Writing advice and commentary from the editors at Essential Edits / SFeditor.ca
Glad to have made the cover of next issue (Vol.39, number 3) of Exile Literary Quarterly. They reprinted my story, "Hacker Chess" from The Playground of Lost Toys anthology edited by Ursula Pflug and Colleen Anderson. Considering what a fabulous anthology that is, kind of mind-boggled that mine was one of the five stories chosen out of the 22 in the book. But very glad for the extra exposure!
I am often asked by aspiring writers, especially those with some critical success writing short stories or winning contests, "How do I become a full-time writer?". The short answer is, "You don't."
I don't actually mean that too personally. It's usually not that one is not a good enough writer, it's that that career line simply doesn't exist any more. In the 1920s and 1930s, writing fiction for the pulp market could garner one a decent income. Unfortunately, that pulp market, and the pocketbook market that replaced it, are essentially gone. The few fiction magazines that remain still pay the same rates they were paying in 1930, so it is no longer possible to make a living from writing short fiction; and pocketbooks are pretty much down to a few dozen best sellers. When I started my career, there were 42 different publishers to whom I could send an SF manuscript...now we're down to maybe five. Given that everyone else is submitting to the same five editors, the bar for entry has been raised too high for mortals to cross, and the wait times to even have one's manuscript read (given the thousands of manuscripts submitted to the same five markets), this is simply no longer a viable career option.
For example, out of the three hundred or so published writers I know personally, perhaps three make what one would consider a decent middle class living; another 20 or so live by writing, but consequently live extremely humble lifestyles. For example, I recall one woman—the author of about i5 books at that point—who exclaimed to our writer's group, "Now I'll be able to buy tea!" when a royalty check arrived. I don't know about you, but not being able to afford a box of tea for months at a time does not constitute "making a living" in my books.
Most writers I know have day jobs to support themselves and their families. Many work as technical writers, so that they are still practicing their craft, but computer manuals and political speeches are not what they would 'count' as their actual writing. Others have jobs in unrelated careers, such as 'spouse'. (Though one writer told me lately that she would have married anyone prepare to support her writing, so maybe that is a related career after all.)
To which aspiring writers often retort, "Well those guys (pointing to the best seller counter) make a very good living. How do I get to be one of them?"
You don't. Because it is not enough to be a great writer anymore; you have to be outrageously lucky as well. (Or, you know, deal-with-the-devil seems the only plausible explanation for the success of some writers, but that's beyond the scope of the current post.) Unfortunately, pointing to a successful best-selling author these days and asking how to get there is much like pointing to a lottery winner and asking me how to make a living buying lottery tickets. Yeah, there are folks that worked for because somebody has to win, but I think we're all agreed that if one mortgages their house to buy lottery tickets,they're an idiot. One has a better chance playing for the NHL as a career path than making it to the exalted ranks of best selling author, so most career counselors will recommend having a backup plan to even the best aspiring hockey players.
The good news is that becoming a published writer is easier than it has ever been. Getting into the big five is next to impossible without an agent, and getting a respectable agent to take one on is pretty difficult, but it is possible, provided that one's work is both to that standard and commercial. But there are lots of smaller presses around, which can deliver a fair degree of quality and prestige,if not best-seller scale sales. And if one can't find a publisher to take one, one can always self-publish. (If you're going to self-publish, I suggest starting with Kobo Writing Life, which is an author-friendly interface, run by author and book nerd, Mark Lefebvre.) Seeing one's book in print (and digital) is easy--getting anyone to buy it after, not so much.
Bottom-line: if you're in it for the money, you're likely going to be disappointed. If you're in it for the writing, then happy days.
It's kind of fascinating how different authors respond to my—er—style of editing. About 85% of the time I get, "finally, somebody who just comes out and plainly tells me what's wrong"; but 10% complain, "why are you so mean?!" and twice in the last two months I've had clients say, "That's it, I'm quitting writing!" And those were the ones I was trying to be tactful with. (I think I talked one of them out of burning the manuscript and quitting...haven't heard back from the other!)
I often joke that I took early retirement to edit full time because I could be ruder editing authors than grad students... the fact is, after doing this for 25 years, I can usually guess which writers I can be sarcastic with, and which I need to retain a degree of decorum. When an author and I are pretty simpatico, I can relax a bit and edit faster by just saying stuff, 'playful sarcasm' and all. It's actually a lot slower to find 'supportive' ways of saying "this is stupid". (Well, not that I'd actually use the word 'stupid', but you know what I mean.) I can be incredibly supportive when in supportive mode, and I've encountered plenty of grad students/authors over the years who didn't need editing so much as reassurance and morale building. And I happen to be good at that too (as testimonials on my website attest). The problem, then, comes if I guess wrong....
I've had this discussion with other editors, and they all pretty much tell me I should be nice to everybody all the time because you can't take the risk of getting it wrong. They're probably right, since I am painfully aware that writing is hard, we all question our ability all the time, and someone telling us this or that piece of writing sucks can set one back months or worse.
But um.
Here's the thing: I've also gotten a number of manuscripts across my desk that have already been edited, but I couldn't tell. I understand that sometimes novices ask for 'an edit' not understanding the difference between copy editing and structural editing. I get that maybe the editor in question thought the person wanted the grammar and spelling fixed before sending it off to a publisher, and honestly believed that their tactful copy edit was worth the $3500 they charged the client. But personally, I believe it is unethical to copy edit a manuscript that one knows to be terrible. Some of this might reflect in how low regard mainstream editors hold SF (i.e., they did not think the giant ants a problem), but I think most of it is motivated by the fact that freelance editing is a tough way to make a living (a lot like writing!) and taking an novice's money is better than being short on the rent. You know? So at what point does "tactful and supportive" morph into 'exploitative ripoff'? Because I have had half a dozen clients now tell me they have already spent thousands of dollars on several iterations of a manuscript, which when I get it, looks like I'm starting from scratch. And it's not that these writers didn't have any potential...it's that no one has told them that giant ants are a no-go, at least not in this way. So when is 'tactful' just out-and-out lying to maintain an income stream?
Vanity presses are tactful and supportive. I'm starting to wonder how much of the freelance editing industry is the new vanity press?
On the other hand...I don't want to scare away potential clients reading this and thinking, "Oh my god, he's admitting he's mean? So a couple of (made-up) examples of my editing style to illustrate what I'm talking about:
1) An author writes: "I expect a few good chuckles and maybe the odd wince."
If I thought the author should use "occasionally" instead of "odd" in that sentence, I might say something like: "Well, your protagonist is odd, so I would expect her to wince oddly...how about 'occasionally' instead of 'odd''? I think I'm being hilarious, but if it strikes you that I am in fact revealing myself to be a self-indulgent ass, feel free to ask for the 'tactful' editing package.
2) "The good folks at Mall World accepted my proposal."
If I thought that a bit too casual for a formal piece of text, I might say in the track changes "Yes, the bad folks at Mall World were dead against it, but the good ones eventually prevailed." Again, I think I am lightening the mood, but would completely understand if people found that annoying.
Okay, maybe not the best examples I could have chosen but they do sort of represent my style with people I know well. I don't do
This is one reason I insist on editing a sample (usually, about 30 pages) for a flat introductory fee ($90) before taking on any new client. That way, the client can see if they like my style of comment (and it's only the cost of a 'first date', if they don't) and whether the feedback they are getting is the type of feedback they want. (Not everybody wants to hear that they have to rewrite.) And, I get to see if the manuscript is one that resonates with me...because there is no point trying to edit a piece I don't 'get'.
Related Post: Five Rivers' Publisher, Lorina Stephens, weighs in on editing style.
Can*Con 2015
I started the convention off with a bang by presenting Joe Mahoney with a Five Rivers contract for his book, A Time and A Place. That was scary for both of us, because I hadn't actually finished reading the manuscript, and Joe wasn't sure he didn't want to go with one of the big five.... But I liked what I had read so far, and my editorial assistant at Five Rivers, Kathyrn Shalley, had read it all the way through and recommended we buy it, and there is no point in having an editorial assistant if you don't trust her judgement and let her assist you. (And knowing Joe was either the producer or the story editor on the best SF ever to come out of the CBC didn't hurt either!) For Joe's part, he found himself taken aside by a couple of writers in the consuite who told him, 'if you find an editor who 'gets' your writing, take your book there!" Apparently he thought that good advice!
Joe Mahoney signs with Five Rivers
Considering that these days almost every stage of book publishing, including the negotiations over the contract, are conducted via email, it was a unique pleasure to actually meet and sign in person. An actual paper contract, not a scanned PDF....
Joe and I hung for most of Friday and Saturday, joined by various interesting folk. I met so many authors and editors, some of whom I knew virtually, but many of whom were completely new to me. Of course, that was the point of going out: to show the flag for SFeditor.ca and Five Rivers; and to spy out the lay of the land.... Some very interesting small press publishers out there. I already knew Bundoran, Dragon Moon and Tyche, of course, though this was the first time I've met Dragon Moon's managing editor, Gabrielle Harbowy. But it was a blast meeting Kristin Hirst (and her Dad) from Pop Seagull, for instance. And so many writers...Sorry CZP had to miss due to illness.
I did a couple of panels (How to Pitch Your Novel, and one on the History of Canadian SF with Jean-Louis Trudel and Allan Weiss; I did three rounds of Five Rivers Pitch sessions; a couple of Blue Pencil Cafés and a reading as part of the mini-launch of Playground of Lost Toys (from Exile Editions). Must confess I was a bit intimidated by readings by Kate Story, Claude Lalumiere, and Mellisa Yuan-Innes whose stories were all completely fabulous, and Derek Newman-Stille's introduction....Had to miss David Hartwell's panel on history of Science Fiction; readings by some other authors I really wanted to hear, but there was just something interesting every hour and I couldn't do it all. I did get to a panel with Ed Willett, Ryan MacFadden, Gabrielle Harbowy based on CBC's "Adults read things they wrote as Kids". It was a pretty awesome time — though Ed Willett's voice can make anything sound fabulous...
The con was very well organized. Trains all ran on time. I really liked the design of the Blue Pencil Workshops / Publisher's Pitch sessions which were set up in an area where one volunteer (three cheers for Kerri Elizabeth Gerrow) was able to run all four sessions simultaneously. And registration was not just hyper efficient (e.g., tracking me down to correct the error printed on my panel schedule so I could be where I was supposed to be...), they were also totally enthusiastic — all smiles all the time.
The Sheraton as the venue worked well for me. I heard some grumbling over the cost of the restaurant, the lack of alternative places to eat nearby, but I personally really liked the hotel restaurant. I guess the food was bit pricey, but worth it. I don't mind paying when the quality is there: best steak sandwich in a long time.
Did lots of work for Five Rivers, got a couple of potential customers for SFeditor.ca, and totally enjoyed myself.
I'll try to get back next year. Highly recommend the Can*Con to any writer/editor/etc out there.
"What does any of it mean? I think that chaos is alive and the natural order of the universe."
— Lorina Stephens, Publisher, Five Rivers
Do you have characters — or stickfigures
Years ago I attended a presentation by Emmy-winning author, Sean Stewart, in which he explained why there were no children in SF. It is, he said, extremely tricky to keep the action going and the tension up if the heroine running down the corridor is trailed by a toddler saying "Are we there yet, Mommy?" or "I don't like the Death Star, Mommy! I want to go home!" every ten feet. (I thought this terribly funny at the time, but found it less so when I subsequently had children of my own, and recalled Sean's description as my five-year-old kept punching me every 30 seconds because we were stuck in an hour-long line up at customs one 3AM flight, and she couldn't understand why I wouldn't let her leave.) Kids and action adventure stories do not make an easy mix.
Challenged by Sean's talk, I chose to include a 9 year-old in my own first novel—which may partly explain why my first novel took so long to finish. Although a key factor in a couple of scenes, figuring out what to do with the kid for the rest of the book was ridiculously difficult. Arranging for various babysitters to show up so my hero(s) could go adventuring without him wore thin pretty fast, and the biggest flaw my editor identified in my preliminary draft was that I had simply forgotten about the kid for five chapters while the main characters dealt with their current crisis. "And where is her son when all this is happening?" came to be the one editorial comment I dreaded most during revisions. So yeah, I don't recommend including child characters in an action novel unless one is a glutton for punishment.
The biggest problem I see with child characters coming across my desk as an editor, is authors getting the ages wrong. As any parent knows, there are huge gaps in sophistication between an infant, a toddler, a grade 1, a grade 4, and a grade 7. When one has an infant of one's own, one can accurately peg the age of other infants to within a few weeks. By the time our child is in grade school, our accuracy is down to being able to say if a newly encountered child is the grade above or below our own: a mere six weeks makes no difference developmentally, but a year's difference is still sufficiently significant to be obvious. As kids grow up, age becomes increasingly unimportant, with some teenagers, for example, presenting with greater maturity than many of the adults one encounters. As our own children age, our ability to remember what characteristics go with which age becomes less precise, because that knowledge is no longer relevant to our daily lives—at least not until our children start delivering grandchildren.
Writers, however, need to get this right. If one gives a nine year-old character the dialog of a five-year-old, one's adult readers might not notice—it's just a kid talking—but a nine-year-old reader will find it infuriating. It is not just not credible to that young reader; it is highly insulting to discover the author has so little regard for nine year-olds—whose self-image is that of a grown up / sophisticated almost-adult, definitely not to be confused with a five year-old child. That the writer could make such a fundamental mistake is to them an insurmountable barrier to finishing the book, no matter how good otherwise. Could you finish a book that gave the character of a Sudanese immigrant an Irish brogue? If the author can't get the dialect right, how is the reader to take anything in the novel as credible?
Most authors know better than to attempt depicting an accent they are not themselves intimately familiar with, but I am astonished at how frequently they will assign dialog or actions inconsistent with a character's age when depicting children. If one is writing a YA novel, for example, the younger siblings in the novel had better behave in a credible way, or the YA readers will throw the book across the room in disgust. YA readers have a much more accurate estimation of maturation levels than most adults because they either have actual siblings that age, or have best friends with siblings that age; and if they cannot picture their little brother or sister saying or doing that, the story loses all credibility. I don't understand authors who spend months researching police procedure or forensic evidence or the astronomical details of their SF setting, but are three years off the mark in depicting the reactions of a ten year-old. If one doesn't currently have a ten year-old in one's household, or a convenient nice or nephew, then why even have that character in the novel? If there is some compelling reason to add a child, do your research: go find some kids that age to talk to. One needs to put at least as much research into that character as one would any other element of the novel.
I started with a seven year-old in my novel...but have revised the age upward with each subsequent draft as my own youngest matured, because the only sure test I have ever had for the credibility of that character was to ask, "Is this something my kid might actually say/do in these circumstances?" Of course, not living on a starship, I have to do a certain amount of extrapolation, but at least I'm determined to be in the right ballpark in terms of maturation. Am shocked and appalled how often this is not the case with many of the manuscripts that cross my desk.
Cover for Playground of Lost Toys, edited by Connie Anderson and Ursula Pflug
My story, "Hacker Chess" which appears in Playground of Lost Toys scheduled for Dec 1, 2015 release, is a good example of writing for a specific market.
When the call for submissions originally came out for Playground I didn't have anything to hand, or even any ideas for a story I could possibly submit. It was pretty much a topic to which I didn't relate. So, I ignored the call and wrote a story for a different anthology that fit nicely with a couple of the stories on my "in-my-head-and-should-really-write-down-one-of these-days" list. I sent that story off, although I was not completely satisfied with it's ending.
I subsequently wrote a second story I liked even better for that other anthology, but when I ran it past my personal editor (naturally, I never submit anything anywhere that hasn't first been edited) she said, "Hey, this is pretty good. Why don't you submit it to Anderson and Pflug for their anthology, since you're already got that other one in for the first anthology?" And because it is always a good idea to listen to your editor, I did that, even though I didn't see how it even remotely fit their theme at all. And lo and behold, they rejected it by return email because, as they correctly pointed out, it didn't remotely fit their theme. But--here's where things start getting interesting--they thought the story 'clever' and asked if I would rewrite it to make it fit the theme.
I thought about that, and played around with the story a bit to see if I could make it fit. But every time I tried to change something, the whole thing fell apart. So, bad news was there was no way I could bend that story into shape to fit Playground; the good news was that in looking closely at that story again, I realized I could improve the ending to make it both more optimistic and more realistic. I then sent "Age of Miracles" off to the other anthology which bought it (though it's TOC hasn't been officially announced yet, which is why I'm being coy about calling it "the other anthology".)
Which left me with the predicament that I had a couple of editors who actually liked my writing (indeed, Ursula had already bought another of my stories for her previous anthology, They Have to Take You In) and no story for them. So I looked again at the initial call for submissions and at all of their subsequent posts talking about the kinds of stories they were getting as opposed to the kind they actually wanted, and I sat down and wrote the story they said they wanted.
I have to say, that was one of the fastest I have ever managed to write something, because having a specific target made it really, really easy to focus. And I was very happy with the result. Indeed, when I made my daughter read it she was sufficiently impressed to say, "Hey, this is actually really good." (Which, you know, I still can't decide if I should be complimented by her enthusiasm, or insulted by her surprise.) But thus reassured, and with the blessing of my regular editor, I submitted it to Colleen and Ursula.
Who promptly rejected it. They still wanted me to rewrite "Age of Miracles". I thought this one was at least as good as "Age of Miracles", and more on target, but the writer's opinion is not the one that counts in these situations. I had to confess to them that I couldn't make "Age of Miracles" work for their theme and had already sold it elsewhere, so that left me just a day and a half to come up with something else before Playground's final deadline for submissions.
Carefully analyzing what they had liked about "Age of Miracles" and what wasn't working for them in the second story (well, it did take awhile to get to the toy part), I wrote "Hacker Chess" in less than 10 hours. That's an all time record for me. But having a very clear idea of the target and a tight deadline seemed to focus the process wonderfully: no time for the usual angst, no wandering off message, no obsessive rewriting...just a quick turn around from my regular editor assuring me it was up to my usual standard.
I hope you like the result.
Writing for a specific market, then, has the advantage of knowing exactly what the target is, which may both speed and focus the process. The downside is, if you miss, there is nowhere else for those stories to go.
Let's face it, no one wants to publish a story someone else has already rejected (because what would that imply about one's standards?); and even if one were open-minded enough to realize that a story may be rejected because it didn't quite fit the editors' theme rather than for questions of quality, it's quite likely other venues in that genre are going to be inundated by stories on that theme from all the rejected submissions. An editor can only take one dinosaur or flying saucer or 'toy' story per annum, so when 25 toy-themed stories come in the month after Playground closes, only one of those has even a theoretical chance of seeing publication. In reality, once the editor realizes that 25 toy stories are not a coincidence, quite likely to have an allergic reaction to them all.
So I now have two stories in my inventory with nowhere to go. Luckily, the story I wrote specifically for Playground was sufficiently mainstream there's a chance I can pass it off as CanLit. Consequently I shot it off to a mainstream lit mag hoping that its editors sufficiently removed from the genre scene not to instantly recognize it as a Playground reject, and the market sufficiently removed that it won't be the first choice of other rejected Playground writers. If that doesn't work, I'll have to tuck it into a drawer for a couple of years until the flow of other toy stories has ebbed, and it's safe to bring it out again.
The leftover story from the other anthology is probably too odd to go elsewhere with ease. It is part of a larger world I'm developing, so I might just have to wait to incorporate in that collection/novel; or wait for the second volume in that anthology series, should the editors/publisher think there is potential market for a second collection. (I think there is, because fascinating topic, but having a story in hand on the topic may be biasing me.)
One's other option, of course, is to enter the leftover stories in contests, such as the Merril. The Friends of the Merril contest is particularly good one because it has (1) low entrance fees, (2) excellent judges, (3) significant prize money, (4) they accept simultaneous submissions (5) they aren't asking for publishing rights, and (6) the proceeds go to a really good cause, which I would support anyway. Oh, and you get a free Lovecraftian e-book just for entering this year, which is pretty sweet if you're into that at all. Again, danger of the judges being overwhelmed with stories addressing the same theme, but at least my Playground reject has the advantage of being off topic rather than being yet another doll story. Downside, of course, is a lot of tough competition for the one winning spot.
Front and back covers, with backcover blurb.
I would, on the whole, count the experience of targeting specific anthologies a positive one. Two sales to top anthologies (seeing the TOC, I'm pretty happy with whom I am rubbing shoulders!) feels pretty good, and I was slightly amazed at how much easier and faster my process given a clear target. Instead of being a constraint, writing to a theme turned out to be strangely freeing. I recommend giving it a try next time you see a call for submissions, even if the topic at first glance is not one for which you have an idea to hand.
