Editor’s Letter

As someone who works primarily with non-fiction writers and editors, I’m often asked how I edit fiction. I always say it’s the same way you edit non-fiction — just look for pacing, voice, and structure. The truth is, I probably edit non-fiction the way I edit fiction, because fiction editing was the first and the most intensive kind of editing I was taught as a student in the University of British Columbia’s creative-writing program. When I read a submission, I look for whether a story makes sense to itself. Does the reader have the information they need — no more, no less? Does the writing make you want to keep reading, or does it feel like work? A lot of drafts are great for the first few pages but then just peter out as if the writer had an idea for a scene or character but wasn’t sure what to do with it. Professional writers often say that the short story is the hardest literary form. It is also a genre in which Canadians, not just the Nobel Prize–winning Alice Munro, are prolific. At The Walrus, we publish ten short stories in print a year, with an acceptance rate of less than 3 percent. We receive submissions via agents and publishers but also regularly find new voices in our general inbox, fiction@thewalrus.ca. One of the hardest things about editing fiction at The Walrus is rejecting it. In my two years here, I have found that many of the stories we receive aren’t that far off. It would be easier to decide what to accept if the submissions were all long shots, inappropriate genres from writers who just found us on the internet. In fact, most of our submissions are from published writers who know the magazine well; a lot of stories are already 60– 80 percent there. My job is to find the ones that can make it to 100 percent. When we find a story that I think could speak to a wide audience, I usually ask the writer for a phone call. A lot of writers are surprised, and not just because fiction writing can be lonely, solitary work. There are few general-interest magazines that still publish literary fiction, and even fewer of them edit the way we do: over a series of conversations and with a fact-check. On the call, I might talk to the writer about what I think is missing from the story or explain where I was confused. This is where fiction editing most departs from working on non-fiction. I’ll ask questions like: Is this story set on a different planet? Does your main character have super powers? Is he or she dead and communicating from the afterlife? The selections we do publish are the ones in which the writer is able to create a world. That is true of all of the stories in this summer reading issue. Mireille Silcoff’s realistic family drama “Upholstery” is set in Quebec’s Laurentians. Troy Sebastian’s “Tax niʔ pik̓ak (A Long Time Ago)” is set across time periods, interspersing Ktunaxa and English vocabulary. Awardwinning writer Zsuzsi Gartner’s fable “The Second Coming of the Plants” describes a future in which humans are no longer the planet’s overlords. Zsuzsi was one of my first fiction teachers, and I still remember her giving us a handwritten chart depicting the different “story structures.” There was a triangle, a spiral, and, off in the corner, an indescribable scribble just labelled, “genius model.” I always think of that when I remember the range of things — in style, in subject matter, in scope — a good story can be. The same is true, of course, of other forms of writing. In this issue, we have dedicated considerable space to an increasingly pressing concern: the environment. Science writer Anne Casselman reports on an ambitious collaborative audit of Canada’s efforts to address climate change — I think it’s the sexiest story you’ll read this summer about a bunch of bureaucrats (“Emissions: Impossible”). Josiah Neufeld describes the struggle of disparate groups over a pipeline project in his home province of Manitoba (“Crossing Lines”). Ethan Lou proposes a new growth area for the Alberta economy: Bitcoin mining (“Unnatural Resources”). And, in her “Extinction Sonnets,” poet Susan Glickman considers the final days of animals all over the world. Our annual summer reading issue is traditionally one of the most popular editions of The Walrus. We hope you will enjoy this one. And if you are, like so many of us, a writer, please send thoughts and suggestions to letters@thewalrus.ca. B