It was exciting to work on the same book that made me interested in coming to Bemidji State in 2007, but it was also difficult perhaps for that reason in making a decision about what should go into the book. The fact of it is, I know how it feels to have people not think your work is worthy enough, as well as knowing the pride in having someone think your stuff is interesting enough.
I was thankful however that we did get to do an editing process to make sure things were copied right for the book, since I also cringe when thinking back on my piece and seeing all the errors... though I do believe they were on my part back then. I can only hope that everyone who gets into the book enjoys and is proud of it. Even the students from the teachers who sent multiple pieces from their students. Mind you I don't know since they didn't write something that they wanted to, they wrote due to the assignments given to them. Which is wrong, in New Voices we are trying to print the voices of future authors, not pieces of... I honestly don't know how to put the outrage at these pieces having been forced from them like parrots. Each having their own voice, but still it's the same thing, repeating what they were told to say. All the "ode"s, and "I am from"s is disheartening since they may have been more interested in mystery writing, or fantasy, though they could get some of that into the assignment, I question if they wrote it knowing that the assignments would be turned into us. And if not, how many of them were bothered upon hearing it. Were there assignments that weren't sent into us, like the same assignment but from different students that weren't well at all?
Beyond the assignments that were turned into us I enjoyed reading the pieces and I hope we all made the right decisions.
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