Writing for Readers, not Writers

Fiction writing seems to be something that everyone and his dog is engaged in these days. Firstly, about twenty-five years ago, the arrival of the word processor meant that anyone could two-finger type out a novel, print it and send it off to unsuspecting agents and publishers. Secondly, the establishment of the Internet has spawned a plethora of journals, zines and communities full of people writing fiction. This has produced a polarization in the fiction market. At one end - the most densely-populated end - are the non-subsidized print and Internet literary journals. Despite their best efforts, the vast majority of these seem to exist for the sole benefit of writers - there are precious few people who subscribe to these zines just to read them. For the most part, they are filled with writing by promising beginners and intermediate writers. At the other end of the spectrum lurk the subsidized literary and American University journals. They have deliberately striven to dissociate themselves from the 'writers' journals and have been criticized for being elitist, narrowly "MFA-Literary" and nigh on impossible to get into.

The problem is, there seems to be nothing in the middle: nothing to cater for fiction that is neithersafe and rule-abiding on the one hand, nor elitist and establishment on the other.

What does this mean for fiction writers first entering the market? Initially, they develop fast. There are so many resources available to them. Developing short-story writers move swiftly from beginner level to intermediate by joining on- or off-line writing courses, or getting peer reviews in well-established writing communities such as EditRED.com, and often go on to enjoy plenty of success. The non-subsidised journals publish a lot of new fiction, but they answer to the needs of all the other developing writers of fiction.

The irony is that as these writers, encouraged by their initial success, start to believe in themselves and hone their skills. They begin to dig deeper and reach for other ways to express themselves through their writing, only to discover that they have outgrown the market that nurtured them through their development. They have simply become too good, or too challenging for the majority of online journals. However they may not yet be good enough, or well-connected enough or "MFA-Literary" enough to be picked up by the top literary journals, which are ultra-competitive. So even though their fiction is of a much higher quality, the rejection letters start flooding in.

What options are left to this ever-growing group of fiction writers? Should they dampen their literary ambitions, prune their "heavier" stuff and return to the safety of the journals they began with? Or do they continue trying to get their best work into the elite journals and accept the struggle with zen-like determination knowing they could spend years trying to place their best stories, while the ones they churn out as a matter of course garner publishing credits with relative ease?

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