Short Story Submissions

The elements that we consider make up a "well written" story tend to be those we've observed in stories we like. When we consider stories for Neo-opsis, the first thing we consider is, "did we like the story?" not "would my English teachers have approved of all the elements of the story?" One story didn't have what some would consider the best writing techniques, but when I read the story, I felt like I was in the story watching it, rather than looking at words on a page. That to me is far more important than whether their grammar was perfect, if their tenses always matched, etc.

It's easier to fix the grammar in an interesting story than it is to make a well-written boring story less boring.

—Karl Johanson
Editor, Neo-opsis Magazine

Interview with Terry Fallis

Fabulous interview by Mark Leslie Lefebvre with Terry Fallis about going from self-published writer, to Stephen Leacock Medal winner, to bestselling author with one of the world's largest publishers. Terry talks about writing a novel no one was interested in publishing (a satirical novel about Canadian politics--well, duh!) but nevertheless reached the audience he needed to reach.

If you don't have time to watch, do what I did and listen to the audio podcast at the link included. It has the advantage that you can listen on your headphones as you do the dishes or vacuum or walk the dog, so you get two things accomplished in the time for one. Also, the audio version includes 15 extra minutes of Mark's commentary on HIS writing life, in this case, excellent advice on how to keep from being overwhelmed by too many writing projects or being discouraged when you (inevitably, in my view) fall behind self-imposed deadlines.

My favourite Fallis advice to writers from the interview—something I've also been telling students and clients for years—is not to chase trends:

For crying out loud, write something that you care about. If vampires are all the rage right now, don't write a vampire novel because of that. If you love vampires, by all means. But I remember meeting a writer, an aspiring writer, and she said, "Yes, I'm writing a novel about vampires because they're so hot now". (In the rise of Twilight.) And I said, "Oh, do you, are you interested in vampires?"
"No, not really."
"Do you know much about them?"
"No, not yet. But I'm just researching them now."
"Do you know any vampires?"
"No."
"Are you a vampire?"
"No."
"Are you touched in any way by vampires?"
"No."
So I could only imagine the challenge it would be to write a book that feels real, and powerful, compelling, authentic, when there is no connection at all between the subject matter and the writer, beyond the marketing imperative of the high profile of vampires at that moment in time.
So when people would say,"Why would you write a politcal satire of Canadian politics, that sounds like a terrible idea," and maybe it was, but at least it was something I cared about, and knew about, I'd lived in that world, I had some views on it and I had a story I wanted to tell to illuminate a different path we might take in how we practice politics in this country. And I think it's hard to write your best work when you're not writing about something that you care about.

I've seen this again and again: writers chasing a trend. Even those talented enough to write something half-way decent are wasting their time because by the time their book is ready, the market has been flooded by copycats, and the trend is over. Any book you can write fast enough to cash in won't be good enough, and any book that's good enough will take too long to write, have edited, go through the submission/or self-published process to appear while the trend is still there. The only authors who were able to cash in on Twilight's success, were those who already had a really fine vampire book in their bottom drawer before vampires were hot.

Similarly, there is no hope of predicting what the next big thing will be to get ahead of the curve—would you have expected Canadian political satire, for example? And even if you could predict, it still has to be something to which you actually have a connection. Certainly, every genre editor can spot when a mainstream writer has decided to "knock out a genre novel" on the grounds of "how hard can it be" and reinvents every cliché that died out 50 years ago—or worse, believes an SF or Romance novel has lower standards. No thanks!

The whole interview is awesome because Mark is a great interviewer and has known Fallis forever, certainly before Fallis was known outside of Hamilton, and because Fallis is a fascinating guy with an unusual career path. (And for older writers like myself, it's encouraging to know you can still make it as a writer after age 35.)

I'd also recommend Mark Leslie Lefebvre's Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing for not just this episode, but as an ongoing series. Mark was the founder and former director of Kobo's Writing Life program for independent authors, was a long-time bookseller and one of the first to install an Expresso Book Machine in Canada (i.e., print-on-demand before anyone else had heard of POD), and is an established author himself. He has an insider's knowledge of both traditional and self-publishing, and extensive experience as a bookstore manager. So...yeah, you need to be listening to this if you want to understand what's happening in the industry.

Highly recommended.

On Common Errors in Fiction

Andromeda Spaceways, the Australian SF magazine, has a helpful and amusing article by Douglas A. Van Belleon on the most common reasons they reject a story. Pretty accurate and comprehensive list of reasons your story might not be working (though I've added one additional suggestion in the comments section). Worth a look!

The Editor is Not Your Enemy

Good post from Inside Higher Education by Rob Weir that explains the difference between copy editing and developmental editing, and especially how an author should react to editor feedback.

The Editor is Not Your Enemy

Spoiler alert: Chucking the whole project is not the solution.

Rob is talking about book publishing, but the same advice applies to theses and dissertations, just change "editor" to "supervisor" in the article, and it applies.

An editor's view of clients

A good depiction of an editor's view of clients for Halloween: Boo! These Are the 10 Monsters Your Book Editor Fears the Most by Blake Atwood.

Blake concludes by saying "Now, this isn’t a complaint article about editing clients. Rather, it’s meant as a curtain-parting glimpse into what editors deal with in terms of unprepared, underprepared, or naive clients. It’s what not to do when working with an editor."

He goes on to say, "Additionally, many of these 'monsters' come by it honestly. Because they don’t live, breathe and eat writing and publishing as editors do, they just don’t know what’s conventional or expected. Most editors understand this and are glad to help new authors learn the ropes—so long as the author is receptive to expert advice."

Of course, most clients are not like those described. Most are reasonable people looking for expert advice on their manuscript and open to input to ensure their manuscript is as good as it can be. They are happy to learn about the process and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their writing so they can eliminate any bad habits for next time, and pleasantly surprised how good their writing is after an editor as been over it. The editor-client relationship is almost always positive, Blake's occasional monster notwithstanding.

What Not to Say to an Editor

Neo-Opsis editor, Karl Johanson, during a panel with and Laurie Smith at KeyCon (Winnipeg, May 2016) gives an example of something not to say to any editor when submitting a manuscript:

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....

  — — — — — —

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.

---

Oh, say! Karl posted a part two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX-jyRxfqTA

Another good point!

Query Letters

Here is a good article on query letters by Jane Friedman, though I am a bit skeptical about her comments on simultaneous submissions. I think that depends on the particular market you are in. Similarly, if a publisher's guidelines ask for something specific, then do that in your submission to that publisher, rather than what any advice columnist says: publishers guidelines always trump generic guidelines. But in general, Jane's column is a good clear discussion.

Story Cliches

I was considering submitting a story to Strange Horizons Magazine and happened upon this list of "Stories We've Seen Too Often" attached to their "Guidelines" page. I was laughing heartily at the hopeless hackneyed ideas of these unsophisticated and unimaginative beginners. . . when I realized that the story I intended to submit was #5 on the list.

*Sigh*

Clearly there is no point submitting this story to any SF venue if my plot is #5 (on a list of 51) SF cliches.

There is nothing for it but to throw it out. . . to CanLit markets. (Well, might be new idea to their editors!)

In Acquisition Editor Mode...

Signed a new author for Five Rivers yesterday that I've been stalking for a long time.... So happy! Brilliant, brilliant book. I'm sure it will be the author's breakout novel; just the best thing I've read in years.

Adrianne Kerr (editor of Commercial Fiction at Penguin Canada) said on a panel a couple of conventions ago that acquisition editors these days can't just sit at their desks and wait for great manuscripts to come in over the transom, they were increasingly expected to go out and find them. I thought she just meant combing the big sellers among the self-published novelists for something that might be worthy of bookstore distribution, but I think now she maybe meant something a little more complicated... I know it took me a long time and very deep roots in the speculative genre to hunt down this book. The manuscript had been sitting in the author's bottom drawer for years. Finding that...feels like the greatest coup since Carr scored Rite of Passage for his Ace Specials series. So feeling pretty good today!

And if that wasn't the end of a perfect day, next up on my agenda, editing a brand new Dave Duncan novel! Whoohoo!

And three more solicited 'possibles' sitting on the editorial assistant's desk, awaiting her judgement; a nonfiction monograph due back in from revisions at end of the month; and the first of a two book deal with another new writer who hung onto the movie rights because, yeah, that one could be a successful movie....

Never thought there could be a better job than professoring...but editor is giving it a good run for the money....

(cartoon source)

Interview on Editing

Interview with me on editing by Mike Plested on his regular Get Published podcast. Mike's questions covered a lot of ground and I think the interview came out rather well-- i.e., he did a good job of editing out all of my more stupid comments.

Submission Guidelines

I've blogged elsewhere that the The editor is not your enemy, but I am constantly amazed how many authors seem to start from that assumption. In one recent on-line discussion, an author took exception to a online publisher specifying such details as "straight quotes marks rather than Word 'Smart quote marks'" in their guidelines as needlessly picky -- he described such requirements as "stringent, bordering on snobby" and a "barrier" to soliciting work. When I tried to argue that different publishers needed different formatting options (e.g., print publishers like smart quote, online publishers need straight quotes because smart quotes turn into weird Greek characters on screen) so it just made sense to alert authors to what was needed for this particular market, he responded that the publishers were trying to get the authors to do their job for them.

Well, yeah, I guess you could see it that way. But if I am submitting to a publisher, I'm going to try to make it as easy as possible for them to accept my work. The first step in that process is to ensure that I have read and followed the submission guidelines. In my most recent sale, I had to reformat all my "--" to "&emdash", a process that took me about 20 seconds. I really don't see the problem. Making all the changes required by their guidelines probably took about half an hour, a very minor investment of time compared to writing and editing the story -- but if you multiply that half hour by 200 submissions, well, from the editor's point of view, that's a couple of week's work for no reason -- it's just annoying that authors couldn't be bothered to follow the formatting specified guidelines.

When I encounter a manuscript that isn't formatted for the particular market, I usually safe in assuming either:

(a) the author is a newbie whose got hold of some Writer's Guide manual from the 1970s that says this or that format is the correct way to do it, and no one's explained that that's all changed since the turn of the century -- what the publisher needs varies depending on the software they're using and the format (book or print) they are putting out, so it varies between publishers and actually matters because if you get it wrong and they don't catch it, your published work could be filled with weird Greek characters....

(b) they are submitting a piece they formatted for another market which has already rejected it, and the author is shooting it out to the next market down their list -- and if they are not reading the submission guidelines on formatting, they're probably not paying much attention to the guidelines on genre, style, etc. etc. either.

I'm usually okay with (a), since it is relatively easy to bring these folks up to speed, but the (b) category are a pain. Why would I want to read, let alone publish, a manuscript that someone else has already rejected, possibly more than once? Sure, taste vary and it is possible that I might like what someone else felt unsuitable for their venue, but if I have to read through 200 slush pile submissions, anything I can do to quickly whittle that number down, I'm going to do. When I see a submission that looks like a resubmission from somewhere else, chances are I'm going to send it to the bottom of the pile and get to it when (and only if) I can't find anything more suitable among the submissions targeted specifically to my publication guidelines.

To summarize: what publishers need varies widely; each publisher specifies their particular preferences in their submission guidelines; following the guidelines makes it easier for them to accept your work.

This is not rocket science. This is about professionalism. If you are submitting (or resubmitting) a manuscript, take the time to read and follow the guidelines provided. The half hour it takes you to do so is time well invested both in terms of your making the sale and in saving some poor copy editor hours of unnecessary frustration. Failing to do so strongly suggests to a publisher that the submission is coming from someone who is unprofessional -- either inexperienced, or careless, or just difficult to work with. With so many quality manuscripts competing for so few slots, you'd have to be a complete idiot not to format as requested.

I'd like to conclude with a comment by editor/publisher Sandra Kasturi which illustrates what I've been saying (emphasis added):

We prefer CLEAN manuscripts, READABLE manuscripts--no stupid Gothic Nazi fonts and weird layouts intended to "help" us. But I don't want zero formatting and courier font because I'm reading manuscripts on the screen. I get tired of reformatting them into a readable font just so I can have a look at it. And the correlation between stupid font/layout/lack of paying attention to guidelines & really dumb story/bad writing, is almost 100%.

I think when we re-open to slush on July 1st, I might put a caveat at the top of the guidelines page that states "Due to the extremely high volume of submissions, if you have chosen to ignore the guidelines, then your manuscript will be automatically rejected."

Then I can hear the sound of a thousand terrible writers having temper tantrums because we're not catering to their every needy whim.

Isn't it nice? We've only been in business three years, and already disillusionment and aggravation are the mots du jour. : )

Cover letters and Synopsis

Great interview with Sandra Kasturi, Co-Publisher, ChiZine Publications, on Jim Harrington's excellent Six Questions for..." blog. I particularly loved the discussion of cover letters and synopses which is the clearest statement of the typical errors people make and the clearest direction for how to do them properly I have yet read.

Advice to Aquisition Editors

Kristin Janz's Top Ten Habits of Highly Irritating Editors makes for entertaining reading.