Hugo endorsement: Sheila Gilbert, Best Editor (Long Form)

Warning: This’ll be a long post, with a bit of preamble. If you just want the takeaway, go ahead and scroll down.

Hi, everyone. This is my first post on a personal website I don’t have reason to use very often, but which I felt might be the best platform for the information I want to put out there on the Internet, which is my take on why Sheila E. Gilbert of DAW Books deserves your vote for Best Editor (Long Form) in the 2013 Hugo Awards.

I’ve worked for DAW for six years; Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert are the co-publishers and co-editors-in-chief of DAW. I’m not unbiased. But this also means I’ve been able to see Sheila work with the dozens of authors she’s worked with, day-in, day-out. The actual work of editors is largely invisible to the general public, and when editors gain visibility at all, it is usually in one of two ways.

First, there is the generous acknowledgment by the authors they edit. The existence of this generous acknowledgment is much appreciated by the editors, of course, and is hopefully a pretty good indicator for these editors’ quality! Sheila has edited many, many authors who’ve been widely read and enjoyed by the speculative fiction community for years. Some have already endorsed or spoken about her, but I’m writing this with a few weeks left in the voting cycle. I fully expect more to do so.

The other way editors occasionally gain visibility among people who don’t work directly with them is through non-editorial interaction with the reading & writing community: either in-person at conventions or conferences, via traditional or online media (interviews, essays, and so on), or, these days, primarily through social media, Twitter, Facebook, blogs…  you know, that sort of thing. (This sort of thing.) And that’s valuable, too—these are the editors who are directly involved in the discussions of the day for their communities, who might contribute new ideas to spec-fic’s ongoing conversation, and debate or amplify the ideas of others. If an editor does that in addition to all the editorial work involved in getting awesome books out to readers—fabulous! I won’t devalue it. Sheila may have less of this sort of visibility—no Twitter, blog, or so on—but I’m trying to address that a little by putting this post out on the SF/F networks that I, myself, do take some small part in.

But primarily, what I want to do here is not just give Sheila a bit more “blogosphere” visibility; I want to speak to her editorial work from a different perspective, and one that most readers (or even authors) probably don’t get to see.

The focus and dedication I’ve seen Sheila bring to the work are genuinely impressive, and inspiring. She reads manuscripts on her bus commute to and from the DAW office. She line-edits in between phone calls with artists and agents. She’ll have an extensive revision discussion early morning, late at night, weekend or weekday or whenever the two very busy schedules of author and editor can match up. Somehow, she can even occasionally read submissions, though I have no idea when or how. She’s not surfing the SF/F Internet, she’s not tweeting, she’s not giving interviews (though again, no disrespect at all to those who do!). Every day, every week, she’s simply doing the work, and the work gets done, at a pace I have not seen many people match.

Because, if you’ve downloaded the Hugo Voter Packet for the category, take a look at the list of books she worked on. Those are all original novels first published in 2012. None are paperback reprints or omnibus editions or anything other than books that Sheila edited and published last year. And every single novel written by an author Sheila edits gets her editorial take, often twice. Some got additional planning or advisory discussion in formative stages, or essential advice during a case of writer’s block in the Great Swampy Middle. There are nineteen novels on the list. That’s a new novel every two or three weeks, consistently, throughout the full year (and remember, any given novel probably got read both in original and revision). That’s in addition to all the detail work involved in working in an office, and the strategic work involved in running a company.

Better yet: she’s good at it. One author I know has said that their revision process, upon finishing a first draft, now begins with the question “What would Sheila tell me to fix?” Another has said that hers was the most in-depth and helpful editorial critique they’d received in decades.

For my part, when I was new to publishing and wanted to see an editor in action, I read a first-draft manuscript while Sheila was reading it, and, when we had both finished, I came to her with my notes and we had a discussion about it. There were points where she and I had identified the same problem; I was pretty proud of those. But where my sentences ended—“this part doesn’t make sense,” “this part’s boring”—hers continued, immediately, with the retrospectively obvious fix, the one that made it make sense and be more exciting and be more emotionally involving, all at once. The intuitiveness of her eye for improving story was and is at a level I didn’t know people could reach. But, it turns out, if you work with fiction professionally for forty years or so, apparently you can. Or, at least, Sheila could. And since Sheila can adjust her take and apply her knowledge on the fly, those revision discussions can be recalibrated as she exchanges ideas with authors, so that new ideas can blossom and the authors can almost always hang up the phone reinvigorated and excited about the work. I’ve heard them say so.

Look. Every one of the nominees deserves to be there. I can personally attest to that regarding those on the slate I know, who are also incredibly hard-working, talented, and passionate. For those I don’t know myself, I’ve generally heard great things from friends or colleagues, or appreciated the comments and essays they’ve written, or have simply read and enjoyed authors they’ve edited. But I am in a privileged position to speak up for Sheila, and that’s something I very much want to do.

* Takeaway *

Sheila has been one of the guiding lights of DAW since 1985, and was the head of the Signet science fiction line before that. This is her first Hugo nomination, and it’s for a year of many successes for her authors. I won’t single any out, but take a look at that list again. (Available from the Hugo Voter Packet, if you are a supporting or attending WorldCon member. Memberships are still available. And I’ll go ahead and duplicate the list itself in a comment below.) If you’ve read and enjoyed any of those books, or heard good things and are looking forward to them—well, the authors wrote them, and revised them, and sweated blood and tears. All credit where it’s due. But Sheila played a real part in helping make them what they are, and in getting them out to you.

A section of Sheila’s office shelves, containing paperback copies of some of the books she has edited. There are more.

From my position within DAW, I’ve felt fortunate to have Sheila as one of my mentors, and to witness example after example of her work as a brilliantly focused, dedicated, and insightful editor. She has developed exceptionally close, long-term relationships with many of the authors she has worked with over the years, and it’s been clear to me that her input has become an invaluable part of these authors’ writing processes.

Her contributions to the science fiction and fantasy genres at the most basic level—the books we read—have been important, extensive, and ongoing, in quantity and quality, and in 2012 she had one of her strongest years yet. I think Sheila deserves your vote, and I hope you agree.