Professional development

On Becoming an Adjunct Instructor: 3 sources for further reading

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Vintage postcard: Driveway in Busch’s Sunken Gardens, Pasadena, Calif.

Good News: Inside Higher Ed publishes career advice for adjunct faculty

My cautionary essay, “Advice to a Friend on Becoming an Adjunct,” has been published by Inside Higher Education.

The idea and structure for the essay came from reading Benjamin Franklin’s “Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress,” which dates back to 1745. I saw similarities between Franklin’s words and present-day discussions of adjunct faculty. You may remember one of the Franklin’s oft-quoted lines, “And as in the dark all cats are grey…”

DEFINITION: Adjunct faculty may be called lecturers, faculty associates, or similar titles. Adjunct or contingent faculty are contracted to teach one or more university courses each semester. While they are not on the tenure track, adjunct faculty hold advanced degrees in their subject areas, and teaching may be their full-time job.  

I began drafting this essay after receiving an adjunct teaching contract with a per-course pay rate so low that it was similar to my first teaching contract in 2000.

Regrets surged at having stayed with adjunct teaching and its attendant fears of losing full-time work (and health insurance) every fall and spring. Looking back, I would have advised myself to exit the academic treadmill of year to year or semester to semester contracts and re-enter the ranks of higher ed. classified or professional staff—jobs that offer more stable schedules, competitive incomes, and maybe even raises.

In any case, the Inside Higher Ed essay offers advice I wish someone had told me (or that I had listened to). If you’re interested in some of my sources, I’d like to share the following:

Sources (partial list)

The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission, University of Chicago Press book

The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission by Herb Childress, a former dean at the Boston Architectural College, was published by the Chicago University Press in 2019. The book offers “Recommendations for Survival in the Current Climate,” including that grad students should consult the National Research Council’s assessment of doctoral programs. “Be cautious about applying to any school not in the top 10 percent of its discipline,” writes Childress. “Lots of doctoral programs can give you a wonderful intellectual experience; only a few of the are likely to give you a chance in the [higher ed.] labor market.” To further gauge one’s prospects for a career in academia, Childress’s self-test, “The Academic Career Calibration Protocol,” may feel like an ice-water dunk.

“Who Are the Part-Time Faculty: There’s No Such Thing as a Typical Part-timer,” American Association of University Professors article

“Who Are the Part-Time Faculty: There’s No Such Thing as a Typical Part-timer” by James Monks, an economics professor at the University of Richmond, Va., was published in AAUP’s Academe in July-August 2009. The article includes a plethora of economic, demographic, and related data about contingent faculty. “[P]art-time non-tenure track faculty earn between 22 and 40 percent less than tenure track assistant professors on an hourly basis,” writes Monk in citing his earlier article, “The Relative Earnings of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education,” which was published by the Journal of Labor Research in 2007. Monks’s earning percentages seem high, based on my years in the adjunct world at Wisconsin and Arizona universities.  

“Professional Identity in a Contingent-Labor Profession: Expertise, Autonomy, Community in Composition Teaching” Writing Program Administration article

“Professional Identity in a Contingent-Labor Profession: Expertise, Autonomy, Community in Composition Teaching” by Ann M. Penrose, an English professor at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, was published in Writing Program Administration in 2012. Among Penrose’s points is a discussion of how a profession is defined to include growth and development. She asks whether contingent instructors are members of a profession/discipline given their often-narrow opportunities for growth. “But under the conditions of contingent employment, ‘professional development’ can easily be interpreted as a euphemism for brainwashing or remediation….,” writes Penrose. Brainwashing is a strong word, but my professional development opportunities related almost solely to practical concerns, such as university technology adaptations, curriculum changes, or course development. “Under this interpretation,” Penrose writes, “professional development activities are intended to regulate and regularize and thus present a clear challenge to an experienced faculty member’s autonomy and professional identity.”

Other Sources

Publications regularly covering issues concerning adjunct university instructors, such as unionization efforts, include:

Related post

Thinking about a college teaching gig?

Bookshelf: Elizabeth Berg’s Escaping into the Open offers a plethora of writing prompts

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Writing Prompts. Love them? Hate them?

Most writers can point to a project that started or developed with a prompt.

Prompts prove useful when casting about for fresh writing projects. After all that prompt-based writing, however, steel yourself for slogging through the rubble to find gems.  

Revision work may be where prompt-based writing shines. Approach prompts with an ongoing project in mind. Seek material that deepens your text without sending the project on tangents. The results can be satisfying.

Escaping into the Open

Among the prompts worth visiting (or revisiting) are those in novelist Elizabeth Berg’s Escaping into the Open: The Art of True Writing. The book, which is nearing its 25th anniversary, includes a full chapter of prompts that shows “thinking less and writing more can become a very good habit.” While the book’s publishing industry advice is a bit dated, Berg’s encouragement and guidance on using details to bring writing alive continues to be timeless.    

Field trips

Berg recommends field trips or rather “plunking yourself down in a different environment” and writing about “everything you see and hear and feel, if only to make a list of sensations.”

Documenting the people, as well as your senses, can yield characterizations, such as “nose-ringed teenagers” and “pastel-cardiganed grandmothers,” to replace stickier, clunkier lines.

In terms of setting, Berg recommends focusing on ambient sounds that “can help your readers visualize a place.” For example, tune into the sounds after a church’s prayer vigil or lunchtime at a local diner.

On field trips, seek the details, updated metaphors, and memories (yours or your characters) that give weight to your words. In doing so, run through your senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.

Speaking of taste and that field trip to a local diner, what would your character crave or try under duress? There’s a special place for food in both fiction and nonfiction writing, especially cuisine linked to a particular setting.

Red Flannel Hash

The opening paragraph of Pam Houston’s short story “The Best Girlfriend You Never Had,” from The Best American Short Stories 1999, does a lot of work and refers to a specific food:  

“A perfect day in the city always starts like this: my fiend Leo picks me up and we go to a breakfast place called Rick and Ann’s where they make red flannel hash out of beets and bacon, and then we cross the Bay Bridge to the gardens of the Palace of Fine Arts to sit in the wet grass and read poems out loud and talk about love.”

Red Flannel Hash? Beets?
Beyond Pam Houston’s story, I explored this new-to-me way to eat beets, one of nature’s so-called superfoods. I recommend this recipe from Taste of Home: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/red-flannel-hash/ The Red Flannel Hash recipe, which includes vegetarian options, calls for corned beef, but I used four slices of bacon to match the description in Houston’s story.

To “prime the subconscious pump,” try some prompt-based drafting and take writing-focused field trips. Consider the following prompt from Berg’s book to get you started:

“Describe five completely different types of people placing their order for coffee with the same waitress. Describe these people in appearance, movement, and speech. If you like, also describe the waitress’s reaction to them.”

Recommended reading on the craft of fiction writing: ‘From Where You Dream’ by Robert Olen Butler

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From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction by Robert Olen Butler is a book worth another look

‘Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you.” —Robert Olen Butler, From Where You Dream

The best writing craft books transport you. You imagine you’re in a college seminar with an expert creative writing teacher. Unlike typical classrooms, however, these books allow you to work at your own pace.

Such expert teaching by Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler is captured in From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction, published by Grove Press in 2005.

Tapping into the unconscious, hence the word dream in the book’s title, is one of Butler’s main points. He offers insights into how and when to access your unconscious in the pursuit of art. Butler uses examples from his own, often messy, writing process to illustrate the yeoman work and perseverance required.

“You must … desire to create works of fiction that will endure, that reflect and articulate the deepest truth about the human condition,” Butler says in greeting his students. “I will take your aspirations seriously, and I will demand that you take them seriously.”

If your fiction is good, but not quite resonant or true, Butler’s insights and process tweaks may help you level up. The process won’t be simple or easy. However, the difference might be between creating fiction where you can pick almost any line and find something sensual, telling, and fresh (hint: Gabriel Garcia Marquez) versus writing that just gets the job done.  

For instance, to access the unconscious, Butler recommends journaling for 45 minutes to an hour, especially in the morning, as close to emerging from your dreams as possible. Similarly, journaling before sleep may also prime unconscious consideration.

“But here’s a certain kind of journal that might be useful to you: at the end of the day or beginning of the next day, return to some event of the day that evoked an emotion in you,” Butler says. “Record that event in the journal. But do this only—only—moment to moment through the senses. Absolutely never name an emotion; never start explaining or analyzing or interpreting an emotion…. Such a journal entry will read like a passage in a novel, like the most intense moment-to-moment scene in a novel.”

In discussing story drafts, both his own and those of students, Butler often focuses on the work of evoking emotion in fiction. You’ll better appreciate Butler’s feedback on resisting the urge to include labels or analysis within the writing after reading the drafts yourself. You’ll see what he identifies as working or not, as well as how his feedback may or may not align with yours.

For many, reading others’ rough drafts isn’t a favorite part of writer’s workshops (the type of class the book documents with help from co-author and teacher Janet Burroway). By examining student work, however, Butler’s book “shows” his teaching, instead of just telling. Learning by example often has more staying power than any lecture could.

Robert Olen Butler received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993 for his short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and he continues to write literary novels, short stories, nonfiction, and more. He has decades of experience teaching creative writing, most recently at Florida State University. Butler’s innovations in writing and teaching have included his “Inside Creative Writing” series on YouTube, which invites viewers to look over his shoulder as he writes a new short story.


Worth another look…

Thinking about a college teaching gig? 

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Vintage postcard: Overlooking Castaic Creek on the “Famous Ridge Route” between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, California.

3 resources for new university adjunct faculty & instructors.

DEFINITION: Adjunct faculty may be called lecturers, faculty associates, or have similar titles. Adjunct or contingent faculty are contracted to teach one or more university courses each semester. While they are not on the tenure track, adjunct faculty hold advanced degrees in their subject areas, and teaching may be their full-time job.  

The default for many new or inexperienced university instructors is to teach the same way they were taught. However, what worked for them — successful, and most likely, high-performing students — may not work for today’s college students. For example, some students may score high on traditional lectures followed by multiple-choice exams, but those lecture/ Scantron-test scenarios don’t always foster a deep understanding of course content. 

However, a second default for new adjuncts and instructors may be more useful — namely, returning to their roots as students. By studying successful college teaching, new instructors can create classroom experiences that are more rewarding for their students (and themselves). Effective college teaching can be learned, and the following resources may help:

NOTE: For adjunct faculty and tenure-track professors alike, college teaching skills are often learned on the job. Novice instructors have subject-area expertise, but they may have zero teaching experience. Many instructors are expected to teach courses while they’re learning how to teach. At the same time, each of their students is paying $20 (or a lot more) for each class session. No pressure. 

1.      Communication within a Course – Book: Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, 2nd Ed., by James M. Lang (2021)

The little things make a difference. Imagine you’re listening to a music broadcast, and you hear a song you love and want to know its title. However, the program just keeps going and going, and you never learn the title of that song. Many students have this type of experience in their classes, and the small teaching techniques that Lang discusses can reduce student’s frustration and help them learn.

Simple things, such as giving students a preview of the day’s lesson can help. Better yet, explain how a day’s activities fit into the course’s overall learning goals (knowledge or skills the instructor will need to measure on exams or projects), so everyone in the classroom can focus their time more productively.

Throughout his book, Lang details classroom techniques, supported by research, that facilitate meaningful teaching, learning, and communication.

2.      Alignment to Course Goals — Video: “Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding” (2009) 

“Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding” is a short film about teaching at the university level that offers a true north sort of message, with a few dashes of humor.

A key takeaway is that if you are aligning your course content, activities, assignments, and assessments with the course’s overall learning goals (see the college catalog or departmental course description for these), you’re headed in the right direction. The film’s keyword is alignment. As in, the “Constructive Alignment” theory from educational psychologist John B. Biggs underpins the film’s content.

Bonus points for linking the film’s points back to Lang’s Small Teaching methods to communicate to students how specific elements of your course connect to the overall learning goals. Explain to students what they should learn and why. Double bonus points for incorporating activity-based opportunities for student learning.

3.      Deep Learning – Book: Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice, 2nd ed., by Maryellen Weimer (2013)

Speaking of active learning… Weimer encourages instructors to go beyond delivering information to passive students. Ever spoken before a passive audience? People dozing off? Multitasking on their phones? Whether your audience is students or coworkers, imagine how well passive learners will retain your detailed, exceedingly important information. Not well.

Active learning — such as think-pair-share strategies that ask students to grapple with course content together — are more likely to foster deeper learning. Deep learning goes beyond the surface level — such as vocabulary terms memorized for a test (and often forgotten) — so that students may retain and apply what they’ve learned. It’s much like the difference between watching home repair YouTube videos that make tasks look easy, until you try to do the actual jobs yourself.

Weimer notes that learning can be a messy process, and she encourages instructors to position students to work in collaboration with other students (take an active role in their learning), as well as to reflect on their own attempts and progress toward the course goals.  

To some, college teaching might seem like a dream gig. Show up in class for three hours a week and viola! Easy peasy. Get paid. However, much like ballet, there are hours and hours of work going on behind the scenes to make those classroom hours, online portals, assignments, and assessments work to prepare students for success in higher-level classes and careers. 

3 Resources to help writers get back on track: Motivation (lack thereof)

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Vintage postcard: Forest Drive, Near Observatory Tower, Peninsula State Park, Door County, Wisconsin.

For some reason, meeting writing goals and finishing projects seem more difficult these days.

What’s getting in the way of your writing?

  • Is it the specter of AI replacing you as a writer? Or fears that AI could copy, replicate, and surpass your writing, as has happened to some visual artists?
  • How about the publications (markets) you’ve been watching that closed to submissions while they figure out how to handle all the AI-generated stuff?
  • Is it the revelations about contests/lit mags/publishers that continue to accept submissions (and fees) but never publish anything or much of anything?  
  • Have you received just one rejection too many?
  • Is it that life is getting back to normal, and suddenly there’s so much to do (besides writing) now that lockdowns are in the rearview?
  • Is it just summer?
  • Is it just me?

Setting writing goals, seeking inspiration, and addressing common frustrations seem to help. Or at least they sound good. Here are a few resources for writers:

1.      1000 Words of Summer

In her Poets & Writers Magazine article, “1000 Words of Summer: How an Accountability Project Opened Up My Writing Life,” Jami Attenberg discusses how a now-worldwide project started, “In 2018 my friend Anne Gisleson and I decided to write a thousand words a day, every day, for two weeks straight.” The #1000wordsofsummer project’s sixth year started on June 17, 2023, and Attenberg has been posting daily on her Craft Talk newsletter, as well as on Instagram and Twitter. Even if you’re starting this project late, there’s still time to read the newsletters and get a writerly boost.  

2.      Field Trips for Serendipity & Inspiration

Maybe you feel like you don’t have time to peruse a book or take a field trip, but maybe you’ll find information you need (a key, an inspiration) from an unexpected source. What book or artwork or object practically jumps out at you? Here are a few places that might coax creativity your way:

  • The recent releases shelf at your local library. What catches your eye? How might a source connect to your works in progress?
  • Museums, galleries, resale shops, flea markets, and more. Again, what are you drawn to? Ask yourself what the visuals, objects, and their histories could contribute to your writing. Maybe do some people watching too. For instance, I once saw a goateed woman haggling with a burly vendor over sewing notions at a swap meet.
  • Immersion in tastes, smells, and sounds. Indulge your senses at spice shops, confectionaries, farmer’s markets, ethnic restaurants, neighborhood sporting events, music recitals, and more. Sometimes just listening to buildings—the different sounds inside a high-rise and a hospital—can alert you to telling details for your writing.   

3.      Websites for Writers

Moderation (avoiding rabbit holes) is important, especially with websites, but sometimes hearing what other writers are saying is reassuring:

  • Writer Unboxed: This website “is dedicated to publishing empowering, positive, and provocative ideas about the craft and business of fiction… [T]he site now hosts more than 50 contributors, including bestselling and rising authors and industry professionals.”
  • Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers: Past categories have included: Best Live Streams, Podcasts, and YouTube Channels for writers; Best Writing Advice Websites (including Writer Unboxed); and Best Genre/Niche Websites. The 2022 list came out in July, so the 2023 listings should be published soon.

In the end, doing something (anything short of a bonfire) with your writing is more productive than the alternative, right?

Related Post: Distractions: Don’t let Mr. Facebook and Ms. Phone keep you from your writing projects

Why writers should read ‘A Swim in a Pond in the Rain’ — Let George Saunders help you see more in the fiction you read and write

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Vintage postcard: Lake Park and harbor view from lighthouse, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Recommended reading on the craft of fiction: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life) by George Saunders, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021

In grad school, I remember how few of my MFA cohorts would admit they had “What the heck?” reactions to some of our fiction reading assignments. They always “got it” or at least grinned enigmatically.

However, writer and professor George Saunders acknowledges that his students at Syracuse University have had what-the-heck reactions to the short stories he assigns. To elicit such honesty from students, Saunders must create a collegial space for questioning and exploration in his classrooms. His 2021 book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, demonstrates this mode of inquiry.

In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, Saunders shares the assigned readings, lectures, and discussions from his popular Syracuse course that examines the short fiction of several nineteenth-century Russian authors — Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, and Nikolai Gogol (who had Ukrainian roots). Within his analysis, Saunders acknowledges student critiques, such as that certain specifics seem like fluff.

Saunders shows how he can take a story that makes you shrug (and consider cutting by half) and helps you see how the writer’s craft works. At least once, he challenges you (and his students) to try cutting an assigned story, which turns out to be an insurmountable task.

These types of hands-on revelations are especially useful when turned to your own writing. Your awareness of what is and isn’t working in your own drafts grows after seeing these Russian stories through Saunders’s lens, alongside student and critical perspectives.    

One of the many concepts that will stick with me from this book is TICHN. “As we read a story (let’s imagine) we’re dragging along a cart labeled ‘Things I Couldn’t Help Noticing’ (TICHN),” Saunders writes.  Language choices, story structure, patterns, and so on — noted consciously (or not) — may fill the TICHN cart. For readers, the TICHN cart may offer aha! moments upon reflection. For writers, these elements may help bring together a story’s ending.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain starts by approaching a Chekhov story one digestible page at a time: page, discussion, page, discussion, and so on. The book continues with newer translations of the Russian short stories, with each story examined further in “Afterthoughts.” At times, Saunders offers discussions of discussions that break down the stories through outlines, editing challenges, and exercises for students.

It’s no secret that I would recommend A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. As readers, this book helps us see how some notable fiction works. As writers, we can apply the knowledge and techniques revealed to our own fiction. As teachers or workshop participants, Saunders offers approaches and hands-on tasks to use in the classroom and beyond.  

Creative writing: Adaptations can update, critique, distill fiction  

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Vintage postcard: Curry’s Lebec Lodge on the Ridge Route between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, California.

The best adaptations add to the literature & expand the conversation

Adaptation is a long-standing aspect of creative writing. The first adaptations I remember were cinematic — a couple 200-year-old novels re-imagined for the present day:

  • The movie Clueless adapts Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma for 1990s Beverly Hills where matchmaking perils become a story of surviving high school and finding love.
  • The movie/novel Bridget Jones’s Diary adapts Austen’s 1813 Pride and Prejudice for London in the early 2000s. The crux is Bridget/Elizabeth discerning the character and motives of potential suitors. Does the name Mr. Darcy ring a bell?

The number and array of adaptations of Shakespeare are legion. For example, Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres adapts King Lear and his three daughters for Iowa farm struggles. David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle adapts Hamlet’s tragic brother-killing uncle for a family of dog breeders in rural Wisconsin.

Shakespeare himself was an adapter and borrower. For example, All’s Well That Ends Well traces back to Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron in a more troubling manner than most. Some have said this Shakespeare play is “a direct lift.” In today’s world, would Shakespeare be accused of plagiarizing or passing off a translated work as his own?

Beyond the word adaptation is a range of approaches — including homage, hauntings, satire, critique, retelling (slantwise or not), and re-imagining — that Margot Livesey explores within her book The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing. In the chapter, “Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be: Paying Homage,” she explores the gradations of borrowing from predecessors in literature, as well as art.   

The adaptation process can approach writing as a series of conversations, instead of a solitary act of creation. “That is, we write in response to what we have read, and expect others to read what we have written and to write in response to us.” This quote, which came from a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee first-year writing program common syllabus, applies to a range of writing from adaptation to refutation. The notion of critical conversations is especially important given today’s changing reading patterns, namely more skimming and less deep reading.  

The idea of a conversation acknowledges that novels, plays, and other creative works, no matter how highly esteemed, have weaknesses and strengths. Adaptations may update (for example, by revising uninformed mental health portrayals from past centuries), critique (for example, by addressing the lack of gender or racial diversity), or otherwise distill elements of the original.

Adaptations may:

  • Update (for example, by revising uninformed mental health portrayals from past centuries)
  • Critique (for example, by addressing the lack of gender or racial diversity)
  • Distill elements of the original

However, adaptations/responses/critiques should go beyond copying, plagiarizing, or copyright infringement. A worthy adaptation is “very much its own work of art, one that can be appreciated by readers with no inkling of its ancestor,” writes Livesey. The adaptation needs to add to the conversation, not just repeat it.

Writing prompt

Think about the books, plays, poems, or other works that have stuck with you. Maybe you’ve found yourself re-reading one or two of them. If so, ask yourself why. Why was this work so significant to you? Do you have something to say in response to the plot, main character, voice, subject, or a mix of those and other elements? Maybe you want to explore what made the original so compelling – how did it work? Or, consider the adaptations that you’ve admired. Is there something you want to add to the conversation through your own writing? 

Reading recommendation

Outside of my classes or reading/writing groups, I try to include books on the craft of writing in my daily reading. Books such as Margot Livesey’s The Hidden Machinery offer reminders and ideas that enrich my works in progress. Even by reading ten pages a day, a craft book a month is useful in terms of continuous improvement as a writer.

3 blogs that flog, deconstruct or explain the choices fiction writers and editors make

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Vintage postcard: Soldiers Field & Field Museum at the Chicago lakefront.

Miss those fiction workshop critiques of other writers’ work? Maybe? I remember having a lot of time to doodle in MFA workshops, especially when the conversations turned contentious. Then, moments of constructive feedback would connect to my own writing and lead to furious notetaking.

Reminiscent of the best graduate school critique sessions, the following three blog series offer insights into the craft of fiction writing. We have the added knowledge that whatever worked (or not) in the stories has resulted in publication.

Flog a Pro: Would You Pay to Turn the Page of This Bestseller?

In monthly posts on Writer Unboxed, Ray Rhamey provides a novel’s first 17 lines and asks “Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter?” And, by extension, would you be willing to risk money and time to read the book, especially if you were a busy literary agent?

After the novel’s opening lines, Rhamey shares his verdict, explains his reasoning, and polls blog readers for their verdicts and comments. Reader comments, along with Rhamey’s own, offer useful perspectives into storytelling choices and their consequences. The series has examined books by Elin Hilderbrand, Kristin Hannah, Stephen King, and John Grisham, among others. The outcomes can be surprising, especially when the writing of a well-known novelist doesn’t conform to commonly held writing advice. (Note: The opening of Stephen King’s most recent novel didn’t fare as well as you might think.)

Ray Rhamey offers the opportunity for writers to receive similar feedback on their works in progress through his Flogging the Quill blog. Rhamey is the author of five nonfiction books, including Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling, and four novels in genres such as political thrillers and contemporary fantasy.

Let’s Deconstruct a Story

“Let’s Deconstruct a Story: A Podcast for the Story Nerds” is a series of podcasts and blog posts that include author interviews conducted by Kelly Fordon, who teaches writing in the Detroit area and has published two short story collections and a poetry collection.

August’s post featured an interview with Susan Perabo about her story “This Is Not That Story,” which appeared in The Sun in March 2006. Perabo, whose most recent book is They Run the Way They Do, ended the interview by saying, “I love getting into the choices and the questions that only deep reading and deep thinking can get you to. I think you’re doing a great service for writers and for students of writing, and that’s all of us, right?” 

As with all critique sessions, you should read the story first, and Fordon provides links to the texts under discussion. Her posts often go beyond the basics. For example, in a deconstruction of the story “Creve Coeur” by Jacob M. Appel, Fordon created a word cloud from the adjectives Appel used. It’s telling that the words “dark” and gray” stand out, as do the words “indifferent” and “happy.”

NOTE: Beyond deconstructing someone else’s story, creating a word cloud for your own work can be a useful editing and revision tool for exploring a story’s tone and the ideas or themes being explored.

“I’m basically offering these workshops on ‘Let’s Deconstruct a Story’ for my own gratification because I feel like I learn so much from studying the stories of other writers,” says Fordon at the beginning of her work with Appel’s short story. “Really delving into them. Seeing how they work, the mechanics, so I can get some more tools for my own toolbox.”

(Thank you to Erika Dreifus and her “Practicing Writer” blog for bringing Kelly Fordon’s work to my attention.)

Why We Chose It

The Kenyon Review’s blog includes the occasional feature “Why We Chose It” written by the literary magazine’s fiction and nonfiction editors. Posts in the series link to a current selection from the Kenyon Review so that you can read the text being discussed. For veterans of lit-mag rejections, the posts offer insight into what drew an editor to a particular story.

In a recent “Why We Chose It” post, the Kenyon Review’s Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky focuses on the short story “Caduceus” by Perry Lopez, which appeared in the magazine’s July/August 2021 issue. Kenyon Review is published six times a year at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

10 ways to access literary magazines before submitting: How to research markets for your writing

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Race horses postcard2

Vintage postcard: On the turn at Gulfstream Park Race Course, Hallandale, Florida

The warp speed way to exit the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts isn’t what you want, but writing that is poorly targeted may get just that treatment at literary magazines.

As a former fiction editor at Hayden’s Ferry Review, I remember the easiest (and most frustrating) rejections were the texts that weren’t in the universe of our submission guidelines: Literature written for very young children. No. Graphic sex and bestiality scenes with little story. No. Academic essays. No.

NOTE: See the Hayden’s Ferry Review website or Submittable portal for their guidelines. They’re currently seeking submissions for their “Magic” issue.  

While university literary magazines run by graduate or undergraduate students may demonstrate changing literary tastes or themes from year to year, they seldom make wide swings away from a core mission. Therefore, it’s easy for the editors at almost any publication to see who submitted works for consideration without researching guidelines or reading published issues first.

Ignore the oft-heard advice “read an issue before submitting” at your peril. Here are 10 ways to access current literary magazines. Many ways to do this market research are free.

Printed sources

Strategies for getting your hands on recent publications include:

  • Sample issues: Many literary magazines offer online pay portals.
  • Book fairs: Associated Writing Programs and other writing conferences and festivals.
  • Newsstands: College and commercial bookstores.
  • Libraries: Current periodicals sections, especially at college and university libraries. (free)
  • Literary magazine offices: Many magazines exchange copies with their peers, but you may need to know someone on staff to gain access. (free)

Electronic sources

Exploring a magazine’s content continues to get easier through online options:

  • Web excerpts: Content may include pieces from current or past print magazines. (free)
  • Web-only content: In addition to excerpts from print issues, some magazines offer web-only content. Note the submission process and guidelines may be separate from that of the print issues. (often free)
  • Publication newsletters: Magazines such as Kenyon Review offer weekly newsletters that link to content currently available online. (free)
  • E-magazines: Print magazines may offer pdf versions that can be downloaded immediately. Prices for these e-issues tend to be lower, possibly noting the absence of printing and shipping costs.
  • Databases: Some literary magazines are indexed by databases available through college and university libraries. While some entries list only bibliographic information, others offer full-text files of individual sources (short stories, poems, essays, and so on). (free)

While reading an issue before submitting may help you target your writing efforts to more receptive publishers, the process also makes for good literary citizens. As much as you work hard and want your work to be read, other writers and publishers want the same thing.

Distractions: Don’t let Mr. Facebook and Ms. Phone keep you from your writing projects

/ melissaolsonpetrie / Leave a comment

Aquarium Bar postcard 18_0930b

Vintage postcard for the Aquarium Bar in Milwaukee. “Everything in the bar is alive—fish, frogs, alligators, turtles, lizards, etc.”

The first month of the fall semester is in our rearview mirror, and it’s about time for the first big papers and projects. So I thought I would share a couple things about writing productively that I reacquainted myself with over the summer.

“The writer is the person who stays in the room.” This is from fiction writer and teacher Ron Carlson, who is currently at the University of California, Irvine. (He served on my MFA committee at Arizona State University.) This quote comes from his craft book Ron Carlson Writes a Story: From the First Glimmer of an Idea to the Final Sentence (Graywolf).

Carlson also advises writers not to stop, not even to look up a word in the dictionary or a detail online. Move forward with your draft, and only your draft. Go back and clean it up later.

If Carlson is any indication, his advice works. He has published eight books of fiction, and his stories have been included in the Best American Short Stories series, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and more.

None of this is easy. The forces pulling you away from your writing include “Mr. Coffee and Mr. Refrigerator, and oh, there in the other room is Mr. Television, and there’s Mr. Bed,” writes Carlson.

When talking with my students about distractions I add Mr. Facebook and Ms. Phone and Mesdames et Messieurs Friends who want to hang out, drift, eat, and more. Then there’s Ms. Puppy and Mr. Kitten who need your attention so viscerally they will knock your laptop to the floor after walking across the keyboard. (The eating of homework is so ’80s.)

When I ask my students to write during class, it amazes me how weak their bladders become. One or two at a time, students saunter to the bathroom. Sometimes they pass the closest restroom and opt for one farther away. I rarely sense any urgency, except that they’ve been told to write and we all know how hard that can be.

So stay in the room. Stay in the chair. Stay away from technologies that may have been designed by marketers and psychologists to pull you deeper and deeper into their thrall and further away from your own thoughts.

“[T]he Internet is the enemy of the writer’s day,” writes Carlson, and I see this in my own productivity as well as in that of my students.

Stay on task. On goal. Focus on your own thinking and your own writing. Fight for it. You’ll thank yourself later.