Show your work

What people expect when they pay nothing

If you want to hear my radio voice, I was a guest on NPR Michigan Public’s Stateside last week. I’m quoted (or this newsletter is) in a story Madeleine Connors wrote for the LA Times about naïve art on book jackets. This Thursday, March 19, I’ll be part of a reading at Mast to launch Ann Rower’s Lee & Elaine, reissued by Semiotext(e). Other readers: Lynne Tillman, Jim Fletcher, Devan Diaz, Gracie Hadland, and Jessica Ferri.

I like to write for other publications because I like to be edited. The validation of wider reach is something, too, but the idea of a too-broad readership scares me. The debilitating hindrance of a non sequitur comments section has been confirmed by friends whose books are on bigger publishers and whose personal anecdotes are in the Times. When I get emails from editors at real newspapers asking for opinion pitches, I panic. Do I have opinions? Who exactly wants to know?

If it was paid, I’d prefer writing for no one—or, like, one person. (Does one person want to pay me to write to them every day?) Which is to say I’ve never been too discerning about magazine size or circulation because “audience” isn’t what excites me. Writing under my own name is not my main source of income, and neither is it, at this point in my life, publicity for my other work/availability—what we used to call “exposure.” If anything, I might be overexposed. Still, there are reasons to write for magazines other than money, like the chance to work with an editor or to be involved with something artfully designed. Recently, though, a series of emails just about pushed me over the edge, ruining it for the rest of them.