Taking Flight with Raptor Lit

To start a Literary magazine as I soon would discovered is a collection of many efforts. Honestly before I had a chance to help start “Raptor Lit”, I did not have much experience with any Literary magazines at all. So I first started where anyone would research, I looked up a few lit mags so that I could kind of get an idea of what they were all about.

The first and also one of the most important things that I searched for was the mission statements of the magazines I read from. I then compared it to the work that they published and for the most part I discovered that the work tended to reflect the mission statement of the magazines. That was something that really stuck out to me. The mission statement is the foundation of your Lit mag. It is the spine that frames the work that you publish, and it is honestly the best starting point for creating a lit mag because of that. Once you know your mission statement you know how you want your lit mag to be.

Another thing I researched was the Mastheads and the people who worked on the magazines to see if they themselves represented what was published. I was positively greeted with a group of diverse people of many different walks of life. You could see that the editors and staff were open minded and did not appear to have any biases that would prevent anything for being published in their lit mags based on personal beliefs or opinions. This was something that we all agreed would be we wanted for “Raptor Lit”. We wanted it to be as open and diverse as the many people who work on it.

As I stated earlier there was a good amount of us and that is something I would highly recommend when starting a lit mag. Not only did it make things easier coming up with ideas to help make improvements to the magazine. It also helped us make up for each other’s weaknesses. For example we talked about the possibility of group editors.

So what that meant was the ones who had talents in poetry would edit poetry and fiction writers would look over the fiction that would be submitted. Basically since we had the numbers we were able to put those who had the most knowledge on a certain genre of writing on it to edit it and look over it. Basically the more people you have the more knowledge and diverse talents you have to make your lit mag better.

One of the hardest things we had to do was to attempt to solicit work for the magazine. Now when we first started I did not really even think about us having to do this, I know it should have been common sense because the stories have to come from somewhere, but somehow it slipped through my mind. Now when you first start doing your recruiting you should be upfront. Give them info on your Lit Mag and what kind of goals you have for it.

I started with my friends and people I knew personally that wrote. They had never been published or anything so they were very excited for a chance to submit. I also contacted some published authors and poets hoping to possibly get a response. Most of them never got back to me, but hey you have to swing the bat to hit a homerun right. I was however lucky enough to get a published poet by the name of Adam Day to respond and he even submitted his work! Like I said you never know so just go for it.

All in all helping create a lit mag can be very difficult but it is something that helped me as a writer. It forces you out of your shell and helps you make many new connections. I would highly recommend giving it a try for that alone, not to mention all the different perspectives it exposes you to. I am so thankful I had the honor to help be a part of starting “Raptor Lit” and I am sure it is a pride you will feel if you start a lit mag also.