I missed this drama, probably because I don't spend any time on the site mentioned. But it made me curious about who this author was and how they possibly could have achieved that level of publication in lit mags, which are notoriously slow and are drowning in manuscripts. Also, to land 50 publications in a single year must have meant submitting each of those at least 3 times, which would likely mean spending $400+ in submission fees. So I have many questions about this.
However, my next thought was that I have very much enjoyed publishing much more than 50 pieces in a year on my Substack. In fact, my typical output is more than 100 posts over that time. I'll admit that a Substack post is written quite differently from the longform essays I used to hone over many weeks, sometimes many months. But none of it's slop.
On the other hand, I have not mastered the art of turning my Substack stream into books. And so my weekly output is working directly against my longform work rather than seeding it, as I'd originally hoped. So there are tradeoffs with productivity, too.
Yes there's some care to be taken that the easy win doesn't get in the way of the hard, but more valuable one. And that balance is, like all balances, not a steady state but a series of moments in which one is off balance, but adjusting.
This is such a subtle and thoughtful response to that whole controversy! And your comment about building confidence was so insightful: "for many writers, the one single most precious resource they have, or need to have, is confidence."
Right now I'll switch between pitching reviews/essays to publications and publishing informal posts on Substack. The pitches are more legible and useful, perhaps, as "real writing"…but I've realized that it's not emotionally sustainable to just do that!
I want to be read and I want semi-immediate reactions from people. If I don't get any of that, I can't sustain my commitment to writing. So doing the apparently less-ambitious, less-polished work isn't just wasted effort…it helps me commit to the serious work, too.
Agree. I do think carefully about whether an idea could be a column or an essay that could go somewhere else, and in those cases, I don't write it up as a Substack post. But I have so. many. ideas. that it's actually good for me to get some of them out so they can stop crowding my head. And sometimes Substack is more than enough, I don't need to make a whole long, drawn-out thing out of everything I wanted to say.
"We need to be willing to adapt our creative strategies to suit our lives, our changing bodies, our duties and pressures, and the needs of each particular project."
Completely agree. I've found with novel number 2 that I've had to alter my process to accommodate the changes and needs you've identified in this sentence. Having interviewed many authors about their process over the years, I've come to the conclusion that what works for others may not necessarily work for you or the work you're writing. And the whole question of "productivity" can be a drain on creativity and dampen the imagination.
Mine has nothing to do with productivity perhaps. I used to write fiction and I don't anymore. It's not just that I no longer write it, it's that the idea of writing fiction now feels so alien to me that I sometimes find it hard to believe that I once wrote fiction.
I missed this drama, probably because I don't spend any time on the site mentioned. But it made me curious about who this author was and how they possibly could have achieved that level of publication in lit mags, which are notoriously slow and are drowning in manuscripts. Also, to land 50 publications in a single year must have meant submitting each of those at least 3 times, which would likely mean spending $400+ in submission fees. So I have many questions about this.
However, my next thought was that I have very much enjoyed publishing much more than 50 pieces in a year on my Substack. In fact, my typical output is more than 100 posts over that time. I'll admit that a Substack post is written quite differently from the longform essays I used to hone over many weeks, sometimes many months. But none of it's slop.
On the other hand, I have not mastered the art of turning my Substack stream into books. And so my weekly output is working directly against my longform work rather than seeding it, as I'd originally hoped. So there are tradeoffs with productivity, too.
Yes there's some care to be taken that the easy win doesn't get in the way of the hard, but more valuable one. And that balance is, like all balances, not a steady state but a series of moments in which one is off balance, but adjusting.
This is such a subtle and thoughtful response to that whole controversy! And your comment about building confidence was so insightful: "for many writers, the one single most precious resource they have, or need to have, is confidence."
Right now I'll switch between pitching reviews/essays to publications and publishing informal posts on Substack. The pitches are more legible and useful, perhaps, as "real writing"…but I've realized that it's not emotionally sustainable to just do that!
I want to be read and I want semi-immediate reactions from people. If I don't get any of that, I can't sustain my commitment to writing. So doing the apparently less-ambitious, less-polished work isn't just wasted effort…it helps me commit to the serious work, too.
Agree. I do think carefully about whether an idea could be a column or an essay that could go somewhere else, and in those cases, I don't write it up as a Substack post. But I have so. many. ideas. that it's actually good for me to get some of them out so they can stop crowding my head. And sometimes Substack is more than enough, I don't need to make a whole long, drawn-out thing out of everything I wanted to say.
Really enjoyed this one - thank you!
Thank you too!
"We need to be willing to adapt our creative strategies to suit our lives, our changing bodies, our duties and pressures, and the needs of each particular project."
Completely agree. I've found with novel number 2 that I've had to alter my process to accommodate the changes and needs you've identified in this sentence. Having interviewed many authors about their process over the years, I've come to the conclusion that what works for others may not necessarily work for you or the work you're writing. And the whole question of "productivity" can be a drain on creativity and dampen the imagination.
The question of productivity can be absolute poison if it gets out of hand.
Mine has nothing to do with productivity perhaps. I used to write fiction and I don't anymore. It's not just that I no longer write it, it's that the idea of writing fiction now feels so alien to me that I sometimes find it hard to believe that I once wrote fiction.