Blog – Page 22 – John Joseph Adams

Codex Q&A: What do you think new editors are doing right, wrong, or could do better?

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

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Since we have a few editor/writers here, what observations would you offer about the things new editors are doing right, doing wrong, or could do better?

It’s hard to generalize about that kind of thing, but the first thing that comes to mind that I’ve seen a number of times is just people treating writers poorly. This is mainly manifested in posting snarky things online–sometimes while reading slush, which of course makes every writer who has a story in your slush pile feel terrible and assume you’re talking about their story. So there’s that kind of thing. The thing is, if you do that kind of thing, writers aren’t going to want to work with you. And it’s also just mean, so there’s that.

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Codex Q&A: Would you consider publishing an Alternative History piece?

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We just ran an internal contest on speculative history. Would you consider an Alternative History piece? Something in the vein of what Turtledove turns out?

Sure, I’m definitely open to Alternate History. I’m not likely to publish something that has a very subtle alternate aspect to it, but otherwise I’m definitely open to it in general.

And thanks for the question, because that actually reminded me of a story I should totally try to reprint because it’s one of my favorite alternate history stories, and I don’t think I’ve actually had any in Lightspeed as of yet.

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Codex Q&A: Will you edit novel-length works at some point?

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Any ambitions to edit novel-length work at some point, or is short fiction where your heart is?

Short fiction is definitely where my heart is. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t ever take a gig editing novels, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I have any ambitions in that direction. I’d be perfectly content with my editorial career if, when all is said and done, all I ever did was edit short fiction.

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Codex Q&A: Do you ever think a story is great, but not like it personally?

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Do you ever read a story and think, “Yeah, this is great. Great story, well done, an important story even. But I don’t like it.”

Oh, sure. I don’t like plenty of “important” stories! I can think of any number of classics that seem universally loved yet I don’t connect with them at all, though at the same time I can appreciate why so many other people found them to be excellent.

One of the challenges as an editor is whether or not to publish such stories. Obviously if I *hated* a story I wouldn’t publish it even if it seemed like one of those “important” stories, but in the cases where it’s maybe not quite my cup of tea, but is obviously a good story…that’s where it’s tough. Because at least some readers are reading my magazines and anthologies at least in part because they specifically trust my taste, so if I ever deviate from my completely honest opinion (i.e., trying to guess what other people will like), that’s dangerous territory.

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Codex Q&A: Have you ever rejected a story and then later wished you had bought it?

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Have you ever rejected a story and then later wished you had bought it when you first had the chance?

I’ve had plenty of second thoughts about stories. In a couple of cases, I rejected the story, and then actually went back to the author and said “Hey, is that still available?” and then ended up publishing it after all. For these cases, it was usually because I couldn’t quite get the story out of my mind, and that, of course, is always a good sign.

On the other hand, I’ve rejected stories that later went on to some critical-acclaim, and I’ve gone back to revisit them and found that I still didn’t like them. I don’t often revisit stories I’ve previously rejected, though.

And on the other hand, I think I’ve actually reprinted a couple of stories that I initially rejected.

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Codex Q&A: When you edit your anthologies how do you decide the order in which to present the stories?

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When you edit your anthologies, how do you decide the order in which to present the stories? Are there certain “rules of thumb” you follow, such as “open strong, close long”? Is there value to opening or closing the anthology with a piece from a well-known author? Any other tips you’d be willing to share?

I actually just answered this in an interview recently, so I hope you don’t mind me copying and pasting that here:

That’s definitely more of an art than a science and, as a result, is kind of hard to explain the method to my madness. Essentially I do it by feel; I want there to be a certain flow to the anthology, and everything I do is an attempt to achieve that flow. I like to lead off and end the book with two of the strongest stories (with the final story also ideally providing a lot of emotional impact that will resonate with the reader long after they put down the book). I also tend to put one of the other strongest stories somewhere around the middle of the book–what I think of a ‘tentpole’ story. With those three in place, I then go about trying to achieve my desired flow. I think about each story and what it would be like to read that story and then to read the story after that, and so on. Another factor is story length; I find that it’s usually best for the flow of the anthology if you don’t clump too many long stories together, so in my spreadsheet where I have all the stories listed, I have all their word counts there so I can see that as I’m sorting the contents out, and I try to balance out longer stories by running shorter ones afterward. Speaking of my spreadsheet, that’s what I use to actually figure out the order. I just have a column for the table of contents order, and in that column I put a number for the ‘slot’ that story is slated for, that way I can sort the spreadsheet and have it thus put the stories in TOC order.

But yes, opening (and closing) strong is always a good idea. Closing with a bigger name is nice, but not required by any stretch; I think it’s more important to close with a very strong story that will have that emotional impact I mentioned. And in some cases, there are stories that just feel like an appropriate thematic capstone to all of what’s come before in the book.

Ultimately, I’m not really sure how many people actually read anthologies in order, so it kind of often feels like a lot of mental effort wasted. But, hell, they’ve got to go in SOME order, so might as well put them in the best order possible for that Ideal Reader out there who reads anthologies in order. :)

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Codex Q&A: Where do you get the themes for your anthologies from?

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You’re editing across the genres in your magazines and your anthologies. Do you have a particular soft-spot for any of those? Or do your anthology themes hit you as our story ideas tend to hit us – out of the blue and with the speed of an out of control semi?

This is an unintended pun-laden statement, for which I apologize, but I guess I would have to say I have a soft spot for hard sf…mainly because it’s so hard to do well. It was my first love in sf, and as my taste has developed, it’s become progressively more difficult for me to find hard sf that I enjoy, but when I do that’s probably my favorite thing.

But my anthology themes do also sometimes come along out of the blue, as you say. Other times, it’ll be something brewing for a long time. Sometimes they come out of a joke that you say aloud and laugh about with friends, and then you think, Wait, that’s actually a good idea.

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Codex Q&A: What do you wish you were seeing more of in the slush?

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What do you wish you were seeing more of in the slush? Particular themes, styles, content, details, settings…? This doesn’t mean we’ll spam you with those things, but insights like this are always interesting to hear!

Oh, you SAY that, but I totally would get inundated if I specified such things! So because of that I always try to avoid saying much of anything on that topic.

I guess if I’m being more general, it’s safe to say I’d like to see more Hard SF. I never see enough good Hard SF submitted.

Also, I’d be interested in seeing more stories in the 1500-4000 word count range. Seems like I’ve been getting a lot of (good) stories at the upper edge of our word count lately.

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Codex Q&A: How do stories progress through the slush system?

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I’m interested in how the editorial process works at Lightspeed. For example: Do you have a big pool of slushers? How do stories progress through the system?

We do have a pretty big team of slush readers; the idea is that by having more on staff, it means that more attention can be devoted to each submission, and there’s less pressure on the readers to plow through everything. And if we’re going to keep to our goal of a 2-day turnaround, we need to have a large team just so the slush process can be flexible for the readers–not everyone has free time to devote every day, of course.

How our system works is:

All the stories come into the submission system and display in the order they are received.

A reader can login to the system and “claim” a submission, to let other readers know to work on something else.

Once the reader has read the submission, they process it by leaving a comment for me explaining what they thought of it and also assigning it a numerical rating on a scale of 1-10.

A score of 6 or higher makes the story a “Recommended,” meaning it goes into my reading pile and I’ll take a look at it. A rating of 5 or lower means that it’s not quite good enough; such stories I may or may not look at, depending on the reader’s comments and/or the author. There are a lot of authors I’ll look at their stories no matter what the reader says about it, just because I’ve read other good stuff by that author, etc.

I send out all the rejection letters myself, so a slush reader can’t accidentally reject something I wanted to look at. It takes a little extra time on my part to handle it that way, but it’s a good safeguard against anything being rejected by mistake.

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Codex Q&A: Have you seen any particular themes or motifs in recent SF/F stories that strike you?

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This isn’t so much a question as a writer to an editor, but wondering if your TON of reading has given you insight: Have you seen any particular threads in recent SF/F stories, as far as themes or literary motifs, that strike you? Cultural shifts? In how the speculative elements are handled, for instance. Things that, looking back, you see are emerging in the SF/F scene of literature since you started editing?

Well, I detect resurgences of themes in the slush pile all the time; that’s one of the ways I identify what theme anthologies to pursue.

Otherwise, I’m not sure how to answer that without, like, doing Doctorate-level research into the last 10 years of my career or something. That kind of complex critical analysis isn’t really my forte, which is one of the reasons I hate writing introductions so much!

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