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

By

Writer’s Notebook: “Sink or Swim”

Writer’s Notebook: “Sink or Swim”

Published January 2021, Issue #5

abstract seagull a couple shades deeper than the sea background
Sea Glass in oil on canvas by Sandra York.

Reader, I need you to understand me, because my co-editors do not: The presentation of a Waterwheel Review issue—the text-boxed excerpts from the three new publications, the companion pieces and background images chosen to appear with each, the quote we hang over them all—is available, in all its homepage-scrolling glory, for one single month only.* The publications remain at the site, of course, and we have archives depicting the original homepage triptychs. But that issue’s presentation, and the homepage experience of it? Gone forever. This is painful for me. It’s why I spend so much time on our homepage. I scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll. And scroll. 

For my co-editors this quirk of our publishing model is entirely a source of joy. The coming loss just sweetens the experience of a “live” issue. Yes, sand mandalas. Yes, The Wisdom of Insecurity. I know. I know. Knowing doesn’t erase the strange little pulse of heartache I feel when an issue gets replaced. 

The sense of loss limning the almost giddy bloom of happiness that overtakes me when I get the text—We are live!—can only be soothed in two ways. (1) A marathon of new scrolling, of course. (2) A visit to the Archives page to be reminded of former scrolling-love. I start using that second strategy at least a week before the new issue goes up, and always as my thoughts leap from the new pieces about to be published to the ones that live on our site already, one former publication will jump out and demand new attention. That’s the piece I settle on for a Writer’s Notebook.

Heather Diamond’s “Sink or Swim” is the perfect last-season companion to Issue #12. In our editors’ note, we called this issue a meditation on human connection, which is exactly how I feel about “Sink or Swim.” Here’s a note from Heather on her inspiration for the piece, and the process of pulling it together:

“Sink or Swim” did not start as a triptych lyric essay. It grew from fragments and juxtapositions as well as my background in folklore studies. I wrote the last section first, the part about a children’s dilemma game that I remembered playing with other girls. Working with the details in that scene reminded me of a stalled essay I’d written about teaching in which I had described a similar dilemma I’d used as a classroom exercise. When I juxtaposed those scenes, I realized they shared water settings and were both about deciding whether to save a partner or a child. That was when I connected them to a discarded section from my memoir in which my daughter and I argued about life choices and blood ties. From there, the mother/child theme took over through the extended water metaphor as I considered “how water sings to blood” and the what-ifs and consequences of the choices we make when it comes to love. In the final edits, I rearranged the panels to “sink” backward to childhood and linked the sections by adding the subtitles. In writing as in life, some choices choose us.

In my first two Writer’s Notebooks, I included notes on companion pieces we considered but didn’t select for the publication I spotlighted. I won’t do that here because I have to use this opportunity instead to get more eyes on my favorite companions in Season One, a video (see below) that still makes me gasp, and a painting (see above) by Sandra York, a friend of Heather, that captures perfectly the feeling of “Sink or Swim.” Enjoy!

https://finland.fi/life-society/magical-ice-skating-video-from-northern-finland-wows-viewers/
Clicking on the video will take you away from the Waterwheel Review website.

All my thanks to Heather Diamond for helping to soothe this month’s heartache, while adding another layer to the thrill of new work. 

–Claire Guyton

*Excepting the May issue—that one was up through our summer hiatus (and I very much enjoyed all the extra scrolling).