Editor ’ s Note
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F YOU HAD asked me during my MFA whether the world needed yet another lit mag , I probably would have said “ no .” There were already so many that no one could read them all , and getting published in one carried less career weight than it used to . Few paid . Yet here I am , years later , with the help of only a few dedicated volunteers , editing another brand new magazine . What changed ? I had already known that every lit mag inescapably derived from its editors ’ aesthetic , and that there were , at least in theory , as many aesthetics as there were editors . But in practice , as a submitting writer , I found that most publications took an “ anything goes as long as it ’ s good ” approach on their submission guidelines . Nevertheless , these publications exhibited , as they must , a specific editorial taste . So why the ubiquitous “ send us your best work ” instead of something more narrow and , dare I say it , more honest ?
My best conjecture was that editors wanted to be surprised and to publish something they wouldn ’ t have expected to fit their definition of “ good .” But I wondered if that hurt more than it helped , leaving writers submitting every which way to see what , like spaghetti , ended up sticking . ( I still believe there exist too many lit mags for one to get a sense of every editor ’ s aesthetic by reading them all , and since many have rotating mastheads , this becomes impossible regardless .) Instead , why not attract submitters to magazines likely to enjoy their work ? For editors to articulate their aesthetics in detail would better pair them with writers of similar vision .
So the degree to which a new lit mag can contribute to the literary landscape is not one of quantity as much as of quality . As long as a magazine has both a unique aesthetic and a strong articulation of it , writers gain an opportunity to seek aesthetic compatibility and not yet another blank wall at which to hurl their proverbial spaghetti . The Quiet Circle ’ s website describes our aesthetic in as much detail as possible in hopes of achieving this end .
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