Lilies and Lunatics

Twelve years ago a poet friend, Leo Luke Marcello, ignited the spark that became Swamp Lily Review, An Online Journal of Louisiana Literature and Arts. Leo mentioned a desire to edit a literary review one day. I thought, Wonderful, and knew I wanted to be part of his endeavor. Leo never did start the journal, but his idea remained with me and grew from involvement in someone else's journal into creating my own. On January 16, 2011, the seed bore fruit. My co-editor, Jessica Ferguson, and I published Issue 1, Number 1 of SLR.

During the months leading up to our debut, Jess and I thought of so many issues to resolve:  Name? Word count? Type of work accepted? National, regional, or Louisiana only? We studied other journals' mission statements and guidelines and the best deals on website hosting. We stressed over whether this venture would ruin us financially and creatively and/or ruin our friendship. Did we need a partnership agreement? A lawyer? A psychiatrist?

All valid questions. What we didn't stress about, of course, were the things that nearly did us in. Like building the website. It took me months – months! – just to figure out we'd have to buy a format. I couldn't bend the free ones to my will. I looked at hundreds of themes. They flashed in front of my eyes, haunted my nightmares. Getting the right look for SLR was too important, though. After picking the right name for the journal, we refused to compromise on finding the right images for it and the right theme. The search was worth the time.

I'd never have done it on my own. If you decide to publish a journal and think you can build your own website, don't do it alone, and pick the right partner. Boy, did I luck out. Jess knew less than I did about sidebars and linking posts and pages and how to change the theme logo to our logo – because the original was an image file and needed the right program to revise it. But she was there, and she remained committed. She took the weight of other problems and left me free to figure out the mechanics. Because Jess didn't give up on me, I didn't give up on the project, and somehow answers came.

Getting the work to publish was a job in itself. For some reason, we weren't immediately buried in submissions! I laugh when I think of our nerve, but, I swear, it was naiveté, not arrogance. There are a lot of print and online reviews in Louisiana alone, and not everybody was going to get excited about yet another, even after we sent out invitations to submit and press releases and got word of mouth going. We hit all the bases and were fortunate enough to get good, quality works of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and photography.

There were still days I wanted to email our contributors and say, "I'm sorry, but we made a huge mistake. Your work is wonderful. You'll have no trouble placing it elsewhere . . ." And if I had a dollar for every time I made up my mind to find a web technician to help me build the site (and didn't do it), I could've taken a course. Maybe I should have.

But no matter how many instructions you read, no matter how many advisors and well-wishers you have, your journal is your journal. You've got to put it together your way, with or without technical help. At the end of it all, I look back on what we went through and what we ended up with, and I marvel. For all my clumsiness and ignorance, we ended up with great work to publish and a beautiful site. We published Issue 1, Number 2 on August 1, 2011.

Clearly, Somebody "up there" liked SLR. That's the only explanation.

Thanks for the inspiration, Leo. Rest in God's peace.