Opening a Literary Magazine and a New Year
A student reflects on his experience working with his peers to create a new publication
While the unpleasant year 2020 came to a close, my classmates and I were working away to open new doors in the shape of the literary magazine Raptor Lit. We’ve spent the past few weeks learning what it means to be a lit mag, and soon we’ll be putting our own out there into the world. Everything goes by quickly at my college; classes last only 6 weeks, and I’ll be graduating soon, too. Putting together a literary magazine during that timespan has been an exciting and sometimes arduous endeavor, but one that I’m proud to have been a part of before I graduate.
Really, it’s been a lot of fun. As a Creative Writing major, most of the work has been right up my alley; analyzing and discussing published pieces was the first step, and it’s always a great time talking with my peers about creative work. We were even able to bring in some writers to discuss their pieces!
Looking into other literary magazines was the next step, and it was reassuring to see just how many are out there. I managed to find a few that I liked personally, which I’ll have to read again and perhaps even submit pieces to. Soon after, we found ourselves reverse engineering a lit mag of our own, soliciting work, and sending out social media promos. On the 21st, our debut issue will release, and we’ll be reading our submissions then, too. I’m proud of how far we’ve come.
The Good
One of the most exciting parts, for me, was working with such a passionate team. It’s not every day that I get to collaborate with a large crew, nor one as enthusiastic as the folks at Raptor Lit. I truly enjoyed discussing pieces and ideas with them, as well as seeing which ones they chose to present, and I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing their work.
Another fun part of the process for me was sending out solicitations. I’m quite bad at keeping up with people, and solicitations made for a good reason to get in contact with some people I’ve not spoken to in a long time. I was also thrilled to actually see a response from someone who I didn’t know and reached out to for a submission. Plus, it feels good on all sides to present and be presented with an opportunity to be published. Having a door opened to you is an exciting thing.
That’s another aspect of this whole process that has stood out to me; starting this literary magazine is experience in my career field. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to write, and in my senior year I’m finally learning how to be a writer. I think that working on Raptor Lit has not only been fun, but will help me to push my writing career forward as well.
The Bad
Not everything has been easy, however. As I mentioned before, everything at my college goes by quickly, and that goes for this endeavor as well. Having only a few weeks to learn about an operation like a literary magazine, and to then recreate one, has to be the biggest challenge I faced with this project.
During that short span, my peers and I had to learn not only how to create the required frameworks, but also how to navigate around things that we didn’t like in other magazines, and how to embody our ideals as a group. It’s also difficult to solicit submissions in a short amount of time, as people are often busy and might not have something ready off-hand. The time crunch has been the biggest hurdle for us, in my opinion, and some of these challenges are difficult to navigate through regardless of deadlines.
The Lessons
Everything said, I think I’ve learned a lot from this experience. I came into this class knowing what literary magazines are, at the very least, but I didn’t have the slightest clue how they work. Now, I can say I do know that editors select pieces rather than just edit them, that there are varying internal hierarchies that can have multiple levels of reading, and really, how hard it is to get these operations off the ground. I’m delighted to have discovered the range of writing and literary magazines there are out there, from magazines that look for one genre to those that accept everything; from those themed around video games to those on mental health. I’m glad to have learned that opportunities are everywhere, and that I can make them too.
