybe, perhaps, show flaws on the first page. Does a knockout first sentence grab us? Of course! But I’m not sure the flashy sentence is necessarily what we’re looking for. All good stories suck the reader in by the end of the first few paragraphs, but how early or how soon we are certain can vary quite a bit.

There are two important things to keep in mind. One, we read the whole manuscript. Really. We’re all writers too, so we know what it’s like sending out your work and getting it turned down, and what it’s like when a magazine wants your work and really gets behind it. Because of that, we always make sure that our manuscripts are handled with care. The reason, of course, that we can do this is because we have a large staff. Five senior staffers, six graduate editors from our university’s PhD program, an office staff, and anywhere from ten to twenty interns every semester: for a literary magazine we have many dedicated readers, so we don’t have to rush through any of our reading.

Second, we are known for being good editors. Among literary folks, Evelyn Rogers is known as being one of the very best editors in our business. Other writers rave about how she can shape a story, how she works with the writer, how collaborative and smart her process is. Because of this, one clunky sentence somewhere does not necessarily damage a story. And, of course, the work we read should be the very best it can be before it gets sent to TMR. A strong opening matters, but if we read a story all the way through and find that, ultimately, the story “works” and we admire it, then we do our best in the editorial process to make the writer’s work even stronger.

As a teacher, editor, and a reader -- does your expectation of a "great" story change?

As a teacher, I’ve never come across a story in my classroom that is finished. There is always something more to do because I’m teaching emerging writers, and there is a tremendous amount to learn. I’ve seen some very good stories in workshop, but I never expect stories to be complete, to be finished.

As an editor, I don’t expect greatness. There is a certain amount of feel to the job. Some work we’ve accepted at TMR has needed very little editing, but usually, all the work we publish needs editing, whether they are changes for style or larger conceptual changes and additions. That’s just what our editorial staff does.

However, as a reader, I find that I’m less and less patient. When I have a book in my hand, I really want to be engaged. I’ve accepted that I’m not going to be able to read every great or even very good book: there are just too many centuries of literature for that to happen. Now, what moves me may not move another reader, but why waste my time with a book that I’m only so-so on? If I’m not roped in within the first two or three chapters, I put the book aside and go grab something else.

What excites you most -- a Charles Baxter-ish story, a Raymond Carver-ish story, or an honest new voice?

Charles Baxter is one of my favorite contemporary writers, so that’s an easy answer.

A more complete and complex answer, though, is this: it really depends. Sometimes I pick up my battered Ray Carver collection and I’m not really interested; other times, I pick it up and I’m riveted. What I want as a reader can change quite a bit, and that’s something that we try to keep in mind at TMR when selecting work for the issue. Of course, any magazine editor wants to publish new, honest, and exciting voices that readers haven’t seen before. In some sense, that’s the foundation of all literary magazines: discovering the best new voices before anyone else does. One type or another isn’t inherently preferable.

One of the best stories I’ve recently read is Graham Joyce’s PEN/O’Henry Prize winning story “An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen.” Joyce is the author of over a dozen books, so he knows what he’s doing. But is this particularly story “honest” and “new”? Absolutely. It’s a breathtaking, masterful story and the name on the manuscript doesn’t matter—what matters is that the story is amazing.

Dan is a recent MFA graduate. He's been a subscriber of TMR since 2009. He has been working on a story for five months now and eight out of ten writers from his last workshop said his story is "ready." But Dan thinks something is missing and is not sure what that is. Any advice for Dan?

I’ve been in this exact situation, actually. So I know how this feels: Dan’s really anxious to have his story read. Ultimately, I think most writers just want readers, nothing more or less, and so Dan feels this pull – he wants his writing out in the world as soon as possible so that people can read it, but he also wants to take just as much time to make the story as perfect as it possibly can be.

Best advice? Put the story aside for a while. One month, maybe two. Write another one. Then pick up that first story and read it all the way through—don’t stop, don’t mark the manuscript—and when that happens, he’ll know if the story is really ready. He’ll have the right distance from his own work to see it with fresh eyes and know, really know, that his work is ready.

One other thing. When I was getting my MFA at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, there was advice up from a writer (I don’t recall his name) somewhere in the webpages of Natural Bridge, the literary magazine of my program. He said once the story is ready to be mailed out … cut 500 words. I think this is great (albeit, difficult) advice and it’s always stuck in the back of my mind.

Apart from being a teacher and an editor, you are an active writer. Is there anything you would like to share about your own writing process?

Not really. There isn’t any big mystery that I’m hiding from the world, I’m just not sure that how I write is interesting or useful to anyone else. Everyone has his or her own way of writing—paper or computer, coffee shop or home, morning or evening, etc.—and my way works for me (for the time being).

I read that you admire Ellen Bass. She teaches at Pacific University and I've been to many of her readings. As a fiction writer, many times I fail to admire the beauty of prose that can be borrowed from poetry. Thoughts?

I’ve had the pleasure of reading Ellen’s work here at TMR and also at River Styx, where I was managing editor for five years. It’s her combination of observation and compassion that I always find so striking. One of the challenges of any writer is to be clear while still being artful; too much writing is bogged down by purple prose and dissociative language. Ellen’s work, of course, never does this, and it’s one of the reasons she is so widely read and admired as poet.

Your advice to Dan is inspiring. Thank you, Michael. Now, the second part. Warning: The questions get deeper from here.

Part II

You mentioned stories that don’t make the cut are sent back, often with a note to the author about aspects of the work that TMR admired.  I'd like to ask about an important phase of your life. Would you please talk about what you went through during the time between your first rejection and your first acceptance? Did you despise editors while you were being rejected? Was the process unfair? If yes, now that you manage one of the world's best literary magazines, as a pioneer in this community, what would you do different to make that emerging writer happy today?

Let’s see if I can remember. My first publication was in Sou’wester, the magazine out of Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. I remember they took it fast: I think the story was only with them for three weeks or so before I received a letter from Valerie Vogrin, telling me they wanted to publish the story. Her acceptance letter is framed and sits in my office at home. I don’t remember thinking the process was rigged or unfair, because it isn’t. I used to keep my rejection letters (or notes, or small scraps of paper, or any of the other very small items that literary magazines use to tell a writer “No.”) but they just sat in a folder and I never looked at them. I throw them all away now.

Editors aren’t making personal decisions about me; it’s about the work and they get a ton of work. Sure, I got excited when Magazine X had my story for a long time, as that meant to me that they were really considering it (which I know now isn’t necessarily true) … only to be a little hurt to then get a form rejection letter. But did it make me angry? Really upset me? No, of course not. Getting indignant about a rejection letter is silly.

I really do wish I could respond further to more writers whose work was really close with TMR, but I simply don’t have the time to do that. I also don’t know the writers, either, and as your question points out, some people take it very personally when they shouldn’t. I’ve had confrontations with writers at AWP. I’ve also had writers email me and thank me for a personal response. I never know in advance whether I’ll get one of those extreme responses (note: I prefer the nice email!), but I also can’t really worry about it. If the story deserves a bit more than the form letter (they all do, of course…) then I’ll say so. Hopefully, those small touches will make a difference. Any writer, no matter where he or she is in the writing life, needs to be stubborn and persistent about mailing out the work. And I think any good emerging writer knows that already.

A good writer is one thing. A great writer is another thing. Like vintage. Once in five years you'll read a story and you will jump and tweet and call your best fiction reader and say, "I found her." You'll see colors appear and smells infuse and emotions crawl into your neurons. In the end, you will live the protagonist's life. Yes, the story was that good.

Do you long to discover the next great writer? What do you mean when you say, "Your story blew me away"?

Do I long to discover the next great writer? Frankly, no. Maybe I’m overemphasizing your words here, but any sense of longing or yearning … no, I don’t feel that way. I hope so, I’m open to it, but it isn’t a burning desire. Work like that will find its way to the desk of an editor at a good literary magazine no matter what. Maybe that’s a bit, I dunno, Taoist or something, but why worry about what I can’t control?

What I mean by a story that blew me away is one that I read all the way through without stopping or thinking. I just have to know what happened next. I need to get to the end. I read slowly, I read carefully, but I’m still just reading and can’t be interrupted by pinging noises from the computer or any “I wonder why that sentence is there …” thoughts that would disrupt the rhythm of the narrative.  I always thought that Gardner’s idea of the “fictive dream” was a little wishy-washy, but there is something to be said for a story that you don’t think about, you just experience. That’s what I’m after.

One more question? I see you nod. Don't worry, I promise -- one last question: if you were given sweeping powers (with no-questions-asked full funding, of course) to make TMR the best literary magazine and writer's community in the world, what would you do?

Sweeping powers? Sounds awesome …

TMR is, I believe, already one of the best literary magazines in the country, and what we are doing to reach out to the writing community—through our publication, through our blog, through our various social media outlets—has been fairly successful. If I could do anything, I would do what most magazine editors would (I’m guessing) say: we’d have more money so that we could pay our writers and our staff more and hire even more people to work on the magazine.

Here’s a small example. We’re kicking around the development of a TMR app for the iPhone and Android. We’re working in collaboration with the journalism school here at TMR, as part of our educational mission, and I’m positive that the end result is going to be something that our audience is going to love. But the process is slow, time-consuming, and done on a tiny budget.

Compare this to ESPN, who is a huge organization and has all that Disney movie stuff. They have thirty people that work on ESPN mobile stuff all the time. That is all they do! Now, I have no idea what we would do with thirty people working on something like that for TMR, but the point is that many decisions we make, other than what work to publish, have little to do with what we want to do, but everything to do with having enough time and having enough people. There’s just always going to be more that a, say, New Yorker or Atlantic can do that we simply can’t. And that’s okay, maybe even good, because collectively, big and medium and small magazines that publish literature all have different goals and different audiences and, on the whole, we’re all pretty good at it.

But, I mean, if you gave me sweeping powers …

 

Priyatam Mudivarti writes fiction at late nights, writes complex software code during the day as a freelance software engineer, and documents people's lives taking time-off as a traveling documentary photographer. He has earned his bachelors in Computer Science Engineering and is currently pursuing MFA from Pacific University. He is working on a collection of interlinked short stories and a novella, Yuti, set in India. He lives in Cambridge.