Tastes
At workshop last weekend, in the general-discussion period after the one-person-at-a-time critiquing, I made a comment about the story we were critiquing, and then one of the other members of the workshop said something like "I hesitate to contradict an editor, but...." I know he was joking, but it gave me pause anyway; I would hate to think that anyone in a workshop with me would feel that my opinion was somehow inherently more valid or more valuable than those of other people in the workshop, simply by virtue of my being an editor.
I can certainly provide a perspective that non-editors might not have; for example, I can comment on whether I see stories that use the same basic idea frequently in our slushpile. Or I can note that as an editor, I'm not intrigued enough by an opening to want to keep reading it. (Although it's very rare that I personally actually do stop reading a story partway through, and even then I skim the rest of it. But many editors give up on stories early on if they're not interested, and I may well start doing that more when I'm more experienced at reading slush.) And I think I'm a pretty good critiquer—though after fifteen years of critiquing, I still learned an awful lot about critiquing from watching and talking with Mary Anne during and after last year's SH workshops—so I hope that my opinions and comments are useful, and I've been told on occasion that they are.
But I firmly believe that tastes differ, and I don't believe in Objective Standards Of Quality (at least, not beyond a very coarse-grained level). There are lots of stories published in the big magazines that I not only wouldn't have published, but that I feel are poorly written; if I'd critiqued those in their current forms, I wouldn't have said "Don't change a word, just send it to Gardner, he'll buy it." Likewise, I imagine that some other editors might read some of my favorite SH stories and say "What possessed them to publish this?" Critiques can attempt to go beyond personal tastes (I can certainly tell a writer that I found a story unpleasant but well-written), but they're grounded in personal tastes, and tastes (even among editors) differ.
For that matter, even we SH editors frequently disagree about stories, and that's despite our intentionally choosing editors who more or less share our tastes.
My point is that if a writer takes anything I say in workshop as gospel truth, they're doing themselves and their stories a disservice; and if other writers fail to speak up in workshop when they think I'm wrong about a story, they're doing the author and the story a disservice.
I'd love to be always right, and I usually think I am. Sadly, just like everyone else, I'm not infallible; nobody in the publishing world speaks ex cathedra.
Besides (and here we move into Philosophy Of Art, I suppose), there is no One Right Way to approach any given story. In the end, it's always up to the author what they want to do with it; imo, the author should take the advice that feels right to them, and ignore the rest, no matter who says it. It's worth listening to the advice of people who can provide a different perspective on the work, but it's also worth remembering that sometimes that advice is just wrong.
(Please note that I'm only talking about workshops here. If a specific editor asks for a revision along particular lines of a specific story, then even if you disagree, you might decide that your desire to be published by that editor outweighs your desire to keep the story the way you want it. But in workshop, it's unlikely that following a particular editor's advice (or anyone else's) about how to change a story is going to lead directly to publication.)
