Editor Q & A: Suzannah Windsor, of Compose, on Starting the Journal, Submissions, and Full Plates

Over the past six months, I've been getting a new view, from the other side of the desk, as creative nonfiction editor for the new online journal Compose. We're now in the middle of reading, selecting, and editing material for the Fall 2013 issue (the journal's second).  Founder and editor-in-chief Suzannah Windsor (you may know her as founder of the group blog Write It Sideways), took a few minutes to talk to me about her journal start-up experience and plans.

Lisa Romeo:  To date, about fours months into the process of inviting submissions for future issues, what has surprised you the most -- pleasantly or not -- from the editor's seat?

Suzannah Windsor: I have to say I was surprised by the number of submissions we received in the first month, because I assumed things would be a bit quiet in the beginning. I've also been pleasantly surprised at the quality of the submissions; the majority are polished and professional, even if not quite right for us. While we've received some submissions from newer writers, many are MFA graduates with several publications already under their belts. Others have collections of short stories or poetry forthcoming or published by small presses. It's lovely that we're getting a combination of new writers, emerging writers, and established writers all at once, and it's encouraging that they're interested in working with us, in particular.

LR: What has the experience been like for you in setting up the journal, establishing submission guidelines, creating the editors' roles, and more or less mothering the whole enterprise into existence?

SW: It's been a whole lot of work and plenty of trial-and-error to get where we are today. Many of the problems or inefficiencies we've faced have been things that couldn't really have been anticipated until they happened, so we've had to think on our feet. The biggest challenge has been just getting everything in place and running smoothly. There's a big difference between starting a literary journal and building a successful literary journal, and that's both an exciting challenge and an incredibly daunting task. Even when I think I've gotten ahead of my to-do list, there's always plenty more I could be doing.

LR:  If I'm not mistaken, Compose has editors who live on three different continents. Was that your intention, to infuse the editorial decision-making process with an international world view, or just coincidence?

SW: At the moment, we're divided between the United States and Australia, but if you count our home countries, we range from the US to Canada, Australia, Cuba and Dominican Republic. It wasn't at all intentional, but I do think an international perspective is an advantage. Because we're an online publication and our readers are from all over the world, we want to be able to provide them with a culturally diverse reading experience.

LR:  Surely with your work on Write it Sideways, and your own personal creative writing, as well as a busy family life, you had a lot on your agenda already. So what was it about the idea of an online literary journal that spurred you into action? 

SW: I'll admit—with four children (including toddler twins)—I am committed-to-the-max at the moment. But, I'm also aware that in a few years all of my children will be in school and I'll suddenly have a lot more time to commit to my work. Between now and then, I'd like to build up my writing and editing experience as much as possible. Compose has been a good step toward gaining that experience, but it's also something I've wanted to do for a long time because of my love for reading and writing short fiction. The journal is both good experience and a passion project.

LR: Is there anything you are planning or hoping that Compose can do that other online literary journals are not doing?

SW: I hope we'll be known for featuring established voices alongside emerging ones, because I know from experience how exciting it is to see your work published in the same issue as a writer you admire. It can give a struggling writer a real confidence boost. Aside from that, I hope that we can consistently publish quality work and simply be known as a great read. Whereas some journals are only read by the writers who submit to them, I want us to reach a much wider audience. 

LR: Can you give my readers who are writers any submission tips either for Compose in particular, or for online journals in general (or both)?

SW: When someone submits something that is obviously not a good fit for Compose, I have a good idea that they haven't done their homework. First, always read the submission guidelines thoroughly. Most journals have similar guidelines, but some prefer to have a cover letter with a short bio included, some don't accept simultaneous submissions, and some even want a statement about why you believe your work fits their vision. 

Second, read at least a few pieces from the journal to get a good feel for what they publish. A piece that's perfect for The Missouri Review most likely won't be right for Caketrain. Each publication has its own aesthetic, so take note of genre, style, tone and length.

Third, don't submit until you're sure the piece is ready. We've had several pieces withdrawn shortly after submission, with the writers saying they need to make some changes. Not only does this indicate to us that the writer submitted too soon, it's also a bit of a hassle from the editors' side if they've already started to read and consider the piece. Let your work sit for a week or two after you think it's done, and you'll probably find it could still be improved.

LR: Here's something writers wonder about and debate. When you see that a writer has sent a simultaneous submission, does that make you read it and respond quickly so that you don't chance losing a great piece; or does a simultaneous submission make you think it may be out at a large number of other journals, and there's a good chance it will be withdrawn, so it falls to the bottom of your list?

SW: I really don't think it makes a difference either way unless I think the piece is something we'd really hate to lose. I don't read submissions in full until the senior editors are ready to accept something, but I do get a sneak peek at everything when I assign pieces to editors for reading. So, if I were to see something that captivated me enough in the opening lines and compelled me to read the entire piece right away, I'd probably get the editors to read and vote on it right away. But, I would do the same whether the piece was explicitly labeled as being a simultaneous submission or not. Unless a journal's guidelines state no simultaneous submissions, I think we all expect them nowadays.

LR: There's been some push-back lately among print journals about the proliferation of online journals, some of which seem little more than an individual collecting submitted poems, stories and essays, and putting them up on a blogging platform with little editorial development and scant readership, amounting to a publication credit line on a resume or CV that's hardly more credible than a personal blog or amateur site. Thoughts?

SW: I completely agree. There are thousands of these sites, many of which I assume are read only by the people published in them. Let me say that our process bears no resemblance to these sites, and neither does our product. I often hear from our readers how much they're enjoying our first issue, which means we're already reaching and connecting with people. When a submission comes our way, it receives multiple reads and opinions, and almost every long-form piece we've accepted goes through at least one careful revision with a senior editor. 

Writer Eva Langston, a contributor to our Spring 2013 issue, has said “The editors encouraged and supported me through the process [of editing my story]. I was amazed they put so much time and energy into my dinky two-page story. And yet, I was glad for it. They had me change 1% of my piece, but it made the story 100% better.” 

Still, I hope people don't confuse these amateur sites with some of the longer-standing online journals that publish excellent work but are simple (and perhaps dated) in their design. On the other hand, there are plenty of good-looking sites that publish unpolished work. Design is nice, but content has to be the end focus.

LR: You decided from the start to include the three major genres – fiction, poetry, nonfiction – as well as artwork, feature articles, interviews and book excerpts. Some journals start out with more limited offerings. What made you want to present the full spectrum right from the start, and in retrospect was that a difficult way to begin?

SW: Yes, it was ambitious, but I figured—why tiptoe our way in? If the perfect editors hadn't presented themselves in each genre, I might've just stuck with poetry and fiction, but things have worked out really well in that respect.

LR: What do you hope a reader takes away from each issue of Compose?

SW: If everyone who reads our journal could go away remembering just one piece, and have that piece come back to them again and again—a particular line, an image, a conflict—then mission accomplished. Many of the pieces from our first issue have had that effect on me, changing my life in some small way. Also, because the majority of our audience are writers as well as readers, I hope they'll come away from reading Compose with a renewed desire to write.

You can read another interview with Suzannah at Review Review. The submissions guidelines for Compose are here.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, August 2, 2013 Edition

> I've not yet had a chance to read any of the pieces posted there, but I'm intrigued by The Big Roundtable, a new place on the web for long-form nonfiction (5000-30K words).

> When revising just isn't working, reconsider the blank page.

> AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) has announced the accepted seminars, panels and readings for their 2014 conference in Seattle. The long list is here (PDF).

> Did you know that New Pages lists the blog links for a couple of hundred writers, alphabetically by writers' last name?

> Talk about the imagined pressure to join the "family business" -- what if you were part of the King clan?

> Another place for your (shorter) nonfiction is Tell Us A Story, where a new piece goes up every Wednesday.

> Slightly off-topic, but maybe not if you consider these "33 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Die," as a way to find new essay ideas or motivations for your fiction characters.

> If you use Gmail and have noticed the new email sorting that is being automatically imposed on your inbox and don't like it, here's an easy way to turn it off and return to seeing all your email at once.  (This has been especially irksome to me personally because you know what Google, I'll decide what's important to me, not you, OK?; and if you subscribe to blogs or newsletters, those emails are likely now going to different folders, unnoticed.)

> Working hard to earn money from your freelance writing? Check out this post, listing 15 blogs that can help.

> Finally, everyone is talking about the convocation speech given this spring by the writer George Saunders at Syracuse University (I'm class of...well, long ago). One word: kindness.

Another Piece of the Memoir Pie

Many months after I first realized that my memoir was all about my father's death and my grief at midlife, what I didn't yet understand was that there was other grieving to do, grieving connected to other loss, the loss that comes from choices and decisions made during his life -- and those that were thrust upon him.

This essay (an excerpt from the manuscript), now appearing in the August issue of Pithead Chapel, looks at this through the lens of my father's cigarette habit, which I so often fought against, and never completely understood.

Here's a bit of it:

My father smoked three, four, or sometimes more packs a day by the time I was old enough to understand the differences between addiction and social posturing. He once told me he had his first cigarette at 8 or 10, and was smoking regularly, openly, by age 12.  A boy smoking at 12 in 1938, in the Italian immigrant neighborhood where he’d grown up, was nothing shocking, not unexpected. Boys were regarded as young men by that age, already able – expected – to help their fathers with matters of earning money, doing heavy work, using their bodies as a wedge against poverty, homelessness, hunger.  Already, at 12, he was working alongside his father after school and on weekends. His father was a junk man, hauling broken down furnaces and other metals from residential basements or old factories, heaving them onto a wagon pulled by a horse.

When my father told me these stories, I tried to picture my elegant father, who liked to neatly turn up the bottoms of the sleeves of short sleeved shirts into a neat, crisp cuff, as a gangly adolescent in torn, dirty pants and too tight shoes and soiled, sweaty shirts, tried to picture the wagon, the horse (old and often lame, he said), the streets, the occasional motor car, housewives holding open their doors for the boy and his panting father, as they maneuvered out hulking, broken down and rusted radiators, boilers, utility sinks, pipes, the housewife pulling from her apron pocket a few pennies or a nickel for a tip, the boy taking puffs between stops.

You can read the whole piece here.

The Good, the Bad, the Uncomfortable: The MFA, Five Years Later

This weekend, while I was doing nothing writerly -- okay, I did take notes for a future essay while in a gorgeous hotel that reminded me of traveling with my parents -- a guest essay of mine was posted on the Stonecoast Community Blog.  

It's my take on what's happened for me, and more importantly, what has not (yet?) happened in the five years since I graduated from the Stonecoast MFA program, and why both matter.

I hope it instigates some thoughtful questions for writers anywhere along the MFA trajectory--before, during, upon completion and several years out.

In part, the post reads:

Some of the mile markers I had originally set for myself upon graduation—maybe overly hopeful, surely overly confident—simply fell away. Others got moved further into the future. Most are in a constant state of revision. Getting from one point to the next was, is, taking longer than I liked. But as one year sloughed into the next, and X hadn’t happened on schedule, I watched myself respond with less of the judgment that is my initial self-critical reflex. Instead: 'Oh, not now? Okay, next year will be fine too. Or the next.'

So, some days, I don’t mind at all.

I’m not lazy or apathetic, but understanding that what seemed so clear to me in 2008 was an illusion, has been freeing, until suddenly, it isn’t. Like one day last month...

You can read the entire post here.

What about you?  Did you complete an MFA program several years ago, and looked back? I'd love to hear, in comments.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, July 19, 2013 Edition

Just a few links, because it's too hot here to even think. 

> Love brief writing? I just discovered Two Paragraphs.

> Need ideas to promote and market your blog? Here are 50.

> As usual, the Rights of Writers blog has good advice, this time on writing your own story without impinging on the rights of others.

> Finally, such fun: the 9 Stages of Grieving Over Your Rejected Writing Submission.  Because be honest, we do these things.

Have a great weekend!

Old Habits, New Habits, Weight Loss and Writing

I often use my yo-yo weight gains/losses  as an example of what happens when old habits are invited back into one's life after a period of successfully developing new ones. In my adult life, I've lost (and gained back) considerable amounts of weight (60,80, 90 pounds) five separate times. I know how to lose it, and I do. I shop, cook, eat, exercise, dine out, and even begin thinking in ways that support the weight loss, and for a time, the maintenance of that loss. 

Then I get complacent, over-confident -- lazy. I let old habits back in, even in the face of successful new ones.

For writers struggling to develop and maintain good writing habits and reliable writing routines, this is a cautionary tale. For a while -- maybe you're in a class or graduate school program, or part of a writers group or other well-planned structure that comes with built-in accountability, deadlines and productivity milestones -- you stick to the writing routine. Pages proliferate. You get in a groove, maybe banish old procrastination habits, start new ones, understand and keep the few that already work. You're on a roll.

Then you get complacent, overconfident--lazy.  The old habits arrive, sometimes by surprise, sometimes not.

If I had the "answer" to this problem, I'd be rich -- and thin.

I only know this: new habits require diligence.  And, one other thing.  Those new habits -- writing related or weight related -- won't stick unless they are designed to take into account one's very unique, personal, individual life circumstances:  body rhythms, tastes, likes/dislikes, obligations, job/family, physical limitations, time availability, interests, etc.

Which is why I'm sending everyone I know --whether they are battling the scale or the blank screen (or running from either) -- over to Ruth Foley's blog.  Ruth's a poet, teacher and literary magazine editor (who earned an MFA at Stonecoast, as I did).  And, Ruth's lost 100 pounds. And, Ruth has posted 100 tips/stories/reasons about how she lost the weight and is keeping it off.

It's clear from reading her posts that Ruth understands about creating new habits in a way that honors her own body, mind, life, interests, inclinations, and family/home/work situation.  She explains the habits she adopted, adapted, created, tossed, embraced, tried out.  Her posts are a great combination of common sense, uncommon insight, practicality, innovation, motivation, and compassion. 

Ruth so clearly understands that it's in making small, big, sensible, simple, dramatic, major, minor, expected and unexpected changes, that humans develop the ability to create what they want. To me, her posts (broken into 10 tips at a time) are a valuable resource not only for those interested in weight loss, but for anyone trying to create a workable approach to any daily practice -- such as writing.  (And of course, Ruth is a good writer, so...bonus!).

Start here with #1-10.  Or begin with the final ten and work your way back.  Or find them all in one place.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, July 12, 2013 Edition

> Do you talk (and post/tweet/write) about your long-range work-in-progress?  Or are you in the camp that stays mum so as not to jinx the project?

> Wise post from Julianna Baggott about not getting carried away when you get a debut book deal. Take-away: "Protect your relationship with the page, at all costs, because no matter how the publishing industry defines your role, there’s one place you’re always a writer. The desk. Your long-term relationships is with words on a page."

> Just learned that New Pages (a terrific resource for listings of literary journals) also has a page with alphabetical listing of writers' blogs.

> Speaking of journals - does being published in a print or online journal help a writing career more? (Good stuff in the comments.)

> Memoirist Anthony D'Aries, wrestling with the after-effects of writing about family, on Marion Roach's blog: "In memoir, we live the epilogue."

> Later this summer, I'll be part of a writing program for talented teens. Another member of the teaching team, screenwriter Carol Forbes, has a cool blog where she offers up a daily photo prompt and encouragement for teen girls who write.

> My favorite writing "tools" to pack when leaving home are a slim spiral bound notebook and a smooth gel pen (total cost, about $3). That's because I like writing by hand.

> Narrator "likability" in nonfiction: Does it matter?  Jennifer Niesslein reports in The Virginia Quarterly Review.

> At The Millions, a round-up of notable books headed our way in the second half of 2013, including a novel in rhyming iambic pentameter from the late David Rakoff.

Have a great weekend!

Guest Blogger John Merson on Writing Memoir About War and its Personal Aftermath

In my experience, related people and topics tend to show up which at first seem random, but after a time, the connections and meanings emerge. A couple of years ago, a student appeared in the nonfiction continuing education class I teach at Rutgers University -- a retired physician writing about his experience as an Army medic in the 1950s Korean Conflict. Having never before worked with a writer on this kind of memoir material, I think it is safe to say we learned from one another – and continue to, as he develops more meaningful narratives and I get the pleasure of seeing his work bloom.

Last year, I was asked to help edit a memoir by a severely injured Iraq war veteran, a project that is ongoing; with each new chapter, I learn more about parsing the multi-layered nuances of trauma. Thus my education in first person writing about war and its aftermath continues. Along the way, I've added key books to my memoir reading list.

Which brings us to how quickly I headed straight for John Merson's spot, when I saw his book, published by an imprint of Random House, propped up on the Local Authors table a couple of weeks ago at the Nantucket Book Festival.

Please welcome John Merson.

Teaching a writing class for second graders means expecting the unexpected question. The session was in Brooklyn at the Explore Charter School in February, just after students had finished writing their own stories and publishing them in a class book. One curious eight-year-old asked, “Have you considered writing realistic fiction?”

“No,” I answered, “because my memory is better than my imagination.”

But her question wouldn’t go away.  I began to think maybe I might have more freedom with a novelistic treatment of my subject, the Vietnam war.

My last book, War Lessons: How I Fought to be a Hero and Learned that War is Terror, was a memoir of what I experienced as a foot soldier in Vietnam, and later as a frequent visitor to the country over eighteen years afterward. The book was the surprise result of another unexpected question, this time at my 40th college reunion.

One classmate, recalling our freshman-year study of the Crusades, asked, “Why is it that the West is once again at war with Islam?”

The year was 2006, US forces had invaded and occupied both Iraq and Afghanistan, and I had just returned from my tenth trip to Vietnam. The first was in 1966, when I began a tour of duty as a marine infantry “grunt.” For the next thirteen months, I had a worm’s-eye view of the ground war in Vietnam, living with villagers whose lives were not so different from the farmers and ranchers for whom I had worked while growing up in Pennsylvania and Wyoming. We brought the war into their homes, schools, and rice paddies, gradually forcing them to side with our enemy.

Forty years later, I confronted the damage I had done. My classmate’s question became, for me, a question about the results of war. Having personally endured the years-long process of recovery from war, beginning when I was still in Vietnam, and following my return from duty, I could see that war hadn’t solved any problems, but only made them worse.

Motivated by wanting to explain this to my reunion classmates, I wrote a short story about an actual 1967 incident in which my platoon killed nearly twenty unarmed villagers during a night ambush in Dai Loc. The aftermath of the massacre reverberated throughout my life: during the end of my tour, while returning home, and over the years and decades spent finishing college and graduate school, getting married, going to work, becoming a parent, divorcing and re-marrying, and finally coming back to Vietnam. 

On my first return trip to Vietnam in 1995, Dai Loc was the only place where I had once fought, that I visited.  The site had been made into a war memorial, listing all the names of Dai Loc villagers killed between 1945 and 1975, the years of the struggle for independence.

This experience of revisiting the scene of the original incident became the fulcrum on which I constructed my memoir. I had first tried a thematic approach in which each chapter of the book was devoted to a lesson I had learned, but comments from readers of a draft indicated that this structure was confusing. As a result, I switched to a more chronological story line in the next draft, starting with my arrival in Vietnam in 1966 as a very green and scared infantry scout, moving through my tour in Vietnam, my return to the US, and finally my trips back in Vietnam between 1995 and 2006. The chronological approach worked much better for readers of later drafts, since they understood how and why I had learned the lessons I was describing. The entire writing process took less than a year.

Still, the climax of the story was the massacre, where I was forced to confront the central truth of my experience as a foot soldier: that I was the instrument of destruction for the villagers of Dai Loc. What had led me to that night? Why had I volunteered to fight in Vietnam? I had gone to war with dreams of becoming the hero I thought my father and uncle had been, so why had fighting in Vietnam not made me any stronger or more able to confront the challenges in my life? Understanding the mistakes I had made, how could I make amends?

On subsequent trips to Vietnam between 1995 to 2006, I worked with government officials, tech industry leaders, young Vietnamese who had grown up after the fighting had ended, and with American veterans who had returned to Vietnam to remedy the damage done by the massive American bombing of civilian targets. On one trip, I learned about a project in Quang Tri that clears unexploded bombs, providing new land for farmers. I had spent my boyhood working on farms not endangered by bombs, and so I had found the right project to support with my modest book royalties and speaking fees.

The memoir I wrote weaves two distinct threads -- learning to be a soldier, and finding a way to recover from war. The second graders in my writing class taught me that writing a memoir might be a first step but not the last word.

Note:  You can read excerpts from John's book here.  Some resources and links to information about teaching and writing initiatives, organizations, conferences and classes for veterans:  Warrior Writers,  Writers Guild Foundation Military Writers Workshop, Veterans Writing Project (featured in this New York Times article, and Veterans Voices). Other programs are underway at many colleges, including at Syracuse University.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, July 5, 2013 Edition

> Alice Munro says she's done writing, and you can put money on it. In the same interview she also says "probably". At 82, she's entitled, either way. What a body of work.

> I stand with Edward Kelsey Moore. Never too old to be a debut author. Never.

> On the New York Times  Opinionator blog's "Draft" column, Lee Gutkind, founder of Creative Nonfiction (the magazine, and some say, Godfather of the genre), writes  about the art of listening during in-person interviews, useful for any writer who sits down with a source. 

> It's like Writer TV!  Store this link from Aerogramme Writers' Studio to watch TED talks by and for writers. Catch Amy Tan, Billy Collins, Isabel Allende and ten others (via @CNFonline).

> I often work in a semi-lit room. Maybe--aside from being a cheapskate and/or too lazy to get up and turn on more lights when the sun goes down--I intuited that dim lighting spurs creativity?

> Elizabeth Gilbert's return to novel writing is getting folks excited, and if this book trailer for her upcoming release, The Signature of All Things, is any indication, I'm in.

> Been enjoying catching up with Jessica Morrell's blog, including this post about why she writes. Favorite line: "I just realized that the worst that can happen is that I can be rejected—been there. Didn’t feel good; but the sting of rejection fades and you wake up to discover you’re still writing." If you wander over there, check out her list of "25 Reasons Why Manuscripts are Rejected."

> Erika Robuck, author of the novels Hemingway's Girl and Call Me Zelda, in the spirit of solidarity with writers who are feeling the sting of rejection, offers up some of her worst reviews. Scroll the comments, where other authors chime in with theirs. (And if you're not subscribed to Bill and Dave's blog, you're missing other great Bad Advice Wednesdays.)

> Some pics of great women writers at work.  My office used to look like Anne Sexton's, but now it's more like Agatha Christie's -- a simple table floating before bookshelves and (outer) calm.

> Finally, literature I like overlaps with what my husband and teenage sons read, watch, know, understand, live, eat, breathe.  What dost I speaketh of? Why William Shakespeare's Star Wars.

Have a great weekend!

Notes From the Third Row: Nantucket Book Festival, Part II

A bit more about my activities at the Nantucket Book Festival in late June. To get the whole story, visit my previous post.

Also heard, seen, experienced...

> At a panel on The First Novel, four debut novelists whose books are gathering heaps of positive press, awards, and reader response, renewed my faith in the joy of savoring the breakthrough literary moment.  Among NoViolet Bulawayo, Alex Gilvarry, Madeline Miller, and Vaddey Ratner, none had depressing tales of having submitted to dozens of agents or collecting impersonal rejections. Indeed, this seemed like a group with a Midas touch, but all sounded grateful, a little stunned at their books' successes, humble.

All four talked about being so very committed to their writing and persevering long before submission even became possible --  one ditched an entire draft and rewrote from scratch; another worked on multiple drafts for 10-plus years; another wrote on even though the idea of anyone else being interested in the subject matter seemed laughable at times; one wrote in secret, not sure the manuscript would ever be done.

> I am now surprisingly interested in Bunker Hill (the book) and Boston's role in the American Revolution, thanks to historical nonfiction author Nathaniel Philbrick.

> One of the highlights of my time there was strolling the local authors' tent on the library lawn, where traditionally published authors shared table space with self-published. Many had written (and photographed or illustrated) books about Nantucket's people, history, culture, art, geography, seasons. Without a podium, microphone, and timetable, conversation swelled. Here, I picked up a signed book for my weather-geek son, met an affable poet and his lovely daughter, extended a blog post invite to a war memoirist, and bought a novel almost purely because I was intrigued by the artisanal expertise of the main character (sure, the author is a friend of a friend, but I don't part with book money just for that reason!)

> Finally, how cool is it that the owner of Nantucket's two bookstores, who is the founder of the Festival, asked all authors to sign the inside of an orange Penguin Volkswagon Beetle?

This is part of a very occasional series in which I pass on some tidbits I've gleaned from sitting in the audience at one literary event or another.