year-end editing roundup
Dec. 26th, 2015 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksIt hasn't actually been a full year since I started editing at Strange Horizons, as I formally began the job in early February of 2015, but the last piece I edited for publication this calendar year has gone live, so it's time for a round-up post.
A quick note as to what editing means, at least for my magazine (other places do other things): we have a capable and talented staff of first readers, so being a piece's editor does not necessarily mean being the one to pick it out of the slush, though I do read some slush, so that can happen. One of the first readers marks a piece for the attention of the editors, and then/or one of the editors reads it and marks it for the attention of the other editors, and then we all read it and discuss buying it. Acquisition is a joint decision, and the piece's editor is assigned as part of that decision, and may or may not be the person who initially put it in the pool for the other editors to read. The editor gets picked based on a whole lot of factors, including but not limited to: everyone's pre-existing workload; editors' levels of acquaintance with the piece's author (sometimes you want to work with somebody you know, sometimes you worry about not being able to be objective about a friend's work); editors' knowledge about specialty fields dealt with in the piece (science, languages, geography and feel of real places, etc.); occasionally we resort to haruspicy; you get the idea.
What the editor actually does is to send the acceptance letter and author info questionnaire, send the contract, work with the author on any desired contract changes, sign the contract on the magazine's behalf, forward the author-signed contract to the publisher so we can pay for the work, liaise with the art department and the podcasting department, and-- the fun part-- help the author finalize the text by asking questions about clarity issues, pointing out grammatical problems and typos, discussing structure and character motivations, and generally going over the piece word-by-word to figure out what could be strengthened. Editors vary as to how much they make suggestions. I find that I generally ask a lot of questions and say 'I would like something that does x here' or 'I am confused by y', but I don't usually volunteer suggestions as to what the something that does x should be, or notes on exactly how to clarify. The point is for the story to become the strongest possible version of the author's original concept and voice, so my voice should not be detectable-- I don't do the writing, even if I wind up asking for four different versions of the same paragraph before I understand it.
The editor also galleys the piece, selects a blurb sentence which will hopefully get you to click on it, puts up the author's bio (and sometimes photo), does any necessary tweaking of the web interface to get typographical things to show correctly, sends the piece off to the proofreaders, runs the proofreaders' suggestions by the author, and gets the author's final approval of the galley. We don't actually hit the buttons that make it go live, though.
Obviously, every editor has a whole bunch of pieces in various phases at any point, and the whole process takes a while, so even though the first piece I edited had already been selected for purchase when I was hired in February, it wound up coming out in May. That's a longer-than-usual but not unheard-of lag for this kind of publishing.
In a delightful and honestly not-terribly-realistic circumstance, the very first piece I ever read as slush as an editor, literally the first piece of email in my new inbox, was a piece we wound up buying and I edited it. This never happens, because slush piles are generally full of unspeakable terror-- ask anyone in the industry. I remain confused but pleased.
Stuff I edited this year:
The Pieces, Teresa Milbrodt, 5/4/2015
What We're Having, Nathaniel Lee, 6/15/2015
Glaciers Made You, Gabby Reed, 9/7/2015
The Wives of Azhar, Roshani Chokshi, fund drive bonus issue, 9/28/2015
The Game of Smash and Recovery, Kelly Link, fund drive bonus issue, 10/19/2015
Artemis, with Wildflowers, Ani King, regular issue of 10/19/2015
Needle on Bone, Helena Bell, 11/2/2015 (this is that first email in my inbox)
Tigerskin, Kurt Hunt, 12/7/2015
Telling the Bees, T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon), 12/21/2015
I am very pleased with this as a body of work to date, and I look forward to seeing what the new year brings.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
comments over there.
A quick note as to what editing means, at least for my magazine (other places do other things): we have a capable and talented staff of first readers, so being a piece's editor does not necessarily mean being the one to pick it out of the slush, though I do read some slush, so that can happen. One of the first readers marks a piece for the attention of the editors, and then/or one of the editors reads it and marks it for the attention of the other editors, and then we all read it and discuss buying it. Acquisition is a joint decision, and the piece's editor is assigned as part of that decision, and may or may not be the person who initially put it in the pool for the other editors to read. The editor gets picked based on a whole lot of factors, including but not limited to: everyone's pre-existing workload; editors' levels of acquaintance with the piece's author (sometimes you want to work with somebody you know, sometimes you worry about not being able to be objective about a friend's work); editors' knowledge about specialty fields dealt with in the piece (science, languages, geography and feel of real places, etc.); occasionally we resort to haruspicy; you get the idea.
What the editor actually does is to send the acceptance letter and author info questionnaire, send the contract, work with the author on any desired contract changes, sign the contract on the magazine's behalf, forward the author-signed contract to the publisher so we can pay for the work, liaise with the art department and the podcasting department, and-- the fun part-- help the author finalize the text by asking questions about clarity issues, pointing out grammatical problems and typos, discussing structure and character motivations, and generally going over the piece word-by-word to figure out what could be strengthened. Editors vary as to how much they make suggestions. I find that I generally ask a lot of questions and say 'I would like something that does x here' or 'I am confused by y', but I don't usually volunteer suggestions as to what the something that does x should be, or notes on exactly how to clarify. The point is for the story to become the strongest possible version of the author's original concept and voice, so my voice should not be detectable-- I don't do the writing, even if I wind up asking for four different versions of the same paragraph before I understand it.
The editor also galleys the piece, selects a blurb sentence which will hopefully get you to click on it, puts up the author's bio (and sometimes photo), does any necessary tweaking of the web interface to get typographical things to show correctly, sends the piece off to the proofreaders, runs the proofreaders' suggestions by the author, and gets the author's final approval of the galley. We don't actually hit the buttons that make it go live, though.
Obviously, every editor has a whole bunch of pieces in various phases at any point, and the whole process takes a while, so even though the first piece I edited had already been selected for purchase when I was hired in February, it wound up coming out in May. That's a longer-than-usual but not unheard-of lag for this kind of publishing.
In a delightful and honestly not-terribly-realistic circumstance, the very first piece I ever read as slush as an editor, literally the first piece of email in my new inbox, was a piece we wound up buying and I edited it. This never happens, because slush piles are generally full of unspeakable terror-- ask anyone in the industry. I remain confused but pleased.
Stuff I edited this year:
The Pieces, Teresa Milbrodt, 5/4/2015
What We're Having, Nathaniel Lee, 6/15/2015
Glaciers Made You, Gabby Reed, 9/7/2015
The Wives of Azhar, Roshani Chokshi, fund drive bonus issue, 9/28/2015
The Game of Smash and Recovery, Kelly Link, fund drive bonus issue, 10/19/2015
Artemis, with Wildflowers, Ani King, regular issue of 10/19/2015
Needle on Bone, Helena Bell, 11/2/2015 (this is that first email in my inbox)
Tigerskin, Kurt Hunt, 12/7/2015
Telling the Bees, T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon), 12/21/2015
I am very pleased with this as a body of work to date, and I look forward to seeing what the new year brings.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
