Whenever I submit a story or essay to a journal, I feel a satisfying sense of expectation: smart people are about to read my words, and if they are good words told in the right order, and if the right reader encounters them, and if my piece fits the issue and is original enough from the other selections, and if, if, if—then maybe the journal will publish it so that many other smart people can read what I wrote, and thus will begin that mystical process by which one person’s vision catches fire inside another person’s imagination.
And like all writers, I hate the waiting. I want an answer right now; I want to know if I hit the high mark at which I was aiming.
But here’s what I have come to learn in my years as an editor: the process of choosing and editing work then building the various pieces into a coherent journal issue takes time. Even with electronic submission managers handling some of the clerical work of logging in manuscripts and letting the writers know we got them, the process still relies on editors—people—sitting down and reading carefully all the many poems, stories, and essays that come our way. Last week, for instance, I read sixty short stories and essays and half again that many poems. Not skimmed but read.
I always read hoping to discover that gem that makes all the hours and eyestrain worthwhile—that inspires me and makes me grin with the old-fashioned pleasure of sharing a bright imagination different from my own, one that shows me the world in a new way and inspires me to think interesting thoughts. The kind of writing that sticks in memory, that I find myself talking about at the dinner table or while having a drink with friends.
Every so often a writer who has submitted work to Chautauqua gets impatient that we have held the work for too long—he or she wants an answer, yea or nay—and might even withdraw the work from our consideration. This of course is every author’s right.
But realize that like so many literary journals, Chautauqua is produced by a largely unpaid staff who works conscientiously for many hours each week trying to find the work that best fits our journal, expressing our literary and ethical values. We create the journal over the course of two semesters, which means that we often hold work we are interested in until the end of the reading period in November and then some—if we are interested in publishing it. We want to figure out not just whether it is good enough to be included but whether it will join in conversation with the rest of what we are publishing—a silent dialogue that will elevate every piece beyond its own intrinsic value as part of a whole vision.
Each piece is read by at least three other members of the editorial staff, and I read pretty much everything—as does Jill Gerard, my co-editor, and Marissa Flanagan, our managing editor. If any member of the editorial staff champions any manuscript, it comes to the table. We have spent a solid hour talking about one word in a poem, other hours parsing the ethical behavior of a nonfiction narrator, or arguing about the merits of an unusual literary aesthetic. We read as much of the work as we can out loud, each of us taking turns, to hear it and to taste it. We learn how to listen to each new voice.
As I am fond of telling our editorial staff—which largely consists of students in the MFA and BFA programs in creative writing here at UNC Wilmington—we are not just producing a literary journal; we are creating an experience of artistic collaboration whose outcome is—if the process works right—a beautiful piece of literary art. In the spirit of Chautauqua Institution, the journal is the concrete expression of the experience of cooperation, of passionate discussion, of conscientious engagement with authors and artists and their ideas.
If you submit a manuscript to us and could be present to hear the way your work is discussed, you would be proud and humbled and gratified and flattered and at times a little stung by the critique—but whatever else you felt, you would feel respected.
There is just no way to hurry up the process and still respect the work and the authors who send them to us. We make haste slowly. So if your work remains in our editorial queue for several months, please don’t feel slighted. Just the opposite: know that your words are being read and responded to by multiple readers. And if they are good words told in the right order, and if they are original and fit our theme and if, if, if—then maybe they will catch fire in our imaginations.
—Philip Gerard, Editor