For all these years out of school I've been tackling the problem of making it as a writer of fiction from a pro freelance perspective, where the single measure of success is the pay and circulation of your market.
The truth is that freelancers are kind of snobs about it. I think you have to be, because you can't live on $250 a week or whatever these literary magazines are paying for short stories. NF pays so much more, for much less work---and being entrenched in that world I never gave the academic press a second thought, because when compared to mainstream commerical publishing the pay and circulation are both negligible.
But if we accept that high-paying high-circ markets simply do not exist for literary fiction today, New Yorker notwithstanding, then isn't trying to solve the problem of writing short fiction in terms of pay---of a professional freelance career---just completely doomed?
And suddenly it hit me, like coming home after a long trip abroad and your old familiar world is fresh and new, I'm wondering if the classroom is actually the final end. Every MFA faculty member is well published---not in mainstream publications bought at the newsstand and read by all, but every MFA enrollee knows all the big and medium names in academic lit. And isn't the Western university with its lavish creative writing programs basically a self-perpetuating system that saves and preserves the art of literature? They provide well-paid work (with benefits!) for the writer of fiction, a captive audience (the educated elite of MFAdom), plus plenty of publishing outlets (the academic journals), great networking and endless conferences, and lots of opportunities to write (sabbaticals, retreats, programs). How can you go wrong?
The truth is that freelancers are kind of snobs about it. I think you have to be, because you can't live on $250 a week or whatever these literary magazines are paying for short stories. NF pays so much more, for much less work---and being entrenched in that world I never gave the academic press a second thought, because when compared to mainstream commerical publishing the pay and circulation are both negligible.
But if we accept that high-paying high-circ markets simply do not exist for literary fiction today, New Yorker notwithstanding, then isn't trying to solve the problem of writing short fiction in terms of pay---of a professional freelance career---just completely doomed?
And suddenly it hit me, like coming home after a long trip abroad and your old familiar world is fresh and new, I'm wondering if the classroom is actually the final end. Every MFA faculty member is well published---not in mainstream publications bought at the newsstand and read by all, but every MFA enrollee knows all the big and medium names in academic lit. And isn't the Western university with its lavish creative writing programs basically a self-perpetuating system that saves and preserves the art of literature? They provide well-paid work (with benefits!) for the writer of fiction, a captive audience (the educated elite of MFAdom), plus plenty of publishing outlets (the academic journals), great networking and endless conferences, and lots of opportunities to write (sabbaticals, retreats, programs). How can you go wrong?