Ephemera Newsletter Iss March.3

(Creativity and Motivation Weekly)

Welcome to the Ephemera Newsletter, do'stlar! (Uzbek for “friends”).

Dear Readers,

We have a few announcements:

• This week’s letter is pay-walled.

• Reminder: Now Publishing Poetry (Deadline for the May issue: March 31)

  • Ephemera will be publishing poetry in each issue w/ a $200 honorarium. For more information, please see our post outlining the details. Or:

• Indie Author Shoutouts: We want to promote indie writers and their projects. We’ve opened a free to submit portal on our submittable page to receive applications for our Indie Author Highlight. We’ll select authors on a rolling and case by case basis to highlight their work, projects, and any accolades in one of our free issues. We will wait until we’ve received a sufficient number of submissions and the timeline for our first featurette is TBD.

Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo, Xiè xiè.

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Ephemera

The writing world is a tough economy…more people join the creation component than join the reading component it would seem, even fewer join the paying-to-read component, and that leaves us all in a place of low economic potential. Artists should create absent the pull of economics; it’s often asked of creators to exist within a baseline of purity in this regard. Even if we aim toward economic success, the odds of getting there are slim. We write and create because we must, fundamentally, because it’s our interest, it’s an expression of self as pure as we can muster. For this reason we laud new approaches to publishing, to decentralization that expands opportunities for eyes if not also funds. We need a robust space. We need new verticals. The more that exist, the theory goes, the greater the pull on new readers, the lowering of barriers to entry. Hence, poetry reemerging with younger generations, hence flash writing’s growing popularity—quick reads compete relatively well with videos, songs, and clips. Oh economies! Let’s lend some brain space as an industry to these ideas. As individuals, let’s consider the utility in short, medium, and long works, ways of lowering barriers to entry. Let’s recommend reads, deliver free tidbits, bolster new endeavors as well as old, and engage in our field with vigor and open-mindedness.

The music industry frequently debates the changing economic landscape (something we follow for insight into where writing might go), and artists in the field work hard to be reachable, consumable, but also meaningful. This week we visit a musician, Angeline Morrison, who research’s historically submerged voices and writes them into the British Isles tradition of folk music with beautiful affect, and lovely homage. We also explore one of the all time most well known photographers, Annie Leibovitz, how she learns her subjects (i.e. researches) and fills portraits with extra-real detail. Our economical list of 3s: 3 zines, 3 awards, 3 recent job postings. We direct you to more of the-future-is-here-ness with an article on technology as it relates to telepathy. Books too! While we all exist in a culture and in an economic reality, let’s consider how those pressures might make their way to our voices, our characters…

Characters can be economically motivated—the Russians, Austen to an extent, effectively involve these base-line considerations. Yet, sometimes we distill our written folks & voices into avatars of emotion that behave in ways too-useful. Economies intrude! Pressure toward consumable novels means details must be eschewed, verisimilitude winked at. We end up delivering a reduction. This can be useful, of course. Neither every poem’s ‘I,’ nor novel’s tertiary character need be hyper-dimensional. But we’ll certainly want to at one point or another explore a character as complexly as possible at least in our notes and treatments—maybe we write pages and pages of not-intended-to-be-used exploration; events, motivations, diary entries, dialogue, thoughts, actions, physicality and economic necessity. Remember that voices and folks make choices to pay bills, achieve larger ends, or simply fill their bellies. Work happens. Money motivates. And what lovely perverse incentives we might deliver to our texts! What drama or even triumph! Or low down shenanigans. Or middling malaise. Of course emotions motivate, but don’t forget the money. Follow it. Feel it’s weight. It certainly intrudes in the lives of we the creators. Let it infiltrate the ranks of our pages as sinister or promising. Maybe a push-pull fraught mix of both.

Minnatdorchilik!
(Gratitude)

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~We’re so happy you’re here!~

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Poetry at Ephemera (March 31 for May)