As some of you may know, I am the editor-in-chief of a small, almost unknown, completely new magazine called Survival By Storytelling. This magazine publishes writers 25 and younger. My co-editor is a teenager from Canada. Everything about this magazine is like working in an entirely different world, and for good reason: young writers are somewhat of a different beast.
Young writers are a varied lot. Some of them are mature, some of them are not, some of them are excellent writers prior to adulthood, and some of them don’t start flowering until their early twenties. Having a magazine that takes work for anyone 25 years of age and younger means getting work from all of these variations of young folk. Some of it is fantastic and some of it isn’t, but the stuff that isn’t often is the result of poorly developed (or undeveloped craft) rather than one’s inability to write. I remember reading for Survival By Storytelling and getting loads of stories that had great ideas, but stiff dialogue, or weak prose in some spaces, or a boring plot, but interesting characters.
And there is the problem. Because a lot of young writers are teenagers, they’ve never faced rejection, especially not for their writing. A lot of them have developed their craft in a vacuum either through sites that seem overloaded with praise rather than constructive criticism or through friends and family, or even a creative writing teacher. Most of them don’t know what it means to get a rejection letter, and some of them will take what you say to them as a personal attack. It’s like playing a game with feelings, because your words literally open wounds.
SBS, thus, became a way of helping many young writers (especially those from Young Writers Online) come to grips with the harsh truth of the writing world: you will get rejected…a lot. Almost every writer faces rejection, but learning about that young and getting some constructive feedback from an editor can help point out where one’s writing needs work and where it is strongest. A lot of the writers we rejected at SBS ended up getting personalized rejections to show them what we didn’t like; a couple wrote back and argued with us (hopefully even they learned something, but I suspect those that argued were the kinds of people that grow up and never listen to anyone, become bitter and grumpy about everything to do with publishing, and then go on to do even crazier things).
But on the more enjoyable side of this is finding that writer who clearly has the talent, but still is young-minded and needs a little guidance, a little push in the right direction. We had a couple situations like this last year and we ended up publishing several young writers whose work was good, but needed a little push. The stories we ended up with in the end are probably some of the best pieces in the magazine.
Young writers, to me, are a combination of the same and different. They have different ideas, sometimes because they are young and don’t know anything, but most of the time because they live in a world that is somewhat different from ours. They are occupied by different views of the same things, different ways of reacting to social pressures, etc. Not all of them are stuck in a bubble where all they know is high school; some of them see beyond that, or have things to say about youth, about living in a world that is rapidly changing, or growing more and more bizarre, technology-oriented, or unreal. Working with young writers is like working with anyone else: when you find the gems, it’s an amazing experience; but for my co-editor and I, those gems, the truly sparkling ones, were like striking it rich, because it was a constant affirmation that young writers could be great writers, that we were truly onto something with this whole magazine thing.
We’ll see how it goes, but working with young writers (not just reading their work, but helping some of them polish pieces we knew could be great with a little TLC or encouraging those with talent to keep submitting) was a treat.
Shaun Duke is a graduate student at the University of Florida studying science fiction, postcolonialism, and fantasy. He regularly blogs at The World in the Satin Bag and is the co-owner of Young Writers Online, a web community and writing workshop for young writers. You can learn more about Survival By Storytelling Magazine at http://sbsmag.wordpress.com/.
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What a fabulous mission! In some ways, all writers–at least the ones who stick with it–remain forever young writers. But outlets geared towards the chronologically young that don’t patronize them are a rarity and a service.
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