Best Lesbian Erotica 2014

FOREWORD: EDITING A LIFE

It’s been half a decade since Tristan Taormino and Cleis handed the curating duties of this series on to me. Half a decade, and I’ve read well over five hundred stories, worked with six different judges, corresponded with writers whose work has been chosen (and not) from all over the globe, and spent many a late night line-editing, negotiating changes and sitting with the chosen stories before me like a jigsaw puzzle, fitting them into an order that makes sense, has an energy, an arc to it, and finishing up all the housekeeping tasks: assembling bios, noting which pieces have been published before, collecting contracts and turning it all in. And then I’m done… until it’s time to look at the proof files, then the dummies (as we used to call them in publishing), and set up the first reading, and start visiting my PO box to collect next year’s submissions.

I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m delineating the parts that make the whole. Sometimes, when I tell people that I edit lesbian erotica, they say: “Well that must be fun!” And I usually respond: “Well, when the stories are good, it is.”

I am of the tribe that can appreciate a well-crafted piece of erotica, then sit there and debate if a word should be in italics, when to use the past perfect tense, or whether correcting a character’s grammar changes the voice of the writer. I can also shout at my computer screen over the words of a would-be writer who can’t tell the difference between “your” and “you’re”; “their,” “there” and “they’re”; or “its” and “it’s.” It can grow into a personal grudge for a story full of spelling and grammatical errors, a story submitted in a funny font or a story that’s by someone writing to “sell” a story rather than tell one.

I relish the exchanges with the writers who are just coming into their own: when I send them an edited version of their story, and break down what I did. Some may disagree with the changes, but others say: I see what you were doing there. I know something about my own work that I didn’t before, and I’m going to use it as I go on.

It’s because I tend to love writers, and want them to hear an encouraging word, want to let them know that someone else believes in their work, or perhaps give them permission to believe in it themselves. Oh sure, there are some crazy mean ones, and people I would prefer not to ride in a car with, but even then, I know that’s the result of the journey they’ve been on, and their work is their way of trying to find some kind of meaning in a life that is sometimes awful or tragic.

I also make it a point to acknowledge people who are already good at what they do. Each year, I seek out the people whose work I published in previous years and ask them to submit something new. It’s a mark of respect, letting them know that their work is something I look forward to reading. Of course that also means every year there is a larger pool of people to disappoint if their work isn’t chosen.

And they sometimes email me afterward, frosty or penitent, snarky or mock-carelessly, asking why their work wasn’t picked. Because no matter how long you’ve been at this, no matter how good you know your own work is, rejection stinks. It’s an arrow in the heart.

What makes it worth it?

I always say: try again next year. It has become my custom to take stories that I particularly like that didn’t get in one year, and throw them into the pool of submissions for the next. What doesn’t suit one volume might suit another. And I’ve been happy to see stories find a place in the series in later editions.

That’s why it’s always a pleasure to sit there puzzling over the final lineup, knowing that the stories chosen will become a new whole. And even though this is a “best of” book, there always seems to be a theme, something that’s on everyone’s mind. This year, there seems to be a lot of reaching, of needing, of people fighting themselves to get what they want or need. Maybe that’s why this foreword is taking the shape it has.

Sometimes I think the writing of erotica is about being afraid of something, and needing to say it, to have it, to own it. No one can define it, except the person at the keyboard, who is by herself, even if her lover is asleep in the next room. No one can know if a story is the one that should be told, or how, except the one telling it.

And then sending it out, hoping to find someone to read it, to listen, to understand.

To me, that’s an honorable life, well lived. That makes it worth it.