Tuesday, 15 May 2018

Literary journals and longevity

With the rising cost of paper and stamps, what's the point of producing a paper journal? It's unsustainable. Why not publish online? If the production quality of HTML isn't sufficient, you can offer PDF, which is what Antiphon does. And the best online magazines are taken just as seriously as paper ones.

Paper magazines are indeed being converted into online publications, but even those are disappearing - some with a bang, some with a whimper. Web sites and submission guidelines are abandoned without as much as a goodbye. The trouble is that the hidden cost of running a literary magazine - the time required dealing with submissions - increases when online submission is offered. Magazines have dealt with the extra load in several ways -

Limiting submissions

  • Retaining a paper submissions process - South for example does this
  • Online submission windows - US magazines often close during summer. An increasing number of UK magazines open for a month per issue.

Increasing person-power

  • Internships - The Forge advertised one that wasn't unpaid.
  • Teams - Realising the fatigue of sole-editorship, recently launched magazines are team efforts. The Forge has a rotating editorship - see their About The Forge page.

Getting money

  • Applying for grants - not easy nowadays unless there are special reasons
  • Having the support of an institution - This is much less common in the UK than in the USA. Magazines like Flash are based in Universities, run by staff. Sometimes a magazine is running by students, associated with a Creative Writing course, providing editing experience
  • Competitions - Reflex runs a quarterly Flash competition, entries doubling as submissions for being printed on their site
  • Submission fees - Magazines like Iota charge for submission via submittable

Niche

  • High production values - Strix (paper-based, with care) has recently appeared.
  • International contemporary writing - Wasafiri (paper-based) has lasted a while. Grant-aided.

Tuesday, 8 May 2018

Long write-ups

There are some books that I not only like but also find useful for my writing. I can write a lot about them, though the result's not really a review. It's more for my own benefit - a study-aid. Here are 2 examples of what I mean -

Sometimes themes emerge. With "In the Glasshouse" by Helen Tookey (poems) I homed in on Symbols and Fragmentation. With "Used to be" by Elizabeth Baines (short stories) I wrote both long themed notes and a short review.

The longer write-ups aren't usually entertaining reading, though the original author can find them interesting enough to use - see the sites of

Monday, 7 May 2018

Glimpses of home

This tapestry shows our house - it's the one on the right. Everything looks tidier than it really is - no telephone line for a start.

My bedside. Radio, diary, reading material, writing material, etc. The green folder contains my submissions record. In the distance there's an Italian/ English dictionary and a competition form.

From our bedroom window in this photo you can see the table-tennis table twice. As usual, there's lots of greenery. From this distance you can't see the grapes around the summer house. I'm trying to write outside more.

One day we'll tidy up the loft - the board-games, the children's books, old bank-statements, demi-johns, Scalextrics, etc. Here are bikes and a sledge.

A rarely-seen view of the kitchen from the spare room which makes the place look huge. I spy cereal packets top-left and Woks on the right, with a big blue cold-box straight ahead.

The spare room at the back serves many functions. Here, behind the ironing board, you can see the left-overs of my attempt to create a video of a programming talk.

Thursday, 3 May 2018

Flash collections

More Flash collections are appearing nowadays. "You're Not Supposed to Cry" by Gary Duncan (Vagabond Voices, 2017) is the most mainstream one I've read lately. "Some of us glow more than others" by Tania Hershman (Unthank books, 2017) is a mix of Flash and short stories. Her earlier "My Mother Was An Upright Piano" (Tangent, 2012) was more purely Flash.

More problematic in some ways is "Seeing stars" by Simon Armitage (Faber and Faber, 2010). It was sold as poetry, but the pieces aren't even prose poetry. A few are Flash. They're all short prose. Suppose someone tried to invoke the Trade Descriptions Act? "Waiting for the nightingale" by Miles Burrows (Carcanet, 2017) is mostly short prose too, though unlike "Seeing stars" it uses line-breaks.

Other flash books I'm looking out for include "What We Know So Far" by Robert Scotellaro and "PEEK" by Paul Beckman.

Tuesday, 24 April 2018

Flash Resources

Tuesday, 10 April 2018

Some Offers

Friday, 6 April 2018

Magma 70 'Europe' Launch

If the time they spent on my contribution is anything to go by, the editors (Paul Stephenson and Susannah Hart) have had a very busy few months. The event was in Europe House with well over 100 attendees on Apr 6th. I managed to squeeze in at the back, briefly meeting Fiona Moore, DA Prince, Eleanor Livingstone, etc.