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Waccamaw and the Wheel

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Waccamaw Journal is a favorite online literary site edited by Dan Albergotti and Joe Oestreich, supported by Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. Waccamaw takes its name from the Waccamaw River, which wanders through Conway on its way to the sea. Albergotti has a collection of poems called The Boatloads that you must read if you haven’t already, and Oestreich’s memoir, Hitless Wonder,  published earlier this year, chronicles the plight of Oestreich’s band, Watershed, and is a great read. Albergotti and Oestreich have a current feature called “Nine More Gates” which highlights an essay by University of Tampa MFA faculty poet Erica Dawson called “John Donne is My Pusherman.” In it she claims, “Writing is a gateway drug.” Like Dawson’s essay, the eight others featured on the site consider the topic of “poetry and gateways.”

Another creative feature of Waccamaw Journal is Jason Ockert’s Waccamaw Interview Wheel. Here’s what Ockert says about the concept of the interview wheel:

In an effort to reinvent the traditional author interview, I invited ten of today’s best fiction writers to participate in an experiment. After randomly selecting names, I encouraged each author to both ask and answer questions posed by their peers. There were no stipulations…

Ockert recently won a short story collection contest by Dzanc, who will publish the collection of fiction in 2013; it will be called Neighbors of Nothing. Ockert has also published a highly recommended, surreal collection of fiction called Rabbit Punches.

For those looking for fine fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, Waccamaw Journal offers plenty. Albergotti, Oestreich, and Ockert have created a repository of literature that is sure to please.

The Future of the Publishing Industry

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In Nate Silver’s recent best selling book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t, the Great Predictor begins with a history lesson.He begins with a brief history of what he considers the information age. The lesson does not begin with the personal computer or the internet, but with perhaps the first info-tech invention:

Signal and NoiseThe pursuit of knowledge seemed inherently futile, if not altogether vain. If today we feel a sense of impermanence because things are changing so rapidly, impermanence was a far more literal for the generations before us. There was “nothing new under the sun,” as the beautiful Bible verses in Ecclesiastes put it — not so much because everything had been discovered but because everything would be forgotten.

The printing press changed that, and did so permanently and profoundly. Almost overnight, the cost of producing a book decreased by about three hundred times, so a book that might have cost $20,000 in today’s dollars instead cost $70… The number of books being produced grew exponentially, increasing by about thirty times in the first century after the printing press was invented.

In the recent MFA residency period, a good portion of breath went to the discussing of and pondering about publishing and its future. Some of the guest lecturers of previous residency periods suggested the publishing industry is dying, that Amazon, with its selling books at a loss and pricing out all local book sellers, was mere years away from soldering shut the vault of diversity that had been the publishing industry. Others bemoaned the written word would become purely digital, that no physical scrap would survive.

Allow me to posit an alternative. Allow me to suggest we learn from the ebbing past, we ask History what becomes of outdated technology. Because History says progress does not mean deletion.

A Simple, Powerful Story

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This handsome young man:

Francis Alexander's Charles Dickens in 1842

…Wrote this undying story, and it was published 159 years and 1 day ago. What has made this story such an enduring treasure of western society? Why has it birthed no less than infinity adaptations to film, theater, radio, and graphic novel?

From Dissatisfaction to Inspiration

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Jason Tanz of Wired shared this, the story Peter Molyneux. The famed video game designer behind Populous and Fable, Molyneux had fallen into the fish’s belly portion of his career, but then a fake Twitter account that poked fun at his foibles inspired him to quit his job and start afresh, to become as carefree and challenging as his alter ego @PeterMolydeux.

The story intrigues, inspires, and troubles. Most troubling, and most pertinent, was Molyneux’s struggles with his own finished products and his own disappointments:

Molyneux couldn’t fault the critics. They had a point. He too considered each release something of a letdown. For Molyneux, starting work on a new project was like stepping onto a stone outcrop, looking out over a blanket of fog, and waiting for the mist to clear and reveal what was lying underneath. He couldn’t stop himself from conjuring up the most tantalizing possibilities—the equivalent of finding himself atop a mountain, a lush landscape rolling beneath him. And so every time the fog lifted, he couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. Now, at the presumed twilight of his career, it seemed as though he’d never get a chance to create a game that was worthy of his dreams.

Few of my own writings, whether poems, essays or emails, feel finished. My father, an artist of a painting sort, says his works are never complete, never quite how he imagined them.

It is frustrating to never be able to complete the story we wanted and for which we hoped. It is frustrating, but it is also a side effect of the human frame. And it is what keeps us writing, what keeps Molyneux imagining new, bizarre worlds hewn together with pixels and code, what keeps my father practicing his craft.

Do not become satisfied with your own work. Refine it until your choices are between two goods, but not greats, and then wish it Fare thee well. And then turn to your next ambition. Turn to your next challenge. And blossom in your dissatisfaction.

Refreshing the Palate

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The wise sushi eater takes a sliver of ginger to clear the palate, to prepare for the next piece of sushi, the next and new flavors. In the same way, a writer of fiction or nonfiction is wise to taste poetry on occasion — even bad poetry — to clear the literary palate and prepare for the next chapter or day of writing.

When my emails and text messages feel uninspired, I do little about it. When that same sickness creeps into my blog posts and long emails, I become concerned. When I see the words for my novel or short story fall limply to the page like a dead, wet leaf, I hook an I.V. of John Donne or William Shakespeare to my nearest vein.

If I were wiser, maybe I’d do this every day to avoid these trips to the emergency room. So, for the impending winter and the eager writer, I offer a dosage of Frost. May it cut through the blight of mixed flavors and refresh your palate.