Diary of a Mad Editor

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A Well-Lighted, Not So Clean, Place and Something to Write With

“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration . . . .”
— Ernest Hemingway, from Death in the Afternoon

“…I’m a huge disbeliever in linking your creative process to a single place or environment. Life changes and, more than that, it gets in the way. If you can only write when you have a large chunk of uninterrupted time then there will be many days when no writing gets done at all. If you need silence to work what happens if you want to get a puppy or have a baby? The show still has to go on.”
— Chandler Craig

Probably ever since I first started writing I’ve been fascinated by the workspaces of other writers — not so much in a Life magazine kind of way as in a Psychology Today kind of way. And I’m not the only one with this fascination. Over the last few years there have been a number of posts around the blogosphere on this very subject. A couple of years ago, in fact, there was a whole slew of writers posting pictures of their workspaces and talking about them. Just the other day, I was reading aspiring writer, Chandler Craig’s rather thoughtful offering. The Guardian has a whole series about it.

So when I say I’m fascinated by a writer’s workspace in a Psychology Today kind of way, I’m really saying that I’m fascinated more by the writer’s personality than the physical appearance of the writer’s office. The workspace is a window into how a writer works — not the creative process in and of itself, which is an ongoing, 24/7 happening both at a conscious and unconscious level with the workspace being but one station of that particular cross.

While there are some who’d like us to embrace Feng Shui and believe in a neat, tidy well-organized workspace, others seem to work just fine in clutter and chaos. As I’ve admitted before, my workspace leans more towards the latter. No matter how many times I’ve cleaned and straightened and organized my workspace, it always ends-up being a big junkpile of crap. Why? Well . . . I’m a packrat for one thing. I can’t seem to throw things away. I’m always afraid I’ll need it later (and I usually do after I’ve finally thrown something away). Plus, I’m an unapologetic multi-tasker. I’ll usually have about four or five windows open on my PC at one time. I’ll be researching something on this website over here while updating a webpage or writing a blog, and reading submissions at the same time. These two factors require me to have my stuff within arms-reach. So, I have manilla folders and dictionaries and CD-ROMs and Flash drives and web design books and water bottles and lots of other crap all within a few feet of me in any direction. And I have this bad habit with pens as well. I buy pens several boxes at a time. I’ll grab one and jot something on a Post-It note. Later, after I’ve dumped a pile of paper on top of the first pen — and not seeing the first pen, I’ll grab new pen. This keeps happening until I run out of pens. I’ll scratch my head and wonder, “Where are all of my pens?” So, I go buy more pens
. Pretty soon, after I’ve cleared the paper off my desk, I’ll find all these pens that I forgot about.

Now does this somehow make me a more or less efficient writer? I honestly don’t know. I think what it does is make me a more comfortable writer. Personally, I can write anywhere and I often do write in lots of different places. And, necessity being the mother of invention, I will write with any utility that’s handy whether it be a laptop or a number two pencil and a napkin. Truthfully, any real writer should be able to do this. But my main workspace is where I feel most free. It is my sanctuary. It’s a place where I can listen to music to provide the rhythm to make my fingers dance on the keys. It’s a place where I can seperate myself from the rest of the world to better converse with the voices in my own head. It’s my home.

You Are a Doo-Doo Head or, Do As I Say Not As I Doo-Doo

Dear Uptight Grammarian:

You know — honest to Christmas, I wasn’t originally going to respond to your email. It’s been sitting in my inbox for 2 weeks and I was going to delete it today. I get a little sick of reading the same complaints by knuckeheads like you who have nothing intelligent or substantive to say beyond the usual whining. It gets tiresome trying to come-up with witty retorts and there’s really very little sport in it for me these days. But, I was chatting with another literary editor yesterday and we were talking about the use of vulgarity in writing, so I thought I could cover that topic by way of a response to you.

Before I address your point about my use of “vulgarities” let me say this about my blog:

1) Yes, I do bend the rules of grammar/mechanics to some degree. This blog is written in a certain style and I bend those rules to fit that style. The manner in which I write this blog merely reinforces everything I’ve said about good writing. If you don’t understand that, I’d suggest you read through my blog more carefully.

2) My “snide, unprofessional attitude”? Is there some special edicate manual for literary editors I’m supposed to know about? I’ve read and responded to thousands and thousands of submissions over the years, and I’d defy but the tiniest percentage of those thousands to even suggest that I was ever unkind or unfair to them. And if I did trash that tiny percentage of writers, they had it coming as far as I’m concerned.

3) Last time I checked, this blog was called Diary of a Mad Editor — not Diary of the Warm, Fuzzy, Well-Manicured Editor so, get over it.

Now, about “vulgarities”:

Yes I do curse to some degree in this blog and elsewhere. But I only use obscenties when they seem appropriate. I’ve never said to any writer not to use obscenities in their writing — only that they use that language when necessary and not frivolously. Foul language, seemingly inappropriate subject matter, extreme violence, explicit sex, gallows humor, taboo subject matter of any kind — all of these things have a place in written communication. Anything that is a part of our human experience has a proper place in our literature. This was what I was discussing with my editor friend. When you write about a subject, you have to be true to that subject. You can’t sanitize it if the subject, by it’s very nature, is unsanitary. Fuck that. Fuck censorship. How are you going to write about something convincingly if you restrain yourself that way. As a writer, you have to embrace the idea of an appropriate level of language. That doesn’t mean that you write something purely for it’s apparent shock value. What it does mean is that if you are writing about a dock worker, for instance, that he walk, talk, dress and exhibit many of the traits of someone of his social class and experience. Same goes with soldiers or cops or anyone else. If you write about a pedophile, you have to capture all the things about him that make him creepy and wrong no matter how taboo.

Now, I realize I’ve deliberately strayed from your email’s topic, but only somewhat because, despite your protestations to the contrary, I think I’ve demonstrated in a roundabout way that I do very much practice what I’ve been preaching.

Can I get an “Amen”?

You Think They’d Really Be That Desperate?

Yesterday morning, I was at the post office picking up some submissions. I opened a few of them while I was there as per my normal custom and began to read them. The first submission was just good enough to get assigned to my “maybe” pile. The others were definitely going into my “no-way-in-Hell-never-ever” pile. In fact, the third submission I read was so bad, that I loudly exclaimed, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me with this shit!” My friend Tony was on duty and he started chuckling.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

So I told him. And told him. And told him. Several minutes later, he nods his head and says, “You know what?”

“No. What?”

“Maybe you oughta start a magazine that just publishes bad poetry. Call it Your Poetry Sucks Review.”

“Huh? Yeah . . . I don’t know about that. Interesting concept though.”

Truth is, I was seriously considering it. But then, I thought:

A) Who’d want to read it?

I do recall some years ago, there was a magazine (can’t for the life of me remember the name of it) which published only material that had been previously rejected. I don’t know for a fact that all of the material was necessarily bad as “rejected” doesn’t automatically mean that a piece of writing is unpublishable. Nonetheless, as far as I know that magazine didn’t last too long, so I can’t imagine there’d be this great demand to read a similar magazine.

B) Why should I create a publication opportunity for poetry that shouldn’t see the light of day?

I’ve always been of the opinion that bad writers have the right to write as much as they want to, but the public has the equal right not to have that crap foisted onto them and it’s an editor’s job to police the situation. I’d be dishonoring and disrespecting my readers if I made it easier for these deluded individuals to get their work out there.

C) Who in their right mind would agree to have their suck-ass poetry in a literary magazine dedicated to poking fun at what terrible writers they are?

Actually, I do know of a few godsmack awful writers who’d love to be in such a publication. They are so deluded about their talents that they are oblivious to any criticism of their work. I could make fun of them to the trump of doomsday and they simply wouldn’t care as long as I spelled their names correctly in the byline. Most writers, however, would be offended and wouldn’t give me permission to publish their work in such a way. So, I doubt I’d be able to fill many issues over the long haul.

Besides, poking fun at the odd writer here in this blog is one thing — those writers more or less ask for it. Devoting a whole publication to the practice is another fish altogether. Even I’m not that heartless.