Across the street from Deseret Towers and just west of the BYU bell tower is a small, brick house with white trim. Inside, the living room is cramped with a long table and a couch. There are filing cabinets in the kitchen. Downstairs, the bedrooms contain only tables and computers. A thick layer of dust lines the tub in the bathroom.

This is Crandall House West, BYU's student publications center.

Throughout the week, the house is filled with student editors, scattered in small groups, working on one of the some student journals published at BYU.

All journals provide students unique opportunities to get publishing experience. But for students who want to publish their poetry, short stories, personal essays or plays, their best choice is Inscape, BYU's creative writing journal.

Like all other student journals, Inscape has standards and criteria. Students have a better chance of getting published if they know what the journal is about, what it looks for, and what to expect after submitting.

Inscape's format hasn't changed much in the 20 years it has been in print. It's still published twice each year, 6 by 9 inches, with prose and poetry interspersed throughout the issue. All submissions are still judged by student staff members who share a love for creative writing.

Emily Gigger, a senior majoring in English, said she joined the staff because she wanted to read other students' writing.

"I like getting the practice of reading other people's poems and short stories because it makes me a better writer," Gigger said. "It helps me to realize what I need to change about my own writing to make it better."

Every semester, Inscape gets hundreds of submissions and judging all of them can be a long process. Each submission is read by three different staff members and scored on a five-point scale. Scores are added and averaged, and submissions that receive high scores are placed in a pile to be read again. Submissions with the highest scores are reviewed and discussed by small groups who narrow the submissions down further.

When winning submissions are finally chosen, authors are contacted and work with staff members to edit and polish their work one last time before publication.

Inscape staff members say there isn't one specific standard they judge submissions by.

"We look to see if they use language well and if they sound like they knew what they were doing," Gigger said. "I would say we use the same analysis that we would in any literature class. In poetry, I like to get some meaning or at least a really good, fresh image."

Brad Franklin, Inscape's poetry editor, said choosing good submissions comes mostly from gut feeling.

"You can measure against the formal elements and measure against novelty, which we do," he said. "But in the end, it's this feeling that you develop - kind of this instinct which explains what's good and what's bad. It's beyond what you can learn in a textbook. It's something you learn as you do it more and more."

Franklin said this gut feeling mostly comes from reading good authors.

"You have to read some of the best authors and gage against that," he said.

Because every staff member has his or her own notion of what constitutes good writing, submissions are read by at least three different people - with some exceptions.

"Sometimes I find things horribly written; so bad they're actually hilarious, even when they weren't intended to be," Franklin said. "I won't even subject people to reading those. So there's obviously a bias there."

But usually Inscape takes steps to ensure submissions are judged as fairly as possible. All submissions are kept anonymous and reviewed without consulting other students. Each scorer doesn't look at the previous scores a submission has received.

"I think it balances out in the end," Gigger said. "There could be cases where we just don't have good judgment, and some good stuff isn't given the credit due. Or, there are people on the staff who have a particular liking for a certain kind of poem or short story and not for another. But you find that in any publication."

There are also times when the editor will put in a poem or short story that got bad reviews just because the editor personally liked it.

"That's their right," Gigger said. "Because sometimes the staff is inexperienced."

Submitting work to Inscape holds other benefits besides getting something published. Students have the option of submitting with a self-addressed stamped envelope and requesting feedback. Staff members will write the students, explain the submission's strengths and weakness, and offer suggestions for improvement.

If a submission comes close to being published but doesn't quite make it, staff members will call the student and explain their decision, encouraging him or her to submit again.

Gigger and Franklin have both submitted to Inscape just to get feedback.

"I've submitted things that were very rudimentary without revision, knowing that they wouldn't get published," Franklin said. "It gives me a chance to get other people's opinions on what I need to revise and how I need to change and develop my poems."

When Inscape is published, staff members sell it at booths around campus, at the BYU Bookstore, or at Inscape sponsored events.

But Gigger, who will have a poem published in Inscape's next issue, said the journal's audience is small.

"Most students don't read it; most students don't care," Gigger said. "I think people who are interested into going into graduate school care, but just so much as we accept their work so they can say they've been published."

Franklin said Inscape, as well as most of the other student journals, don't have readers because students are unaware they exist.

"The student body in general is completely ignorant of most student publications," Franklin said. "That's one of the biggest problems with the journals; they don't get publicity."

Franklin said individual departments don't have a lot of information for interested students about the journals they sponsor because the journals are run independently.

"Even Inscape, you go to the English Department and they can't give you a lot of information besides maybe a submission sheet," Franklin said. "It takes digging."

Franklin said he doesn't feel students' lack of awareness of the journals is any person or groups' fault in particular, but rather a collective problem.

"Definitely the staff can do more, definitely the departments can do more," Franklin said. "And the student body in general has an apathy toward reading anything that isn't class related."

Although it may not have many readers, Inscape does not struggle for material. Posting fliers in the Jessie Knight Humanities Building helps to bring in plenty of submissions from English and humanities majors looking to get published.

Sponsoring events such as "Bad Poetry Night" at Barnes & Noble helps to get more students interested in the journal itself.

Gigger believes Inscape will always be beneficial to students, not just by offering publishing opportunities, but by helping them see the kind of creative writing their peers are producing.

"For undergraduates who are interested in this kind of thing, the journal can be very useful," Gigger said. "Some of them may just not know it yet."



Copyright Brigham Young University 6 Sep 2002