Marion Agnew

Dear Everyone Who Works or Has Worked at a Publication: Thank you for the energy you expend helping writers find readers. Thank you for making time, on occasion, to include a brief comment with a rejection. Thank you for your honesty, your care, your attention. Thank you, too, for the occasional reminder that you are as devoted to good writing as writers are. We may disagree about what constitutes "good writing," and that's cool. Artists can disagree about definitions while agreeing that art is important. Because of you, writers and readers can meet in (sometimes imaginary) rooms to discuss imaginary or re-imagined people. What a gift. Specifically, I extend gratitude to the readers and editors at the specific publications listed below. And because this post is not about me-me-me, the links go to the submissions pages of those publications, which writers should bookmark. Then, writers, browse archives to get a sense of their definition of "good" before s...

As part of my ongoing effort to evaluate 2017 and plan for 2018 , I'm meeting with folks to kick around some frustrations and ways to address them. By the way, it's really fun to do this kind of thing with word-people you trust. Maybe trusted artists in other disciplines, too. For example, we spontaneously invented a series of metaphors around snowfall to describe various stages of the creative process. Fun times. One of our discussion topics was how to distinguish between what is and isn't within our control, especially relating to having work published. In our control: researching and submitting. Not in our control: whether it's accepted. I've written about this before, many times , because it's basically rejection, one of my preoccupations. Also as part of the evaluation process, I'm reminding myself to be grateful to those who administer contests and keep publications afloat. Next week, I'll give specific shoutouts. Meanwhile, gratitude is on...

It's December in what has been a VERY busy year. Throughout the month, I'm looking back at the past year and looking ahead to what I want to do in 2018. Besides, of course, focusing on getting stuff done in that last-minute pre-deadline rush, the one I thought I'd grown out of when I was no longer taking formal classes. However. Deadlines and all that. One joy of this year has been playing around on Instagram. I don't do fancy stuff--mostly just posting the same "here's the view from the window" I've always enjoyed capturing with my camera. But I've posted fairly often, and recently I've been posting snow pictures; in fact, some of the ones I've also uploaded here. In any case, Instagram assembles the nine photos people have liked the most into one shot. Here's mine: It surprised me to see the photos from earlier parts of the year--even just earlier this autumn. Why? Because the landscape out EVERY WINDOW now is so very diff...

We had the first serious snow of the season yesterday. See? And a few weeks ago, I wrote about not remembering my jeans --how seasonal transitions require new wardrobes and remembering hacks from the end of the season. That whole process, going from not-remembering to "oh yeah," also works with mitts and scarves and hats. Just in case you were wondering.