Desme Hewson 🖊

Hot take: Publishing isn't actually slow. It just involves mountains of difficult, invisible, and often thankless work that is not an author writing a manuscript

What do I do when my submission has been rejected... x100? Hello wallow my old friend (to the tune of “Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel). The poems you had envisioned speaking to editors seem to have left them cold. Key word: *seem* How to handle rejection - a thread:

I have been talking about this sentence construction in various group texts for an entire day and I refuse to stop talking about it anytime soon.

I had a similar resume when I moved to Manhattan. First NYC publishing job paid $30k in 2015. I knew assistants at other imprints making $20k. Took 4 years (and switching companies) to get to $46k, still below my previous salary in Portland, OR.

I spy @TruckLesbian 👀

language rules. love to communicate meaning and intent

In this comic, Sólveig Eva asks: "How much talent has gone uncelebrated because we feel entitled to women’s work?" Read more 👇 (1/4)

thinking about this piece of writing on mary oliver: “oliver never wrote as if grief and mourning were choices we could make, but she did write as if freeing ourselves required a kindness we couldn't choose alone. she wrote as if we didn't have to be kind, alone.”

If I sound like a broken record, so be it.

This poem by @VChangPoet blows me away:

Leaving this here for all poets & peers staring at a draft which may be brilliant or else a pure POS, and how tiring the wiring of the mind sometimes when risking things in language. 🖤 How W. S. Merwin ends "Berryman."

Wendell Berry for your Monday:

If you ever wanted examples (but anon, of course) of why publishing is the way it is, why people will continue to leave, & why it’s so hard for those of us who remain to change things…look no further than some of industry sources quoted in this article publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/in…

“To say a work of fiction is unrelatable is to say ‘I’m not the implied audience, so I refuse to engage with the choices the author has made.’” —Matthew Salesses

I say this with love in my heart: Every time an author says "My book doesn't have any comps" I think one of two things: 1) You don't read very much, do you? 2) You haven't done even the most cursory of websearches on your topic. HERE'S HOW TO FIND YOUR DAMN COMPS:

@TruckLesbian None of the above! That’s a jumping spider.

narrowed it down

"i need to stop thinking about the news and personal dread, i need to just chill out, ground, and get ready for my next meeting," she thought, as she lifted her favorite coffee mug to find a gigantic terrifying spider inside

As requested, here is our thread from earlier as higher contrast versions with alt-text

If you have the privilege to meet with agents or editors before you decide who to work with, one of the most important questions to ask is what books they think your work is in conversation with - something wise @ginathechung taught me (she teaches me everything fwiw). THREAD