Any day now, my instructor at Orlando Bellydance will post the official date and performance sign-up sheet for the annual Summer Gala. As in previous years, the event will likely take place at a local restaurant or hotel, include dinner with the ticket price, and offer an opportunity for students to perform to an intimate crowd of mostly friends and family. Venue location, costume colors, and the order of routines and solo slots are as eagerly awaited as Christmas; dancers who have been on vacation will rush back to participate or at least attend in support of their fellow dancers (which happened to me last year, when my chance to attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference prevented me from performing).
This summer I have no scheduling conflict. So why do I find myself hesitant to sign up?
Perhaps it’s because I haven’t been in front of an audience in awhile—not since last fall. This spring I was away at a residency, working on my novel, at the time of our big show. But I’ve performed numerous times over the past several years; I’m not the type to get cold feet at the prospect of the stage. So that leaves me to wonder if what I’m shirking from is the work involved—no, absolutely required, of performing for an audience.
And if that’s the case, then my hesitancy makes an intriguing parallel to where I found myself recently with submitting my work for publication.
I’m reminded of the words repeated by my dance instructors before each performance opportunity looms nearer—Performance is always an invitation. No one is ever forced to dance in front of an audience. But we strongly encourage everyone to perform.
We strongly encourage everyone to perform. What does that really mean? And how might it benefit us as writers to approach publishing as performance?
What the instructors are saying pertains across art forms, and I think, is crucial if we consider the time and energy we put into what we do once we become artists. They mean, first and foremost, that how you choose to practice this art form is up to you. You can take classes for decades and never shimmy past your living room, and that’s perfectly okay. Except, they say, we as your mentors and champions think it’s really, really important that you get up there and perform what you’ve worked so hard to learn. Especially if you’ve taken seriously the achievements, challenges and joys the art form has brought you.
But why? one may ask. What difference does it make if I perform or not? Can’t I just dance for myself?
For the writer, similar questions arise. Shouldn’t I just write for myself first and forget about publishing? What does it matter if I publish in literary journals anyway—how many people are reading those? Is it really worth my spending hours in front of submission managers until my back aches and my eyes glaze over, or stocking up on manila mailers from Office Depot?
The answer for both mediums is yes and yes. Publishing is the performance aspect of the writing process. If you take your craft seriously, you’ll have to take publishing seriously, too.
Recently I found myself fed up with the literary submission process. I’ve been submitting fairly heavily over the past four years with excellent results, but this spring I hit a wall. For most of the spring I didn’t send out much, in part because I was working on rewrites of my novel but also because I was plain burnt-out, tired of the grunt work, the long response times, and overwhelmed with the sheer number of markets. But when I opened up my “Finished” file the same stories and poems stared back at me. Good work, deserving of homes and needing them fast, because my new material is radically different from what I was writing merely two years ago.
You’ll never get any of this published if you don’t keep sending out, I chided myself. And I dug up one of my all-time favorite quotes about publishing that I stumbled across a few years ago, by Isaac Asimov:
“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”
This quote never fails to motivate me. But why is Asimov so adamant in his convictions? Is he speaking here of merely publishing-for-publishing’s sake? I don’t think so. To me, the zealousness of his statement speaks to that underlying why. As a writer, you’ve poured your heart into manuscripts that you wouldn’t have put to paper if they hadn’t meant a lot to you, and you’ve likely studied and rewritten and studied some more, so that you can tell a story damn well, better than most people out there. Through hard work, and perhaps some inborn talent, you have a gift. And it is incumbent upon you to share that gift with the world, with those who are silently desperate for the beauty and truth you have to offer, for you to provide the bright spot in their day. It is incumbent upon you to muster the courage and generosity of spirit to find your art a stage where it may shine. To persist.
If you don’t, the world might not come to any harm as a result. But it surely won’t be any brighter.
I called my resurrected submission efforts the Great Summer Journals Project. The fact that most of the big literary magazines were closed proved a great opportunity to research a market I’d been avoiding as a potential “stage” for my short fiction—online journals. I’d first broached the realm of online publishing last year, albeit hesitantly, with poetry. After all, was anybody really reading short fiction on-line? But as I knew from the handful of poems I’ve had picked up by online journals, such publications reach a much wider audience via the Internet—an exciting prospect for any writer. I organized my approach by setting a manageable goal of combing through NewPages’ Big List of magazines alphabetically, one letter a day. I was excited by the variety of very decent online magazines that I’d been unaware of, such as Dzanc Books’ “The Collagist,” the men’s journal dubbed “The Bull,” “52 Stories,” “Slush Pile” and others, many of which are open year-round.
The result has been an astonishing eight poems and three stories accepted in one month, with a fourth story currently in final review. At least two of the poems will also be featured as Podcasts—an exciting prospect, indeed. All because I made the decision that the grunt work, and most importantly, the stories and poems themselves, were worth it.
Performance means commitment, and in many ways, requires as much stamina as creating the work itself. I happen to think performance is crucial not only for the audience who receives the benefits of our effort and vision, but for the performer. Preparing for public presentation, whether on stage or in print, forces you to put your best foot forward, puts you on top of your game. It’s no great coincidence that I still tinker with drafts even while I’m sending them out, just as my dance instructor tinkers with choreographies right up through dress rehearsal week. And as with stage performance, seeing a piece of writing at last in print—whether by sharing the journal link on Facebook or holding the print publication in your hands—builds confidence and reaffirms one’s identity as an artist. Performance completes the creative cycle for a given work, enables the artist to pause, look at what he or she has done, and step boldly toward the next challenge.
Here’s another thought: what if all dancers elected not to perform, all writers not to publish—to leave those manuscripts to die, two hard drives ago. What if?
The world would be a less colorful place, indeed.
So this week when the performance roster goes up, I’m going to commit to the sword routine I spent four Tuesday evenings learning. I’ll pack my sword in my suitcase when I leave to visit my family at the end of the month, search for costumes on-line. Suffer the performance-day jitters, remember to smile at the audience, many of whom will never Bellydance, or get the chance to share hard-earned efforts or talent onstage. Step into the wings confident in having seen work through, to a job well done.