To Submit or not to submit... you can finish the statement lol SUPPORT this channel by buying my book The End of Everything on amazon here: amzn.to/4ep9j79 Join this channel to get access to perks: / @mattwall www.ihatemattwall.com
P r e e e e a a a c h ! I will say that I do participate in “themed” monthly short story and flash fiction submissions for practice. Somehow a theme and due date gives me extra motivation to write. I’m also pitching a story to a major market newspaper because I WANT to write it and believe I have something to offer. I think it’s all a “getting myself out of my comfort zone thing” right now more than a “I need approval validation thing” 🤷🏻♀️ I’m still a baby in all this.
I had a bunch of my poems published in my high school literary magazine. I used to think that was the start of my poetry career. Because it is a career, right? I made sure I kept on writing my poetry for many years to get all my writing down in a bunch of notebooks. Then I started typing them and printing them up into little booklets. Alas, I was finally published by myself. In 1978-1979 I thought if Fleetwood Mac could sell 300,000 copies of Rumours album a week, surely my poetry would take off as well!!! (But they WERE touring.....I was not!!) Notebooks, papers, and booklets started piling up. I gave copies to friends and family. I really woke up when my sister told me she kept all of my poetry booklets in the bathroom because it made great bathroom reading! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha .... so I pivoted and I started writing essays and fiction! LOL! Oh lawdy, talk about being on a hamster wheel!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! The late Truman Capote said it best......that's not writing, that's TYPING.
@@MattWall mostly poetry and prose. Pretty much the same. Also wandered into lyric song writing, but the music business was just a big trainwreck .... learned writers don't write because they WANT to, writers write because they HAVE to.
Agreed. I mainly find poets and poetry through RU-vid like button poetry. I'm much more interested in buying their individual books than poetry journals. I've read some calls for submissions I get in emails that sound interesting but not worth submitting to. Especially one time payments with a bunch of restrictions on the story. I'm just going to continue to write poetry books and put them out there.
There are magazines that people read in the way you’re saying, but they’re very far and few between. Literary Matters was one but of course it’s almost gone. Rattle magazine is real, and Timothy Green is super transparent about their data. But there aren’t many others.
I lounge on the sofa with a cat on my lap till the phone rings. It’s the landline - has to be the landline. Guess what, it’s _The New Yorker._ “We’d like a couple of quatrains from you,” the voice says; then, in an apologetic tone, “I’m afraid we can only pay $600/line.” Isn’t that how it works?
What we need to do is get a bunch of us together - entirely dedicated to the distribution, process, and quality of passionate poetry. Almost like the beats did- only purer. They were constantly publicizing each other's work. We do readings, readings, readings. We hand out our poems in front of F'ing malls, lol. When one of us wins- we all win. I'm convinced it's the only way to eliminate the 666 foot high pile of polished trash the Paris Review calls poetry. I have a lot to say about this, lol. But, I'm homeless again and my phone's dying. Love your content, big homie. I admire your dedication. But we're gonna need a corp of people who are talented and dedicated to puncture the MFA badge holding poesy writers.
Yes, the collective pursuit of an audience is the way to go. The hyperindividualistic tendencies among writers are and will always be the biggest problem to overcome. I agree with this video as a whole, but the above comment adds what's needed for everything to actually move forward in any meaningful way. We can't keep doing this thing where everyone's their own little media production business, working their asses off, getting burnt out, shaving years off their lives, for an audience that hopefully grows by a handful of readers a year. That will always be way more stressful and far less effective than working together. When something doesn't make any noise, people won't notice it - sure. But if instead it becomes atomized, it has effectively ceased to exist altogether.
@@JHJHJH Foreal though, @MattWall has the knowledge and ability to actually put together quality looking books, plus his experience just grunting it all these years- and he's a great poet. My skill is raw- almost stupid passion and dedication, plus organization. And I know there's more in these comment sections who are gifted in different ways. We all want to be read, we all believe in poetry or we wouldn't be looking up RU-vid channels about it. And idk bout y'all, but I'm sick of the polished trash who are part of the inner circle getting the opportunity to be read by audiences, while real mf's starve. I'm not saying we sell out- I'm saying the opposite of that- I'm saying we make it to where they have to hear us. Too many people are living in a violent world, where everything they try to do gets shoved in their face. Idk wth I even read when I read a Paris Review poem, like what did you say? I'm talking about a movement- we might not get to see the fruit, but the next generation that reads Bukowski, Jim Carroll, Poe, Chris Bursk, etc. won't be sitting and wondering why they suck and nobody wants to read their stuff. Instead, they'll say I'm glad those dudes were willing to call it war- and put real verse back into the conversation. I hope what I typed is legible, I'm walking beside an interstate, and can't see the screen for the sun. I really hope I didn't freak y'all out. I'm not crazy- just really passionate. I'm glad I found your channel @MattWall
I submit to journals and still agree with this. I honestly pretty much think it’s best to just publish with your friends, as community. Or to self publish.
There are magazines that people read in the way you’re saying, but they’re very far and few between. Literary Matters was one but of course it’s almost gone. Rattle magazine is real, and Timothy Green is super transparent about their data. But there aren’t many others.
