Introducing 'EMIL IS MY EDITOR'

An initiative by and for the fiction community

If you’re part of the Substack fiction community, chances are you’ve heard the name

Emil Ottoman

many a time already. You can read his fiction right here—as well as some of the most important and valuable free writing advice you’re ever likely to see printed anywhere, full stop.

Emil’s Autopsy series, where he performs a public developmental and line editing pass of a short story, free of charge, for any fiction writer brave enough to risk a punch or twelve in order to improve themselves, is at the essence of who the man is: he wants to lift his fellow writers up.

This winter, he and his family have been caught in a perfect storm of predatory insurance practices, rental application practices, and lawyer fees—not to mention the literal winter storm that dropped thousands of pounds of snow and ice on a hundred-year-old roof and forced them into this shitshow in the first place.

For someone who offers so much of himself to go through this sort of hideousness alone does not sit right with us, and we’ve decided to fucking do something about it.

It’s not a huge thing for any of us, individually. We’re simply insisting on paying Emil’s regular reading fee for our Autopsies.

And we’d like to encourage those of you who are waiting on an Autopsy (or have already had one, learned a ton about your own writing, and want more) to join us.

How does it work?

1. Our brave hypothetical author sends Emil his reading fee ($125 for up to 2,500 words) via Venmo to @emil-ottoman with the memo “EMIL IS MY EDITOR.”

2. Our hero sends the specimen (and a screenshot of the Venmo receipt for everyone’s records) to emilottoman@gmail.com under the same subject heading.

3. Everyone waits as patiently as possible under elevator music while the man does his thing.

4. When the edit is done, Emil sends it back to the author privately by email first—that way, if our hero decides they can’t go through with the public beatdown aspect of the process, no one outside the circle is any the wiser (and those of us who know about it promise not to judge).

5. Assuming our hero still has the stomach for it, Emil posts the autopsy, and we re-stack the living shit out of it in solidarity.

6. Later, when our hero has made the relevant edits, they post the final, improved piece—hopefully with some sort of acknowledgment of how much they learned in the process—and, again, we, the authors of this initiative, re-stack the living shit out of it in solidarity. Just tag us when you drop the story and we’ll send it as far and wide as we’re able.

That’s it. That’s the process.

We are currently lining our own specimens up to get the initiative started, so you’ll be seeing our pieces go through this process over the course of the next several weeks. The value to the writer will speak for itself.

If you want in, or you have questions, you’re welcome to get in touch with any of us directly via DM or just drop a comment below.

Yours,

Tom, Zani, Fitz, Nick, EK, Andrew, Slater, Luke, and Zivah.