About a year ago, I got a project submission to the What’s Your Project? project — Four Hundred Words. I thought it was a great project, and posted it. This project was a little different from most of the others in that it requested submissions from people. I’ve tried to express in the guidelines that if you open it up like that, please be sure to have something at least partly established (beyond the “just an idea” phase), and be pretty darn sure you’re going to see it through. But as the publisher of the site, I have no idea if something will actually get completed. And, hey, that’s just the nature of project-making — projects don’t always work out. Any project-maker knows that (and I include myself in this lot, most definitely). But how wonderful it was to check in on the Four Hundred Words site recently and see that the Four Hundred Words book (issue 1) was done and published and available for sale. And even more wonderful was ordering a copy and having it arrive in the mail — what a wonderful, insightful, creative project. Congratulations to Katherine and all those who participated.
Following is a short interview with Katherine — I checked in with her to discuss a little further what the project means to her, how she took it from idea to printed book, and what inspired her.
The Four Hundred Words idea serves as a sort of writing exercise, but what else is it to you?
First, a way of connecting to other people. That’s been the most rewarding aspect so far. Doing Four Hundred Words has gotten me in touch with so many people I wouldn’t otherwise be. And it’s funny: most of the contributors are people I’ve never met and only communicate with by e-mail, but it turns out that that type of connection can be powerful in its own way. Like the serendipity adds something to compensate for the face-to-face parts.
Second, it’s a learning exercise for me. I’ve always been obsessed with magazines, and most of my ambitions lie in the direction of writing, editing, print media — with a special soft spot for independent outlets. Given those interests, it seems like a lot of the knowledge I’m picking up doing Four Hundred Words could be useful down the line: soliciting bookstores, working with contributors, the printer, doing layout and building a website. I’m learning a lot in a really haphazard and hands-on way, which is fun.
After seeing all the submissions, were there some common themes that were revealed?
Sure. I saw a lot of love, sex, work, family, different kinds of struggles — as expected. What I didn’t expect so much was the recurrence of moving as a theme, literally uprooting and going from one place to another. Most of the authors talk about some kind of move to a new city or country, and a lot of them really structure their pieces around moves. The attitudes about moving vary, too: moving is everything from traumatic to bittersweet to triumphant to just a part of life, a given. The people in the collection lose and find themselves through moves. I think it’s neat, the way that the collection seems to show this one facet of modern life, our transiency, having a big effect on people, or at least on how they choose to tell their life stories.
What was your inspiration for the project?
Being 22 and 23 a couple years ago and having no idea what direction to point myself in after college. Feeling simultaneously mind-boggled by all the choices supposedly out there, and demoralized by the setbacks: like the way that a 4-year degree didn’t protect me from not being able to get a coffee shop job in Portland, OR in the 2002 economic slump. I became keenly interested in other peoples’ life stories, like maybe there were answers in there somewhere for me.
How many 400-word pieces do you think you’ve personally written?
Five? I played around a bit with lengths when starting the magazine. I knew I wanted the pieces to be short but not too short. So I wrote 600-word pieces, 300-word pieces. Four hundred just seemed right. So then I tried writing my 400-word autobio a bunch of times, but telling it differently each time: the happy version, the sad version, the just-the-facts version…
How did you get people to submit to your project? What advice do you have for those folks out there that are trying to put together their own writing-based projects that involve soliciting submissions?
First, I bugged all my friends, personally and through postings on Friendster, and that paid off pretty well. Second, which worked even better in terms of volume, I made a lot of posts on Craigslist. Over the course of a few months, I advertised on Craigslist in about fifteen different cities. And people actually wrote in! I’ll never forget how exciting it felt to log into my Four Hundred Words e-mail address and find the very first submission, which was a good one to boot. Eventually, I got a few hundred that way.
For the next issue, I’m going to try those two methods again, and also take out a classified ad in Poets & Writers magazine.
What book/writer/publisher/publication has most influenced your own writing and publishing efforts?
I remember being a teenager and first starting going to local indie rock shows. The culture of the shows and the sense of community really attracted me. I wanted to get involved, but even then I was aware of having zero musical talent. I was good at writing, though, and I fantasized about a world where small, local publishers could do for writing what indie labels had done for rock, where the culture of writing and reading could approximate the culture of music…
Over the past five or six years, I’ve noticed things trending in the way I dreamed of then. Writing will never be rock ‘n’ roll, but I’m fascinated by the McSweeney’s phenomenon, and its many spin-offs: the books, the tutoring centers, The Believer. Authors have gone on book tours for a long time, but lately I’ve noticed writing-related tours undertaken with a more celebratory and collaborative spirit, like Found Magazine’s tours, or the Projet Mobilivre/Bookmobile Project, whose coordinators pilot an old airstream trailer full of zines and artist books to workshops and other events all over North America. That kind of innovation excites me — new combinations that make print culture a more immediate and communal experience.