KILL YOUR JOY FEED
I complain a lot about the media — editors, magazines, journals, newspapers — and what have I done about it other than reject it?
For almost a year now, I have sworn off pitching any stories anywhere. I have withdrawn all book samples and query letters from agencies. I think the publishing world is thoroughly rotted. I think it’s become a popularity contest based on twitter numbers and hashtag trends. I think too many publishers, editors, and agents have become increasingly beholden to overly polished and fleeting trends than to risk in art. There are outliers, sure, but the Internet has turned the world into a small town and when I open organs like The New Yorker or The Atlantic, the voices are almost always indistinguishable. This should bore us all. I’m not saying I’m the antidote, but I refuse to take part in that watered-down, corporate, idealogical literary-ism.
The Joy Feed is the best way I can think of maintaining some type of, let’s call it, amorphous column/publication — that I can beam directly to you. I do not want any middlemen between what I create and those who read it. I want writing to be like painting. All brush strokes and mistakes visible — if you look close enough — but no one’s sterilizing it for fear of audience patience, or advertising, or, as George Carlin called them, “the moral commandos.”
I hope to make The Joy Feed a weekly project. But, as I find my rhythm, it might be more and it might be less — depending on what each piece demands of me time-wise.
One downside to shunning the publishing world is the money lost. It made up a good deal of income in 2019 when I was fortunate enough to publish at least one story a month. I will be working, for now, with a pay-what-you-want model. I will have to do the icky business of asking those who might appreciate the work to donate via venmo/cashapp/etc… Your donations of any size would be greatly appreciated.
The goal is to collect each month’s writing into a physical copy and sell those through Vulture House Press. Those readers that might sign up for a paid subscription service will receive the physical copies as part of their help.
I promise to be ruthlessly honest with you. Even if, at times, my honesty might disappoint you. There will be warts. There will be risks. There will be things that you will disagree / agree with. There will be turbulence. There will be debates. Art. Observations. Personal essays. Interviews. Fiction. Poetry. Historical narratives — and maybe even videos — I’m open to anything. I want The Joy Feed to be a vessel for all the things I’ve dreamed of writing at all the publications I used to care about.
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The Joy Feed, as a phrase, is an idea I’ve been throwing around for a few months now.
The Joy Feed, outside of this project, is what I’ve been calling the lens through which we see the world and the depths to which these lenses, our world-views, are created/distorted by social media, newspapers, magazines, and TV. It is the umbilical that feeds us the information that forms our opinions, thoughts, relationships, fears, etc…
Your personal Joy Feed confirms you biases — your propensity for doom, fear, and paranoia, all of which create a sense of faux-joy — joyful that you are correct about all the ways the world is bad and good.
We all have Joy Feeds to varying degrees. I think one of our biggest problems as a society, if not the biggest problem, are the competing Joy Feeds that have distorted any sense of a shared reality. I aim to deconstruct plenty of examples of the nefarious schemes at work in our Joy Feeds.
I hope you’ll follow along as I learn to develop this experiment.
I will also take any submissions for topic ideas or articles you’ve read that you’d like me to address @ shane.cashman@gmail.com.
Thank you,
Shane Cashman
