Last week I got an email from a local high school student who wanted to know what she needed to do to get published…

My name is XXXXX XXXXX and I am a student at Meadowdale High School. As a senior you are required to complete a final project of your choice. I have chosen to see how a student writer can become published. I have always enjoyed your paper and I was curious if you publish any amateur essays or work? I’m sure you are very busy but if you have any information of help you could give me i would greatly appreciate it.

I responded on the Slog…

Does The Stranger publish amateur essays or work? Every damn week, XXXXXX. Shit, do we publish any other kind?

As for seeing how a student writer can “become published,â€� well, there are lots of ways to make that happen. You haven’t taken any abstinence pledges, have you? That could make your path to publication more complicated—not at The Stranger, of course, where we absolutely, positively do not have sex with 1. high school students, 2. wannabe freelancers, and 3. high school students. But the annals of literary history are packed to the rafters with stories by and about young people—male, female, intersexed—who gave their careers an early boost by putting out.

I never responded personally to XXXXX, figuring she would see the Slog post and figure her pitch was a non-starter. The path to publication in The Stranger doesn’t wind through homework assignments. But this morning I got another email from XXXXX. She’s upset that she hasn’t heard from me. Things are getting dire. She needs my help.

Dear Editor, I hate to keep bothering you, but I must. At the end of this project I have to present in front of a bunch of younger students. If I end up finishing this project without getting anything published then honestly I look like a complete idiot. I have 2 different essays completed already. The first one is about my worst fear which is living a normal life. Here is a little excerpt:

My worst fear is living a normal life. A normal good guy husband whose sensitivity or thoughtfulness is show rarely with a bouquet of 14 dollar roses and a box of chocolates from QFC. Who comes home from his 9-5 job that he hates, tired, frustrated and heading straight for the fridge to grab a beer. He retires for the night watching ESPN while I sit alone, ignored waiting for something more….

It is about a four page long essay.

The second essay I have is like a word play essay. It is a little off the wall and not really even a real essay at all. An excerpt:

Give me what I want forgetting what I need. The two are never the same and the result is deep unfulfillment but shallow gratification. I long for something which eats at my insides and exudes on my outside as a hollow being of un-reached expectations.

Okay listen if you think these both sound lame then it is fine and I completely understand. But if by some miracle you actually want to give me a chance then I am more then willing to do anything. You could even give me a topic of your choice and I would write about it. Thank you again, XXXXX

Some thoughts…

While XXXXX’s writing samples aren’t bad—I see worse submissions every day—it’s not the kind of writing we generally publish in The Stranger. But by tossing up XXXXX’s original letter I was, in a sense, publishing her work—on our blog. Wasn’t that enough?

I suppose not, because here she is again.

I’m really not sure, as an editor, what to do about this second letter from XXXXX. (Besides tossing it up on the blog as well, of course.) We get a lot of pitches from writers that want their work to appear in the paper. But when writers tell us why we should print their stuff, their pitches usually mention the alleged brilliance of the writing or the originality of the idea. Never before have I had been confronted with a pitch like this, a pitch grounded in my apparent obligation to prevent this particular writer from appearing foolish in front of her classmates.

If we do publish XXXXX now, what will she have learned about the “path to publication”? When in doubt, resort to emotional blackmail? That non-school papers have a responsibility to publish student work? That her homework assignments are somehow the responsibility of every newspaper editor town? That she was owed this?

And yet… XXXXX is persistent, and that can move a writer a step down the path to publication. But being persistently annoying, however, can move a writer two steps back. We have, nevertheless, decided to give XXXXX a chance. We are assigning her something—the assignment was Schmader’s idea—and if she can turn the assignment around, XXXXX’s work will appear in next week’s paper.