UnderOneRoof

Main Points of the Lesson

1. Revision is re-vision. Not correction but seeing again: asking what the piece is really about and letting the draft become that.
2. “I do not paint its being, I paint its passage.” Montaigne, in “Of Repentance,” describes the essayist’s subject as a self in motion. Memoir is always revised by the life that continues.
3. Three passes you can do alone. The whole: write the true subject in one sentence and cut what does not serve it. The scene: start later, dramatize the turning point, end looking outward. The sentence: read every line aloud and trim ten percent.
4. Where true stories go. Four families of venues: welcoming first venues (The Sun’s Readers Write, Chicken Soup for the Soul, the Christian Science Monitor’s Home Forum); venues for older writers (Passager, Persimmon Tree); Philadelphia venues (Philadelphia Stories, Broad Street Review, Hidden City); and literary magazines (Brevity, River Teeth, Hippocampus, The Sun).
5. Honest odds. Publication is hard everywhere. Modern Love reported about 7,000 submissions a year for 52 essays; Brevity reports an acceptance rate near 2%. The answer is not discouragement but a list: the right piece, sent to many well-matched venues, over months.
6. Match the essay to the venue. Before you submit anywhere, read at least two pieces the venue has published and its guidelines, twice. Length, subject, tone, reading period, and rules about previously published work all decide the match.

Reading for Class — Click to Open

• Michel de Montaigne, “Of Repentance,” trans. Charles Cotton, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt — read on Project Gutenberg
  The essay in which Montaigne explains what it means to write the self.
• Under One Roof, “Sending Your Work Out” — open our course page
  Every venue we discuss, with lengths, reading periods, fees, pay, and links to the guidelines.
• Poets & Writers, “Literary Magazines” guide and database — read at Poets & Writers
  How literary magazines work: reading periods, fees, cover letters, and contributor copies.
• Textbook: Tell It Slant, Chapter 13, “The Writing Process and Revision”; Chapter 15, “Publishing Your Creative Nonfiction” — see the textbook guide

After Our Discussion — Critical Reception

• Montaigne’s Essays — composition and revision (Wikipedia) — Montaigne revised his essays for the rest of his life, adding rather than erasing.
• Poets & Writers — Open Reading Periods — A running list of magazines open to submissions right now.
• Chill Subs — browse literary magazines — A free, searchable directory with deadlines, payment, and acceptance-rate data.

In-Class Writing Prompt — Laptops Closed

Twenty minutes. Then, in pairs and only if you wish, read each other’s first page aloud and name the one sentence that should never be cut.

What happens with this: nothing is collected. It is yours, written on paper, in your notebook. No one is asked to read aloud who does not wish to.

Discussion Questions

1. Montaigne says he paints not the self’s being but its “passage.” How has your piece changed since its first draft? What changed in you?
2. What would an editor who has never been to 2601 need from your essay to feel the building?
3. Why do so many venues refuse work already posted on a blog or social media? What does that mean for how you share drafts?
4. Which of the four families of venues fits your essay best — and which would be a mistake?