web writing, and the purity of purpose
by Shya Scanlon

EVERYTHING I WRITE is accompanied by a little voice in the back of my head telling me which, of the journals on my radar, would be most likely to publish it. The question of publication has long been a tricky one, of course, and there are books for sale detailing which journals publish what kinds of writing, which editors like which genres, who’s been published where, etc. And for some, I’m sure, the issue is still just that. You write something, you shop it around. Someone likes it, bingo: you’re in business.

But for me, as a writer whose work can be found almost exclusively online, who is in consistent dialogue with the editors of those journals who’ve been kind enough to publish my work, this is not the full story. Such constant dialogue, verging on peer relationship, coupled by the immediate response allowed by the web, has in my case created a situation wherein the process of writing the work has begun to run parallel to the act of its submission.

This lays the foundation for what could be a heretical distortion of author intent. Given the basic opacity of creative inspiration, who’s to say the very act of writing my stories isn’t somehow colored by this conspicuous merger. Who’s to say that the ideas themselves aren’t born of some need to appease those figures, the editors, who have shown me some consideration, who’ve given me a pat on the back once or twice, who’ve thrown this dog a bone?

Though not one to cave so easily, I can’t rid myself of the suspicion.

There is an idealism within the literary arts community, probably as in all the arts, insisting the act of composition, of creation, is sacred. The idea is, Who knows where it comes from, and my God don’t try too hard to find out. You’ll scare away your muse. If this is the case, then I’m practically defiling the entire medium by suggesting that the purity of my prose is pilfered by some publication preference or other.

But how can I help it when the publication community, that of the web journals – bless their hearts – is such an insular operation? Every time I turn around I see familiar names; editors publishing work on sites other than their own, which are nonetheless cross linked with their own journals, writers with work in constant rotation on a handful of sites featuring the work of other writers with similar surface patterns. Are we writing only to ourselves here, people?

And so the environment ends up feeling much more like a tight community than a collection of public venues. Like a giant, decentralized writing group. As with any close community, one cannot help but consider the feedback one has received from its various members, one’s peers, when engaged in the act of production. Editor A likes long, rambling sentences that support loose plots, while editor B opts for tight, quick statements revealing some surprise. Editor C likes anything involving scatological references; editor D wants nothing but romance masquerading as misanthropy. And from there it’s all down hill. Once you develop a sense of who likes what, within your writing group, it becomes harder and harder to claim full responsibility for your decisions. Everyone wants to be liked.

So it happens.

There you are, Working On Something. You’re writing out a sentence, two, three. You try to envision a couple paragraphs ahead and then BLAMMO! - right in the way of some important plot twist or developmental event, obscuring its detail, stands an editor you’ve formed some sense of, as described above, encouraging you to relate the scene this way, or to include some additional element. Maybe have toilet paper stuck to someone’s shoe. From that point forward you’re fucked. You’ve got to choose something, you’ve got to write the piece, but is it really yours anymore? Is it still sacred?

photo by Sherrie Gulmahamad

Obviously this is not a difficulty for web-writers alone. But the very same aspects of web-journals making them dynamic and vital might be unwittingly having a detrimental impact on the web-writer’s Purity of Purpose, at least as espoused by those romantic champions of the traditional muse. If indeed this high-minded ideal is threatened by something so fundamental to the medium, what is the fate of web-writing? Or perhaps more appropriately, what is the fate of this high-minded ideal?

Perhaps (and this has been known to happen) I’m just behind the times. Perhaps this is an emotional hurdle that all web-writers go through, and if so, probably without nearly as much fuss as I’m hereby making. And really, once one gets over the initial shock at having one’s private creative process intercepted by some fictionalized editor-persona telling you which way to word a phrase, it becomes almost comforting. You have a goal. What a relief! No longer do you have to toil in utter darkness, unsure of whether anyone will understand, appreciate, or even read your work! It’s like having an assignment.

Despite the exaggerated perspective I’ve given above, there is a sense that web-writing, existing in such a dynamic and dialogic medium, one which encourages communication between the “classes” of writer and editor, could become a sort of fictive journalistic affair. Editors will parade their favorite writers around, and through an on-going system of informal feedback, hone the writer’s product in whatever direction suits the journal in question. Yet writers, of course, quite slutty when it comes to their work - if I may use myself as an example - will likely moonlight with other editors, trotting out quite stylistically distinct work for alternate sites. This is already the case, to an extent. But what I’m envisioning is an environment free of the responsibilities derived from idealistic attitudes about the sacred nature of artistic endeavor. The author comes down from her ivory tower and mingles with the little people, the readers; the editors encouraging, easing this transition with the itinerant tools of the medium: fast connections, prompt response, detailed feedback.

The art of writing, in this vision, becomes a far more social affair. What it loses in purity, it makes up for in actual exchange. But regardless of what value might be found in this altered state of composition, it is incumbent upon web-writers to confront the issue head-on, to choose (or reject) this for themselves, rather than slip into such a predicament unawares. The strange specter of editorial presence within the writing process itself ought not to be treated lightly. The ivory tower can be surrendered, but only under the auspices of a kindly muse that might follow the writer down the stairwell, looking out for missing steps.

For my part, I try and treat such voices as I do any other voice, any influence I notice in process. I’m not going to ignore a suggestion simply because it is given to me by some composite image I have of a person I barely know, but I’m certainly going to fight the urge – and the urge is insistent – to make my editors happy. I’m not writing to make them happy. In the context of web-journals, this seems a difficult statement to make, and stand by, especially if you wind up befriending your jury. But I continue to write, biding my time until writing becomes the easy thing I’ve always been told it would be.