Agents & Editors Recommend

Some writers, especially when we’re just starting to find our voices, believe that the best art is unfiltered expression, “pure” creativity. There’s something stereotypically American to me about that idea, how bootstrappy it is, ruggedly individual. I’m fascinated by the assumption that a mystical, uncompromising Pure Art could exist at all, but more than that, that it would be meaningful to anyone other than its creator. This must sometimes happen! But I see writing more like a bridge that we build to reach other people across a chasm of our different beliefs and experiences.

Try to maintain a balance between input and output. Whether writers feel uninspired, burned out, or overwhelmed—or they feel like every sentence they’re writing is pure gold—my constant refrain is, “Take a break. Do something that has nothing to do with this book.” It is ineffective and spiritually draining for creators (or anyone, really) to be in a one-way relationship with content; it’s so much easier to generate interesting stuff when you’re absorbing interesting stuff.

Be the change you want to see in the lit world. That might be volunteering for a literary journal or press to ensure that your underrepresented identity has a champion in the queue, or it might be requesting recent small press releases for acquisition at your local public library—many libraries have an online form for requests, and most are delighted to acquire the books their community wants to read!

In my opinion, writers should never worry about trying to explain anything. I’ve recently been editing Jeffrey Zuckerman’s translation of Carl de Souza’s fever-dream of a novel Kaya Days, which takes place during the 1999 riots in Mauritius after the death of the musician Kaya in police custody. The protagonist is a teenaged girl trying to find her brother in a suddenly broken city, and she just doesn’t have the vocabulary to make sense of what she’s seeing.