Posts Tagged ‘editing’

BREAKING: F&SF’s Gordon Van Gelder Does Not Want to Drink The Blood of Your Children

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Last week, we had a lovely mini-​​controversy over the poorly announced inten­tions of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to launch a work­shop for newer writ­ers run by Gardner Dozois.

The details that we were able to gather were:

  • The work­shop will be online.
  • The work­shop will be lim­ited at first to around 100 writers.
  • Gardner will be able to choose up to 3 sto­ries a year from the work­shop sub­mis­sions to appear in F&SF.

The details that we do not know:

  • When will the work­shop launch?
  • How much will it cost?
  • How much face-​​time will you get with the work­shop admin with 99 other students?

The issues that  weren’t clear to some:

  • Whether or not Gordon would pay for the sto­ries that come from the work­shop like any other story
  • Whether the cost of join­ing the work­shop would in fact include the price of the soul of your first-​​born child?
  • Whether this is a vio­la­tion of Yog’s Law, in which money flows from the writer to the pub­lisher? (“money flows to the writer”)

The con­tro­versy to me was exactly the same as Amazon’s screw-​​up a few weeks back regard­ing the data­base and adult/​gay con­tent being removed from list­ings.  It boiled down to this:  poor infor­ma­tion con­trol and release.  It was a PR fubar.

Perhaps I assumed the bes in that work­shop­pers selected for the pub­li­ca­tion would be paid just like any new writer, that Gordon was not plan­ning to sell my unborn chil­dren into slav­ery to the Mi Go  and that Yog’s Law was per­haps sim­ply bent, but not in a way that was unprece­dented.  Ultimately, I shouldn’t have to assume, nor should any­one else.  Once again, the issue is that, in the absence of real infor­ma­tion, the inter­net will invent a con­tro­versy.  WhateverFails are spon­ta­neously gen­er­at­ing every­where on the web because a rumor has got­ten out of hand and real infor­ma­tion has not stepped into to fill the void.

What could F&SF Done Differently?

Gordon and his staff prob­a­bly should have acted quickly to cor­rect any mis­in­for­ma­tion being spread (and to their credit, they did so, but I don’t think they did it com­pre­hen­sively enough).  He should have issued a full press release in the first place, out­lin­ing every detail of the project, from cost, to dura­tion to “here’s the web­sites, go sign up.”  The first any­one should have heard of this project should have been when every detail was sorted out and  ready to go.  If you are vague on any aspect, it just gives peo­ple an oppor­tu­nity to see bog­garts where there prob­a­bly aren’t any.

Information about this seemed to leak via hearsay on one blog, and the con­tro­versy built rapidly in this infovoid.  Damage con­trol would have been to imme­di­ately release all infor­ma­tion.  Unfortunately, I think not every aspect of the project as nailed down, so it seemed that they were rushed to release what they knew so far, which wasn’t and as far as I know, still isn’t every­thing.  I put my name on the list of inter­ested par­ties and I look for­ward to learn­ing more.

In gen­eral, I think F&SF needs to con­trol its online pub­lic rela­tions bet­ter (I imag­ine Gordon might think ‘great, yet another new job I don’t need and didn’t sign up for.’  Sorry, man. ).  The prob­lem is, and jus­ti­fi­ably so, they see relat­ing with the pub­lic online to be an antag­o­nis­tic thing.  n this posts, I am care­ful not to say ‘Gordon should do…” which is way too easy with F&SF.  I’m try­ing to say “the orga­ni­za­tion should do…”  Because I know F&SF has a team of peo­ple, pri­mar­ily dri­ven by Gordon.  Being the only editor-​​owned mag­a­zine of the Big Three in the field, its easy to place the blame or put a face to any per­ceived prob­lem with the ‘zine.  Gordon, for bet­ter and for worse, is F&SF in the pub­lic eye.  You can’t nec­es­sar­ily do that with the Dell Magazines. Their edi­tors gen­er­ally aren’t mak­ing the busi­ness deci­sions.  So the crit­i­cisms of F&SF often come across as too personal.

That’s unfor­tu­nate.  F&SF is a good mag­a­zine and Gordon is a great edi­tor.  The orga­ni­za­tion needs to reset their inter­ac­tions with the online world entirely, and design­ing a good PR plan would be a nice place to start, in my opin­ion.  I have some ideas of how to go about that which I will go into in more detail at a later date.

What Could We the Public Done Differently?

We should be bet­ter at real­iz­ing when we have par­tial infor­ma­tion and we should be less eager to jump to con­clu­sions based on that par­tial infor­ma­tion.  Perhaps our first instinct should not be to write a blog post or to start a com­ment thread on a forum.  Perhaps, when we have sus­pi­cions or are con­sid­er­ing cast­ing asper­sions, we should con­tact the par­ties involved over email or phone and ask our ques­tions.  If we don’t get sat­is­fy­ing answers, then maybe that is the time to scream from the rooftops.  Also, apply some com­mon sense.  What in Gordon or Gardner’s long career would ever make you think they weren’t going to pay writ­ers?  Yes, it’s impor­tant to make sure you get paid as a writer–but these guys are NOT the enemy. I have dis­agreed with Gordon on mat­ters elec­tronic in the past, but I know that he is a con­sum­mate professional.

This lat­est con­tro­versy is made up of mis­takes on both sides.  The bur­den of pro­vid­ing clear, accu­rate, and com­plete infor­ma­tion rests with the publisher/​project run­ners.  The bur­den of the rest of us is to not jump to assump­tions with­out ask­ing ques­tions first when we receive only par­tial information.

This Week’s Editoral Advice: Do Not Reply to Rejection Letters

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is still hap­pen­ing from time to time with my work for Escape Pod. I had kind of thought by now that argu­ing with an edi­tor over their com­ments in a rejec­tion let­ter was com­monly con­sid­ered a bad idea to be avoided at all costs, but I’m still get­ting these at Escape Pod. Let me put it to you all straight.

Nothing makes me more dis­in­clined to pur­chase your work than you argu­ing with me about me not buy­ing a story.

There are a lot of minor mis­takes you can make as a slush writer. I over­look most of them. For instance, we get sent things as attach­ments when our guide­lines call for them to be in the body of an email. I might men­tion it briefly to the sub­mit­ter, but I don’t hold it against them much. There are so many dif­fer­ing e-​​submissions sys­tems that I can under­stand why this hap­pens. No big deal.

But when you decide to quib­ble with an edi­tor over the points of his or her rejec­tion let­ter, you’re cross­ing a pro­fes­sional line. You are enti­tled to your opin­ion. It’s a good thing if you have enough faith in your story that you will con­tinue to send it out, because one editor’s opin­ion doesn’t amount to much, which is why I say my edi­to­r­ial com­ments are not intended as writ­ing advice.

The main thing it will lead to is an edi­tor not pro­vid­ing you any detailed feed­back at all. We will sim­ply write form rejec­tions for your work from then on out. Because noth­ing is more annoy­ing to me, at least, than some­one decid­ing to bicker over a rejec­tion. It’s not going to change our minds. It’s only going to make you look worse. So we’ll stop giv­ing you points to quib­ble with. This is not good for you. We don’t want to do this.

It is a no-​​win sit­u­a­tion for the writer.

So just don’t do it. Stick to cre­at­ing your edi­tor voodoo dolls and slag­ging us off to your cats. Take out your frus­tra­tions another way, even if the edi­tor is dead wrong. It doesn’t matter.

And another thing– I would rather not see replies, even short thank yous, at all. It clut­ters up my inbox, which I work very hard to keep orga­nized, and your con­tin­u­ing sub­mis­sions with us is thanks enough. Tack what you want to say on to the cover let­ter of your next sub­mis­sion. I would pre­fer that.

Also, Machine Gun Submissions

Oh, and finally, one last thing– it does you no good to send me story after story after story when I’m read­ing them quickly, when you get rejected every time. You should cool it and wait a bit between sub­mis­sions. Probably want to wait and let me for­get about how I rejected 3 sto­ries in an hour. Because I do notice, and I know other edi­tors do too, espe­cially with e-​​submissions at ‘zines with rel­a­tively fast turn­around times. Nick Mamatas even had a sub­mis­sions limit. I’m con­sid­er­ing imple­ment­ing one if this keeps up. At the very least, you’ll stop get­ting such rapid replies.

An Editor’s Perspective on Rejection

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Since I’ve taken on the gig of man­ag­ing edi­tor at Escape Pod, I’ve been relearn­ing a lot of things about being an edi­tor that I had for­got­ten in the time since clos­ing th Fortean Bureau. I’ve been think­ing a lot about rejec­tion let­ters, and rejec­tion in gen­eral, but not from my usual per­spec­tive as a writer, but now as an edi­tor. It’s inform­ing the way I think about rejec­tions as a writer as well.

It’s Not Personal

Rejection let­ters aren’t per­sonal. I find it very hard not to take them per­son­ally because by god, I wrote the story, I poured my self onto the page, and so it hurts to see that rejec­tion come in most of the time. My sto­ries are like the mind-​​prosthesies I never really asked for. And they trans­mit pain like any real limb. Er, so to speak.

Doling out rejec­tions, many to fine writ­ers whose work I love in a gen­eral sense, it’s really hit home. The rejec­tion is always for the story at hand, and it’s not about you. Great writ­ers get rejected. You will too.

I walk a very fine line in try­ing to avoid offense with my rejec­tion let­ters. How much detail does a Hugo-​​nominated writer need when you bounce his or her story? Do they need a rea­son other than, just didn’t sync up with my inven­tory needs at this time? I don’t want to be in the busi­ness of hand­ing out writ­ing advice in my rejec­tion let­ters. I tend to err on the side of less, rather than more, infor­ma­tion. Which brings me to my next point.

My Rejection is not Writing Advice

Most of the time, my rejec­tion let­ter says the same sim­ple line: “didn’t grab me.” I stole this one from F&SF, because it’s suc­cinct and a polite way of putting the truth. When I write this, it means that I did not fin­ish your story because I got bored with it. Sorry, but that’s the truth. And that’s why I don’t write what I lit­er­ally mean in the rejec­tion let­ter, because I am not a cal­lous mon­ster. When I do pro­vide feed­back as to why I am not buy­ing a story, it’s just based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ence of read­ing the story. Every edi­tor brings their own pecu­liar biases and inter­ests to the table. There are some ideas that always grab me more than oth­ers. Biological SF will win out over aster­oid min­ing every time, until you write that aster­oid min­ing story that proves me wrong.

New writ­ers should most def­i­nitely not be look­ing for writ­ing advice in their rejec­tion let­ters. Other writ­ers, and a cri­tique group, are the best way to gain this insight. It’s not the (short fic­tion) editor’s job, espe­cially not today, to cul­ti­vate the writer’s tal­ent. We sup­port your tal­ent, but we don’t have the time to fer­til­ize it. You need to turn to other sources for advice.

I can under­stand the impulse to seek feed­back from edi­tors. Writing is a soli­tary game, and it’s hard to find meth­ods with which to mea­sure your progress. How do you know if you’re get­ting close?

Again, time to be blunt. You’ll know you’re get­ting close because the edi­tor will tell you. When your rejec­tion let­ter asks for more of your work, that’s not just being polite. That’s because we think you have the chops and we’re just look­ing for the right story. When rejec­tion let­ters turn from “didn’t grab” to “didn’t work for me, for the fol­low­ing rea­sons” that’s a step up.

Trust me, the pain is only begin­ning when you’ve made those first cou­ple of sales. You’ll want more, and if light­ing has struck a lit­tle early, it can be painful to go quite a while afterwards.

At the same time, if you go from encour­ag­ing rejec­tions to a non-​​encouraging one, it doesn’t mean you’ve back­slid. It prob­a­bly just means the edi­tor has got­ten a bit too busy to give you spe­cial attention.

I Liked It, but I Didn’t Love It

I get to buy 52-​​ish sto­ries a year, and I prob­a­bly select those from ten times that many at least. This means I am not only look­ing for good sto­ries, but I’m look­ing for sto­ries that leave an impact on me. I reject a decent num­ber of good sto­ries, because I can’t use up all my slots buy­ing just good sto­ries. They have to be good, plus some. That spark is the most elu­sive thing you’ll seek as you develop as a writer.

I per­son­ally haven’t bro­ken past this phase. My rejec­tions are very often in the “this is a good story, but I didn’t like it enough to buy it” vari­ety. I sell oca­sion­ally, but this is my career wall at the moment. I think I’m close to under­stand­ing why, but I may never know, and I may never take the step for­ward. Especially if I don’t write more than I have been these past few years.

Doesn’t Fit My Needs at This Time

This is very sim­il­iar to the “like it, didn’t love it” rejec­tion let­ter. Under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, I might have, prob­a­bly would have, bought this story. But maybe it’s a bit dark in tone, and I’ve been buy­ing way too many of those lately. Maybe at the moment, I need more light-​​hearted pieces. Maybe I bought an aster­oid min­ing story shortly before you sub­mit­ted yours, and they’re too sim­i­lar in sub­ject matter.

This is the “shit hap­pens” rejec­tion let­ter. I find they’re the hard­est and eas­i­est to take at the same time. They’re frus­trat­ing, but at least you can put these to the capri­cious­ness of fate, rather than your own per­sonal skills. It helps.

So that’s a lit­tle bit of the think­ing I’ve been explor­ing regard­ing rejec­tion as I work to select sto­ries for Escape Pod. It’s def­i­nitely given me a bet­ter per­spec­tive on my own rejec­tions. If it were pos­si­ble, I would rec­om­mend every seri­ous writer find a way to read slush some day. Not only do you learn to spot the most com­mon mis­takes, you start to get a lit­tle empa­thy for that poor soul on the other side of the transom.

5 Lies Writers Believe About Editors

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

At least in the sci­ence fic­tion com­mu­nity, there’s a lot of false com­mu­nity wis­dom float­ing around about the edi­to­r­ial process.  Some of them may have been true once.  Some were prob­a­bly invented to mess with the heads of noobs.   Some of them are care­fully nutured lies, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.   Well, no longer.  I’m here to tell you the truth, no mat­ter how ugly it may be.

LIE #1:   Editors give every story fair con­sid­er­a­tion. OR:  Editors reject sto­ries with­out read­ing them at all.

The truth is, the slush is deep, and it’s rarely an editor’s favorite part of the job.  Why do you think so many places have slush readers?

Every story doesn’t get fair con­sid­er­a­tion.  Not every story deserves it.  If you can’t be both­ered to read the sub­mis­sion guide­lines and fol­low them, it’s an easy rejec­tion.  If you have five gram­mar and spelling mis­takes in the first two para­graphs, it’s an easy rejec­tion.    If it’s a story about vam­pires, and I hate vam­pire sto­ries, it’s mostly an easy rejection.

Most sto­ries get at least a page out of me. Then I skip to the last 3 para­graphs, if I’m feel­ing gen­er­ous.   Some get less.   Some work is so obvi­ously bad that it’s star­tlingly easy to know it’s not going to work.  But every story gets looked at.  Nothing ever gets rejected with­out being par­tially read.  Honest.

LIE #2:  Editors never reject a good story.

I rejected plenty of really good sto­ries at the Fortean Bureau.   I’ve even rejected a cou­ple at Escape Pod.  The rea­son is pretty sim­ple: edi­to­r­ial vision or scope.   The Fortean Bureau was look­ing for a par­tic­u­lar kind of story.  Your space opera, no mat­ter how good, was never going to appear there.  Likewise, we don’t accept hor­ror or fan­tasy at Escape Pod.   If the story is good, and sucks me in, I will rec­om­mend send­ing it over to the other editors.

Stories get rejected for being too long, too short, too sim­il­iar to another story the edi­tor has already bought… there are as many rea­sons for rejec­tion as there are sto­ries.  And not all of them involve you mak­ing mis­takes.  There are aspects of the process that a writer can­not con­trol.  Best to just relax about it.

LIE #3:  Editors don’t fos­ter new writ­ers like they did in the old days, and don’t care about new talent.

John W. Campbell was a med­dle­some bas­tard who sent his writ­ers spe­cific ideas for sto­ries.  He was not what you call a “hands off” kind of edi­tor.  He wrote his fair share of sto­ries, and some of the tales I’ve heard about him make me think that he was often think­ing as a writer as much as he was an edi­tor.  He wasn’t afraid to rewrite some­one else’s story.

For what­ever biz­zare rea­son, some peo­ple wish edi­tors would take that level of inter­est in their work, and  they lament that edi­tors no longer fos­ter new writ­ers, giv­ing them the kind of con­struc­tive crit­i­cism that leads to their per­sonal growth.  Everything for writ­ers was just won­der­ful back then but these edi­tors today are jerks!

Not true.  Campbell may have had time to do this with a larger per­cent­age of his sub­mis­sions, but the field was smaller then.  Today, there are tens of thou­sands of writ­ers all try­ing to break in to the same pub­li­ca­tions.  We sim­ply don’t have time to give per­sonal feed­back to each sub­mis­sion.  These days, some­times the best you get is an encour­ag­ing rejec­tion.  My first came from Stanley Schmidt: “I like your writ­ing, so I hope you will send more in the future.”  Not very spe­cific, but it does the trick.  It tells you that you’re on the right track.

As much as I give Gordon van Gelder a hard time for his oppo­si­tion to online media, the man writes a very suc­cinct and help­ful rejec­tion let­ter.     Even the form let­ters have a sys­tem to them to help you fig­ure out why the story was rejected.  I always simul­ta­ne­ously feared and looked for­ward to his short notes.

Editors do build a sta­ble of writ­ers.  The rea­son most peo­ple don’t see it is because by the time you come along, the edi­tor has already estab­lished a group of authors he or she can count on.  But short story writ­ers in par­tic­u­lar are always going on to write nov­els, so open­ings do occur from time to time.

If you really want feed­back on your work, join a work­shop or cri­tique cir­cle.  It’s not the editor’s job to help you become a bet­ter writer.  Sometimes, we’re help­ful, but we can’t do it for everyone.

LIE #4:  Editors are peo­ple too.

“Editors are just like us.”  No, we’re not. You don’t have a nev­erend­ing stream of bad writ­ing com­ing at you day in, day out.    You get to read for plea­sure, select­ing mate­r­ial that has been through at least one fil­ter.  Whereas you turn on the tap and get a stream of nice drink­able water,  we put our mouths to a sewer pipe and hope to get at least one swal­low that won’t give us rag­ing diarrhea.

I know the sen­ti­ment of the phrase is meant to imply that we’re not god­like arbiters of taste, mak­ing and break­ing careers on a whim.    But edi­tors do wield power.  And it changes us.  Generally it makes us ill-​​tempered and eas­ily dis­tracted by shiny objects.    I’ve yet to feel god­like, but I’m not rul­ing out the pos­si­bil­ity.  Maybe when some­thing I’ve pub­lished wins a Hugo, I will ascend to Asgard.

LIE #5:  Editors (and crit­ics) are failed writers.

As a rule, no.  A lot of us are mod­er­ately suc­cess­ful writ­ers.   Some of us have never wanted to write and never will.  There are a few who have started out as writ­ers and given it up for the editing/​publishing game (Gordon, I think), but not all of us have.

We’re not dri­ven to become edi­tors out of bit­ter­ness.  We all come to the posi­tion for dif­fer­ent rea­sons, but I think most of us start out as opti­mistic and hope­ful.  We think that maybe we have a vision for a type of story that nobody else has seen before.  We day dream about find­ing writ­ers that amaze us and pub­lish­ing them before any­one else.

It takes a pecu­liar sort of ego to take up edit­ing.  And thank god.  If it wasn’t for edi­tors, we’d all have to sort through the kind of self-​​published garbage that made it pos­si­ble for Geocities to stay in busi­ness for so long.  I shud­der to think of a world with­out editors.

And finally, a well-​​known truth:

You can bribe an editor.

Most of us are broke and dri­ven to drink copi­ous amounts of alco­hol.  See the sewer pipe anal­ogy above.  That gives us a weak­ness you can exploit.  Next time you’re at a con­ven­tion, go to the bar, and buy a drink for your favorite edi­tor.  Make sure you do it early on, because seven or eight drinks in, we’ll never remem­ber your name.   We’ll be lucky to wake up in the right hotel room, or even the right state.  Who bought the drinks on a night like that will be the least of our con­cerns when we wake up naked atop a desert mesa cov­ered from head to toe in blue paint.

Putting a name to a face, along with a men­tal data­base note of “bought me a beer” doesn’t hurt.  One of the things that makes edit­ing eas­ier is pre­tend­ing that the sto­ries aren’t all writ­ten by human beings with heart.  Sometimes, we have to put that out of our minds.  And if you find a way to politely shat­ter that illu­sion, well, it can be good for you.  But only if you are likely to start sell­ing sto­ries anyway.

There are no great secrets to being pub­lished.  Read lots.   Write sto­ries.  Lots and lots of sto­ries.  Submit the work until the sto­ries are either accepted or rejected by every mar­ket you could bear to see your name asso­ci­ated with.  That’s pretty much all there is to it.  Everything else is basi­cally unimportant.