My First Day on Fictionaut
[Kirsty Logan / March 7th, 2010 / Random Meandering Thoughts ]Like a mouth-breathing, crotch-rubbing, bulge-eyed stalker, I have long admired Fictionaut from afar. But I’ve always felt that it’s slightly out of my grasp. Fictionaut is for proper writers; ones with pro sales and chapbooks and story collections and maybe even – gasp! – novels. Surely I was not ready for such glory.
Ready or not, when I received an invitation from the ever-surprising Beate Sigriddaughter, I jumped all over that hot little Fictionaut profile without stopping for breakfast. That was eleven hours ago, and I’m still staring at its pages.
I’ve posted a story. I’ve replied to the comments on the story. I’ve commented on a few strangers’ stories. I’ve joined groups for magazines I like and made a group for my own magazine. I’ve added a few friends, who aren’t really friends as such but more writers whose writing I admire and who I can kid myself that I actually am friends with if they appear on my little list marked ‘friends’.
Fictionaut makes me feel like an astronaut, a cosmonaut: like I’m seeing things that I haven’t seen before. I feel special, like I’ve won something. Technically speaking, I have seen everything on Fictionaut’s pages: I’ve seen literary fiction, I’ve seen poetry and flash fiction and disconnected paragraphs. I’ve seen work offered up for critique and writers’ bios and photographs. But there’s just something about the way those lovely white boxes and Georgia font look on my laptop screen. They match my MacBook, for heaven’s sake, and I can’t be expected to ignore that.
I particularly like to refresh the main page, just to see how many people have looked at my story. I don’t know whether anyone has actually read to the end, or if they have all just clicked on it, read the first line, then clicked back in disgust or indifference. But I like to imagine that everyone has read to the very last line, then sat back and thought something interesting.
I’ve been fiddling around with Fictionaut all day, and I feel like I’ve been busy. But is it all just timewasting? Should I have been actually doing some writing? Probably. I tell myself that networking is very important, and that makes me feel better. And then I refresh the main page again.
***
It’s a few days since my first flush of Fictionaut love. I still read and comment on stories, and I’ve posted some more of my own work. I’ve noticed that the submissions to Fractured West, the magazine I co-edit, have improved in quantity and quality.
I’m still not sure whether Fictionaut is just another social networking time-vortex (see: Twitter, see: Facebook) that I will obsessively lurk around, wasting time but calling it work. I can say that some of the writing I have seen posted on Fictionaut is better than work I’ve seen in literary magazines. It’s better than work I’ve seen in books published by large publishing houses. Some of it is genius, some of it is crap, and some of it is probably amazing if I could only understand it. I read Fictionaut more avidly than I read any other magazines or websites, and I feel more connected to it; maybe because I feel like I know these writers. I don’t, obviously, but the tendency of comments to turn into dialogue make me feel like I do.
Because that’s what I love best about all this social media – the blogs, the status updates, the trackbacks. I love when people comment on one another’s words. I love dialogue. I love that people are responding to the thoughts of others.
I don’t know if you can identify, fellow fiction writer, but I sometimes feel like I’m talking to myself when I write. Sure, my words are flitting out into the vast world of the intarwebs, but does anyone give a shit, really? Or maybe it’s all just so that I can assure my girlfriend that yes, I am working, not just drinking tea and staring at TweetDeck. I trip over my own thoughts all day and finally corral them into some sort of order, and I feel that is progress. I suppose I do think about blogging as writing a diary; sometimes I forget that other people do actually read it. At least, I think they do. There are so many words out there and no-one can read them all. If we did, we would have no time to write our own words.
Anyway, PANKsters, give me your thoughts. Are we all talking to ourselves?
[...] this article by Kirsty Logan at the Pank Magazine Blog on her experience with joining the Fictionaut group: Some of it is genius, some of it is crap, and [...]
nice to have you at fictionaut, kirsty
i’m spending more time in the private workshop group in fictionaut, really getting amazing help from generous writers/editors
i am trying to limit my time checking yahoo e-mail, fictionaut, facebook, etc. i closed my twitter account. facebook is something i’m grappling under control now. i only let myself check it 1-2 a day. it’s way too easy to sit on there all day being snarky or “funny”.
Dave, I’m trying to curb my infomania. My mum has just moved to a house in the country, and I’ve decided that when I visit her I’m not taking my laptop or checking email on my phone, which means that about once a month I’ll have no email/Facebook/Twitter/Fictionaut/blogs for a weekend. It seems like a small step, but for me it’s a big deal.
I’m also trying to resist the urge to feel that I have to ‘catch up’ when I get back. I don’t like to feel that I’ve missed anything, but really, if something is that vital then someone will email it to me.
Also, Yahoo email? Get yourself on gmail, mate!
I can totally relate. I don’t get out much and I live in an area that is quite remote from any place bustling with literary activity (is there such a place? In my mind’s eye I always see all writers except me hanging out in bars and having the greatest time and talking literature all night. The sad truth I thing is that most writers sit home alone trying to type something that makes some sort of sense…) so on line networking is pretty much a must for me because without some sort of a network in Literaryland you are never going to sell your stuff. So no, it is not a waste of time and no, you are not talking to yourself because people read. People comment. It is as you said: there is actual dialog going on.
The downside of it all is: whenever you’re twittering/tumbling/facebooking/blogging/fictionauting you are not writing… But I don’t know about you, but I would find plenty of excuses (guitar playing, calling friends, electronics soldering, reading, etcetera, etcetera) not to do any actual work without social networking so I can’t really blame the web, now can I?
I also feel like all other writers spend their time having scintillating conversation out in bars and cafes while I’m sitting at the kitchen table and staring at my laptop. I think everyone feels that way. I do have writer friends, but my girlfriend gets annoyed because when we hang out with them we just talk about books and writing all the time and I’m sure it’s very boring for her. Like when she hangs out with her musician friends and they talk about guitars. Yawn.
I disagree that you need a network to sell your writing. I’m sure some of the big-shots of indie publishing find it easier to sell their work, but I don’t think it’s vital to “be someone”. Most of the writers I’ve accepted for Fractured West haven’t published before (or have published very little and aren’t well-known names), and I’ve had to reject plenty of comparatively well-known writers. I should clarify that I think they are very good writers, but the stories they’ve sent haven’t been quite right. Maybe it depends on where you’re trying to sell your stuff, but I (perhaps naively) believe that editors judge work on its own, rather than in terms of the writer.
It would really bother me if I thought a magazine accepted my story because they recognised my name, rather than because they loved the story. I don’t think I have to worry about that at the moment, though!
Also, electronics soldering? That interests me.
Yes, magazine editors (I used to be one as well) generally judge the work in itself but getting a gig as a reviewer or a columnist is more complicated than that I think. Also, when selling a book it pays to use your network to avoid the slush pile. Or maybe I’ve just been ruined by my former career as a corporate rat
About the electronics: I’ve been trying to learn about them by building something called a ‘cigar box amp’ out of an old intercom unit so I can play my electric guitar without firing up the old 1,000,000-watt tube amp. The project (which is very time-consuming and therefore perfect for procrastination) is now at a standstill because the cigar box fell to pieces when I tried to cut the speaker hole…
I’m a guitar player as well as a writer and I can talk about literature as well as name guitar brands all night if need be. Maybe I should come to your house and act as a diplomat
‘Writers are procrastinators, and the internet is an easy scapegoat.’ So very true!
I know that’s true, I just don’t want to admit it. For small, non-paying magazines (like mine) it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve published. But I know it’s impossible to get big publishers to read your novel if it’s not sent via an agent, an acquaintance of the publisher, or another writer. I suppose because Scotland is so small, I sometimes forget how big the rest of the world really is!
I would LOVE a weekly or monthly column but as I’ve been writing journalism for all of five minutes I don’t think it’s likely. Still, maybe next year.
This might sound silly, but couldn’t you just glue the cigar box back together? Or get a new cigar box and strengthen it with little strips of plywood before you cut it?
I’ve decided to try and get the electronics working first and then decide what to do for a case. I might make a new front for the box or go for a 1 euro cookie tin…
Me too. I signed up for it, got very excited, published a few things, and promptly became crippingly self-conscious about my net Internet use. I started doing a computer sabbath on Wednesdays. This helps. I’m now re-organizing my computer attention, and I have to fit Fictionaut into that new shuffle. Good luck to all the screen-starers!
As an aside to Bekker: Jonathan Franzen wrote in the Guardian that no one writing on a computer connected to the Internet writes anything worthwhile.
Computer sabbath? I wish I had such self-control. I just can’t get past that feeling of missing something vital, even though I know that’s ridiculous.
I completely disagree with Franzen. The internet is not a shiny new toy built to distract us. The internet just IS, and everyone (writer or no) needs to learn to live with it. If it wasn’t the internet then it would be books, or Call of Duty, or playing with the dog, or True Blood, or washing dishes, or the Sunday newspaper supplements. Writers are procrastinators, and the internet is an easy scapegoat.
I do a lot of my writing in Gmail actually, including my pieces in PANK. In fact, I haven’t written anything when not connected to the internet. Recently I’ve started nearly everything on my cell phone with its tiny little thumb keyboard.
Kirsty, no need to feel intimidated on Fictionaut. Just don’t get overwhelmed reading people’s responses to matchboook’s discussion questions. There are plenty of regular folks on there, myself included.
I console myself that if I was on Fn (or anything else) instead of writing, then I probably wasn’t ready to write yet.
Which is why, in the first draft stage of anything, I turn off my computer and go old school with a fountain pen and a stack of A4.
Would you be willing to send me an invite so I could join the community too? : ) It looks excellent!
- Kaitlyn
paperbirdsong@yahoo.com
Your website is utterly lovely, and I enjoyed the preview of One Six Billionth – it reminded me of zines people used to write and photocopy and post across the world before everyone had a blog.