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

Editor’s Notebook: Happy Anniversary, Sinners!

Editor’s Notebook: Happy Anniversary, Sinners!

November 2022

abstract painting that resembles a scary face with long nose, big hoolow eye, and snarling teeth in orange and teal colors

Cheryl, Suzanne, and I first came together as a team in 2012, when we co-created the essay series “7 Deadly Sins of the Writing Life” at Hunger Mountain, the literary journal published by the low-residency MFA program we all attended at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Cheryl and Suzanne wanted to explore the ways in which we writers are beset by SIN as we make a writing life. What writer doesn’t struggle with Envy and Sloth? In the context of the writing life, what is Lust, Gluttony, Wrath, Greed? Does Pride inevitably lead to shallow work? I was an editor at Hunger Mountain, looking for creative nonfiction about the writing life, so they pitched their idea for the series, and we got to work. Long, detailed work. Work enriched by email threads that digressed into countless personal anecdotes about the trials and tribulations of our individual writing lives. We responded to each other’s personal stories with empathy, shared our own parallel or contrasting experiences, and offered advice. All the while hammering out thoughtful, creative essays about how to play with the notion of writing-life sin as a way to develop better, more fulfilling writing habits.

At the end of that intense collaboration, we were a bonded writing community of three. That earned faith in each other has sustained our writing lives ever since, and gave birth to this magazine in 2020.

To celebrate our 10th anniversary of that life-changing project, we’re re-publishing the essays in the final 7 months of our third season of Waterwheel Review, each on the first day of the month to coincide with a new issue, from November 2022, through May 2023. I’ll tease them here each month, and you’ll find the essays at our new site, 7sinswriting.com.

Today we’re publishing the introductory essay to the series, and the first SINFUL essay, “Envy.”

Here’s my favorite part from the introduction:

Traditionally, stories about the deadly sins were meant to teach sinners how to travel through a long trial and back to virtue after a fall from grace. So too does a fall from grace exist in the writing life. The difference I see, is that the path back is not one toward virtue, but toward the work of writing.

And here’s my favorite part of “Envy”:

Despite its potential for damage, Envy carries a perk. The sunny side of Envy is that it shines on what we most want, which can be a valuable time-and-sanity-saving device in a writing world so bloated with opportunity to submit, subscribe, post, apply, and enroll. Most of the time I click “like” on Facebook, there’s nothing more to it than that. I like it. But if Envy bites while I click, I want it.

If you’re reading this post, you’re almost certainly a writer. If you’ve ever felt an envious pang at a writer friend’s accomplishment… you’re like every single writer who has ever existed. Likewise every other selfish, sinful impulse that falls under the 7 Deadly umbrella of dark thoughts and deeds. Welcome.

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

—Claire Guyton