Dear Readers,

When we launched Waterwheel Review, we were keen to explain why we were so moved and motivated by the image of the waterwheel. Water stands for language, an ever flowing, renewable source; the waterwheel, an engine of labor, circles through, lifting words and then dropping them back into the running stream. Our magazine is a mill, we said, where the waterwheel powers writing and publishing. “We want—and need—to make things.”

For a couple of years, now, we have known that we can’t make enough of our own things while we give so much energy to the work of others. We have had to cut substantially the time and attention devoted to our own writing, and mostly we have been glad to do it, determined to find a way to repay our own work in the end. We never did find that way.

If we could quit our jobs and earn that income publishing this magazine, we would take that deal in an instant. But that’s not the world we live in. For many, many months we have known this, but we couldn’t accept it until now. And thank goodness for that.

Every single issue of this magazine has been a wonder that transported and enchanted us. We can’t say we gloried in every moment. We read or edited or built the site at times while sick, exhausted, grieving—that’s the nature of any publication. But we damn well gloried in every word, every paired image and sound.

Four years and thirty-six issues: What an honor to publish our contributors. What a privilege to offer stunning work to our readers. We must use the word pleasure, too, always rolled out to accompany “honor and privilege,” but pleasure isn’t strong enough, nor is gratitude nor joy nor blessing. For once we find ourselves at a loss for words to express precisely what it has meant to keep this waterwheel turning.

Maybe this will do it: How many times does anyone ever fully achieve the glittering, half-glimpsed vision floating above; that winking, flirting piece of art we ache to manifest? For the three of us, precisely this once.

We will keep making things and so will you. We started this magazine with the image of the waterwheel and a Jean Rhys quote, and we will end in the same way, as we thank you for reading and submitting, and wish you and yours all the very best:

Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl

September 1, 2024: Waterwheel Review will stay online for the foreseeable future. It remains as it looked for the final June 2024 issue.

Waterwheel Review

Literature Without Labels

Archives for August 2022

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Editor’s Notebook: The Power of “I”

Editor’s Notebook: The Power of “I”

September 2022

Rakotz bridge (Rakotzbrucke, Devil's Bridge) in Kromlau, Saxony, Germany. Colorful autumn, reflection of the bridge in the water create a full circle

I like to use this feature either to peek behind the editorial curtain, as when I put together a piece on our favorite issue quotes last May; or to revisit and celebrate a previously published piece (as I did here). I look forward to doing both of these things in the coming months, but as September 2022 arrives, opening the door to the glory of our third season of Waterwheel Review—I almost can’t believe I just wrote “third” but here we are, our baby is still bouncing and beautiful, and I’m more in love with her than ever—I want to step more deeply into our process. I want to offer a peek behind the authorial curtain.

We three editors are writers, first. Our friendship community was forged by and for writing, and that’s still our primary focus. Through our decade together, we’ve used many tools to keep each other in tune with our writing lives. In the last year or so we settled on a very simple one to focus our writing energy: I-words.

We each chose an I-word to meditate on, hold in our mind’s eye, float before us every time we sat down to write. The word served as a reminder of what we wanted to accomplish with our writing and in our writing lives. Why an I-word rather than some other letter? I can’t remember but as I write this post, I’m thinking Suzanne, who I’m sure suggested this exercise, was clever to choose the one letter that also happens, in English, to constitute a word that stands for personhood. No surprise she’s the nonfiction writer among us. She thinks deeply about the “I” every time she writes.

We chose Ignite, Integrate, Intend.

Did it work? Like any tool, yes and no. I’ll just speak for myself and admit that I have until recently done very little writing throughout the pandemic, and the smallness of my efforts was beginning to take a very serious toll. More and more this year I was feeling the way I always feel when I go too long without writing anything of substance—fractured, unfocused, uninterested. But I pulled out my I-word here and there, opened a Word file … and, eventually, what do you know. Ignition. I am now fully immersed in a writing project conceived while meditating on my I-word, and, as always before, my almost daily writing practice is my salvation.

And now here we are; the Maine sky has begun to take on that saturated blue of September, and there’s a hint of chill in the morning air. I do relish opening the door to this third season. We’re back! And we need new words.

We are writers, first, and by necessity. Our drive to discover and spotlight fine, moving, unique work is born entirely of our reverence for every aspect of writing as makers. This project of crafting art with words … we just can’t get enough of it. But it’s clear to all of us that the wheel has to keep turning. If all the water flows in one direction only, under and through the wheel, from us and into the magazine—none lifted by the turning blades, none coming back to us—then there is no replenishing and the source runs dry.

In renewed understanding of how important it is that we nourish ourselves and each other as writers so that we can step up with enthusiasm and energy as editors, I suggested we select new I-words for our new season: Our 20th or so season as writers, our 10th or so season in writing community, and our 3rd season as co-editors. All—writing, community, editing—linked and replenished by the waterwheel.

Our new words: Invent. Invest. Intensify.

Welcome to Season Three.

—Claire Guyton

By

From the Editors | Issue #19

September 2022

From the Editors

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. —Stephen King

three middlge-aged women taking a selfie

In Issue 19 a song goes to the moon, the night becomes the jealous watcher of a cat—“black skim of spine and sleek head”—and the phrase “scarred bell and brain” captures a lifetime of fractured relationship. Heidi Kasa, Rosemary Jones, and Ted Mc Carthy usher in this third season of Waterwheel Review with textured, lyric work that speaks to what time eventually takes—our ambition, our health; but reminds us, too, of what remains from one generation to the next, from one civilization to the next, to give us meaning and purpose. Reminds us? No. Celebrates. This issue’s guiding quotation—“Time takes it all,” says Stephen King—works like a sad song that lifts us from grief because it makes us sing. King’s words tell us to stay in this moment, this art. Be present. While you sink into that sentence and the next and the next … there is no time.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl 

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We’re in our third season here at Waterwheel Review, and we couldn’t be happier. But we have big dreams. Right now we have two ways—in addition to being an author or maker—to be a part of our labor of love.

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