Editor Interviews

Read all the editors' answers to Duotrope's interview question: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you? Learn more.

Free Preview

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

A: I attend a writing group regularly and practice giving feedback on writing. I read about the craft of writing comedy and do my best to apply those lessons to my own writing and to my editing process. Over the last 8 years, I have reviewed more than 800 pieces of writing.

A: Taking care of everything else =) We're all volunteers, so we do the editor business in between our day jobs; reading lots of submissions, prepping the next issue, endless communication and coordination.

A: Everything is printed out to be read.

A: Everything is printed and read several times.

A: I'm a mother of three, a teacher, and a practicing poet, so I do my editing and reading in the little spaces between things, in the quiet of the evening, in carline, while waiting at dance class, etc. I read for what moves me, intellectually and emotionally, and I'll often flag pieces and return to them later for a deeper read. As a team, we leave notes about what we love on submissions, which helps us to see right away what drew another editor in. There is no identifiable information that we are able to see in Submittable, so every single submission is on equal footing.

A: Short & sweet answer: A lot of admin and reading.
Long answer: My day includes reading pieces, processing feedback, filling in lots of forms, communicating with our staff of approx 20, planning events and our newsletters via Substack and working on new offerings from Fahmidan! I'd say I spend approximately 20 hours a week on Fahmidan currently though this can vary between 10-30 depending on workload.

A: Half of it is reading, responding to, and logging (in a big spreadsheet) e-mails. The other half is reading. Hearth Stories generally gets between 350 and 500 submissions per reading period (so far), so there is a lot of reading to be done and a lot of e-mail to be answered.

A: Editing is not a full time job. I work on the journal every morning for a couple of hours, reading submissions and taking care of correspondence. The rest of my day is devoted to my own writing and other bad habits. There are about two weeks of more intense activity when issues come out, since I send out proofs and have to paste everything into my issue template on Wordpress. In general I enjoy the work.

A: During our reading periods, we of course spend most of our time processing submissions: reading, evaluating, discussing, making final decisions. We also correspond with submitters about any potential questions, considerations, or major suggested edits. We read and make decisions on a rolling basis.
This current reading period (Sho No. 6) is the first time we’ve incorporated a third reader, our summer intern Claire Zhou. Unlike most journals that receive a large number of submissions and assign them to first readers, Claire is assigned submissions that we have both read and advanced to the next stage. So she is literally our third reader.
As a relatively new journal with a limited budget, we’re still getting the word out there. We aren’t inundated with submissions, which means that the submissions we do receive get a careful read. In the past, we’ve included personal feedback with submissions that caught our interest or came close, but that can be tricky. Not everyone wants feedback. Some people get offended. It's also not sustainable for us, given our 30-day response time.
Between reading periods, we produce the journal. We read all the poems we’ve accepted, put them in order, typeset them, send proofs to contributors, work with our cover artist, design the cover, get it to print. Then, close to the release date, we get in touch with contributors who might want to order extra copies of the journal at a discount, start taking pre-orders. When it arrives, we mail everything out ourselves.
We also devote much of our time to promoting Sho contributors and their work on social media. It can be exhausting, but it’s worth it. We are excited by the work that crosses our path.

A: In addition to producing the FictionWeek Literary Review, I read every submission as soon as it is received.

A: As a full-time mama, wife, and book publisher, being an editor has proven to be very time-consuming with emails, editing, printing, shipping, so that is why we have only one spring literary journal per year. It's a joy, but quite a hectic season as well.

A: I compile every received submission into a spreadsheet as they come in. Generally, I will wait until submissions are closed to begin reading, but this isn't always the case. When reading the submissions, I will give them initial tags (most often 'maybe', or 'decline'), and once I have a batch of those labelled 'decline' I will write up the emails for those submitters and update the spreadsheet accordingly. The same goes for 'acceptances' and the 'maybes' that become 'acceptances'.
It sounds rather clinical when it's laid out like that, but the magic is between the lines!