Why the Short Story Matters, Part 1: Emerging Writers Network
Publishing a first novel means beating the odds. I was talking with an editor at a McKnight Foundation event in Minneapolis recently, and he mentioned some rough numbers pertaining to Milkweed, a local small publisher in the city (but not the small publisher he worked for). For every manuscript bought, about 450 others sat in the slush pile.
450 manuscripts. And that was just in the slush pile--the place where manuscripts submitted without agent representation are placed. If we include the manuscripts submitted by agents, the real number is higher. And that's at a small publisher. At the blog Editorial Ass, the editorial assistant "Moonrat" recently gave the scoop on her indie publishing house. She gets about 100+ novels for each one they accept--and that's just the novels submitted by agents. If you don't have representation, she tells us, save yourself the cost of postage and the headache of going to the post office. It isn't happening.
The problem for emerging writers is being unknown. And getting an agent alone won't change the fact you're an unknown quantity. What needs to change? Writers need to get their voices out there. In print. On line. Anyplace your audience goes to to uncover new material--and anyplace agents and publishers go to to discover new voices.
The emerging novelist needs to publish short fiction.
With this in mind, I'm starting to tell everyone to look up Emerging Writers Network (EWN), one of the most valuable resources on the web for writers. The focus of the reviews and articles is literary. If you're a science-fiction, mystery, or romance writer, you might not find much here. If you are a writer of mainstream fiction or nonfiction, however, there's lots of luscious information to gather from this site. Indeed, if you're a mainstream or literary writer, you want to featured on this site. (Write that in your planner, journal, or wherever else you stick challenges.)
From well-written reviews to links to interviews and other blogs, EWN provides endless entertainment for the more word-hungry of us in America. I want to direct your attention, however, to the site's margins. Look at all that glorious information available! On the left we find: Bookseller Blogs, Litblogs, & Author Websites (again, you want to be on this list), as well as some Booksellers and Reading Series (radio based). Those lists should be enough to salivate over.
But the right side holds some holy grail lists that really caught my eye.
First in the right side margins: a long list of Literary Journals. Second: an even longer list of Best of the Web-Online Journals.
These two lists are both overwhelming and inspiring. Within each of these links are opportunities for inserting yourself into a conversation with other writers, readers, and thinkers.
And if you're muttering (to yourself or to me!), "But I still have to finish writing/revising my novel!"--you're, well, wrong.
But that's for Part 2...
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