I attended the wonderful Sewanee Writers’ Conference earlier this month, and in the packet for fiction writers I found a note offering the opportunity to meet with several book publishers, editors, and literary agents that would visit at different points during the 12-day conference.

As far as I know, there was not such a note for the poet participants, and very few poets attended the panels, Q & As, and the individual meetings held in tiny book-lined rooms so dim you could hardly discern the features of those hip New York visitors. It soon became apparent that many of us fiction writers didn’t belong at such presentations and meetings either.

In case we missed the large flashing-red billboard posted all over the mainstream publishing industry: SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS DO NOT SELL. At Sewanee, hopefuls, including myself, still attended some of the editor panels; we still met with agents. If we didn’t have a novel, these practical folk told us, “Talk to us when you do.” And if we said we weren’t interested in writing a novel, that we prefer the short form,  they looked at us blankly. Were we crazy? Why would we not want to write a novel? Why would we not want to make money?

Wait. Money? Really?

Actually, many of the editors and agents were sympathetic – they loved short stories. One editor asked a room of perhaps eighty of us, “But who here has actually bought a short story collection in the last year?” When every single person raised his/her hand, the editor laughed. “Of course,” she said. “You’re writers.”

Maybe we should just admit our kinship with poets: that like poems, short stories are likely only to be read by other writers and aspiring writers; that our short stories aren’t marketable in a large way. And why should the goal be to write for a large audience? Will we be able to take the risks we want to take, write with the edge we want to write with, if we also wish to please everyone?

Is it so bad to be read only by other writers?

Although the publishing industry visits the conference, Sewanee is ultimately a place for artists – for writers to really feel like writers: to talk, sleep, and eat writing with no outlet for miles. And doesn’t everyone know that despite those flashy few living in penthouses and employing personal chefs and bodyguards, there are a lot more starving artists than rich ones?

Therefore, I was surprised by the number of people at the conference who really did have hopes of making a career – a livelihood – out of writing. Some were in the midst of putting off kids and traveling and other life-dreams until they “made it.” Until they could quit their day jobs. Until they proved to people in their life that writing wasn’t a silly hobby. Until they reinforced capitalist ideals that money is all that matters. Until they had an agent, a publisher, a book front-and-centered in Barnes and Noble.

What burdens to put on an artistic spirit.