25 December 2009

Merry Christmas

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Not much going on these past few weeks. We continue to read, read, read those submissions. Keep em coming. We started this business, so we could help discover emerging writers. Nothing makes us happier than reading something great from someone not yet known.

13 December 2009

So here's what I like...

So here's what I like and dislike about The Metropolitan Opera and the American Ballet Theatre and how they run their business:

1. Great marketing. Sexy ads and opera trailers. The marketing peeps over there have done a lot to make opera and ballet more appealing to everyone.
2. Combination of old and new: every year they show the old classics (La Traviata, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Nutcracker) as well as new programs.
3. Live HD broadcast of the operas to movie theaters. When will they have this for ballet??? I can't wait. Plays and other types of performance art should soon follow. I'd pay $18 easily to see a live broadcast version of anything out there now, Broadway or off, and I don't think it would cannibalize sales. I can't remember if I deleted this post or not - but for all the talent we have in this country - the thousands of people who are trying to make it in the arts - there's a surprising lack of stuff to watch. Or what I mean is that it's not very accessible. I don't know how many times I've gone to the movies and been unable to find anything I wanted to see. And I'm sure there's someone out there capable of churning out a hundred plays and screenplays to suit my sensibility perfectly. Someone who's dying to work and dying for an audience and who would give anything to just be given the slightest chance. It's a matter of someone facilitating that connection. Once that connection is facilitated, there will be many more opportunities for artists.
4. Educational initiative: I like that the operas are broadcasted for free to schoolchildren.
5. Affordability. $24 for a Family Circle ticket, $18 for the HD. Reasonable compared to the cost of martinis in this town.

Stuff I dislike:

1. Now I'm not sure what exactly is going on, but I know that ticket sales cover only half of their operating cost. The rest comes from donations. Is it really necessary to have costumes designed by Chanel or Valentino? Why not employ the services of emerging artists who are dying to have any sort of audience for their work? Why not make it a contest? Why not make everything a contest? It would be a lot cheaper, probably of the same quality, serve a good social purpose, and make for a leaner business. And contests are entertaining! Why not broadcast the contest? Open it up to the public? Charge admission? The surface area is endless.

Perhaps this is naive, but I just feel that if all the right minds came together, a good number of problems could be solved.

"Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." JFK said that. Growing up, I never had much of a reaction to that quote. Just lame inspirational bullshit is what I thought. I wasn't the kind of person who ever considered "giving back," community service, charity work, etc. I figured that was for people who were sure of themselves and their place in the world. I used to be one of those writers who just wanted to get published and win prizes. Like most people, I wanted recognition and validation, the usual human nonsense. That used to be my whole life. Then I woke up one day - it was literally that abrupt - and thought to myself, "Alright, this is really lame. There has to be more to life than obsessing over prizes." I still loved creative writing, but I didn't want to love it in the old way - the jealous boyfriend kind of way. Immature, selfish love. That's when I decided to become a publisher, to try and generate a system that would enable others and create opportunities. Honestly, it has been very good for me as a human being. It is a bit like having a child, I think. It taught me about responsibility and humility and forced me to get off my ass and work. I hold my temper now. I think before speaking. I watch my expenditures. I try to do a good job at work, a really good job. It's so oddly healthy compared to what life was like before.

So many things to do...

So exhausted. We have so much to accomplish. It feels endless. I guess that's part of the fun.

We have a movie-style trailer to make.

We have promotional cards to design.

We have the YouTube channel to start.

What Would Make Readings More Interesting II

4. Other art forms: I took a directing class where we staged versions of poems, set to music, etc. Poetry lends itself so easily to theater, music, visual art, dance... readings could easily exploit those connections more.

What Would Make Readings More Interesting

Christina again.

I shouldn't confess this, but where else could I? So here goes: I find readings a little tedious. This is strange because I used to enjoy being read to as a child.

Here's why I think this is:

1. I'm now accustomed to digesting words silently and quickly, so readings are a little slow for my taste. Call it a result of our times and my generation's inability to focus on anything for more than two seconds, but halfway down the first page, and I'm usually gone... Poetry still rivets me, especially when it's performed well, but I'm always lost with stories. Lack of patience? Don't get me wrong. I love action-less, atmospheric stories as much as any literary nerd - what I like to call "clinically depressed fiction of minor epiphanies" - but it's just slow. In undergrad, I always liked professors who lectured rapidly; the words just flew by; it was like scrolling quickly and I could get a sense of the overall contours of the argument. I loved the challenge of note-taking, getting the jist of things, scribbling fiercely to keep up. I guess my problem is that I love form (structure, beam-work, the outline of things). When I hear one sentence at a time, and I'm being read to like a child, it's hard for me to see the whole, and a sense of the whole is part of the beauty.

2. I don't hear anything familiar. As with classical music and ballet and opera and the Boston Pops orchestra, sometimes a few old favorites can energize the crowd. I think if contemporary poets recited the work of other poets - or famous poems which everyone is familiar with - that would help a non-literary crowd make a connection between what they studied in school and the work of contemporary American poets.

People who are going to attend a reading should be able to "request" poems the way you would request "songs" before a formal dance. How much more compelling would it be if before readings you logged into a site and requested your favorite poem to be read by a famous poet of choice? It would be cool to see what other audience members picked, too. That would be half the fun. If I enjoyed the event, I might even purchase a recording afterward.

And it wouldn't matter if some of the poems were a little cheesy - or not what we would call great art. It would be worth the increase in attention.

3. Not enough sensual delight. Okay, I know a million people will disagree with me, and it's probably cheesy of me to feel this way, but people today are busy... there are a million things competing for the attention of audiences... strawberries, champagne, wine and cheese, exotic drinks, and goody bags could go a long way... also, if readings were events where people cared to present themselves well... I don't mean in suits or gowns... but I don't know... masks or costumes or something, that would cast a sense of strangeness and excitement on it all. "All dressed up with nowhere to go" is a problem for many people. Just go on craigslist, and you'll see tons of women looking for "Sex in the City" or "Gossip Girl" girl friends. People want to go out and have a good time. They want life to be Romantic and glamorous. They want to dress up and have somewhere to go.

Recent News

This is Christina here. In case people didn't know, several different members of our staff blog here.

We're doing our best at this point to get as many submissions as possible. It's tough with this time of year because everyone seems to be consumed with paper grading. We saw a flood of submissions around August and September.

One thing I noticed: despite the femininity of the site (it's supposed to be gender neutral), we receive far more submissions from men than from women. Someone once told me that more men submit to literary journals in this country than women (but women still dominate other aspects of the publishing industry). I wonder why that is. Are men more confident about their work? Are they more aggressive about their artistic careers? Do they submit prematurely? It would be interesting to pursue those questions with research and hard data.