Writing this first Letter From the Editor took me three-and-a-half days: longer than the time it took me to complete my senior capstone project, for the biblical Jesus to come back from the dead, and the time frame Rome was not built in. I went back and forth debating whether I wanted to establish what Pretty Good Pieces is all about — or tie a common theme between this month’s pieces — or introduce my role as the new editor-in-chief — or this, or that, or something else entirely.
A master’s degree involves a great deal of writing. It’s what I love about graduate school (I never have to take an exam again). I didn’t realize, though — until writing specifically for an audience — how much I’ve stunted my own ability to work with the written word.
The older you get, the more daunting it becomes to submit to editors, agents, publishers, and even friends: in middle school I wasn’t thinking about profitability or Amazon reviews. There was no critic in my head blocking out the stories I wanted to tell with nonsense about sentence structure and whether my vocabulary struck the right balance of erudite and accessible: I hadn’t read enough Hemingway, just yet, to worry about whether or not I’d ever be him.
Maybe the best of my work lends itself to that uninhibited quality with which I’ve lost some touch. This experience doesn’t seem to be unique to me.
A comma here, a question about a plot point over there. Even when you’re wrong, the “editor” label carries a weight that — depending on the culture you create — can intimidate writers into submission. You have a right to make mistakes, granted by seniority, that a brand-new beat reporter might not. Editing is easy.
The people who subjected themselves to perception, and possible revision, are the real heart and soul of Pretty Good Pieces, and each one brought a different voice to this edition.
In Aidan Koch’s “A Tower No Longer,” you’ll find the first installment of a riveting three-part fantasy adventure. Kaylin Corotis thoughtfully reviews Netflix’s “FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.” Alongside three deeply reflective poems between Mir Lawson and James Snell, whose subjects range from gardening to finding humanity in the most mundane places, you have a terse and gritty short story from novelist Reece Caven — beside Kaspar Relaford’s candid account of attending a Waldheim concert.
These students have created the Pretty Good Pieces I have the privilege of presenting this October and set the bar for all future editions. More personally, they have shown me how much fun writing can be when it’s not brimming with citations or journalistic jargon — they’ve motivated me to submit to next month’s edition and dip my foot back in the water I shook off when I pulled my fiction books from print.
I am extremely proud of what they have created together, and beyond excited to continue overseeing the monthly circulation of Pretty Good Pieces. I’ll see you again in November.
—EJ Haas, Editor-in-chief
