The Crucible of an Audience
12:41 PM – On self-taught writers and the crucible of an audience:
Once I have my anthology scored, I can compare it with Best American Essays (2024/2025), at least in terms of “composition quality.” I definitely think it’s possible (we only have to get higher than a 3.7).
The mystery to me is, how is this possible? How is it possible that a bunch of self-taught writers can put together better essays than people with English degrees, MFAs, and status badges from being featured in notable magazines?
I have a guess: the independent writers who operate in the free market of readers has more incentive to improve. They publish, get instant feedback, and publish again, either a week or month later. They have total autonomy to evolve their topics, their forms, their voice. They need to put in the work to make something great (it’s not enough to get a commission, and to make it good enough to live in the magazines). What the independent writer has is more feedback, more speed, more freedom, more stakes.
Compare this to the writers who swarm the literary institutions: they often get no feedback, publish maybe only a few times per year, have to conform to the house style, and the magazines carries all the stakes. There is a staleness that comes from being disconneted from your readers.
So even if literary writers have something like a 5 -year head start, self-taught online writers have a higher slope, and can far surpass the average MFA graduate in terms of ability. (And this is without any kind of formal independent writing education! This is a good reminder/anecdote for me to remember in terms of my curriculum/texthbook/app).