Writer/Editor Relationship

Very pleased that my article "The Writer/Editor Relationship: What Should You Expect" is out today in Westword (April-May, 2025) pp.13-14 (the magazine of the Writers' Guild of Alberta).

Chicago Manual of Style Applied to Fiction

The Chicago Manual of Style is industry standard for North American publishing, but it was designed for academic texts, not fiction. So, that's always been problematic when coming up with questions about style while editing (writing) fiction. I was this many days old when another editor pointed out that Chicago Manual has a BLOG for fiction to answer those questions:

https://cmosshoptalk.com/fiction-plus/

Well duh! Great resource!

Too Many Words

I am frustrated trying to make the necessary cuts to my novel. I have to cut about 30% of what I pantsered out, not just because the novel is way too long, but because the pacing's off.

I think I have pretty good tension in the first 70 pages or so (wherein I blow up the world our hero's on) but then it dissipates in pages and pages of talking. I have the Colleen Anderson quote "Characters talking about doing things is not the same as characters doing things" posted over my workstation, but the book is kind of about how the hero keeps jumping to the wrong conclusions, so he spends a lot of time explaining his wrong theories. This may not have been the best premise for an action adventure novel.

Listening to Jonas Saul's presentations on pacing at this year's When Words Collide re-motivated me to go back in to tackle those problems. I know I have to keep things moving, which means losing everything that isn't action. But every time I try to take out a chunk, it means losing one of the subthemes (which are kind of the point of the book), or I'm chopping one of the key characters (the love interest?!), or the logic of the underlying mystery gets lost. Something has to go, but every time I tug on any particular string, the whole thing unravels.

That's the problem with being a panster: every line flows logically from the one before and leads logically to the next line. The story develops though each of those moments as lived by the character. Now, as I go back to try to impose some structure, cutting out scenes doesn't just mean killing my darlings, it means interrupting that flow and therefore the logic of hero's actions/ reactions/ motivations.

I have no problem editing other people's books but it's impossible to edit my own. I'm okay chopping out scenes I loved writing (especially when one of my beta readers said this scene was NOT funny and this other one was so boring she contemplated killing herself rather than read to the end of it--more motivational feedback than the more tactful and therefore vague comment of "the elevator scene drags a bit" from other beta readers :-) ) but it's hard to see how the pieces can fit back together when you've ripped out random pieces from the puzzle.

It's like...having to rewrite the whole thing. Almost from scratch. But that would be, you know, work. Like a lot of work! Really, it's HARD....

*Sigh* As an editor, it drives me crazy when I have clients who are one draft away from being publishable but don't do what I tell them because it's too much work or wouldn't be as fun as starting a new book. I have no problem bossing other people, but apparently, I am not the boss of me.

[I have managed to stop myself from starting any of the other twelve novels in my head until I finish this one--but there's a reason I've been pumping out so many short stories and flash lately...]

It's tempting to send this off to an editor to get them to do it for me, but I know (thanks to my beta readers) it's still too rough. It has to be at least polished enough for the editor to see what I'm trying to do. And...I just have to stop being lazy if I'm serious about getting this out there. So, I just have to put my nose to the grindstone. As soon as I finish this post.

Five Rivers Publishing Closes

Lorina Stephens today announced the closing of Five Rivers Publishing.

The press, unlike so many others, did not fail. It was in fact thriving, but family issues related to Lorina taking on eldercare made it impossible for her to continue Five Rivers Publishing. I am sad to see Five Rivers go, but Lorina’s reasons are altruistic and it was the right decision.

Lorina helped many authors launch their careers, and her belief in me made my career as a professional editor possible. It was an honour and a privilege for me to have been associated with Five Rivers for nearly a decade.

I hope that Lorina is able to continue her own writing. Her own books were, in my view, undervalued. I met Lorina (online) when I was one of the few reviewers to find and rave about her first novel, and it was through that contact that I became a beta reader on her second novel, then an Editor at Five Rivers, and then Senior Editor. I watched Lorina put more time into the press than into her own writing, and I know she always paid authors, editors, and artists before she took a dime herself.

She put her time, energy, and money into the press because she believed in the community of writers, editors, and artists that she gathered around her. She made it all work in spite of the turmoil in the publishing industry: Five Rivers survived and thrived when other independent presses around her were wiped out.

My hat is off to her vision, her stubborn survival in difficult times, and her promotion of Canadian voices in literature.

I will always be grateful to Lorina and to Five Rivers.

Greetings at Joe Mahoney Book Launch

I wasn't able to be present in person at the launch of Joe Mahoney's novel, A Time and A Place in Toronto, so Joe asked me to send him a brief video to bring greetings. The two minute nine second video of me gives one a sense of what I'm like as an acquisition and developmental editor.

[I shared this video previously on my EssentialEdits.ca/SFeditor.ca blog, but I'm still learning how to use Youtube, so am trying out the feature where the embedded video skips the first minute and five seconds, and actually starts where me. But I can't figure out how to show the frame from where the video starts, rather than a picture of Lorina Stephens, my boss at Five Rivers Publishing, who brings greetings from the press to start the video. (Click here if you'd like to hear Lorina.]

Leacock Medal

The longlist for the 2017 Leacock Medal (in alphabetical order by author surname) is:

• John Armstrong for A Series of Dogs, New Star Books.
• Mona Awad for 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Penguin Canada.
• Gary Barwin for Yiddish for Pirates, Random House Canada.
• Judy Batalion for White Walls, New American Library/Random House Canada.
• Lesley Crewe for Mary, Mary, Nimbus Publishing.
• C. P. Hoff for A Town Called Forget, Five Rivers Publishing.
• Marni Jackson for Don’t I Know You, Flatiron Books.
• Amy Jones for We’re All in This Together, McClelland & Stewart.
• Jack Knox for Hard Knox: Musings from the Edge of Canada, Heritage House Publishing.
• Noah Richler for The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Doubleday Canada.
• Drew Hayden Taylor for Take Us to Your Chief And Other Stories, Douglas & McIntyre.

From the Stephen Leacock Associates Press Release:

This year’s longlist will be narrowed down to three Leacock Medal finalists, who will be announced in Orillia on Wednesday, May 3, 2017.

The final winner, who also receives a $15,000 prize supported by TD Bank Financial Group, is to be announced on Saturday, June 10, 2017, at a gala award dinner at Geneva Park Conference Centre, just outside Orillia, Ontario. The gala dinner is open to the public, and limited tickets are on sale exclusively through the Stephen Leacock Museum in Orillia.

In announcing the list, Taylor described the submissions this year as of exceptionally high quality. The judges and readers recommend all the longlisted books as entertaining Canadian works, worthy of consideration for this prestigious and unique literary humour award in Canada’s sesquicentennial year.

I'm thrilled to see C. P. Hoff's A Town Called Forget on the longlist.

The novel follows the adventures of a young girl, sent without explanation to live with the eccentric aunt she didn't even know she had. As she tries to solve the mystery of her banishment, she slowly comes to terms with her aunt's skewed view of the world, and the exceedingly odd townsfolk of Forget.

From the moment I saw the manuscript, I knew this novel was something special. I acquired the book for Five Rivers, Lorina did the substantive editing, and I followed up with a line/edit (and then there was a copy edit after).

This makes four books that have been shortlisted for national awards from Five Rivers Publishing. Fingers crossed for the win!

[Now, hoping Den Valdron's The Mermaid Tale gets shortlisted for the World Fantasy or Bram Stoker Awards]

When Words Collide 2016 GoH Speech

Dr. Robert Runté speaking at When Words Collide. [Photo:

The When Words Collide writers' conference (held each August in Calgary) has a podcast page on which they release Guest of Honour speeches, panel discussions, and interviews. These are generally well worth a listen.

My Guest of Honour speech August 2016 was just released: "WWC 2016 GOH speech finds the curmudgeonly, retired professor Robert Runté questioning English teachers and praising fan fiction."

Impending Retirement

I should probably mention here that I am taking early retirement from my position as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Lethbridge, June 30, 2013. Partly this is due to my increasing interest in my other career as editor (for Five Rivers Publishing and as a freelancer at SFeditor.ca) and writer; partly it is thanks to the university's offer of an attractive retirement option (an incentive bonus plus a post-retirement contract that combined works out to about 80% of the salary for about 20% of the work for the next three years....); and partly reflects the fact I am, you know, getting old.

(Retirement incentive plans make a lot of economic sense for the university, because now that there is no mandatory retirement age, some of my colleagues are staying on well past age 65. Current collective agreement allows professors to collect standard raises for a total of 35 years, and merit increments as long as they are earning them, which often translates to quite significant salaries for these individuals. They could, for example, hire three assistant professors right out of the PhD program (i.e., young, current, and energetic) for the price of one of me, and probably four for the price of some of my older colleagues. So offering us a package to promise to go away, represents significant savings, especially if they just replace 2/3 of present tenured faculty.

In my case, I will officially retire and start getting my pension in July; and I will teach two courses a year for next two years, then one course the third year, to slowly taper off...this gives them time to find a replacement, and gives me time to get used to not being a professor. But I also love that it gives me time to transition into full-time editor/writer. Teaching was only 40% of my regular workload, the rest being committee work (20%) and research (40%). So teaching two courses a year frees up about 80% of my time for writing and editing, so I can continue to build that business into a living wage. I'm pretty happy about that.

Not entirely coincidentally, I have finally finished the first draft of my novel. I have explained to Mary that once I have edited the manuscript, publishers will beat a path to my door and I will thereby effectively double my retirement income, and that consequently she need have no fear about her now being the sole income for the family. Oddly, she does not seem reassured....

As it happens, today I got my assessment from my Dean on my last two years as a professor, and was pleased to find that I was rated as "Excellent" for teaching, and "Outstanding" for research. So, nice to end on a high note, rather than, say, waiting until they had to have security escort me out the door -- because I was no longer able to find the way myself.

Retreat: Day 5

Finally connected with client over editing job, and manager apologized nicely for screwing up, but apparently had emailed me at the wrong address, and assigned the work elsewhere when I hadn't replied. Why the manager hadn't tried, oh I don't know, phoning me at the contact numbers they'd insisted on when she hadn't heard back, or why they hadn't responded to my correctly addressed emails to them is less clear. "Oh, we never got those emails!" The whole conversation has the same feel as when students insist that they have submitted their assignments on time, it must have gotten lost in email/ Moodle/ WebCT/ their dog somehow.... But whatever: it was pro bono work, and I'd much rather be working on other stuff during my retreat.

So actually go out and about in San Diego. The Westgate, where I'm staying, is on the edge of the Gaslight district, so walked around there for a couple of hours. Yesterday was pouring rain, nasty wind, too cold to walk very far, so I just went to downtown mall for some take away. Today was way better. Intermittent rain, but then really great sun when the clouds open up. Had the drinking chocolate at Ghirardelli's. Bought a few things for the kids at World Market. Enjoyed the architecture of San Diego (nice looking convention centre! Some nice towers. Even some of the smaller buildings colourfully painted etc.)

Above: Convention Center; below, just some colour

Thing that makes the strongest impression on me, however, are the number of homeless on the streets here. I count an average of three per block. I'm only approached by pan handlers a couple of times, and they're carefully low key, polite even, but every few yards there's someone sitting with a shopping cart, three to five large green garbage bags of possessions, and a resigned expression. In two cases, its families. And everybody else just walks by as if this is perfectly normal. I can't understand how average American can feel secure when so many of those around them are so obviously in desperate straits, though the other subliminal presence were armies of guys with "security" on the back of their jackets. One particular image burned into my brain is of an obviously homeless guy leaning against a parking meters, watching at a group of yuppies -- their clothes and smart phones and expensive sun glasses pushed back into their hair said 'brokers' or 'software moguls' to me -- yakking away in an sidewalk open air bar. The way he was starring at them -- though they were completely oblivious of him, three feet away -- I could see him thinking, "that's who I was four years ago". And I look back at the yuppies and think, one mis-step and it is a long way down....

No wonder the 'haves' are so focused on getting more. San Diego is a nice place to visit, but I don't think I could live somewhere where it is so literally every man for himself.

And all those guns.

Back to the hotel for productive day on various writing projects. Make excellent progress on my day-job Report. In between working on different sections of report, start negotiating a three book deal for Five Rivers while I still have reliable internet access. Author seems open to it. Another coup for Five Rivers, I think.

Work until supper time, eat at The Bandar. Unbelievably big portions, three times the size of anything ever served in equivalent Canadian restaurant. Again, can't help but think of homeless outside, conspicuous consumption inside. But would highly recommend Bandar to anyone who likes middle Eastern food. Superb meal. Had to wonder, though, how many of the customers realize that "Persian" means "Iranian"? (Aside from that group over at the next table who are themselves clearly Iranian and therefore, you know, potential terrorists. :-) Another productive writing session after supper. Things are starting to come together!

Retreat: Day 2

Okay, drawback to landcrusing: train was doing 80mph all last night, consequently sleeper car shaking back and forth with considerable vigor. I have to confess this tended to keep me awake rather than lull me to sleep as I had expected from fondly recalling the many sleeper car experiences of my childhood. Apparently, I wasn’t particularly worried about falling out of bed when I was ten when I still had a four inch clearance from the edge… Nowadays, I rather fill the single bed with a minimal margin for error, so having someone violently rocking the bed from side to side was not conducive to a secure and peaceful sleep. Mary tells me the next leg of the trip is a bit quieter, but I’m dubious as the train is currently doing about 80 mph and shaking violently from side to side as I type this.

A freight train broke down ahead of us this morning, so we sat on the track in the middle of nowhere for about four hours. When we finally got moving again, we had used up all the time I was supposed to have in Portland between connections. Indeed, we arrived after the second train was supposed to have already left, but it waited for us. I stepped off my train, was scooped up by a conductor and driven in his golf cart to the next platform, shooed into the sleeping car, where I quickly dumped my suitcase in my cabin, and trotted down the corridor to the dinning car for a rather late lunch, within about two and half minutes of the first train coming to a complete stop. Full marks for efficiency!

I, on the other hand, wasn’t every efficient or productive for the morning, partly feeling sleepy and partly worrying about my connection. (I tend to be a nervous traveler, which is irrational because not only had my wife contingency plans for every eventuality, she has my back remotely – anything goes wrong, she knows about it before I do--thanks to Amtrak updates via Internet--and can talk me through anything as she makes and unmakes reservations ahead of my travels.) But it’s like waiting for the cable guy: there’s no real reason why knowing he might come should stop you from doing all those other chores around the house, but somehow it becomes this constant, if absent, distraction. And, to be honest, having finished marking the last of my student papers this morning, I was it finding hard to motivate myself to begin my next big task, a report I’d rather not be writing. But I got into the holiday mood listening to episodes of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on my Ipod while enjoying some excellent scenery.

I eventually pulled out some of myfiction I’d been thinking about the last several weeks. For some reason a short story from the 1990s has been popping into my brain. I abandoned it back then because it was too long for short story markets, too short for novel, but now with e-publishing, length is just no longer a consideration, so idea is again worth revisiting. So I read over the original version and saw how easily my new ideas would plug into what I had from before. It’s embarrassing, but I remain my own biggest fan. I don’t know what it is about this guy, but he has exactly my sense of humor! So that got me into a writing mood, if not on the work I’m supposed to be prioritizing.

By the time I switched from the Empire Builder to the Starliner and had lunch I was prepared to settle down to work. Discovering active wifi in the parlor car on the Starliner, I was one happy camper. Catching up on work email, posting grades and so on, finishing off all the work I was supposed to have done before leaving, while they hosted a wine and cheese reception around me. (I can’t drink, but plate of cheeses was nice!) Quite productive afternoon and evening, interrupted by a steak dinner for supper. Fellow dinners were a family from Orleans, a Vice Principal and his wife --an instructor at the university--and their son in a Perry The Platypus T-shirt. A pleasant conversation, and interesting for me as the VP explained why he hated interviewing new teachers: “They all say what they think I want to hear so it’s different faces but the same speech over and over and over.” He was the VP of a Catholic school which pays new teachers about $30,000, so he knows that his applicant pool are those who couldn’t get jobs in the better paying public schools. So that was interesting for me in terms of preparing my graduates.

When I finally retired for the evening, settled down to read an SF novel from the 1980s that was one of my favorite examples of why Canadian SF is different than the American version. Not quite recreational reading--though I am thoroughly enjoying re-reading the novel--because it is one of the ones I am negotiating to republish, so and I’m editing as I go. As a novel previously published by one of the big houses, it obviously doesn’t need as much editing as most of the manuscripts that come across my desk, but it never ceases to amaze me that the previous editor let a lot more stuff go than I intend to. The lapses are all minor – some Bob and Doug dialog, a couple of momentary lapses in POV, the very occasional ambiguous sentence, but still… it’s the editor’s job to see the book is as good as it can be when it goes out.

Of course, I say that knowing that some fan is going to identify a billion minor lapses in the last manuscript I edited. Just finished editing Mik Murdoch: Boy Superhero and even on the third iteration, found stuff I had missed on the first two times through. Pretty sure I nailed all the big stuff, but there is always the occasional mistake that slips through: e.g., caught a reference to an earlier but now deleted scene, or that we forgot that we’d tied the dog to a tree at the start of a scene and need to retrieve him at the end of it. Oops. But after a while the editor becomes as intimately familiar with the novel as the novelist and consequently suffers the same kind of “see what you expect to see” blindness. When the galleys come back for Mik Murdoch I’m giving a copy to my daughter to read in hopes that her fresh--albeit untrained-- eyes can catch stuff like that….

Of course, I, the author, the publisher, and another editor will also be proofing the galleys. It’s constantly amazing how many errors can creep into even a thoroughly edited manuscript at the last second. I remember when I worked as a test developer for the provincial government, each test went through about 30 different reviews, and we still had the occasional exam go out where the typesetter (and the 11 different proof readers who subsequently reviewed it) missed an exponent on an equation, rendering the question incorrect. But at least we try, in contrast to the big houses which now seem to expect manuscripts to come in preproofed and self-publishers who just don’t see the need….

Retreat: Day 1

I drive from Lethbridge to Shelby to board the train to Portland. The steward hands me my dinner reservation as I board; I am later seated with three random strangers. The first excuses himself after a moment to join friends he has discovered at another table. After the usual pleasantries--interrupted by appropriate oohhhing and ahhhing as we pass through Glacier National Park--the three of us who remain slowly get to know each other. The man seated across from me acknowledges at one point that he used to be a corporate pilot. As the woman next to him draws him out, he allows that he was also a former test pilot. Later, a stunt pilot, and featured airshow act. He is, in fact Delmar Benjamin, whose plane and flying are featured on the covers of three different flying magazines, a one hour TV documentary, and a series of YouTube videos under his name and GeeBee. (Go have a look, I’ll wait.)

So this guy, this random guy, has a ton of fascinating stories, including the fact that he did 52 airshow performance in one year, clearing about $300,000. (The airshow scene, he noted, is now in decline and he doubts that this is still possible. Too many doctors and dentists, he says, have bought planes and are willing to perform for free.) He regales us with tales of his days as a flight instructor for the next generation of test pilots. He is one interesting guy.

Has he, I ask, ever considered writing a book? Well, yes he has indeed written a book. His first book was published by a small niche aviation press some years ago. He is now writing his memoirs, tentatively entitled, Ten Seconds to Impact. “There are so many stories, things that I’ve done and seen, that would just be gone if I don’t write them down.” We discuss publishing options at some length. He has 10,000 photos of he and his plane, youtube video, documentary video, magazine covers with which to promote his forthcoming book. I explain about Pinterest. He responds by noting that he has an email list of 12,000 people interested in his plane. After choking on my water, I explain to him why he must be the envy of every other author. Compared to others whose names mean nothing, he has a built-in market with which to launch his novel.

Meanwhile, the recently retired woman with us notes that her father had been an illustrator with publisher Ziff-Davies in the 1930s and 1940s, and crazy about planes. He had created innumerable covers for Popular Mechanics and Flying Magazine in which Delmar was subsequently featured… (twice).

I find her father’s name strangely familiar. Didn’t he also do some SF covers for Ziff-Davies? Spaceships and the like? Why, yes, yes he did.

Small world.

She is also interesting in her own right, an excellent conversationalist who not only took the lead in drawing out Delmar’s story, but had a number of anecdotes about her own life and family,

So, how great is this? Way more interesting a first night than I have any right to expect.

But I can’t help reflecting that here it is, only the second time I’ve taken a meal on a train as an adult, and the second time I’ve been seated with someone midway through writing a book. Can it really be that one out of three strangers is writing something?

Interview on Editing

Interview with me on editing by Mike Plested on his regular Get Published podcast.

Tesseracts 15 Launched

Robert Runté reading from "Split Decision" at Edge book launch, When Words Collide Festival, August 14, 2011 (Photo John Archer)

I was at the When Words Collide Festival in Calgary last weekend, where Edge publications launched their Tesseracts 15: A Case of Quite Curious Tales collection. As one of the contributors in attendance, I was asked to read a brief excerpt (the first 1/3) from my story. The readings were a wild success -- I can hardly wait to read the stories by the other authors who read excerpts, they were all exceptional -- and I was completely overwhelmed by the reaction to my own reading. I had hoped that my story was amusing, but had no idea that it could generate the gales of laughter with which it was greeted by the live audience. The publisher was apparently surprised too, because they approached me to do a second reading at their multiple book launch again the next day. I read the second 1/3 of my story, again generating a much stronger audience reaction than I would have ever believed possible. The audience for the Edge multiple launches was much bigger than that for the first reading, so the impact of having that many people 'getting' my humor was overwhelming for me. I have never done a public reading of anything I'd written before, so always thought of writing as a solitary and introspective act. You send stuff out there, but you never really know how people are reacting, even if they comment that they liked your story. Hearing their laughter live, is an entirely different experience. Equally gratifying are the tweets and emails I received following the festival telling me how much people had enjoyed the story, a couple even going so far as to say my reading was the highlight of the convention for them. Talk about validation! I could see public readings becoming quite addictive!

The avalanche of positive feedback for that story contrasts sharply with the invisibility of my role as editor. The books I edit for Five Rivers do acknowledge my role in the colophon, but I doubt that many people notice or care -- I can't imagine getting a congratulatory email saying "nice job editing on that book!" since it is by definition an invisible role. Audiences never get to see the before and after manuscripts, or alternate versions of the novel by a different editor (as one gets with directors and plays), so there is no basis upon which readers can judge what editors do. And it is even worse in the case of my growing freelance business (wwwSFeditor.ca), since most of the writers who come to me for coaching do not want anyone else to ever find out that they sought the help of a development editor. I feel I have had a major impact on the success of at least a couple of authors, but no one will ever know because the advice is always given in strictest confidence.

Given how much I enjoyed the positive public feedback I received this weekend, I may have to reconsider how much time I am devoting to editorial work verses my own writing. Though, editing does pay better, and I am really good at it. Hmm, maybe it's my day job I'll have to give up....

Though professoring is a pretty good gig too. Indeed, I've just received confirmation that I have been given the 2012-2013 year off teaching to write a textbook on student evaluation, so there is one book I will be writing for sure (and getting paid for). Now, to see if I can write a textbook that generates the same sort of positive feedback. (Well, I do intend to use a lot of humor -- god knows, the field could definitely use it. The other texts are all so uniformly boring!) Much as I enjoy teaching (comes with a live, captive audience) it will be wonderful to have time to write without feeling like I am stealing time from my family, students, or etc.

Anyway, can't wait to read the reviews of Tesseracts 15 when they come out...I just got my author's copy at the convention, so I haven't read it yet myself, but if the author readings this weekend were any indication, its one of the best YA collections in years, so should do extremely well. The publisher's table sold out of all the copies they had brought to the convention, so that is probably a good sign. The editor told me they had over 300 submissions, and that they just took the best of the best, so I am really looking forward to reading it. I am definitely in good company with this one!