“All right, all right, all right.”
—David Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
I admit that I was more than a little afraid to cede the helm of The Best American Short Stories. I was ready— after 18 years, it was time. But the idea of no longer receiving a paycheck from a publisher— after having done so for thirty years— made me queasy. And irrelevance loomed. I pictured myself like that twenty-year-old still lurking around the high school with a faint whiff of beer on his breath, waxing on about the good ole days of Alice Adams and Edith Pearlman and Tin House magazine. (I am now reminded of Jamel Brinkley’s wonderful story, “Blessed Deliverance,” which appears in BASS 2024. This is one hell of a high school lurker.) I do think that Alice and Edith’s stories and Tin House have echoed forward and will continue to do so, but I digress.
It’s been about 11 months since I ingested 10-20 short stories almost daily. In that time, I’ve devoted myself to HPE, and as an anxious person, I may have overcompensated, as I now find myself busier than I’ve ever been, juggling way, way too much. It’s a happy problem, not even a problem, really, but something to get used to. BASS entailed one task for 95% of the time: reading stories. Now, I find myself working with two other editors to balance a growing list of clients, as well as planning The Breakthrough, a new and new kind of writing retreat with Michele Wildgen (of Tin House! I swear that’s not Bud Light on my breath), commissioning short fiction and essays for a variety of online, audio, and film clients, and many other things that entail a far larger variety and speed than I’d grown accustomed to.
Publishing thrives on a kind of prestige economy. Editors get paid in prestige, certainly not in adequate salaries (especially when one considers the cost of living in New York). There are far fewer jobs in publishing than people who want them, and the idea of publishing is worth a lot. Writing for publication is not all that different.
I seem to have stepped out of both realms recently, and again, it was frightening. People sometimes ask me what I’m writing, and I have to admit that I’m VERY loosely (read: infrequently at best) working on a memoir/writing book/nothing. The thing that I write most is this Substack newsletter. If I’m honest, I see that I don’t much want to return to what felt to me like the suffocating parameters of book publishing OR writing/publishing books, although I do want to help others do this. Maybe that is hypocritical or sadistic or something, who knows.
This is all to say that sometimes, stepping forward into the future and out of the present and past can bring fears of irrelevance, and disappointing others, earning less, seeming brash. None of us wants to be that high school lurker. I’m here to tell you that both capitalism and its attendant guard dog, conformity, conspire to keep us in our isolated holes, wanting more and never getting it. I’m here to say that it is possible to take stock of the positive and even prestigious things that one has done, thank the gods, and move forward and not only recreate oneself, but thrive on one’s own terms.
If this is irrelevance and old age, I’ll take it. I’m even letting my grays come in. I will say that I think this phase of life suits me. As does working for myself. I’m constitutionally a chicken with its head cut off, and so I’ll continue on spreading myself too thin, working directly with authors, and carving out my own strange path.
Wow. As a high school english teacher of nearly twenty years with an eye on possibly changing paths, this post hit me where, perhaps, I needed to be hit. Thanks!
Feel this so much, Heidi.