I’ve been listening to a podcast lately while cooking called A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, that always includes in the following line in the outro:^[1]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in relation to the books I read and recommend. Specifically the novel Villa E by Jane Alison, who, for disclosure, I took classes with way back at U Miami. It’s a damn good fucking book. Jane is so lovely. But mostly it’s a great fucking book, and I want everybody to read it, though specifically a couple writer friends of mine, one of whom is also working (albeit on the back burner) on an "architecture novel," the other of whom likes/writes literary historical fiction and good prose (Villa E is both). And I really enjoyed it, myself,^[2] and so I’ve told people about it.

And funny enough, I only heard about that podcast because one of my cycling buddies (who is also a musician) told me about it: so it must be working.

This is all in the context, too, of — you know — the political climate, and I can’t help but think that in the face of gigantic, large, looming disasters like climate change et al, the only thing to do — the only thing I can think to do, anyway, given my time, abilities, influence — is go local, go talking to people. Thus Two Page Tuesday. Thus a few other projects I’ve got simmering on my own mental back burner. Thus why I keep telling everyone to go read Jane’s book. Why I’ve mentioned the podcast to a few folks. Why I keep trying to think of ways to get journals and agents and folks to the readings so they can see my great friends' great work and sign it.

But the shit takes time, but we’ll get there,^[3] eventually.

Last night at Two Page Tuesday,^[1] we had the largest crowd yet at one of the readings (or, to be honest, any of the related events that have been running since January). We had around 20 at the first reading, about 15 at the second, 25 or so at the third, and last night, according to Megan’s count, we had somewhere in the are of 35 to 40 fucking people there, which is insane.^[2] All seven of the readers were excellent, and pretty much all of the new (to the party) readers brought friends. Somehow a creative writing club at one of the colleges caught wind of it and decided to come. We had at least three people in attendance with ties to either gallery/arts spaces or arts/book events there, you know, for networking.^[3] A lot of people seemed to meet a lot of people. I’d had an unusual kind of day^[4] and was aggressively squirrel brained, but even still (or perhaps because of this) I’m pretty sure I shook everyone’s hand in the room and collected emails and future readers. The bar was happy with us, too, and have invited us back again for January. By pretty much all (nonexistent) metrics, it was a wild success. I’m still buzzing.

The growth is good, I think, but not because it’s "growth" but because people want to be there and seem to be getting something from it. I don’t know how many times I told the "origin story," i.e., explained that it was a bar night that turned into a bi-monthly reading which is now aspirationally monthly.

But it’s been slow to build. Intentionally.

I’m thinking about this today while I scribble these notes (let’s say) on my lunch break at work, where the imperative — for good or no — is more or less always to grow, more or less as fast as we can.^[5] And I’m thinking about this in terms of reach and purpose and everything else, about how there’s no point in trying to grow a community if there aren’t community ties, how there’s no point in adding people if the people don’t actually get to know each other, if the people being added don’t meet folks or have the kind of experience that makes them go, "Well fuck, I guess all these people are writing or working on novels or whatever, maybe I ought to do some of that, too."^[6]

And part of it is functional and/or selfish, sure: I can only do so much, and scale requires resources of time if not many other things, and I have only so much time. So scaling slowly means I have the time to build the infrastructure I need for it to stay fun and not a pain in the ass, like what more or less happened with Response. And as was pointed out by one of the writers I was talking to earlier today who had generously offered help, "delegation takes brain batteries," and there’s no point in delegating if I don’t have the energy to. So slow is good. I think of what a Navy vet I worked with about a decade ago used to say: "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast." I think about this phrase often — like, a lot.

So we grow slow. But we do grow. And I love that it’s not linear, or even always growing larger. And I love that folks took time out of their busy lives to come and read and/or listen and have a good time, and I love that my hunch that many would stay for karaoke afterwards panned out, and I love that when I say "we" about it I really do mean a "we," that though the organization of it is still more or less a one-person operation, there is a "we": there are regulars. People to point to. People who help.

It’s a beautiful thing. And I’m already looking forward to the next one on December 3.

It’s next week, Nov 12! At Charlie’s! From the website:

We are SO EXCITED to announce that the 4th edition of Two Page Tuesday marks our first “odd month” event, as well as the first (of hopefully many, many) journey(s) across the river into Cambridge, and what better place to land than CHARLIE’S KITCHEN. Better yet, an hour or so after our reading, we shall hearken back to days of yore (ask someone about the c.2017-era Breakwater Reading Series) and join in song for KARAOKE at CHARLIE’S, which a few of us were able to confirm is an excellent thing to do after a gathering in September. It’s seriously going to be, so, so fun.

Come along if you’re around!

Because I cannot help myself, I write a "General Prologue" for each Two Page Tuesday. I’d be lying if it were not in part a way for myself to read also, since I’m not going to do a two-page reading (I’m the organizer: I want to hear other people read), but I conceived of it mainly as a scene-setting device, as a way to establish a tone and a mood and a clean way to transition from the bullshitting into the reading (before we, of course, go back to the bullshitting). There have been three readings so far and therefore there have been three "prologues," and in this last I began by talking about how on this podcast the hosts were discussing where it’s best to get poems and stories and things published, if and how that should be a goal. For the purposes of the "prologue" I then took it over to communities and in-person things and why the reading was so great, etc., etc., but I’ve been thinking about it mostly in other ways, at least as far as myself is concerned.

I tend to dislike sending stories out. In fact, I really haven’t done very much of that at all since grad school. Partly it was the pandemic, partly it was working on a novel, but largely it was because I just don’t like the waiting. I’ve worked for/on enough journals to know that it’s a deeply weird and haphazard thing. Yes, good work does rise to the top eventually. But also a lot of stories get passed on because the reader, often a grad student, is hungover and needs a snack and has to power through 200 submissions by the end of the day and thinks that what they’re working on right now is better than anything they could possible read here, so why send anything along through?

(Am I bitter? Maybe. But also this is not an inaccurate picture. I have been this grad student. This is also part of the reason I no longer work on literary journals.)

There was a period at the beginning of this calendar year when I was sending stories lots of places. These were "short shorts," around or under 1,000 words. They’re kind of too long for the "flash fiction" people, and a little too short for the "fiction" people (and so I tell myself that that’s part of why it’s so hard for me to get them published). But I was sending them. I’d finished a good draft of a novel and needed something different to do. Eight months later I’ve collected a good number of form rejections, a couple personalized rejections, and six or seven still outstanding. I’m debating sending out again, but we’ll just have to see: I’m also querying agents about the novel, and I don’t know how much further waiting and rejection I want to carry. (I’ll probably send, maybe after looking over the stories again; I’m OK at compartmentalizing the waiting.)

But what I’ve been thinking about, mostly, is time. How long it takes to hear back, and how long it takes to get the thing published, and then how long it takes for the next one. I’ve had new friends ask to see work, or if I would mind if they went and read some of the published stories, but I always say that they’re so old, they’re not really representative, but then, even if I were to get one of the stories I’d sent earlier this year published, those would not be representative now, either.

This is partly because I’m still not really "settled," I guess, artistically. But also I don’t think anyone ever really is, and also I suppose I’m more settled now than I have ever been. Still.

I met a guy at a wedding who’s also a writer and with whom I was commiserating about how hard it is to get a novel published. He’s got an agent, but is in the no-man’s land that is what’s called being "on submission." It was good to talk to someone about it. But he later sent me a link to a recently published story, and again the caveat was something to the effect of it not really being "current." The journal in question had a little drama and he’d sent it in before any of the drama even began, how long ago. It’s all a lot of weird delay.

Of course, I completely understand why things are the way they are. There are too many fucking writers. Too many fucking submissions, too many fucking micro online "magazines" that nobody reads, too few fucking dollars to support any of this. I think the only people making money on literary concerns are the people who own Submittable.^[1][2] And there has never been money in literary journals. That’s not the point. But they also used to be run by the generationally-wealthy. The circles were smaller. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing. But it was different.

That’s largely the reason why, when I was running Response, the model was one of solicitation vs submission — I had (and still have) absolutely no interest in reading through a slush pile. It’s almost inhumane, the waiting. And journals are even now catching up to the literary agents in terms of there now being a "Closed No Response" option: "Unfortunately, due to the volume of materials we receive, we may not be able to respond to every submission or query." I mean: rude.^[3]

All of which is to say that I feel good about running a reading series instead of a literary journal (even though I genuinely love producing literary journals), and I feel bad about the state of literary publishing. This is not, of course, a new or particularly unique take. But a long time ago, the writer who was then serving as the department head of my MFA program railed during workshop one day about how young writers — fiction writers especially — try to publish too soon (never mind that many of us were in or approaching our thirties or were even older than that). As with many of the things this writer said that infuriated me back then, I’m a little less enraged now. I can almost see his point. I mean, I still disagree. But this is a world in which you might get something published a year, two, three years after you finished your edits and rewrites and revisions and proofreads, and will it then still be something you’re proud of? Maybe, maybe not.

But also I guess you’ve still go to fucking try, don’t you? If you want to do the "writer" thing, I think, you really do.

It was last night, it was a success.

I didn’t do a final count but I know for a fact it was the largest crowd at a Two Page Tuesday we’ve had so far. We accidentally had a whole eight readers because I lost count of how many people I invited. This was actually really fine, and really, really good. The readings were lovely. There was plenty of bullshitting and fun and revelry before and after. Many French fries were consumed. Folks talked about writing and books and not books. There were new faces, and I got some new emails for the email list. I asked folks to take photos and send them to me and they did, so I have some photos to play with for future things as well.

A part of me is tempted to try and get one going in Cambridge (or anyway somewhere north of the river) in November. But we’ll see. The Banshee was happy to have us, seemed like. I’ll get some work going on organizing the next one(s) tomorrow.

For today I’m content to bask in the glow of a very good time, and enjoy the lazy, somewhat absent-minded feeling that comes after a very good night out.