I did some further reading, though, and noticed/learned something I think is interesting: even among the “accepted,” contemporary, “dash-inclusive” collections of her work, the dashes still aren’t fully represented the way she wrote them in her manuscripts… and I’m not just talking about the hypen vs. en dash vs. em dash thing, but even their placement and existence.

Let’s get into some shit…

Here are two different versions of poem #365: 1) a copy of the original manuscript and 2) an all-inclusive print representation of the manuscript (both from Inflections of the Pen: Dash and Voice in Emily Dickinson by Paul Crumbley)

This is kind of interesting right?  Her final manuscripts include alternate word choices, sometimes more-than-marginally effecting the outcome of the poem (e.g. “she” vs. “it”).  Further, her manuscripts (most of them) were found bound in 40 separate booklets (“fasicles”), therefore possibly implying they were finished works — meant to be read with alternate words and all.

But she died.  And her sister found the poems and got them published and the dashes were famously removed by editors.

Here is poem #365 as it was published in 1924 (I think this was the earliest publication of it):

(SOURCE)

No dashes.  Went with “vivid” over “quickened,” “sated” over “vanquished,” “it” over “she,” removed some quotation marks and capitalizations, even changed some words.

Now here’s the poem as it appears in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson and originally published in 1960 (sorry for the blur on the left):

No stanza breaks.  Quotations turned into italics.  Went with “vivid,” “vanquished,” and “it.” The dash after “conditions” becomes a comma, the one after “blaze” becomes a period, the one after “blacksmith” is removed completely.  (If you look at the manuscript, these marks are a little ambiguous, but I don’t see how you can call the line after “tint” a dash and not the lines after “conditions,” “Blaze,” or “blacksmith.”)

Here’s another contemporary version, this one from The Oxford Book of American Poetry edited by David Lehman (the retarded underlines are mine):

This is identical to the Johnson version with the exception of an added dash at the end of the first line.  This dash is not present in the print reproduction of the manuscript (the 2nd image), but if you look closely at the original manuscript image there is what might be a dash after the word “Heat” but before the question mark, although this could also be the missed place cross of the “t” — it’s hard to tell.  Either way, this dash in the Oxford version is a little weird.

SO WHAT?

So, if you buy into the power/theory of Dickinson’s dashes — that they break up conventional thought processes and provoke the reader to a more active reading (these are conclusions we came to in class) — then the above discrepancies are not totally inconsequential.  They make for different experiences and therefore different poems. For example, that dash at the end of the first line of the Oxford version could potentially be discussed ad nauseam (what does it mean???) even though it’s totally absent in other versions and might be a typo.  Does it change the poem entirely?  Not really. Is it a matter of life and death?  No.  I just think it’s funny that for all the “Dickinson without dashes is blasphemy!!” sentiment, there are still discrepancies between contemporary versions, and not all the dashes made the cut.

*Note: I am far from a Dickinson scholar.  If I am wrong about any of this, please call me out.

If you have questions about writing or publishing or whatever, leave them in the comments or e-mail them to roxane at roxanegay dot com and we will find you some answers.

If you withdraw a story, is it appropriate to immediately send another story to that lit. journal? What if you have multiple withdrawals from that publication? (And I’m talking the kind of place where you have to email them to withdraw your piece, not just pull it out yourself and they never even knew it was there.) Are they going to get pissed at some point? When does your good/bad luck become a reason to basically stop submitting to a journal?

Sean Lovelace
Yes, they get pissed eventually. Numerous withdraws? I am already souring your name. What are you doing? If you are continually getting accepted by multiple journals, bless you. But why not stop the simultaneous submissions? You obviously know how to write a great story lit mags want. Cut the shotgun approach at this point.

Lily Hoang

I don’t submit enough to journals to withdraw, but I have withdrawn book ms from presses. I do ask if they’ll consider another ms in the future, unless I have a spare lying around (which I never do). Usually, they’re nice, but with one press in particular, I’ve pulled two or three ms from them (one just a week or two after I submitted it). That’s just embarrassing. With journals though, I don’t think it’s a big deal.

Ryan Call

I don’t think it’s bad to immediately send another story to take the place of a withdrawal. It doesn’t bother me when I read submissions for NOÖ. I just mark the previous story ‘withdrawn’ and the new story goes at the end of the queue. As a writer, I tend not to send an immediate replacement. I don’t often have a story to replace another story, so it takes me a long time to figure out what to send to that editor if I had to withdraw another story that I thought was perfect for him or her.

Roxane Gay

Multiple withdrawals gets annoying. To go on a tiny tangent, I get irritated when people withdraw stories the same day or the same week. I realize that cannot be helped at times, but it is aggravating. When you find yourself in the position where you’re always withdrawing stories, it’s time to stop simultaneously submitting or at least submitting to no more than two or three markets for each story. To really answer your question, I don’t mind a writer immediately sending another submission immediately after they withdraw a piece but if it happened four or five times in a very short time span, I would start to get testy about it.

If you want to publish a short story collection, do a majority of the stories in it need to have been published elsewhere first? Does it matter? Does it make a press more likely to want to publish your book?

Sean Lovelace
A bad-ass collection will be published, period.

Lily Hoang
Having 90% of your stories previously published won’t make me want to publish your book if it’s bad. Having 0% published won’t prevent me from publishing it if it’s good.

Roxane Gay
I don’t think there’s an equation for the ratio of published versus unpublished pieces to include in a collection. Good writing is good writing. That said, I don’t have a collection out yet so consider the source.

What is your favorite literary magazine? Why?

Sean Lovelace
Elimae. Fresh, varied, huge turnover of new stuff–like a really, really good Thai place. Weird analogy, but a good Thai place kicks ass. The one near me just dropped some crazy green bean dish that tastes like sin. I am surprised often.

Roxane Gay
I really cannot pick just one magazine because there’s too much greatness out there but right now I am obsessed with Unsaid 4. I kept hearing people hype the issue so I immediately began to doubt the thing but after reading it for the past two weeks, I have to say the hype is eminently well-deserved. Unsaid is, without a doubt, one of the finest literary magazines I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. The range of writing is fascinating. The very first story in the issue literally made me stop breathing it was so good and while I won’t say I loved every piece, I did read and respect every piece and that is something that rarely happens for me. For editors, the book is a primer on how to assemble a superior collection of writing. For writers, the range of writing styles, genres and techniques on display are very instructive. More than anything, I kept thinking over and over, this is a book that has heart bleeding all over every page. For me, Unsaid isn’t so much a magazine as an experience.

Editors, what is the most annoying thing writers do?

Sean Lovelace

Clearly, clearly do not read the very magazine we print.

Have you ever read a book you wish you had written? Which one? Why?

Sean Lovelace

I am a mediocre writer, so I am going to just give you a number: 84% of books I read meet your criterion.

One part of me—the part editing The Broken Plate and about to teach about copy-editing—is paranoid. Many magazines feel less (or no) errors are related to the quality of the publication.

Some feel like a typo in a book is a human gesture, a beautiful mole, unsymmetrical ears, the smudge in the painting, the flaw that makes the thing.

How much is on the editor, the writer?

How closely do you look at your galleys (if you get them)?

Do you have a technique to catch errors? The writer, too near, as the worst diagnostic?

War story? One time a magazine had my word “years” changed to “ears.” That smarted a bit. Years, ears…

You?

(image by Mr. Eggers)

Blake had a post a while back about the problems that slush presents for every lit mag. When magazines start out, their slushes are pretty small, the editors are really excited about reading, and for the most part, they go into reading each piece with the hope of finding a piece to publish. As lit mags get older, their slushes get larger, the editors get a bit more burnt out, and because the amount of space the mags have is the same, they can’t accept as high a percentage of subs, and tend to start reading each sub with an eye toward finding a reason to reject. It’s kind of horrible and numbing. How do mags avoid this?

In the case of magazines affiliated with MFA programs, they have a steady supply of new readers in their students, so the burn-out factor isn’t nearly as high in the initial readers of the slush. But either stuff gets passed up from the slush that doesn’t really fit the original aesthetic, or the readers read with an eye less toward what wows them personally and more toward trying to match what they think the senior editors like (more often the latter). Consequently, established magazines like these tend to print less and less “risky” material. Not ideal.

In the case of independent magazines, a lot of them just burn out and close down. Or they keep expanding and expanding their staffs and operate in much the same way the affiliated mags do.

From a writer’s standpoint, he suggested such things as submitting bags of shit. For editors, he suggested replacing walls with cottage cheese. I guess I’m not that brave.

So… how could SmokeLong stay fresh? How could we continue to grow, avoid editor burn-out (and frankly, I’ve been burnt out for a few years now), and at the same time, take lots of risks?

What would other folks who love flash would cull from the slush? What would Scott Garson or Sean Lovelace or Roxane Gay or Michael Cyzyniejewski or Todd Zuniga or Ellen Parker or… what would one of them love that one of SLQ’s staff might not?

My thinking is that we bring in one person every week to read slush until they find something they want to accept. And then they’re done. We take the piece and we run it in SmokeLong Weekly, just the piece itself, no interview yet. While we’re getting 13 pieces in a quarter through this method, the regular staff is out looking for seven more to bring the issue to 20 (probably via solicitation), and putting together the interviews, etc. for the Quarterly issue.

I talked about the idea with Ellen Parker, Todd Zuniga (when I saw him at Literary Death Match), and Tara Laskowski (when she was briefly in town). Ellen and Todd seemed to really like the idea of being a guest for such a brief period, and of being able to read what other magazines get in their slush (and Tara liked the idea on more general principles). I also talked about an editor exchange idea on Fictionaut (well before coming to this weekly idea) with some editors like Scott Garson, Roxane Gay, and Ben White, and we all thought it’d be really interesting to jump into other magazines’ slushes for limited periods. And if any one on the permanent staff wanted to be the “guest” for one of those weeks, they’d be added to the schedule.

Having subs read by ONE person who has absolute power in a given week will, I think, result in a much wider array of material that we publish. The pieces published in SmokeLong Weekly will also be in SmokeLong Quarterly, but will also have interviews.

There are so many reasons I love this:

1. Slush-pile reading burn-out becomes a thing of the past.
2. We take more risks and offer less homogeneity.
3. Submitters hear back within a couple weeks.
4. We’re publishing new material every week.
5. We get to work with tons of great people.
6. Through solicitations, we still get to put our own imprint on what we think is great.
7. I love transparency, the idea that writers and readers will know exactly how the material we’re printing got into the magazine.
8. It frees current staff up to germinate and implement new ideas for what we’d like to see in an online lit mag. More interviews? More articles about flash? Social networking? Readings, videos, something nobody else is doing yet? We have time.

So that’s what we’re doing. We’ve already started. Ellen Parker, Roxane Gay, Nadine Darling, and I were the readers the first four weeks. The four pieces we picked out all are by authors who’ve not appeared in SmokeLong before (which suggests to me that the idea is working pretty damned well). Here’s the schedule for the first quarter of subs:

Quarterly issue will be published March 25.

Sorry if this comes off as a bit of a press release. It sort of is one. But hopefully, it’s relevant in considering the question of how lit mags can handle subs, regardless of size, in a way that still honors the writers submitting.

I’ve been thinking about nepotism and croneyism and friends publishing friends because I often hear people talking, complaining, and bitching about the insular nature of (independent) publishing.

Intrapublishing (new word!) happens but not as much as you’d think. Some magazines are largely vanity presses but most are not.

We all know each other, right? We read each other and we publish each other and support each other and love each other and hate each other. It’s a small small community. The longer you stick around, the more inevitable it becomes that you will encounter people you know and/or like (or dislike as the case may be) in your submission queue. Does that influence editorial decisions? Sometimes. If I know you, for example, and you send me a 7,500 word story I will read it but that isn’t a guarantee of publication. Most editors are great people with integrity who can look beyond friendship and/or mutual respect. I get rejected from acquaintances and friends all the time.

But we don’t know each other. I’m old-fashioned. I still generally believe that my friends are people who have seen me doing something awkward at a bar. So we’re friends, but we’re not friends. I may know who you are and we may exchange e-mails and comments on various blogs but I don’t feel any particular obligation to publish your work when it comes my way unless it is outstanding.

The Internet and the interconnectedness of magazines and blogs and writers and editors implies an intimacy that doesn’t really exist. People often assume croneyism is taking place when in fact, speaking from my own experience both as a writer and editor,  it isn’t.

Beyond that, so what if editors publish their friends. I happen to know some really good writers. Is it really a problem?

Severely rigid writer’s guidelines seem only to serve editorial anal-retentive impulses, which I sadly sometimes feel may be driving certain journals to begin with.

I often go to a submissions page and have to tread through 8 or so dense paragraphs of (ironically, often inefficiently written) prose about typing my last name after the word ‘submission’ followed immediately with two forward slashes and then the word count. Are they suggesting that failure to be so explicit will preclude their ability to just read the story? And what is it about including mailing address for online journals? Unless there’s some distant prospect of a printed anthology (at which point many addresses will have changed), the entire medium is exclusively virtual. Do these editors want to see if you live in a culturally viable city like New York? If so, just say so. The street number doesn’t help.

Cover letters are absurd. Writers are not ‘allowed’ to describe their story, thus left in the awkward position of either fawning over the journal, or trying to sell themselves with a list of past publications. This crap is completely useless. Just read the fucking story.

I understand that writers can be disorganized, and these editors are describing an ideal process of what can be a logistical headache, but please, try to be more intuitive and agile here. In the magic of email, the sender’s name is cited along with the email. Is it not possible to simply associate a story as originating from a particular email, one which includes the writer’s name? It just seems that if an editor is serious about publishing a story, he or she will somehow ‘figure it out,’ and if they don’t want to publish a piece, then it’s irrelevant anyways.

Perhaps more irritating is when editors ‘go off’ (usually for three paragraphs) on—not merely what they are looking for in a story, but—the moral ethics of what makes good writing in the most absolute and abstract sense. They say things like, “describe it, don’t say it.” I’ll fucking say it if I want to. I’m the writer here, you’re the editor. It’s my job to write, and your job to reject or accept it. It’s not your job to preach to a voiceless public about how to write.

For every editor, there are about 200 writers. By statistical default, editors have ‘the power.’ They should be nice, and publish what they like, and reject what they don’t. If their egos are still hungry, write them a story about a sandwich. Wait, Bukowski did that already…