Q & A With Los Angeles Review Fiction Editor Yi Shun Lai

Last July, I had the pleasure of introducing my readers to Yi Shun Lai (See "It's A Living: Q & A on Making Money as a Writer"). 

Yi Shun Lai (http://www.thegooddirt.org) has been a writer and editor for over 15 years. She's written or edited for The Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the J. Peterman catalog, and Audubon magazine, among others. She makes her living writing corporate copy and executing content strategy.

Yi Shun writes literary essays and short fiction and is the fiction editor for the Los Angeles Review. 

She is currently earning her MFA at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. She tweets as @GoodDirt.

I am grateful Yi Shun graciously agreed to return and answer a few questions demystifying the fiction editor's role.

Q:   What is the most common misconception about your role as a fiction editor?

A: That I live to reject people. Seriously. I like to read and acquire and publish fiction. That's why I'm here.


Q: What do you consider the best part of an editor's job?

A: Discovering new styles, new ways of expression, new and innovative ways of telling a story. (I don't necessarily mean that experimental fiction is my shtick. I mean that words have infinite possibilities.)


Q:  What's the toughest part of an editor's job?

A: Working with an author to revise a piece. Sometimes you get work that you want to accept, but that isn't quite right as-is. There's a huge amount of humility, and a little bit of embarrassment, involved in asking a writer to revise his or her work to fit your aesthetic. Fortunately, every writer I've worked with has been gracious and grateful for suggested changes. If we're suggesting changes, the intent is to make the work better.

Q:   What specific advice do you have for authors to improve their chances for getting their submissions accepted?

A: Please, please, read the fricken publication before you submit. When I was at the Atlantic as a fiction intern I got stories about foot fetishes. Three of them over my eight-week tenure. Okay, really???

And get someone else to look at the thing before you submit. Critique groups are incredible things. So are second readers. Use them.


Q:  If you could permanently eradicate one submission error you see all the time that most pushes your This Irks Me button, what would it be?

A:  Papyrus font. Seriously, folks: Times Roman or Courier. Don't be fancy-pants, m'kay? I can't read fancy-pants. Also, we usually have a few submissions that exceed our 4,000-word limit. Don't do this. It's in the guidelines for a reason.


Q:  In general, how far do you have to read in a submission before you realize you love it and want to acquire it?

A: All the way through. I once got to the penultimate paragraph of something, only to have it fall apart in the last paragraph. Horrors! The same is not true for deciding something's just not for us.


Q:  Why do you feel a writer should publish his or her work in periodicals like the Los Angeles Review?

A: Platform. Everyone says it, no one knows what it means. It means that when I google you, you pop up someplace. It means you have legitimacy, street cred, a background. It means you care enough to support the arts and contribute to them.

You publish in literary magazines because you think your work deserves to be seen. And when you publish, that means someone else thought your work deserved to be seen, too. That's pretty powerful stuff.

More practically, the stuff in literary magazines is good work that sometimes never gets seen anywhere else. That's why we're here.


Q:  You write as well as edit. What has being an editor taught you about your writing?

A: Mostly, that you learn from everything you read. That is, I learn from other writers. That could be something as broad as pushing the boundaries in story-telling, or it could mean something as specific as word choice.


Q:  What are some things you would like to see more of in your submissions in-box?

A: My submissions in-box is pretty great as it is. We have a really lovely mix of male and female submitters, and we have some great minority literature and viewpoints. But I'm always looking for LGBT and minority stories, and work that isn't young adult but that revisits that time in our lives. I'm a softie for the teen years, for some reason.


Q:  If people wish to submit fiction to the LAR, what is the best way to go about it?

A: Once you've familiarized yourself with our publication, go to our submissions page and follow the directions. I'm always looking forward to reading something amazing.

Is It Smart to Dumb Down?

"Is Fiction Changing, For Better or Worse?" is a discussion question the New York Times posed earlier this month, the topic title alone craftily tapping into the zeitgeist of how we readers willingly enter into a marriage of the mind with our favorite books.

Some of the distinguished respondents posit that smart, well-crafted books that make one think will always find a readership. Others take a more cynical attitude toward what appears to be a readership clamoring for entertainment over substance.

"...as long as people use language, tell stories, and want to know about themselves, they will read fiction," opines William Deresiewicz as part of the NY Times discussion.

While I'm not disputing that fiction is here to stay, I do wonder whether we, the reading public, have emulated Corporate America: eschewing the experienced, educated brain trust in favor of something younger, hipper, hotter (and cheaper).

"Are we just heading toward the dumbing down of everything?" Atlantic Wire writer Jen Doll asks after inflicting the opening of 50 Shades of Grey on herself. It's a valid question. One that, in the light of two beta readers' comments on a manuscript of mine, I have been contemplating from a practical standpoint for the past few days.

"I loved your book," one beta said. "It's very well-written, with great descriptions and a unique story that really used a lot of imagination." (Cue happy song, confetti flinging, and Kermit arm-flailing, 'cause I'm just that pathetic when it comes to hearing people say nice stuff about my writing.)



However...

This beta reader and one other mentioned that they had encountered words they didn't know when reading my manuscript, an adult literary novel with commercial aspirations.

"I don't like having to look things up in the dictionary while I'm reading," one said.

"It makes the book more like work," agreed the other.

I was somewhat taken aback. I had no idea what they were talking about. Had they encountered some slang with which they were unfamiliar, or gotten stuck on the few foreign words I included in my book, I wondered?

No. They just ran into words they didn't know. One of them was kind enough to write them down for me. And I -- God help me -- seriously considered changing them. Until I saw the vocabulary list. Here it is (with excerpts from the novel to put the words in context):

*  "The crate rocked back and forth, caroming off the sides of the van." 
*  "They drowsed, ignoring the diatribe in the background."
*  "The puppy gamboled over to the cage to investigate."
*  "Something in the older woman's voice concerned her. If she didn't know better, she would have said it was fear. That, of course, was impossible, for in all the years they had known each other, she had never seen Ellie quail."
*  "The afternoon sun streamed through the window, backlighting a shaft of light – a God’s eye – dancing with dust motes and dog hair." 
*  "He choked down some of the detox slurry, begrudging every swallow."
*  "If she stretched on her tiptoes, she could almost keep her chin above the morass of trash."
*  "Now people constantly commented on his physical beauty. Sycophants and toadies wanted to be near him, to claim some sort of ownership of his looks." 

Call me a snob, but I happen to think all of these words are perfectly valid components of my vocabulary. I like them. When I use them in my writing and in my speech, they help me say exactly what I mean to say.

But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it would help my chances of finding a major publisher and a massive readership if I reworded things so as not to tax my readers' vocabulary. Perhaps I expect too much of my readers, or am just a hopeless literary bee-yotch. ::sigh::

What are your thoughts? Should I rethink the vocabulary used above? Is it, in your opinion, too advanced or esoteric for today's readership? Have you ever rewritten something you thought was fine -- even "good" -- in order to pander to the masses make it more accessible to your readership?

For the Sake of Argument

I remember very little of my actual university course work, but I remember most of my "American Literature" class. Not because the professor was interesting, erudite, or inspired in any way. Far from it. The best that could be said for him was that if recorded speaking, he could singlehandedly wipe out insomnia. Ah, but in that class we read books. Good books. Great books! After reading them we not only got to discuss them -- but we were actually encouraged to do so!

I was 19, so I, of course, knew everything. I had read most of the titles required for the class before graduating high school and considered Twain, Hawthorne, Poe, and Salinger old friends. I'd read enough Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Crane to know that their work didn't speak to me in the same way my "friends" did. I had definite opinions and was thrilled to discover a kindred spirit in the class.

T. was 10 years older than I. Not only did she have opinions, but -- praises be! -- her views on literature differed significantly from mine. On many occasions, the two of us would take over the class with our discussion of the work at hand. The professor never stopped us. I'm not sure he could have. And the other students would privately thank us for Siskel-and-Eberting because they learned more and found the class more interesting than when the professor droned on unchallenged.

That class introduced me to F. Scott Fitzgerald. How I'd managed to miss out on reading him before then, I'll never know, but I became an instant fan. We read "The Great Gatsby," and it was like finding a book that someone had written just for me. Oh. My. God, how I loved all of its glorious, golden tragic excess.

Until I got to the end.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

WTF?

To young, know-it-all me, that was the DUMBEST ENDING EVER. I thought just about any ending would have been better than that. If the book had ended one paragraph sooner ("And one fine morning..."), I argued, it would have been perfect.

T. disagreed with me on just about everything with "Gatsby."

While I loved the metaphor of the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, T. found the imagery tiresome.

I hated Daisy with a purple passion. I thought she was a conniving, simple-minded bitch. T. took into consideration where Daisy came from and sympathized with the choices she made.

I thought Gatsby's "you loved me too?" is one of the saddest lines of dialogue I've ever read. I still do. I don't remember whether T. agreed with me or not on that. What she thought didn't affect my supreme enjoyment of that line in the slightest.

In fact, one of the few things T. & I agreed upon with regards to Gatsby was that we both loved the book and hated the Robert Redford / Mia Farrow-ization of the movie.

Today, years later, "Gatsby" remains one of my all-time favorite books. And here's the thing: I no longer hate the ending. With age comes wisdom, perhaps. Maybe there's just something to be said for accepting another's creative vision, even when it differs from your own.

For the sake of argument, imagine if Fitzgerald was an unpublished writer tackling today's publishing system with his manuscript for "The Great Gatsby." (Yes, yes, I know Gatsby was his 3rd published book. But honestly, do you think "This Side of Paradise" would ever make it past the intern in charge of the slush pile?)

Gatsby falls just shy of 50,000 words: too short for a novel / too long for a novella. It includes flashbacks, inventive punctuation, and has no clear antagonist. We don't even get to meet the book's protagonist, its namesake, until Chapter 3.

For the sake of argument, imagine if Scott, fresh from finishing his manuscript with a metaphor that (ahem) some 19-year olds might hate, attended a writer's conference where he got to spend a glorious, hope-infused 3 WHOLE MINUTES with a harried editor or agent, pitching his story about the doomed relationship between a poor little rich girl and a hopeless romantic. Show of hands: how many times would he hear "I just don't love it" before he got a green light to submit a synopsis and a partial?

Do we live in a world where agency interns would recognize Scott's brilliance if it shone at them from their email inbox? Would Scott himself have been able to craft a query letter that would "hook" the reader into requesting a partial -- or would his query render him Query Shark bait?

If he did get a partial, either from a conference connection or from shining through slush, would the fact that his protagonist doesn't appear in the first 50 pages of the manuscript nix a request for a full?

In order to get Gatsby published, he would have to find an agent who wasn't trolling for Amish romances, paranormal, YA, steampunk, urban fantasy, horror, mystery, or freaky zombie / vampire / werewolf mashups involving literary or historical characters.

Once such an agent was found, Scott would have to write a hell of a query letter that piqued the interest of the agent's unpaid intern enough to get the intern to request a partial. Then he'd have to rely on the intern liking the story enough to request a full, read the whole thing, recognize its merit, and pass it to the agent with a recommendation. The agent would then have to sell a publisher on the project -- a process as fraught with potential pitfalls as finding an agent.

Could such a thing really happen without Scott receiving notes like:

• Need at least another 20,000 words. Perhaps add a paranormal element? Better market share.
• Consider bumping up erotic tension between Nick and Daisy.
• Does Myrtle have to die? If so, show in more detail. Make me feel her evisceration.
• We need to see at least one sex scene between Daisy & Gatsby. Ramp up the heat.
• The final paragraph doesn't work. Suggest rewriting and / or eliminating completely.

For the sake of argument, I sincerely hope so, though privately, I wonder. Because if F. Scott couldn't get Gatsby published in today's world, then what hope do I have of succeeding where he would fail?