To Be A Writer;

Or, The Need For Further Rejections

When people ask me what I do, I say something like “publisher” or “I work in publishing” or some such. Before I left academia, I would answer the question with “professor.” The funny thing about these answers is that during these years I have written three single-authored books, edited four anthologies, published dozens of essays and articles and reviews, and, of course, write a weekly newsletter. And yet I never answer the question with writer. But I am that, too.

It’s not insecurity; I just have always had other day jobs. Also, the usual follow-up questions such as “what kind of writing?” or “have you written anything I’ve heard of?” are really enervating to answer. People make all sorts of assumptions that don’t include “the materiality of writing, mainly.”

But murmuring under the hundreds of newsletters I’ve written here, the emails I write to Belt authors, and the flap copy I write for forthcoming books, and the freelance editing and teaching I do, are the writing projects I a…