Jen Michalski is the author of the novel The Tide King (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), the couplet of novellas Could You Be With Her Now (Dzanc Books 2013), and two collections of fiction (From Here, Aqueous Books 2014 and Close Encounters, So New 2007). She lives in Baltimore, where she runs the reading series Starts Here! and the journal jmww. In 2013 she was voted one of 50 Women to Watch by the Baltimore Sun and Best Author by Baltimore Magazine. You can find her at jenmichalski.com and https://twitter.com/MichalskiJen. I am excited to announce that Queens Ferry Press will be publishing her next book The Summer She Was Under Water in August 2016!What inspired you to begin jmww journal?After I graduated with my masters in writing back in 1999, I felt really disconnected from the writing community--I missed workshopping stories and analyzing literature and sharing ideas with other writers, whom I’d see several times a week in classes. Outside of the program, I didn't know many writers in Baltimore (and, of course, most writers can be pretty introverted and difficult to pick out on the street). I craved that sense of camaraderie, connection, the information, and support. Social media was virtually nonexistent then, so it wasn’t a matter of just keeping in touch on Facebook and Twitter. Fortunately, the web had evolved enough that suddenly it was very cheap and easy to start a literary journal online with very little overhead--all I had to do was buy a book on HTML and a domain name to host the site. So, with two other graduates from the program (Catherine Harrison and Megan Calhoun), I started jmww.It’s been a great way to participate in the dialog of the literary community, and feel like I can keep up with what everyone else is reading and writing. Fortunately, I also have been able to parlay our online presence into something very tangible in the Baltimore community. For a year, CityLit founder Gregg Wilhelm and I held monthly writers’ happy hours at different bars in Baltimore City; at one such happy hour, I met writer Michael Kimball, who had just moved to Baltimore, and we began the 510 Reading Series back in 2007, which lasted for seven years. (Last year, I began my own fiction reading series, Starts Here! in conjunction with the Ivy Bookshop and Artifact Coffee, also in Baltimore.) Both series, in addition to the journal, have been an invaluable outlet to meet and network with other writers and presses.How do you balance writing for the journal with your own creative work? Is one a relief from the other?I feel like I'm always doing something, which is great! If I’m stuck on a novel or short story, sometimes I focus more on the journal, and maybe then I’m inspired by a story or a poem or an interview or a book review we’ve published. Now that jmww is a weekly, I feel like I’m always digging around and keeping abreast of what’s going on in the larger literary world because our content needs are greater. Maybe I’d be a little lazier about keeping up if I didn’t have this weekly impetus, so I’m grateful in that way, too. But jmww is never a chore; I strongly believe in literary citizenship and supporting fellow writers and publications, because we all win in the end when original, risky, engaging literature is exposed to the greater world that may not have a place in the corporate publishing model.What are your thoughts about being in a writing community? Do you share your work in workshops?I’ve been in writing groups in some form for more than 10 years; I don’t belong to one right now, because of the reading series and the journal, but I think writing groups are a great way to sustain the MFA energy or to have feedback, whatever level of writer you are. They also provide emotional support and empathy, because a spouse may not understand, in the same way a writer does, the rejection or the loneliness when creating or just the difficulty in crafting the perfect expression of your idea. Writers are also readers, and they’re going into the bookstores and buying books, so their opinions regarding the quality of your work count just as much as a literary agent and/or publishing house, in my opinion, maybe more.What are you currently writing?I always try to keep a lot of balls in the air, in case I’m stuck on one thing. I’m about 100 pages into the first draft of a new novel, and my second novel, The Summer She Was Under Water, was just acquired by Queens Ferry Press, so I’m beginning revisions for that and looking at it fresh. I’ve also started writing a "memoir" for my mother, who died unexpectedly a few months ago. What started off as a letter a day to her quickly grew into 60 pages. Although I am not sure whether it’s something I want a wider audience to see, writing for me is the only way I’m able to distill and examine my feelings and thoughts, so it’s been incredibly therapeutic for me to write down the pains and joys and see also the unexpected sentences that come up on the page, ones that may have no other outlet to surface.I also have ideas for a couple of other novels, but they’re just sort of germinating slowly in my head, in the background, while I’m actively cooking on the front burner--like maybe I’m picking up the ingredients at the store and keeping them in the cabinets for the next meal. I think it’s apt that I’m a twin, since when writing I always seem to be pregnant with multiple stories, twins or triplets, in my head.What do you foresee for jmww in the future?I think jmww will be around as long as I can manage it; we’ve had a rotating cast of editors and interns over the years; we’ve grown from a quarterly to a weekly; we’ve published print anthologies and now have an annual poetry chapbook competition, The Claudia Emerson Poetry Chapbook Award (with a $500 prize). There have been times in which I didn’t want to do it any more, but I think about how much jmww gives back to me, and it’salways more, on the whole, than I give to it. As long as that ratio remains relatively stable, I would be happy to do it forever. There are things I’ve wanted to do with jmww (like podcasts, a publishing house) that we just don’t have the human resources to do right now, but what I like is that, online, the journal isn’t boxed into one identity the way a print journal might be. Week to week, we concentrate on different things. I would even be open to partnering with a university or college, as long as we could maintain our editorial vision. (And also our name! People always ask what it means. It didn’t mean anything for a long time, but sometimes we like to joke it means "Journal Managed by Wicked Women (and men sympathetic to our cause)."Any advice on managing time and balancing the rest of your life as a writer?This is tough, because I will be the first to say that it’s not easy to be a writer and editor and reading series host. I always tell people, when I’m on publishing panels, at conferences, etc, that writing is your second full-time job. There’s your job you go to work to every day, and there’s your writing job that you go to at nights and weekends. And it’s another 40-hour week--not only must you write, write, write, but you must read. Youmust support the literary ecosystem by attending readings, buying books, writing reviews, sharing on social media, etc. You also have to build your own platform so that, by the time your book is published, you have a cadre of people who know your work and are excited to read more. Your drive has to equal your level of passion, and you have to believe in your work and be resilient. Just as writers are agitated that everyone they meet thinks theycan write, that it’s easy when it’s not, writers should treat writing as seriously as they defend it to nonwriters.This all sounds overwhelming, but happily, whenever I feel discouraged or weighed down by the work and my own expectations, I remember that writing elementally is how I view the world; some people are visual, or vocal, in their understanding. I write to understand the world outside (and inside) of me. I’ve been writing since I learned how to write, well before I realized there could even be a career in it. I think all writers love to write, and they will find a way to do it, make time for it, even if it’s an hour before work or on the subway home or while the baby’s asleep. It’spart of who we are, and it’s involuntary, like breathing. It’s definitely something that nonwriters may not understand, but I always liken it to being married to an amateur golfer or musician or filmmaker. You wouldn’t belittle their time commitment or dedication to practicing and traveling and promoting, and it’s no different for a writer.In his diaries, Camus called writing a disease, and I tend to agree: even if everyone hated my work and I was never published again, I would still continue to write, because I can’t stop. I can’t think of better advice than accepting who you are.