Guidelines: An Editorial Nightmare
Being a writer who wants to be published in a legit publication, I have always spent a considerable amount of time mulling over the guidelines of a magazine I want to submit to. There are a lot of obvious reasons for doing this, but the most important reason, for me, is to make sure that my submission is properly formatted, is submitted correctly, and fits into the magazine or anthology’s theme or editorial direction–maybe those are the only real reasons for reading guidelines.But now that I’m editing a magazine–well, it’s turning out to be more of a journal than a magazine, to be honest–I’ve discovered that I must be a minority among writers. I don’t know what it is, but since opening up submissions to the general public we’ve been hit with a series of submissions that simply weren’t correct. One submission was from a 45-year-old woman from Argentina who wanted payment through Western Union. The problem? SBS Magazine only accepts submissions from writers under the age of 25 (and we’re a tad lenient on that age, but not lenient enough to add a year to it). To top it off, we specifically stated in our very organized guidelines that payment is made through Paypal. Another fellow submitted to the wrong email address while responding to an ad that I had put up. I emailed him back and told him to read the guidelines to figure out where to submit to.And this has made me want to give a little advice to folks out there wanting to submit to a magazine or journal somewhere: Read the guidelines. They’re not put there to be pretty. Editors want you to read them and submit properly for a lot of reasons. Don’t assume that your submission that doesn’t follow the guidelines will be so good that the editors will ignore that you’ve not followed guidelines and publish it anyway. In fact, of the submissions that have been sent to us that didn’t follow guidelines, we rejected them without reading them, and other editors do this too–and we’re pretty lenient. True, SBS Magazine isn’t Analog or F&SF, and we don’t have thousands of submissions a month, but the guidelines aren’t that hard to read and there are certain things we’re not willing to be lenient on–like age. But editors at bigger magazines won’t read your submission at all if it’s off target–say submitting a poem to a magazine that only publishes fiction. They don’t have the time or patience for you if you can’t even read the guidelines. Editors aren’t trying to be mean an anal when they reject your manuscript because it doesn’t follow guidelines. Most, if not all, magazine editors have a certain direction they want the magazine to go. Analog only publishes hard SF and nonfiction essays on certain aspects of science that might be of interest to readers of the magazine. Other magazines have a wider audience, or at least have no genre specifications, but look for certain types of writing as opposed to any type. So, if your submission doesn’t fit what they’re trying to publish, you’re actually wasting the editor’s time, and they don’t like that one bit. It’s not a matter of being the cranky old editor. Some of the more popular magazines get hundreds, if not thousands of submissions every month. They have to reply to each of them–usually with a form rejection. Can you imagine going through a few hundred manuscripts every month? Don’t be an ass. If the editor rejects your manuscript, don’t do any of the following: Write back explaining why your manuscript wasn’t up to par. Write back arguing with the editor over their choice to reject you. Write back with some sort of snarky remark, such as “I guess your magazine doesn’t publish highly metaphorical literary fiction.” Flame the editor for rejecting you on your blog. If you want to be taken seriously, act professional. Unless an editor has done something morally objectionable, leave it be. Send the editor a mean letter. Hopefully that all makes sense. The biggest thing is to read the guidelines. Seriously.
Prop 8: A Thought
For those of you who think that voting yes on Prop 8 is not the equivalent to hate, try exchanging “same-sex marriages” or “interracial marriages” or “black marriages” or “non-Christian marriages,” etc. Any way you look at this, to remove someone’s right to marriage is an act of hate. And to those idiots who keep putting up the ads for Prop 8 that claim that gay marriage will be taught in schools: has it ever occurred to you that your kids are already being taught about homosexuals anyway and that there’s absolutely nothing you can do about that? Making the argument you are making is basically saying you want to put your kids’ heads in the sand like ostriches. And then what happens when they go into the real world and find out that things aren’t this rosy heterosexuals-only world? No matter how you look at this, gay marriage is going to become a reality eventually. If we ban it now it’s only a matter of time before we unban it. You can fight it all you want, but you’re going to lose. And while you are fighting it rational people are associating you with the same people that believed that God mandated them to keep blacks as slaves or to maintain segregation. Heterosexuality is not the supreme sex just as white is not the supreme race. That is all. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Short Story Review: “The Ships Like Clouds, Risen By Their Rain” by Jason Sanford
Mr. Sanford sent me a copy of his short story some time back when he was holding a contest for a subscription of Interzone and I had intended to review it back then, but am only getting to it now. “The Ships Like Clouds, Risen By Their Rain” (“Ships” from this point forward) is a truly bizarre piece of speculative fiction. Science fiction meets fantasy meets weird. It takes place on a world ravaged by weather patterns driven by bizarre ships in the sky. Small settlements of people have slowly built their cities on top of older buildings, rising higher and higher as the storms constantly shift water and mud around, burying the markers of people long gone. Without giving too much away, I can say I enjoyed “Ships.” For such a short piece I think it did a remarkable job of presenting Sanford’s ability at world building. World building is generally one of those things that is exceedingly difficult in short fiction, but somehow Sanford managed to give me a good idea what his world is about without giving everything away. I genuinely want to see more of this world. How did the world in “Ships” end up like this? How long has it been this way? What is the future of the people not mentioned? What is the future for the ships? I think one thing I took away from it that had nothing to do with the actual story was a better sense of my own writing, particularly an alleviation of concerns I had regarding my experimentations with style, story, and plot. Sanford has created a fascinating piece that I think is a fine example of what speculative short fiction can be. I know, this sounds like I’m just plugging Mr. Sanford, which isn’t my intention here (sort of). I simply think that this is a terrific story with a fantastic, if not unique, vision. It puts Sanford in a category of people I admire and perhaps hope to be like–not in the sense of imitation, but in the sense of rising to that level. And he’s in good company (Tobias S. Buckell is on that list, along with John Scalzi, Paul Genesse, and a handful of other fine writers). For those interested in reading “Ships,” check out the August 2008 edition of Interzone. If Sanford’s story is any indication of the quality of fiction in Interzone, I expect many more great things from this British magazine–they’re going in the right direction for me.