$50.00 to every person that comments (if that doesn't get your attention, nothing will)

Hello, all

I hope things are treating you as you deserve. As for me, things have been quite busy juggling jobs and school and writing, but I'm sure I've heard some sickening platitude about idle hands, so I suppose things are as they should be.

I have been thinking recently about how writers go about structuring longer pieces of work. I don't mean to exclude poets in this post, so I will do my best not to. Although, I find that, unless a given poet is writing the next epic poem this discussion may be found to be a bit irrelevant. The topic is how writers see longer projects to fruition. I'm sure we have all heard about the writers who outline every single detail of the story before actually laying pen to paper on the narrative, and I'm sure we are all, also, aware of the writers who say they just let the story dictate itself. Surely there are other ways to go about this, but for the sake of concision, I find it in our mutual interest to only outline the extremes. Personally, I find that having a good majority of the details regarding the piece (that is plot, character growth, intended symbolism, etc.) planned out keeps me on track. I have done some experimenting with the "let the text write itslef" way of wrting but I usually find that, although some interesting things may come from it, I fail to see the piece develop in a way which satisfies my expectations. Now, maybe someone would say that we shouldn't have expectations for our work, and that by establishing set parameters, we are limiting our scope, but I find that a clear sense of direction aids in the creation of a unified work.

On a seperate note, I have been troubled recently by how many creative writers, mainly English majors, who, upon my prompting that they should submit work to the magazine, become wary and self-defeating about their work. Now, I understand that even the most sure of us out there are still a bit anxious as to whether our piece will succeed in "hitting its mark",as it were, with an intended audience, but the difference is that we don't let it hold us back from submitting. I do realize that it doesn't help to say that the worst thing that can happen is that you get rejected, because that line of reasoning never really motivated me with women either, so all I am able to say is, imagine where your literary idol would be if he or she never took a risk . . . simply put, they wouldn't be your literary idol, because their works would have ended up lining a bird cage somewhere. So, in short, if you are worried about the editors shitting on your paper, just think about the alternative . . . some mindless creature could be shitting on it . . .and by that I mean members of Sigma Tau Delta. Hey-oh!

As respectfully as I deem necessary,

Eric William Strege