Blake Butler's Open Node Theory

I was over on Matt Bell's site, and he linked to a post on Blake Butler's site in which Mr. Butler listed some things writers and editors can do to support each other. Dan Wickett tossed in some thoughts, too, as did Matt.

Check it out: http://www.mdbell.com/blog/2008/8/2/blake-butler-and-dan-wickett-on-being-an-open-node.html

I would add this thought. Writers could support magazines by doing the following. Yes, of course, they should subscribe to magazines. But, they can do more. We all have people in our lives who have birthdays. Buy them gift subscriptions. Buy them books. My sister-in-law had a birthday in June. I bought her Paul Elwork's The Tea House. She's reading it and liking it. That's pretty cool. She would never have been exposed to it otherwise.

If you're an instructor, offer extra credit to your students for subscribing to lit mags. I do this with my fiction writers. They can earn ten points for subscribing to Hobart. Ten points can make up a missed quiz or a couple of journals. Many of my students go after these points, and I would say that Hobart probably has received nearly 50 subscriptions from this over the years.

This past winter semester, I ran into one of my fiction students at Meijers. As we talked, she mentioned that she had renewed (!) her subscription to Hobart because she liked it so much.

Now, that's really cool. I think Aaron Burch would agree.

As writers, we can do more to bring contemporary writing into the lives of people we know. We have obligatory gifts to give anyway . . . why not make them books and magazines -- especially books from small presses and obscure lit mags.