'Hunter Gray' hunterbadbear@hunterbear.org [marxist]
2014-05-18 18:43:37 UTC
NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:
I received a letter today from a much younger Native relative -- an aspiring writer. He had carefully written a solid piece on a very timely topic. He was promised by an editor that it would be published and a date was even given. But it was not published, and no explanation was tendered. He wrote to me for my perspective on these kinds of things and I responded. We have poets and writers on our discussion lists -- and comment on all of this will be very welcome. (H)
As always, very good to hear from you. You sound fine and we're basically OK here in the Snake River country.
I am very sorry to learn of your disappointing experience with ____________,(a Native publication.) Unfortunately, these things do happen every now and then in the course of one's writing. I've done a good deal of writing, of course, and have found that, in about 85-90% of the time and instances, editors are OK, some just fine. If a person submits his or her stuff on a blind basis, one usually can't fault an editor if a rejection slip is the result. But I have had experiences where I have been asked to write something -- and have -- only to find the editor wasn't going to run it after all. That can be a little angering. And occasionally, an editor will indicate he/she would definitely like to publish something of mine I've placed on my website. I am almost always quite agreeable to that -- I do insist that it be published in total -- and usually it's published as promised. But sometimes it is not -- and that's very galling. I also had the experience once of being asked to review a film, Mississippi Burning, for a cinema journal. I wrote it carefully, sent it in -- only to be told that it wasn't written as per the magazine's "style."
My response to failure to publish as promised is to have little if anything more to do with to the journal in question.
A somewhat related problem lies in giving oral histories. I have done a number of these and almost all have turned out very well indeed -- since the interviewers were well trained and experienced professionals -- and, at the least, pretty knowledgeable on the topic. In all of the foregoing, the interviewer sent me a typed draft of the result for review purposes. You've read my very long interview for Civil Rights Movement Veterans that's both on my website and that of CRMV. That was done carefully by the webmaster, Bruce Hartford, thoroughly experienced in both the topic and the art of interviewing.
But in another instance, I gave someone, a well meaning Northern amateur historian, many interview hours on Mississippi but never received the expected typescript for proofing purposes. The result was a mess of errors -- of which misspellings were the most minor dimension. I strongly suspect the person hired someone to transcribe it and never really checked the outcome.
In the 1930s, James T. Farrell, an Irish American writer out of Chicago, and a top literary person, made a pronouncement well known to this day. " Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write." To that fine statement, I would add, "or change my style of writing."
A writer -- whether fiction, non fiction, or poetry -- has to be absolutely true to himself or herself on all fronts. Otherwise, a writer's Art takes a heavy negative hit. (On the journalistic variant, newspapers sometimes do have their basic style but good journalists will, of course, maintain the complete integrity of their work -- and also get much of his or her style into the piece. In some instances, usually not poetry, an editor may want to make a few very minor changes, e.g., sentence structure -- or suggest a little rewrite. That's not too unusual. But if major changes are involved, don't hesitate to stand your ground -- fast and hard.
So Keep Writing. You are a fine thinker and you write very well indeed. If I can be of any further help at any point, let me know. Need any more sage? We can send all you want.
Our very best to all,
Hunter Bear
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE (Mississippi et al.):
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm
See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
See my new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)
I received a letter today from a much younger Native relative -- an aspiring writer. He had carefully written a solid piece on a very timely topic. He was promised by an editor that it would be published and a date was even given. But it was not published, and no explanation was tendered. He wrote to me for my perspective on these kinds of things and I responded. We have poets and writers on our discussion lists -- and comment on all of this will be very welcome. (H)
As always, very good to hear from you. You sound fine and we're basically OK here in the Snake River country.
I am very sorry to learn of your disappointing experience with ____________,(a Native publication.) Unfortunately, these things do happen every now and then in the course of one's writing. I've done a good deal of writing, of course, and have found that, in about 85-90% of the time and instances, editors are OK, some just fine. If a person submits his or her stuff on a blind basis, one usually can't fault an editor if a rejection slip is the result. But I have had experiences where I have been asked to write something -- and have -- only to find the editor wasn't going to run it after all. That can be a little angering. And occasionally, an editor will indicate he/she would definitely like to publish something of mine I've placed on my website. I am almost always quite agreeable to that -- I do insist that it be published in total -- and usually it's published as promised. But sometimes it is not -- and that's very galling. I also had the experience once of being asked to review a film, Mississippi Burning, for a cinema journal. I wrote it carefully, sent it in -- only to be told that it wasn't written as per the magazine's "style."
My response to failure to publish as promised is to have little if anything more to do with to the journal in question.
A somewhat related problem lies in giving oral histories. I have done a number of these and almost all have turned out very well indeed -- since the interviewers were well trained and experienced professionals -- and, at the least, pretty knowledgeable on the topic. In all of the foregoing, the interviewer sent me a typed draft of the result for review purposes. You've read my very long interview for Civil Rights Movement Veterans that's both on my website and that of CRMV. That was done carefully by the webmaster, Bruce Hartford, thoroughly experienced in both the topic and the art of interviewing.
But in another instance, I gave someone, a well meaning Northern amateur historian, many interview hours on Mississippi but never received the expected typescript for proofing purposes. The result was a mess of errors -- of which misspellings were the most minor dimension. I strongly suspect the person hired someone to transcribe it and never really checked the outcome.
In the 1930s, James T. Farrell, an Irish American writer out of Chicago, and a top literary person, made a pronouncement well known to this day. " Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write." To that fine statement, I would add, "or change my style of writing."
A writer -- whether fiction, non fiction, or poetry -- has to be absolutely true to himself or herself on all fronts. Otherwise, a writer's Art takes a heavy negative hit. (On the journalistic variant, newspapers sometimes do have their basic style but good journalists will, of course, maintain the complete integrity of their work -- and also get much of his or her style into the piece. In some instances, usually not poetry, an editor may want to make a few very minor changes, e.g., sentence structure -- or suggest a little rewrite. That's not too unusual. But if major changes are involved, don't hesitate to stand your ground -- fast and hard.
So Keep Writing. You are a fine thinker and you write very well indeed. If I can be of any further help at any point, let me know. Need any more sage? We can send all you want.
Our very best to all,
Hunter Bear
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE (Mississippi et al.):
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm
See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
See my new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)