On Writing as the Antithesis of Therapy

"I did not look on my work as therapy, and still don’t. . . it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate if from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain. (158)" 

From "Notes" by Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried

Literary Journals

During a craft talk at my past residency in Forest Grove, Marvin Bell advised students to subscribe to at least five literary journals a year. He suggested students chose a couple new journals for subscription each year, but advised keeping the list at five in order to actually read what you're paying for. I've heard this described before as "good karma." If you want to get published in literary journals it's naive (or snobby) to think that will happen without actually subscribing yourself.

So here's what I'm into. And here's what I'm getting into.

The past year I've discovered and purchased/subscribed to these (click on cover for link to website):

Now, I subscribe to and anxiously await issues of these:

And it probably doesn't fall into the realm of journals, but I've been a New Yorker subscriber for over a year now. I like the stories, but I really enjoy the essays each week.