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Editor Interview: Eclectica Magazine

Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.

A: Eclectic literature!

Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?

A: I admire the obvious choices of The New Yorker, Granta, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, Harpers... but also Barcelona Review, Thuglit, Narrative Magazine, storySouth, Carve, failbetter, and many others who continue to raise the profile of online literature. I take great pride in whatever extent to which Eclectica can be considered part of that company.

Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?

A: Any list of "favorites" can't possibly do justice to the great number of fiction and nonfiction writers and poets we've published over the years. Some authors showed or continue to show remarkable loyalty, having published with us many times, including poets Arlene Ang, Bob Bradshaw, C.E. Chaffin, Antonia Clark, Barbara De Franceschi, Taylor Graham, Ray Templeton; and prose writers Thomas J. Hubschman, Stanley Jenkins, Alex Keegan, Anna Sidak, Paul Silverman, David Taylor, and G.K. Wuori, to name just a few. Some authors have gone on to achieve great things and have been kind enough to keep in touch: Charlie Yu, Ron Currie, Caroline Kepnes, Rachel Maizes, Chika Unigwe, again to name a few.

Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?

A: Longevity. Twenty-eight years is a long time online. Quality. The Million Writers Award used to be one measurement of quality: we had more top ten and more notable MWA stories than any other electronic publication. Eclectic. I'm proud of the range of material--subject matter, genre, geographic origin--packed into every issue. Simplicity. Our website doesn't feature fancy graphics or blinking lights. It's clean, easy to navigate, and easy on the eye.

Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?

A: Try to write something that hasn't already been written, and try to write something that someone else will want to read. May seem like flippant advice, but I don't mean it that way.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: The ideal submission elicits some kind of emotional response. It rewards me for all the hours I spend reading submissions that don't. In turn, it rewards the readers who invest their time. There are a lot of different kinds of emotional responses. The best ones, I think, involve some kind of unexpected breath--either an inhale or an exhale, a laugh or an exclamation.

Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?

A: We don't have a complicated submissions process, so the only thing I can think of is when people submit simultaneously and then fail to notify us when they've been accepted elsewhere. Sometimes we'll spend quite a bit of time on a submission, ultimately decide not to accept it, send a note to the author, and get back something along the lines of, "Well, it was already accepted at Raging Cheese, so I don't really care that you didn't like it." That's not cool.

Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?

A: If someone sends a submission with no cover letter--and by that I mean no email message at all accompanying his or her story--I'm predisposed to think said person is sloppy and not very serious about writing. These preconceptions are usually borne out by the work. On the other hand, I don't spend much time reading cover letters, and if one is interesting enough to catch my attention, it's often not for the right reasons. My advice, therefore, is to keep the "letter," which should really just be a note in the text of the email, short and to the point. Explaining what the piece is about or providing a synopsis is probably a waste of time--unless you want to convince me there's no reason to actually read the piece in question!

Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?

A: Anyone who says they read every word of every submission is either lying, crazy, or completely lacking in literary judgment. I can usually tell within a paragraph or two if a piece is a lost cause. I always force myself to skim through the rest, though, and carefully read the last couple paragraphs, just to make sure there isn't some indication I was too quick to judge. I use a multi-level reading process, and if a piece survives the first cut, it's subjected to more and more thorough reads. The best pieces grab my attention, though, and force me to read them all the way through the first time.

Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?

A: Not sure what to say here, but I will mention we use the Submittable tool, which allows us to have multiple readers, discuss, vote, etc. It charges a nominal fee, the proceeds from which allow us to pay for the tool itself and provide cash awards to each issue's Spotlight author and two runners-up.

Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?

A: A day in the life of an editor for me is really a day in the life of guy who works for the man and spends most of his remaining "free" time engaged in various home remodeling projects or taking care of eight rescue lapdogs. Eclectica gets edited on the margins. Along with the rest of the magazine's staff, who generously donate their margins as well, we've managed to keep it afloat.

Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?

A: I kinda feel like having an online magazine is itself an embrace of modern technology. Beyond that, I'm probably more about the literature than the tech.

Q: How much do you edit an accepted piece prior to publication?

A: There is no one, definitive answer to this question. Generally, I look for pieces that are (mostly) ready for publishing. However, submitters should know that if they fall into the camp of writers who feel every word they have written is sacrosanct, and that an editor has no business doing actual editing, then there might be other publications better suited to them. The author always gets to approve final edits, and I'm open to a dialogue in those cases where disagreement arises. In most of those cases, I tend to lean toward accommodating the author.

Q: Do you nominate work you've published for any national or international awards?

A: Yes. We nominate work for Pushcarts, the Sundress Best of the Net, and various others.