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Archives for March 2023

March 30, 2023 By Claire Guyton

Editor’s Notebook: Mad and getting madder.  On writing Wrath.

Editor’s Notebook: Mad and getting madder. On writing Wrath.

April 2023

digital art of a stream of fire spitting out from the left toward a cloud of smoke

I’m very sorry to say that I can’t remember the last time I lived three days in a row without being angry. And usually not just angry. Furious. I bring it on myself, and I’m going to have to keep it up because my work depends on it.

The book I’m writing was birthed in righteous anger. Writing the rage allows me to make meaning from it, maybe even art. But to tell the truth about all that anger, I’ve had to study it. Even wallow in it. And I wonder, as I push on, how much Wrath can writing—good writing—contain? Given all this focus on my own fury, I knew I’d read my co-editor Suzanne’s meditation on Wrath, the penultimate essay in our reprised series, 7 Sins of the Writing Life, in a wholly new way.

When my fiction is inspired by anger, as soon as the story takes hold of me and demands to be written, I rise up and away. The fire can no longer hurt because I experience it as empathy for the character I’ve created. When I worked with Suzanne on this essay ten years ago, that’s how I understood and experienced Wrath in relation to my writing and writing life. But my current work; this outrageous business of writing about my own life… well.

I do not rise. The fire hurts.

“[A]s I think about how Wrath acts—a blind, chaotic, and unstoppable force—it alarms me,” says Suzanne, “that should it go unchecked in our writing lives, it could destroy much more than just our writing.” That alarms me, too. “If we let it, Wrath can steal energy from writing, break professional connections, and destroy nurturing personal relationships in the writing community.” Yes, it can! Shall I tell you how I know that? Another time, perhaps.

But: “Productively using Wrath is like burning the underbrush to prevent a forest fire.”

While my work turns me into a rage-archaeologist, digging around in the dirt of my childhood for the evidence that my Wrath started there (it did, yes), I ask myself how to tame the energy of all that anger, how to avoid stoking it for the sake of the page, how to ensure I keep telling the truth even as I burn. So far, the best answer? Learn from the writers willing to show the way.

Are you writing Wrath? Do you avoid writing Wrath? Take a look at what Suzanne and the writers she consulted have to say about this all-consuming writing-life Sin.

And just for fun, here are my two favorite songs about anger. I took breaks to listen to both as I wrote this post:

Next month, when we publish our final issue of the season, we will complete our essay series with Pride.

May you indulge and enjoy all writing sins forevermore. And may you write well today.

—Claire Guyton

Filed Under: Editor's Notebook

March 1, 2023 By Claire Guyton

From the Editors | Issue #25

March 2023

From the Editors

Time is how you spend your love. —Nick Laird

Often we move too fast to think about how we’re spending our time. So we make ourselves slow down. And we discover how much time we spend in love. With family, friends, the call to write. In love with this, our magazine. Issue #25 puts us into the home stretch of our third year, here at Waterwheel Review. We slow down to savor Caroline Simpson’s ode to aging male mentors, teachers, and fathers, “Old Men Love Me.” Then we sink into Sara Ries Dziekonski’s homage to grandmothers, diners, and good waitressing, “How Simple Steps Become a Dance.” And finally we allow ourselves to be led by Marie Antoinette, in Elizabeth Sylvia’s “Ars Antoinettica,” into a meditation on lucky accidents of birth—another reminder that we are three of the most fortunate women alive, every day doing work we love.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl 


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Filed Under: From the Editors

March 1, 2023 By Cheryl Wilder

Who made it? Issue #25

Who made it?

March 2023 | Issue #25

With “Old Men Love Me” by Caroline Simpson

engraving/etching of two Passenger pigeons, one--with brown and light teal feathers--on a top branch bending down to feed the other--with blue wings and head, a rust red belly and throat--on a lower branch
Passenger Pigeon, 1838, print: etching and/or engraving, 41.25 x 29.12 mm, by John James Audubon.
oil painting with large brush strokes of stone bench between two brown tree trunks, in front of a stone fountain with shades of brown grass
The Stone Bench in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital, 1889, oil on canvas, 51 x 24 cm, by Vincent Van Gogh.

With “How Simple Steps Become a Dance” by Sara Ries Dziekonski

“It Only Takes a Taste” by Sara Bareilles and Jason Mraz.
50s diner with green chairs, blue tables, red barstools, and miscellaneous brick-brack on the walls and shelves
Diner Nostalgia Retro by Michelle Maria.

With “Ars Antoinettica” by Elizabeth Sylvia

Prince & The Pauper clip via Andreas Deja.
Marie Antoinette, a white upper-crust English woman with blue eyes and pink rosy cheeks, wearing a white Muslin dress with ruffles around the collar, a large gold bow tied at the waist, a large sunhat with a gray plume and bow, holding a pink rose
Marie Antoinette in a Muslin dress, 1783, oil on canvas, by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.
digital art of a silhouette of a person standing and looking up with a background of red, orange, green, blue blending together with what looks like start and a milky way
Untitled by Greg Rakozy.

Acknowledgments

Background photo of elder men via Italy Magazine.

Background photo of red hearts on black background by RODNAE via Pexels.

Filed Under: Who made it?

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