2 Years of 2 Rules: Check our Vibes

Don’t forget to join us on Zoom (December 9 at 12 noon est which is GMT-5) for a reading to celebrate 2 years!

Adam Writes:

We built this website two years ago. Two years. It’s hard to think that that was before we had paying clients. It was before we had weekly writing sessions where we could catch up, talk about the craft, and get some writing done. It was before we had a Discord server (easy enough given that Twitter was still Twitter and neither of us really knew what Discord was). And it was also before we had a Facebook Author page or a spot on Chill Subs or 30 Days 30 Poems every April or…

Songs of Innocence

What we did have was a few essayists and one novelist (sort of… it’s complicated) each sending us one fantastic piece a month. And that, along with a dedicated audience and Erika’s ever-growing expertise as a web-designer, was enough.

We wrote amazing pieces about the craft of writing; about disability rights and queer rights; about the life of a teacher; and perhaps most importantly about the proper Hongkongese ways to prepare chicken wings. And in doing so we created something still-more important: a safe place for early career writers and artists to fuck around and receive feedback from their fellow fucking-around artists and writers.

Because being allowed to–and allowing yourself to–make mistakes is the only way to grow as an artist.

That sounds vaguely important.

I hope someone writes it down.

It’s fine.

I’ll remember it.

Songs of Experience

So then we started to grow. Our Facebook community page edged up to a hundred followers. Then to two hundred. Then, with the help of The Lavender Librarian, to a thousand. We started getting occasional drop-in articles from friend and stranger alike. Plus the paying customers looking for more in-depth help with their writing. Plus the wonderful writing meetings on the weekends.

And, perhaps not our proudest accomplishment (that would be our community) but soon to be our most prominent accomplishment, is the forthcoming publication of an anthology of short stories and poems based on Dante’s Inferno. Oh and there’s also this other anthology that Erika is at the helm of involving body horror and the expectations society puts on women’s and genderqueer people’s bodies.

The Visionary Gleam

It’s a lot to accomplish in two short years, and a lot to feel proud of. Through it all, Erika landed her fellowship at Lilith, I got published in a few magazines, Wen founded Language Collage (a bilingual Hong-Kong-based literary magazine), and more. The extrinsic motivation that these milestones represent isn’t necessary to the work we do, but it’s nice. And sometimes it’s okay for things just to be nice.

And something else that’s been happening more and more; something else that isn’t necessary but is nice: people have been dropping $5 tips in our Buy Me a Coffee and just saying: “I like your vibe.” That’s been the refrain lately, though it’s phrased in a few ways: “I like how you worded your call for submissions.” Or: “Thank you for holding this space for people who need it” or “I appreciate the feedback on my writing.”  If you’ve experienced this kind of community support, you know that words are insufficient to convey what tears alone can express.

The Vibe and the Submissions Page

So let’s do a vibe-check. Let’s talk about this carefully constructed and delicately calibrated vibe. You, too, can have a vibe like ours for the low-low price of… well you’ll see.

But actually there isn’t time or space to talk about all of our vibe, multifarious and multifaceted as it is. So let’s just talk about our submissions process.

We get submissions every week (from people on every continent except Antarctica for some reason) who wish to be published on the 2 Rules page. We request $5 per submission and usually get it; but we make sure to give something in return: a few words of criticism and encouragement to each writer who submits. Giving feedback is unusual for a literary magazine. So why do we do it? Well. Partly out of courtesy. 

The Vibe and the Scrappiness of a Little Magazine

Partly, also, because that’s our comparative advantage as a scrappy lil magazine. Sure you can send your essay to the Paris Review and the New Yorker. And you’ll never hear back. By the way, Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker, if you’re reading this, which you definitely are, I sent you those poems about a year ago and you said you’d have my rejection letter back to me in six months. I’m just saying. I got the message loud and clear, thanks, but I’d still like to get the message.

Or you can send your work to one of the other great old respectable publications like Kenyon or Susquehanna. And you’ll hear back. By which I mean you’ll get a rejection-by-form-letter. 

Or you can send your work to us. We’ll probably just straight-up publish your work. Not bad, right? And if we don’t, we’ll give a few suggestions along with the ole “revise and resubmit.” And even if we tell you “this just isn’t clicking; better luck next time,” you’ll at least get a few lines about how we think you can improve.

Why the Vibe Check Matters

A lot of our members and fans are not people who would ever send their work to us. They’re just here for the memes or the discussions or whatever. Or to cry when they read Erika’s essays. (Seriously, Erika. WTAF? I’d ask: “Who hurt you?” but I already know the answer from reading your essays.) And we’re glad to have such fans, as we hope they well know! But we are, at our heart, a writing group. So if the submissions process doesn’t pass the vibe check then it doesn’t really matter if anything else does.

And I do think that the submissions process is emblematic of how we want to run every aspect of this site–with a sense of transparency, with a sense of love and respect for the people who risk everything to put their work in front of us, and with an understanding that not everyone has access to the kind of feedback I did through four years of college and 7-ish years of grad school.

The Exception that Proves the Rule

That said, a couple of times we’ve sent negative feedback regarding someone’s work, and in return we’ve gotten… I don’t know how to say it other than: we’ve gotten rejection letters rejecting our rejection letters.

And of course, when that happens, we respond in a manner befitting mature and emotionally centered adults: we copy-past the hate-mail to our friends and giggle at the audacity. Shrug. Okay so we’re not perfect. Are you?

Good Vibes are Good for Creativity

Why do we go through the trouble? It’s because we know that the worst feeling in the world for a writer is to die of syphilis. And the second worst feeling in the world for a writer is to send out your work, wait like six months, receive that form-letter rejection email, and remain none the wiser as to what you might be doing wrong, or what it is about your work that is not a good fit for the magazine in question.

We don’t like experiencing that. So we don’t make any of our writers experience it, either. And if that kind of thinking is all it takes for us to pass the vibe check then we’re happy to keep stumbling over that low bar.

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Erika Writes:

“Vibe” wasn’t a word that we ever used while we were planning this project. We talked about neurodivergence. We talked about amplifying less-heard-from voices. Talked about who we wanted to hear from. And we busied ourselves with imagining what features we wanted to have and which writers might get involved with us. The pragmatic things. The logical things. We bought a domain, started a Facebook community, built a website and started writing.

But in the process of doing all of that, we created the community we needed; the community that, if we hadn’t started it, we would want to join.

Submissions and Other Guidelines

We set submission guidelines that are aimed at being as welcoming to new or emerging writers as possible. And that are as easy to follow as possible. We see those guidelines working when the submissions come in from people with strong poetic voices, but who we can tell from context clues have never submitted to a literary magazine before.

I like to talk about how we’re not big on rules, but the rules we do have we’re pretty intolerant of people violating. There are the obvious ones like racism and terfism but there’s also prescriptivism, which is rare for a writing site. We kick a grammar scold off our community page at least once a month. We have the “don’t be a dick” rule, but it’s more than that. We’ve created a space where we aren’t just nice to each other; we’re good to each other

The Vibes Behind the Vibes

Why we do all of this isn’t hard to explain. Lots of people drift to writing because they’re in pain. And even when we dedicate ourselves to writing, lots of us are not able to heal the hurts that brought us here in the first place. Deadlines and the pressure to succeed weigh some of us down. Toxicity and competition do for others. All of that negativity makes it hard to be vulnerable, which makes it hard to write. What a waste it would be to construct a writing community that makes it harder to write!

We want our space to be different. So we’ve built a space that isn’t about competition. Instead we celebrate everyone’s achievements. Not just writing-accomplishments. We’ve made a place for self-discovery and collaboration and growth. It’s not easy to let yourself be vulnerable, but we have a space where it’s okay to do that, and you can do it with confidence that you’re not going to be attacked for it.

The People who Make it Possible to Do what we Do

And if someone does hassle you, someone will step in and try to put a halt to it. Most likely it won’t be me or Adam, just because by the time we get to it someone else will have pointed it out and started to deal with it.

We don’t do this enough but: to our most active members, thank you for the labor you do to keep our community free of trolls and dickbiscuits. It’s a privilege to be a part of a community where so many people are willing to do two different and equally difficult tasks: to take ownership of mistakes and to do the emotional labor involved in helping people to curb toxic behaviors before those people and those behaviors take over. (And start harshing our vibe.)

Check our Vibe: Is it Good for Creativity?

When I do hear people talk about our vibe I do this little self check in on two things: how are we supporting creativity and what are we doing to make this the place that we had been wishing for? I had a whole year before 2 Rules existed where my creativity was nurtured. But in that year, I also learned some hard lessons about compassion. Particularly about compassion towards myself.

At the end of that year, I’d gained some skill as a writer and as a web designer. But that doesn’t add up to the number of times since 2 Rules was founded I’ve heard myself say “I never imagined I’d do that,” or “that’s another skill I’ve found myself learning here.” I’m designing graphics and making videos and writing public statements for an organization when things are in crisis.

Finding my Bravery

Those are all nice skills to have, but it’s the bravery that I’ve found, which could only have happened with the nurturing and compassion of this community, that matters more. It’s that bravery that makes our two rules a reality.

So yeah, I’ve gained enough confidence to send out work for publication and handle rejection. (I can also handle acceptance but that’s much harder.) I’m editing. I’m guiding people through the process of writing their own pieces. Leading collaborations on another 2 Rules anthology. I’ve had to accept the trust that other people put in my skills.

Getting Back what we Put In

Reap what you sow, you know? Our community is just as invested in giving us back all of the things we’ve been trying to put out there. I’m not a writer for the rewards, but I found myself in exactly the kind of creative community that I’d spent years wishing for. It’s all well and good build a space like this for others, but when they turn around and give it right back to you, I don’t know what I would call that.

Maybe it’s like a Mortal Kombat finishing move: that sort of cherry-on-top-victory-move at the end of a well-fought battle. But definitely not the one you use on an end boss like Shao Kahn. We’re not there yet. 

I’m Learning to Accept Some of the Credit, which is Huge for Me

Throughout all of this, I keep reminding Adam that he’s transforming lives. I tell him that he has given all of us, including me, something we all need: permission to fuck up. And yes, I put it all on him. Which I shouldn’t. I conveniently forget that I created the 30 Days, 30 Poems project. That was the first major project we undertook as 2 Rules of Writing. We loved that project so much, even in its barely planned, flying-by-the-seat-of-our pants way it happened in our first year. Enough that it became even more incredible the second year. Plans for the third year are already underway, and we’ve also gained the confidence to branch out into other collaborative projects.

As much as I deny it, Adam never stops reminding me that I can take credit for some of what we’ve done here, too. That’s still really uncomfortable for me. Symbiosis. I let him practice patience, and he refuses to let me downplay things I do.

Intimations of Immortality

2 Rules has grown up enough that we’ve listed ourselves as “open to submissions” on Chill Subs. It’s not so unbelievable anymore that one day we might be on Submittable, too. We now share our responsibilities with interns and a photographer. We’ve grown enough that soon you’ll be able to hold in your own hands, a physical copy of our Dante-inspired anthology. (There will be a digital option, too, of course.) There are already plans for other books.

We’ve built something that we were missing, even if we didn’t know exactly what that was. Two years ago we had a document called “Website Plan.” It began with a list of tasks that needed to be completed before our official launch. A year ago, it felt unreal to me that I was renaming that document to “Website Plan-Year 1” and retiring it for “Website Plan-Year 2.” Just recently, I still had to pause for a moment when I began “Website Plan-Year 3.”

Last year I was certain that Adam was wrong about renewing our domain and web-hosting for two years. Now I’m wondering if I can find a way to keep the price we’re paying if we renew sooner rather than later. I can look back at what we’ve accomplished and feel really proud of it. Looking ahead is a lot harder. Planning ahead still comes with this sense of wonder, This feeling of “Am I really doing this? It can’t be real.”

Thank you, Adam, for the chance to go on this adventure with you. And thank you to every one of you who is riding along with us.