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Writers who publish other writers |
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Written by Gillian Polack
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Tuesday, 22 April 2008 |
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My mind is focused on a very particular type of small publisher right now. That's because this year I'm co-editing a short story anthology. I've edited before. Mostly I write novels and those novels are gradually getting published. I get told "Keep at it. Focus on the novels."
So why am I co-editing an anthology? I've wanted to do this for three years. I have worked quietly in the background to improve my skills package so that I could pass the interview. Yes, there was an interview, even though the committee said "Now Gillian, we're not actually interviewing you" every ten minutes for over an hour. It mattered that much to me and to my co-editor and to the committee that appointed us both. It's not really a matter of why it's so important to me, but one of why it's so important to us.
Who are we? We are the members of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild (CSFG). We're a writing group, though there is more than a smattering of artists in our midst and two or three small publishers. We also publish anthologies.
Many of us are very concerned that we live in a city that – for a nation's capital – bears a surprising resemblance to an extraordinarily educated oversized country town. It's very easy to think we know more than we do and to overestimate our own importance. Most of us are in constant danger of joining together to create our own little centrifugal reality.
What CSFG has done is turn a potentially dangerous inward community into one that is forced to reach outwards. We have our own tiny publishing house and it gives us the opportunity to learn a range of skills involved in publishing.
Gradually, gradually, we become a little more professional and a little more professional still. A few of our writers and artists are already there. They may not have needed the encouragement to push that bit further. For those of us who reach out more slowly, who need encouragement, who haven't learned how to self-edit or to format a manuscript, it's a lot more than a place to make friends. There's always someone who has been where you have been and can illuminate what's happening in your writing life.
When the anthology comes out next year, it will probably rest somewhere between amateur and semi-professional in quality because its specific intent is to bring new writers out of hiding and help them hone their skills to professional or near-professional level. To push writers the way I want my editing pushed. I love editing. I have to – my own first drafts need an eagle eye. This means that for me the skill that I can fruitfully work on best right now is editing. Take the skills and experiences I have and push them, hard.
Because writing is about telling stories for readers the final book is terribly important. That's why actually selling the work is part of the job of editing. It's the test of our capacity to find stories that work, to help writers improve their tales, to give readers something they will love. |
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