Writing advice and commentary from the editors at Essential Edits / SFeditor.ca
Membership in CSFFA is $10/yr and open to any Canadian, and includes the right to nominate and vote for the Auroras.
My short story, "Age of Miracles", was nominated for a 2017 Aurora in the short story category, so is included in this year's voters' package. I'm really pleased because that means more people will likely have the opportunity to read the story, though the anthology it's from, Strangers Among Us is a good one (six aurora nominations in all!) and well worth buying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekXhdWbmZ5o
I would add another thing not to say: what precautions one has taken against the editor stealing one's ideas. Because, that's not only telling the editor that one does not trust him or her (and why would I want to work with someone who insults me by suggesting I'm a thief?), it's making it pretty clear that they (a) have a grossly over-inflated sense of how original and creative their ideas are; and that (b) they think coming up with the story idea is the hard part of writing. So that pretty much flags one as paranoid, likely to be a bad writer and difficult to work with. In other words, an easy, instant rejection.
As with Karl's example of a 'don't do that', I never thought I'd actually ever get one of these paranoid cover letters—even though every other editor has their own examples—but we have already had to deal with a couple of these.... It just completely sad, and not just because it means an instant rejection.
(Unless the writer is 12 or under. I am prepared to cut a 12-year-old a certain amount of slack here because they are too immature to . But if you're tempted to write that cover letter when you're in your 30s, you need to seek the counsel of a mental health professional. Seriously.)
I also have had to listen to a couple of semi-pro writers talk about how this or that editor ripped off their idea. In one case the writer complained how an editor's recent award-winning story was actually their rejected submission of a few months earlier. All one can do is frown and nod sympathetically...because that is just patent nonsense. Sure, both stories had a spaceship, and both stories used the word 'hyperdrive' at some point, but really? You don't see a difference in the writing? You don't think that is a sufficiently generic trope that it might come up once or twice before? It's just embarrassing.
I know a number of editors have said they had to stop writing once they became editors to avoid countless accusations of this type. Fortunately, this has not been an issue for me: apparently, no one wishes to claim credit for any of my stories....
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Of course...none of that applies to dealing with anyone connected to Hollywood. Those guys are sharks, and do not—judging by recent remakes and releases—have any original ideas of their own.
Another good point!
The first two chapters of the just published The Tattooed Witch by Susan MacGregor (Five Rivers Publishing, July 2013) are available on Susan's site, Suzenyms. I was the editor for the final version of this novel, though another editorial team had already done the initial developmental work on this one, so it was pretty clean when I got it. And of course, Susan is herself a well known editor (with On Spec Magazine), so I imagine it was pretty smooth writing from the get go. Really looking forward to editing the next two books in this series, the second volume of which is already waiting on my desk.
Currently in my "to do" pile:
I also have two solicited manuscripts for review which I can't talk about until/if we sign contracts. And I'm off to When Words Collide convention in Calgary next weekend (August 9-11, 2013) where a number of authors have signed up to pitch books to Five Rivers, so may get one or two more submissions there. (WWC is a great convention for authors and editors: I get more business done there than at any other convention.)
(Okay, not an actual picture of my desk. The actual manuscripts are all Word Files on my computer. Nobody accepts paper manuscripts anymore. But, you know, there's no photo for that.)
So...29 manuscripts currently on my desk, but that's much less of a backlog than usual. With the kids out of school in August and family vacation, probably won't get a lot done until Sept, but this lot should be off my desk by mid-October at the latest.
Oh, and that's not counting the four graduate students I have working on their theses for me. In fact, here is a great Pinterest site by one of my grad students on 400 children's books to aid children through grieving. (Pininterest beats the hell out of asking for a traditional literature review, eh?)
