When She’s Right, She’s Right

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a lovely woman named Megan who is connected with the upcoming Wisconsin Book Festival. (I love hearing from readers and new fans.)

Thanks so much for providing a comprehensive list of literary festivals around the US and around the world.  I would like to place a link to your lists on the Wisconsin Book Festival website but I noticed when I was setting up the international link that you have your International Festivals divided by alphabet into Africa-England, France-Wales.  The problem is that Africa is not a country, like England, France, or Wales, and you don’t list any of the other continents that way (Asia, for example, doesn’t get its own listing).  Thanks for hearing me out and thanks again for creating such a great resource.

I do know the difference between a continent and a country, but in setting up BiblioBuffet I made a few decisions that go against . . . would I call it common sense or accuracy? A bit of both, I guess. I made the decision to use this particular continent rather than the country because there were so few festivals. (I also made the decision to use “A” in “A Reading Life” (Nicki Leone’s column title) ahead of “BibliOpinions”—a technically incorrect editorial decision because I did not want a guest column to come ahead of a regular one on the home page—and I can live with it. It is not an error, but a deliberate choice that puts my reason for its choice ahead of Strunk & White’s. In this case.

So it also was with the decision to use “Africa.” However, Megan’s comments made me re-think that, and I decided she was right. Other countries had only one festival so why shouldn’t African countries get the same consideration? Well, now they have. Our International Book Festivals pages are divided into Australia-England and France-Zimbabwe.

I agree with Megan “that Africa and the countries in Africa are misrepresented and lumped together so often, I think it’s important to be careful about it.” And I hereby apologize to South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe. They now have their own listings.

In addition, I have updated most of the festival dates (a few even went back to 2009) to reflect the newest information. It took hours yesterday, and I am still not finished. I need to finish the dates, remove defunct festivals, add new ones, and then check every link to be sure it is still live. I hope to finish this afternoon.

If any of you know of a festival I am missing, please let me know. I would like this resource to be useful. And to that end I will be updating as I go. It’s tough because it takes a lot of time—but it’s worth it to know that it can be a reliable source of information for all book lovers. Thanks to Megan for caring. And I promise there will be no September 32 ever again. I still blush at the thought I never caught that.

Oh, Those Rejections!

Remember high school dates? Remember asking (if you are male)? Remember being asked (if you are female)? How did it feel?

If you’re like me it felt wonderful and horrible. As the “askee” in those late 1960s situations I could always sense it coming. My reaction was either one of excitement or dread. If the latter, the dread was enormous because I knew I did not want to go on a date with him and because I had been instructed that good girls with good manners should not hurt his male ego, rejecting him sometimes didn’t happen until the second, third or even fourth date.

Yup, that’s right. I went on dates with certain guys until I could figure out how to turn down dates with them. And when I finally had to do it, it wasn’t because I found the courage but because it became a matter of personal necessity—any more dates would have meant I was going steady, and if I did that I might find myself exclusively paired off with him, then we would become engaged, and *yeech* eventually marry!

In a similar way I find myself all these many years later feeling that same sense of dread when I am faced with queries from hopeful but “not right for us” writers. How do I turn them down? And let me tell you the answer is no less easy today than it was back then, though turning down dates with men in whom I have no interest has become, ironically, easier.

I have had enough rejections in my writing life to know how it feels to study the magazine or the online site, to create an idea, flesh it out, write, edit, re-write, re-edit, and polish it, to send that query, and to . . . wait with hope in my heart. I also know all too well the feeling of deflation when the rejection arrives, and to have no idea why it was rejected.

I liken my role as BiblioBuffet’s editor to that of the girl (which I was). How do I reject writers who reach out to me? Well, I don’t toss off rejections casually because I understand how the writer is going to feel. Yet I cannot allow my feelings to override my editorial responsibilities. A rejection must be a rejection. I do not allow myself to “date” writers while struggling to find a way  to reject them. Nor am I allowed to critique a writer I am not going to accept; it’s not fair to either the writer or to other editors.

Where I found compromise, though I admit this is still not entirely comfortable, is in writing personalized rejection letters. I have been warned against this practice from some editors and agents because on occasion it can lead to an argumentative or angry correspondent. Fortunately, that has not been my experience thus far. What I have gotten are a few notes of appreciation for the comments, most of which are variations of “please keep writing and find a writers’ critique group.” Ooccasionally, I even add, “try us again in a year.” And I mean it too. Unlike, I am sorry to say, when I told Eddie from high school that “maybe next weekend” would be the right Saturday night for a date.

Writing and Waterfalls

It’s still amazing to me how grumpy many editors can be when just being nice to writers—and encouraging them to do what they do best—pays much higher dividends. An example is last week’s post (December 24) in which I shared Pete Croatto’s compliments to BiblioBuffet’s editorial team. The next day I received this in my e-mail box:

I’ve been reading your Behind the Words blog for a while. Your recent post about your editing style struck a chord with me. The chord reverberated so soundly that here I am, writing to you at an unholy hour.

I would very much like to write for BiblioBuffet. I am an Australian writer, historian, teacher, editor and reviewer. Sometimes these things are serious business. Sometimes they’re not. The interaction between the different parts of me always take my writing into odd corners and haunts. I get to meet interesting people and their books. I get to dissect old tales and new. It’s a lot of fun.

I would love to take the moments that most fascinate me and turn them into entertaining reading. There will be books in those moments, because there always are books in my life. I can write pretentious twaddle (have PhD, will twaddle) but I’d really rather not. I’d rather explore genre and Australian writing or the relationship between place and books or between books and food or explore the seamier side of Indigenous Australian copyright. That’s just this week. I don’t know what I’ll encounter next week or the week after, but I know it will be fascinating and that I would dearly love to share it.

When I finished laughing—“have PhD, will twaddle”—I e-mailed Nicki, then, faster than the proverbial speeding bullet, we told Gillian we wanted her.

It’s easy to see why editors can become grumpy. When queries come in that are inappropriate—for god’s sake, I sometimes want to shout, read the submission guidelines we took the time to write out and post for your convenience!—or even illiterate we try our best to maintain a respectful correspondence. But when we regularly see queries that read like (freshman) high school book reports, or beginner blog posts, or that make claims they cannot verify, the process becomes annoying.

Then along comes the next one and . . . suddenly there it is! The query that makes us sit up. Take notice. Smile broadly. And say “Yes!” Honestly, finding one of those is like coming upon a gorgeous waterfall in a fern-laden forest clearing. Picture it: you step into this gorgeous space, strip off your hot, sweaty cynicism, and dive into the cool, clear waters of excellent writing. When you surface you shake your head, letting the words and emotions spin off you as you revel in the sensual feeling of being surrounded by something wonderful. It’s such a joy that it has the ability to wipe away all the grubbiness you accumulated during your slogs through the slush pile.

I know rejections are hard for writers to receive. Even jaded editors know how painful they feel to the writer. To be honest they are hard to write. I hate turning people down when they put themselves out there on offer. But our obligation is to BiblioBuffet’s readers. And we simply cannot accept less than the best.

In the last month, we have had four worthwhile writers appear. In January we will begin the process of working with them. We don’t yet know if they will all work out but we are excited. What we do know, however, is that we would probably not have had the opportunity to find out about them were we still grumpy about the other ones.

Folks, there’s a reason we all have “pearly whites” beyond needing them to chew food. Use ‘em, and smile. The next great query is out there. It’s always out there. And we at BiblioBuffet have no intention of scaring it away.

Watch Those Fingers!

BiblioBuffet has guidelines for those seeking to submit books to us for review. They are few in number but clearly stated. We don’t review business, self-help, true crime, New Age, or romance. And we do not review self-published or vanity-published books.

Today I received another email from an author, this one loudly bewailing our policy. I politely explained that this woman’s vanity-house publisher precluded our considering her book for review but thanking her for letting us know about it. I even took the trouble to refer to her a couple of places that did review self-published and vanity-published books. 

She didn’t take nicely to my gesture. Ah well, no good deed and all that. Her second email informed me, in rather strident tones, that I was wrong, that her publisher was a “traditional publisher.” She even helpfully provided a long-distance phone number so I could call and ask them.

Now I try to maintain a Zen attitude when things go wrong. I am not always successful, but it does help when I am informed of typos in the new issue (ACK!) or problems with the tech side (groan). I’ll admit I lost a little of my calm at her demand that I make that call.

Fortunately, I have a personal rule that prevents an inappropriate response in certain situations. I allow my brain to scream at me, “Keep your fingers to yourself!” The scream is loud so I tend  to listen to it. In this case, I closed the email for a couple of hours. When I later came back to it I was able to compose a calm, quiet, wonderfully Zen-like response. The author is still not happy, but had I not listened to my brain I might have actually made her miserable. I would certainly have made myself miserable. And perhaps even tarnished the real life as well as the online persona I value so highly.