I Dreamt I was Eating My Shoe

They said it was good for the sole

But first, let me tell you a story.

I’m an editor for ILLUMINATION, and the work is insane. Right now, there are 150 articles in the submissions queue. And eleven more, over in ILLUMINATION-Curated, our premium publication.

The oldest article in the queue is five days old, but there are multiple notes on it for things like images that haven’t been captioned to show a legitimate source, problems with the title, severe grammar issues, and so on. No response from the writer, and if they don’t fix the problems we’ll have to send it back.

Most articles are only a few hours old, and every now and then there’s a concerted push by the editors to catch up and clear all of our submissions.

A cry for help

I was alerted by a post to our Slack group — in our help channel — from a writer whose story had been submitted some time ago and they were getting anxious. I went and pulled it up.

It was twelve hours old.

But it was a great story. I corrected a few minor typos, published it, and suggested that it could be submitted to ILLUMINATION-Curated because it was very good. Thoughtful, useful, well-researched, covered new ground, engagingly written. I loved it!

And then I thought about a poem I’d submitted to another publication a few days back.

A slow day on Medium — several slow days, actually

It began when one of my fellow editors wrote a poem and asked for input. I made a couple of suggestions, none of which were implemented, but it got her thoughts flowing and she made a couple of changes of her own accord.

Poetry is an intensely personal and subjective writing activity, and as an editor I usually handle poems very carefully. I don’t want to tramp all over someone’s vision because I think the grammar’s a little wonky. Sometimes poetry works best with unconventional styles and phrasing, and it’s always an intimate piece of the poet’s mind.

I liked the poem, its theme, its imagery, its execution. See for yourself:

But poetry is a personal thing, and I wondered to myself how I would handle the topic.

I’m more old-school, and I like to chuck a few rhymes in. Make it more structural, rigid, concrete. Less like the loose and free dream that Geetika evoked.

I scribbled out some doggerel, and I thought, well I might submit this to a publication for creatives, where it will be universally loved and admired, and thousands of readers will look at it.

That was four days ago.

So far as I can tell, there’s someone publishing submissions, but the latest is two days ago, and my 75-word poem hasn’t been published, hasn’t received a note, hasn’t been touched. No criticism of their editorial staff, because I don’t know their situation, how much they work with the writers, how many stories they have in their “slush pile”, but still I can’t help but contrast with ILLUMINATION, where it is a rare piece that lasts a day without an editor looking at it and either publishing or requiring some action from the writer.

ILLUMINATION writers have it so good

That was part of the original vision. No more stories hanging around for days. A place for writers to be read. A place where diversity and inclusivity were welcomed. A place where communication and synergy — like multiple writers riffing on a theme or a prompt — produced a whole more than the sum of the parts.

Yes, sometimes we hold stories for more work, and sometimes we reject them completely — there’s a bench on the Hades railway platform reserved for plagiarists — but by and large we get stories published and we try to get them into the best possible shape. We have dozens of editors spaced out around the globe, and there’s always a few at work.

We get the job done.

Here’s my dream poem

It’s a draft link, so members can leave private notes. It may be that it’s just so awful, too blatant a theft of Geetika’s ideas, too full of bad rhymes to be publishable.

And again, no criticism of the publication to which I submitted. I know they do good work, they have high standards, their stories are all excellent and you should totally go over there and give them some love and you will be all the better for the experience. You will walk among the stars.

We have a different vibe here at ILLUMINATION and while we do reach some pretty amazing heights, our focus is on giving emerging writers a place to shine alongside more experienced creative souls. It’s more of a writing convention than a literary journal, and (I think) a lot more fun.

Update 1 October 2020

It’s been nine days. No action. The publication is still publishing poetry. Do they have a huge backlog or what?

Update 4 October 2020

Thirteen days and I give up. No notes, no rejection, no nothing. I’ve published it in a different publication, one with a far quicker response. You like it, let me know. You think it stinks, likewise.

Britni