all the shit mama has learned being published & being an editor

1) this is not definitive; so not really all the shit

2) mama will not be all postmodern & not number or mis-number shit

3)the 1st 2 are life lessons which should be learned by all, writers & non-writers alike

4) you will publish your book. it will be like giving birth or getting really high or the unbelievable sensation of getting really high & giving birth AT THE SAME TIME.

5) there will be peeps that care about your book & there will be peeps that don't. you will be friends with both.

6) your book will probably not make any kind of list. at first, at least.

7) there is always hope.

8) if you are a woman, you will be called a female author. it reminds you of MTV. it reminds you of jock culture, rape culture, football.

9) there is a relationship between #6 and #8, sometimes. hell, a lot of the time.

10) you still love your press & any press that puts out unknown peeps.

11) sometimes presses will publish books by peeps with clout. some kind of clout. or cloud. maybe they pulled that cloud out of the sky that i wanted to give you.

12) mama understands that (#11). when mama was a poetry editor at a university lit mag, mama was proud of getting to publish the "big" (recognizable) names... mama was even more proud to publish the peoples whose poetry did the new things, tho.

13) sometimes the new things are the old things to some people & then sometimes the new things are incomprehensibly new

14) mama thinks when the new things come from women the world has no way to categorize these new things. they are not like BECKETT; they are not like GENET; they are not like JOYCE; they are not.

14+) mama was not gonna try to get all political-y, but notice the race+gender of these experimental masters

14++) someone will say well, there are others...

14+++) & there are, like Kathy Acker, like Gerald Vizenor, like Octavia Butler, like ? (who is being taught now as experimental); this is not meant to be an indictment of race+gender in terms of experimental writing. this is just to show that mama, by some lucky whim, encountered some not totally white+male experimentalism

14++++) there is MAGICAL REALISM but it is magical & it is magic; don't touch it

14 something) yeah, magical realism has found a nice niche in academia so touch it all you want, mom & dad. & OULIPO, grope the fuck out of OULIPO, mom & dad. do it. they want you to. as long as you obey their rules.

15) what mama was trying to say is experimental writing by women is often overlooked or devalued or ignored

16) what else she was trying to say was that she loves all the presses who have taken a chance on her... she also loves all the women out there writing the things that are new & edgy & exciting & uncategorizable & please keep doing it. all you brave women writing.