Workshopping for Editors

We all rush to the new letter ranges when they open because we love writing limericks, not just admiring the ones we’ve written. Perfecting them can be rewarding, too, but not as much as writing new ones, which might explain why our workshopping often lags behind new production. But workshopping is at the heart of the OEDILF, and the only way the system really works is if we share the load and pay it forward. I did a lot of workshopping of new members in my first years on the site, to encourage as many writers and recruit as many editors as possible; not so that they would shower me with RFAs, but so they would help other newcomers in turn, and help perpetuate this amazing thing we’ve got going. I want the OEDILF to thrive, and continue, and reach Zz.

The main reward of workshopping is that it brings us together and turns the OEDILF into a community, rather than a loose collection of isolated efforts, which is something only the web can do this well at this scale. Because we’re a community of individuals, we have to adapt and adjust to differences in our opinions, standards, and senses of humour along the way. We can’t simply appeal to some higher authority or single codified set of standards: our Editor-in-Chief isn’t an absolute dictator, thank goodness, and some of the improvements that our technical gurus have made to the site over time have had significant (sometimes unintended) effects on how we work.

Words of Advice

Here’s my advice to new Workshopping Editors:

Choose a limerick. New, Tentative, Revised, major contributor, minor, whatever. Preferably one with fewer than 4 RFAs, to direct your help to where it’s most needed.
If it’s New or Revised and you don’t think it needs to be put on hold, set it to Tentative.
If it’s New, Revised or Tentative and you strongly think it should be put on hold, you can do so, but always explain why. If you feel uncomfortable with putting pieces on hold, message one of the old-timers to see what they think.
If you think it’s ready for approval, click RFA. You know now from your own submissions what it takes to get a piece approved; apply those standards. Don’t give your RFA if the piece doesn’t meet them. Do give your RFA if it does. Take that approach and it won’t matter whether it originally had 0 RFAs or 3: you will have done the right thing.
If you’d like to make a comment, make a comment.
If you see a problem, politely point it out. Be as succinct or as expansive as you like. If you don’t know the writer, you’ll probably want to introduce yourself and to offer a bit more detail in your comments.
If you have a potential solution to the problem and the author has a non-restrictive Workshopping Preference, suggest it. If the author has a restrictive preference or none, ask them if they would like to hear your suggestion.
If the author bridles at the tone of your suggestion or comment, do your best to smooth things over; sometimes words on the screen can give the wrong impression.
If the author screams “How dare you!” and storms off in a huff, add them to your mental list of People Not To Workshop. [Note: saying “thanks, but no thanks” is not storming off in a huff; it’s a compromise between writing “No” and “Dear Workshop Editor: Thank you for your comment of 14 July. I appreciate the time you took to write it, and would be more than happy to follow your advice, were it not for the various factors that have shaped my personal writing style and tastes over the years (see list attached). Feel free to withhold your RFA; I assure you that I shall not feel offended. Yours faithfully, The Author, Esq.”]
Oh, and try to contain your use of OEDILF jargon. Excessive use of abbreviations and acronyms alienates newcomers and makes us look like a clique; I avoid them when I can, apart from the most heavily-used (WE, AE, RFA, STC, and one or two others); I don’t even like using WS for workshop.
Repeat 10,182 times.

The suggestion that new editors should avoid workshopping new members was never intended to steer everyone towards the same half a dozen big names. The idea was to avoid situations where brand-new editors, in their keenness to make thorough suggestions, end up overwhelming or annoying brand-new OEDILFers who don’t yet know how we work. Anyone who has been at the OEDILF more than a few weeks and has submitted more than a few limericks has a good idea how we work, and new members need your attention.

If a member’s first submission was more than a month ago and they’ve submitted more than two or three limericks, workshop all you like. If it was under a month ago but you think the limerick is a work of genius that needs no changes made to it, RFA all you like. If they’ve had anything approved, workshop and RFA all you like. If you’re a new editor, avoid workshopping new members if their work seems problematic. Your judgment of what constitutes “new” is ultimately up to you.

We have Associate Editors who look after the final approval end, and active front-door editors who look after the new submissions. What if others self-identify as Guardians of the 0 RFAs, 1 RFAs, 2 RFAs, and 3 RFAs? Just decide which ones you’re going to work on, head to the search page and search for “Tentative + 2 RFA” (or whatever), and click on the last page of the results. Workshop those. Then repeat the process when you’re done. Hey presto, you’re working on all the most recent limericks at that particular RFA level. If you’ve been finding the tentative pile too daunting, this could cut the amount you’re looking at by 80%. Instead of having to tackle everything and throwing up your hands in despair, you’ll be doing a smaller amount well.

It’s important to keep on workshopping if we’re to retain our high-volume writers—or any writer, for that matter. If we don’t keep working on the backlog to shepherd their work through to approval, we lose people. Authors lose patience, lose interest, drift away, and we’re left with their tentatives, many of them perfectly good apart from a tweak or two, which we can’t do anything with because they’re gone—which wastes not just their work but all the workshopping that went into it before they left. In the early years, when we had higher rates of new sign-ups, we lost some good writers who submitted large numbers of limericks but couldn’t reach the threshold of 20 approved to become an editor. Once people are convinced that their work is valued, they’ll stick around, but if someone submits several dozen limericks without making it to Workshopping Editor, things aren’t looking good. Neglect is our biggest enemy.

Notes of Caution

Workshopping isn’t just about the work, it’s about the writers and workshoppers. When you’re dealing with people you don’t know well, you have to make choices about how to advise and guide them. That’s especially important when dealing with new members: saying to a stranger “this line sucks” is as likely to turn them off you and the OEDILF as it is to inspire them to do better. Sometimes I’ll make a suggestion for a different line instead, but I’m slightly reluctant to do that with newcomers, because I end up in co-author situations I wasn’t looking for.

It’s different with established members; in plenty of cases editors are willing to suggest whole new lines to old hands (which carries the implication, even if it isn’t explicitly stated, that the current line could be better). But even then, we do it with those we know will be okay with it. There are some long-standing members whose writing isn’t really in sync with my own limerick sensibilities, but I know that my idea of “zing” wouldn’t fit with what they’re trying to do—and that’s fine. Maybe I’ll suggest ideas to them anyway for the hell of it, but I’m not surprised or offended if they don’t take it.

I trod on someone’s toes once by suggesting what seemed to me the most innocuous of changes—not to a single word or punctuation mark, but only to the OEDILF formatting—and this was an old hand whose work I generally admired. A few hours later I suggested three entirely new punchlines to another old hand for a piece that was already perfectly good and self-RFA’d, one of which he took. But I knew he’d be up for it, because I’d already workshopped half his tentatives and we’d got to know each other. That makes it easier to offer bolder advice. Nowadays, though, I tend not to make substantial suggestions in workshops unless an author is on the verge of abandoning a piece altogether; I want to hear their voice, not mine.

Any editor is free to hand out tough love at each and every level of workshopping, of course. Different teachers have different teaching styles, and even a tough teacher can command respect. But if the OEDILF gets a reputation for being Limerick Boot Camp, will it still be a fun place to be? I like that we have our share of softies here, as well as the hard nuts. We complement each other. It’s not a rubber-stamp process.

We should keep in mind that we can’t insist that an author change a limerick in particular ways, even around what might seem OEDILF-related features rather than those of the limerick itself. Our Editor-in-Chief has on more than one occasion confirmed the right of authors to reject the addition of a particular topic to a limerick if they feel it undermines their work, such as by giving away a joke they would rather remained hidden. The act of adding a topic can have creative implications. Some of us dislike adding “Wordplay: puns” to our limericks, for example, and wouldn’t like to see it added without our approval.

Similarly, a pronunciation guide is part of an Author’s Note, which is part of the work as a whole, and hence the author’s work. We have formatting rules and guidelines, but we can’t force authors to follow them; all we can do is withhold our RFAs if we think a pronunciation guide doesn’t work. It’s true that Associate Editors can and do edit them to fit the house style, but authors still have the final say on whether those edits are acceptable; if they refuse to approve them at the final confirmation stage, that’s their right, and the OEDILF loses a limerick. That this almost never happens over pronunciation guides doesn’t mean that authors have no rights in them.

Similarly with defined words: if editors don’t like a defined word, they can withhold their RFAs; if they can’t convince the author to change it, they can appeal to the Editor-in-Chief to arbitrate; but if he still can’t convince the author, he can’t force the author to make the change. All we can do is refuse to approve the work (or unapprove it, as has sometimes happened). While it’s true that the OEDILF as a whole controls what defined words appear in our dictionary, that doesn’t mean that authors lose control over what defined words appear in their limericks. All it means is that if the two sides can’t agree, that particular limerick won’t be an approved entry of the OEDILF.

Enjoy the zing when you see it; enjoy encouraging and challenging those who share your sensibilities. And if they don’t, why not let them enjoy themselves?

No Comment

If I knew that every time I opened an unseen limerick I was obliged to say something about it or RFA it, no matter how unexciting it was, no matter what kind of day I’d had, no matter whether I felt I’d crossed my “useful comment” threshold with that particular author, no matter whether I couldn’t face writing (at that particular moment) the lengthy and extra-careful comments that newer or less-prolific members’ limericks often require (as opposed to the four or five words I might get away with for an old hand)... if despite all of that I was still obliged to comment on every limerick I opened, I would stop opening them. Which would mean giving up workshopping altogether.

I’ve looked at a large number of limericks, and have commented on or RFA’d a high percentage. But not all of them, and not all the first time I saw them. That will always be the case; it’s an inevitable side-effect of voluntary effort. Imagine the response you’d get to an OEDILF that wasn’t voluntary:

Hi! Welcome to the OEDILF. We like reading and writing limericks that define words nobody’s ever heard of, and we hope you do too, because once you’ve written twenty limericks that we like, we’ll insist that you tell us whether or not you like every limerick you ever read here! That’s only 11,000 and counting, so you’ll have plenty to talk about! Wheeeee hee heee! (Joinnnnn ussss... joinnnnn ussss....)

Reworked from forum and workshop comments from January 2005–July 2007.