TEV tips me to smart words from Junot Diaz--speaking to The Wall Street Journal, no less--on how new voices can get heard. I can't resist quoting him at length. But go read the whole thing, why don't you?
"God bless perseverance. Because it's not easy. A young person, or someone who's writing in a different way -- in some ways you could say, eventually someone will find them. Eventually someone will hear them. But it's good a lot of young people persevere. Because sometimes you have to send something out a thousand times before anyone recognizes your value. ...
"One has to really trust oneself and one really has to persevere. Because this is not a society nor a business that's bending over backwards to reinvent its formulas. Sometimes you've got to reprogram them yourself as the artist. Reprogram the people that are controlling the gates. Otherwise it's not going to happen.
"...The one thing I can say is, your craft will grow. Your narrative muscle will grow. You can become an extraordinary writer. ... But I always ask my young writers to really interrogate how much what they're doing is about attention, how much is about approval. And that point Daniel Menaker raised today at the seminar, how much of it is really an attempt to communicate. These things often become confused. I think the desire for attention and approval disrupts the work of even the best artists. As young writers, the more you can resist the urge to just work because those are the things you want, the better your work will be. ..."
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