A million years ago, I made an editor so angry that she called me up to yell at me. By the time I hung up the phone, I was in tears. I couldn’t understand why she was so upset until I went back through her guidelines and saw that I had done everything—I mean, literally everything—wrong. My story was written in 3rd person present, while she wanted 1st person past. Her max word count was 3,000. My piece was 4,400 words. She wanted sweet. The kink in my dangerous sex scene went well past her French Vanilla boundaries. You name the rule, I broke it.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
Truthfully? I liked the story, wasn’t paying much attention to the guidelines, and sent the piece off with a wish and a prayer. The way I did pretty much everything back then. I was always surprised (and extremely grateful) when someone took one of my stories—and I didn’t realize that following rules helped get a piece accepted.
But why was she livid? Why not simply send me a big fat NO and move on?
Because editors expect something useable. I’m not justifying the phone call, but I know that reaction in myself now. My editor had trusted me, counted on me, held a spot in the line-up of her book for me, and I’d failed. When I want to pub a piece, and the story strikes out, I can’t help but be annoyed. I’m hoping for winners. I dislike having to say no to people.
And yet what some editors (including me!) sometimes forget is that there are people behind the stories. People with feelings (not to segue off into some pathetic ballad). Recently, I had to reject several tales because the stories were about strangers while my call was for established couples. Seemed obvious to me why I couldn’t use the stories. Yet the hurt and angry ("Go fuck yourself!") response one writer gave me was baffling.
Until I remembered me.
Most likely, the writer
meant to create a story about established couples, but his characters rebelled. Or he forgot the rules entirely and just sent me a story he loved. And I had the gall, the nerve, the balls (insert the right word here) to say no. How dare I?
Writing and editing is a difficult balance. I know that fuck you response you get when you’re turned down. This year, I was rejected flat out from a few places, cut from several anthologies I’d thought I had made it into, and denied something I really wanted. I had a piece accepted by a magazine, and yet when I went to look in the issue, the story simply wasn’t there. Poof! I know what NO feels like in all the shades of black.
So I do my best when I am on the rejecting side not to be arrogant or offensive. Not to say, like an editor said recently to me, “But where’s the effing sex?”
I’m a true Gemini. A split. I can straddle that line between writer and editor. I can see both sides of the equation. The part that wants to tell an editor to go fuck herself, and the part that wants to put on that strap-on and do the job right.
Hmmmm. There must be a story in there somewhere. I’ll just have to make sure there’s plenty of sex in it.
XXX,
Alison
Labels: I mean "Where's the effing Sex Pistols?"
