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When the Cool Writer Kids Won’t Let You in Their Club, Create Your Own
I was a publishing outsider who craved a community.
This may not be the kind of opinion one says out loud, but publishing is a clubby business. And like any other business, talent and hard work are tantamount, but your network is what breaks down all the doors. Years ago, when I was much younger and ambitious, I’d attend book launches, literary magazine events, and parties in the hopes of meeting people who, as one of my friends phrased it, were “good to know.”
These were the kind of people who ensured that your story submission climbed higher up the stack; they brokered important introductions and vouched for your work. They bragged about living in Brooklyn even though they whitewashed the borough where I grew up with their faux grit, expensive eyewear, F-train polemics, and dog-eared copies of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, The Corrections, Infinite Jest — anything written by a Jonathan or a Dave.
Even MFA programs promised connections while you honed your craft — upon graduating from a two-year program, you’d no longer be that nameless person clutching a manuscript; you’d meet people who could make the path to publishing a little easier. The “good to know” crowd was composed of literary journal publishers, associate editors at major publishing houses, agents, and authors who’d been published and nominated for fancy writing prizes doled out to newborns. They were the kind of people who’d lean in and say, “You can tell me,” but better not to tell them anything. Better not to trust the “good to know” people at all. Remember, above all, writers are thieves; your words are theirs for the taking, vulnerable to larceny.
Back in 2002, the number of outlets where you could submit your work for publication was small. Submittable didn’t exist — you had to mail off your story, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope and a modicum of hope. Printed paper gave your writing legitimacy; publishing your work online didn’t have the weight and importance that it does today. With so many submissions and so few outlets, however, gaining placement in a magazine’s table of contents held its own mythology.
