An Act of Insubordination
Letter from the Editor as published in the December 2025 issue
When I was in the eighth grade, a supply teacher sent me to the corner during creative writing time because I was “thinking.” I remember the shame of that moment, the tittering of my classmates, my first introduction to staring down a right angle outside of math class. To my memory, my parents had never sent me to the corner. I wasn’t a child who needed much discipline, too busy with my nose buried in a book to bother with getting myself in trouble. Yet there I was, 12 years old, bubbling over with more ideas than I could hold, sent to the corner for thinking.
And do you know what I did that one and only time I was sent to the corner? I thought. I thought about the story I’d been writing. I thought about justice. And I thought about how sad the world must seem to a teacher who didn’t have any imagination at all.
That was a defining moment for me, coming at a formative time when I was just beginning to find my voice. I didn’t argue (respect your elders, and all that) but I did begin to develop an understanding of what it meant to be a creative in a world of linear thinkers. Though, from time to time, I still forget.
Three decades later, I find myself running a literary magazine, and I keep coming back to that corner. Because building something like Blank Spaces requires exactly what that teacher punished me for: deep, uninterrupted thought. Not the quick, reactive kind that social media demands, but the slow, contemplative kind that happens when you’re staring at a wall with nothing but your imagination.
Yet so much pressure is put on producing measurable results. Sales numbers. New clients. Rankings on lists you have to pay to get mentioned on. The problem exists in creative spaces too. Sales. Subscribers. Metrics that pull our attention from creating to placating. More TikToks! More reels! More followers!
And slowly, our dreams fade to black and white. Because instead of focusing on the source of our joy, we’re folding in to the societal pressure to be relevant. And in our relevance, we lose our spark.
That’s why I’m sending myself back to the corner—back where two blank walls create a canvas onto which I can unleash all the ideas held captive by the algorithm. Back where I can read submissions without checking analytics. Where I can sit with a piece of fiction for an hour, turning it over in my mind, without feeling the tap of urgency on my shoulder. Where the slow work of building a literary community matters more than posting schedules.
I believe thinking makes up most of the work of creativity. When that teacher sent me to the corner, he intended it as a punishment. What he was really doing was allowing me to continue the work I had already started at my desk. And while to an outsider our production might seem sparse, within we are crafting something larger than many can comprehend.
If you’re reading this magazine, you’re one of us—whether you’re a creator who needs permission to think before you write, or a reader who values slow, thoughtful work in a world that moves too fast. You understand that beautiful things are bred in times of quiet reflection. That just because it’s not yet on paper or canvas or stone, that doesn’t mean it has no merit. That sometimes, an act of insubordination can birth a whole new world.
So to the rebels and the dreamers and the candlestick makers: don’t let anyone look down on you for the slow pace of your output. You are not slow. You are exactly where you need to be as long as the direction you’re heading is forward—even if forward is staring into a dusty classroom corner.
Alanna Rusnak
Editor in Chief, Blank Spaces
