In part one of the article I talked about what a slush pile was, and how attaining a position as a slush reader for a small or amateur press editor can be a great learning experience for a writer; helping him understand the submission game from both ends of the process. In part two I presented a few ideas at how to network yourself to editors and publishers, and how to gain some useful experience outside the slush pile that might help you once you get there. For this article, the last of the series, I want to talk about just what it is you will be doing with all that slush, and offer a few tips I learned the hard way that might make your experience a bit easier and more rewarding.

Do What They Tell You to Do

So you’ve been put in charge of all those manuscripts, maybe after a stint as a proofreader, maybe right off the bat. Now what do you do? The easiest thing in the world would be to answer that question with “whatever your boss tells you to do,” because that is at the heart of your new role. Different editors will have different needs, and follow different procedures, so it is important to tailor your work processes to meet the needs of the people you are volunteering to help.

Also, keep in mind, as a new slush reader you will more than likely have less latitude for independent action than you may some day achieve. If your new boss (with so many titles for various editorial positions, it’s hard to use anything beyond a catch-all term like ‘boss’) wants to see every submission that comes over the transom and just expects you to rate each one, then that’s what you’ll be doing. If he trusts your judgment enough to get rid of the obviously unsuitable stuff as soon as you see it, then you’ll do it that way instead. With every editorial team you’ll find a slightly different process, and it’s important that you realize immediately that your role is to give your editor exactly what he asks for.

The Good, the Bad, and the Absolutely Flippin’ Insane

You’ll learn a lot about your fellow man wading through the slush pile — or, at least, about that strange sub-species calling itself ‘writer.’ For every great story there are twenty good ones, for every good one there are a hundred mediocre ones . . . and the mediocre ones are far outnumbered by the bad ones. And then there is a special category all to itself — the manuscripts from crazy people — a segment for whom I hesitate to brandish any statistical estimates, as they tend to be far more memorable than they are common. But they are out there in abundance, so brace yourself to be amused, exasperated, and not, perhaps, more than a little bit scared, when you finally run across one.

The usefulness of thinking of all these stories as falling into broad categories is to get into the slush readers’ mindset of rapid assessment. Not every story is worth your time. I’ll say that again — not every story is worth your time. There is an old and rather pathetic trick dating from the time of purely hardcopy submissions that has the submitter turn a page in his manuscript upside down, or in some other way mark it, the idea being, of course, that in that way the submitter will be able to tell if an editor bothered to read that far in his manuscript. If you are under the mistaken impression that editors are supposed to be doing just that, then slap yourself hard across the face and come to your senses. Better now?

Give ‘Em a Page

You should be able to tell a lot about a manuscript in one paragraph, and certainly in one page. But if you tell most writers you give their submissions one page to catch your interest, they shudder in horror, wrongly assuming that they are being evaluated only on that page. But that isn’t how it works. With one page you can tell what sort of category your submission fits into — is it a possible great story, a mediocre story that could work with help, or the work of a possibly incarcerated lunatic? The point of such quick judgments is always a negative one — you don’t go ahead and declare your winners after one page, but the losers will stick out big time.

A good slush editor should be able to thin the slush pile in just this way, by separating manuscripts in minutes into the very broad categories of ‘maybe’ and ‘no way.’ You’d be surprised at just how many submissions — whether completely off-topic or badly written or offensive or crazy — can be culled with an efficient read-through of the first page, or even just the first paragraph. The test here is the search for basic competence — if the manuscript fails, move on.

Appropriateness, Prose, Narrative, Spark

That’s the easy part of evaluation, and can almost be done mechanically. The hard part is telling a great story from a good one, or deciding if a borderline story fits the theme you are looking for, or whether it’s worth working with a particular author on a rewrite. It’s quite likely that a beginning slush reader will not be making all these decisions, but often they are expected to pass on their recommendations to a higher-up, and should be able to judge for themselves what stories are worth investing in, and which ones are best cut lose.

Appropriateness is one of those things writers don’t think about enough, but that editors think about all the time. The truth is, sometimes it’s just bad luck that a good story does not make the cut because of factors completely outside the submitter’s control. A slush reader has to be aware of these factors, has to not only be able to judge if a story broadly meets the guidelines for their publication (such as those for genre, world count, theme, etc.) but also how well the story fits in the overall shape of the publication. Has a glut of one kind of story meant you are hungry for something different? Has an accidental theme for an issue developed that you now want to take advantage of by accepting similar stories? Has a trend in popular entertainment pointed you in an unexpected direction? Always the needs of the publication are of paramount importance, moreso than the quality of the story.

The way a story is written is often a quick give-away as to its overall competence, and it can also elevate a story above others in its class. While prose is never the sole basis of evaluating a piece (or, at least should not be) it is among the quickest to pick up. Poor grammar, constant misspelling, incorrect and imprecise word use are the hallmarks of a bad story — and the notion that these are purely mechanical surface characteristics and shouldn’t be held against the story itself is a false one. They are, in fact, indicators of an inability to write well and a lack of concern for the writer’s product — a clear red flag to an editor to expect little from the story itself.

Prose is like appropriateness however as, while all bad prose is just plain bad, there are lots of styles and textures of good (or merely competent, which in the world of slush reading can be considered ‘good’) writing. The goals of the publication dictate the style of the writing, and it is entirely likely that an editor may reject one of his best submissions if the prose does not match the overall aesthetic of the book or magazine he is assembling.

Narrative, in the way I am using it, is the story itself. It includes the bones of the piece, the setting, plot, and characterization, as well as theme and voice. This is the biggest, broadest, and most subjective category I’m using for this discussion — in fact it could quite easily be broken down and analyzed piece by piece, in a discussion of its own. I won’t be doing that, or even offering much in the way of concrete advice on just how to dissect narrative, but I will say that if you have what it takes to be a slush reader, and you take the time to read those submissions that have real potential attentively, then you should have no problem finding things like plot holes, unconvincing characterization, or inconsistencies of environment or usage. A big part of an editor’s job is in figuring out just how these story elements can be better, and it’s a skill that primarily comes from the broad experience of reading similar stories from published authors.

Finally, there’s the intangibles about a story that separate the truly great stuff from the ‘merely’ good or, more often than you might think, graduate a purely average story into the realms of the good. More instinctual than any of the above categories, finding spark in a story is a real clue that you, the editor, need to sit up and take notice. Such verisimilitude is genuinely described as rendering a story more than the sum of its parts, and it’s another area of ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’ Just make sure that, when you do see it, you pay utmost attention. Stories with an original and appealing voice or other persistent quality are the best of the best, the stories that get remembered by readers, and are worth whatever time investment you can make as an editor to get them in top shape — even if it means bending over backward to work closely with a writer in rewrites.

Business or Pleasure?

Volunteering to do the amateur press thing isn’t a business, and it isn’t a hobby, it’s in a nebulous gray area somewhere in between. Since it mirrors the actual world of publication, which is a real business, and can potentially morph into it, it’s expected that people act professionally when conducting their affairs. But, since it is staffed by volunteers, paid for with personal money, and primarily of interest to writers who do not make a living writing and of certain highly dedicated fans of a particular genre or style, the whole feels more like a hobby at times. And, like a hobby, it’s often the first thing set aside when real world issues of work and family interfere — only, unlike a hobby, it also feels a good deal like work, so much so that it isn’t the sort of thing one eagerly jumps into on the weekends to blow off some steam. What it comes down to, at the volunteer level, is a shared discipline of craft, and ‘discipline’ needs to be the byword in all your dealings.

In this case, when we talk about the need to be professional and the importance of professionalism, we are not talking about money. It’s about respect, about respecting the craft, the writer, and the work being done. Just as some beginning writers make the mistake of throwing temper-tantrum responses to an editor’s rejection email, so some editors make similar mistakes dealing with writers. At the end of the day, it isn’t about the person you are corresponding with or the issue being debated, but about the work. Respect the work — it is the only way anyone will ever take you seriously.

Stay on Top of the Pile

The real key to the actual process of reading and evaluating slush is organization. The slush pile is like a perpetually dripping tap poised over a bucket — with time the bucket steadily gets heavier and harder to pick up, and will eventually overflow and cause a mess. But if you empty the thing regularly, once a month, once a week, even once a day (!) you’ll find it only takes a little bit of your effort spread out over time. Staying on top of slush is the secret to having a successful stint as a slush reader — something that reflects well not only on you, but on the publication itself. Does anyone really think it takes nine months or a year to evaluate a submission? Or is it more likely that publications with these kinds of lengthy replies are ignoring their slush piles for long chunks of time — whether for reasons of overwork, or disinterest, or pure laziness it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the job isn’t being done, and no one is bothering to admit it and call for a temporary halt to submissions so they can tackle the problem. Their neglect has turned a hobby-level commitment into a major job of work, and it is no wonder they do not want to do it and keep putting it off for ‘one more week.’

Figure out what sort of commitment you can give your job as a slush editor, but realize it is easier to do in little pieces than to save up for big sessions. Reading a manuscript a day, or all your manuscripts over the weekend, will keep the pile in manageable portions.

Make a List, Check it Twice

Another part of being organized is having a master list. This is indispensable, and you shouldn’t try to approach the pile without one. As soon as you receive your submission take down the cogent details — author name, email and website address, story title, and the date. Have an area on your list that denotes whether the submission was rejected, or passed to your boss (or accepted, depending on how much control you have). Not only will this cut down on embarrassing mistakes such as lost manuscripts, it is invaluable in building contacts. Part of your job as editor is to spot and cultivate new talent — a list like this lets you remember potential authors and their stories, and will assist you in contacting them and keeping tabs on their career. You never know when you may wish to solicit someone for a story, or even ask to see a story you’ve rejected in the past if a new opportunity for that piece opens up.

Finally, having a list is a visual representation of your workload, and you can tell at a glance if your slush pile duties are getting away from you.

Naughty or Nice?

No one other than a sociopath actually enjoys giving rejections. However, dealing with writers can be tricky. Depending on your personality, you may be tempted to oversell your own enthusiasm for a story by sweetening a rejection too much — by taking great pains to point out this or that in the story to prove you read it, or lamenting the closeness of the decision for selection when this was not so. The two things you want to be are honest and tactful — if it is true that you found the story fantastic and were hopeful it would be accepted, then say it, but never lie about something like this to assuage your own sense of discomfort. If you cannot articulate with some precision your reasons for liking or disliking a piece it’s better to say nothing — for quite often an editor seizes on whatever reason seems plausible for rejecting a piece, where in fact the real reason is something more vague or fundamentally difficult to express (or for the writer to hear).

I am not, however, in the camp that thinks ‘brutally honest’ — generally a term that means deliberately rude — rejections are an editor’s right. While it may be true that many writers should not be wasting our time and theirs with incoherent and hopeless submissions, an editor that thinks it is somehow his duty to discourage them with ‘tough love’ is guilty of too much self-regard. It is not the editor’s role to judge a writer’s career on one submission, or presume for a moment that what they say will have any persuasive effect on the writer.

If you see talent, however, you should try to encourage it. While an editor’s power in this sphere is less than he would like to think, taking the time to give detailed personal critiques to writers that show genuine ability can lead to some of the greatest rewards of editing. It can also be frustrating when you take the time for a reasoned personal critique and are blown-off or argued with by the submitter. Pick your projects carefully, and don’t be surprised by whatever outcome. While it may seem a contradiction for me to say, on the one hand, that it isn’t an editor’s job to try to discourage writers and yet, on the other, to recommend that they encourage talent when they see it, it comes down to choice. If you choose to go beyond your editorial duties in an effort to help a writer that is commendable generosity — whether it blows up in your face or not. If you choose to go beyond your role as editor to deliver needlessly harsh or insulting criticism, that is an abuse of your position to gather ego-sacrifices to feed your own vanity. It’s only ‘tough love’ if neither party enjoys it, what some of the snarkier editors out there are really practicing is sadism.

Merry Christmas – You Suck

Rejections should be tactful and to the point — generally every press will have a form letter email you can use as the basis for yours. However much you decide to augment your rejection is up to you, though sending at least some form of a useful, personal response is a worthy goal. Getting a reputation for fairness and attentiveness by maintaining a good percentage of thoughtful personal responses will reflect well on the publication you are reading for, and it also means you are respecting the discipline of the craft. Often, time dictates that you cannot reply as fully as you wish, but resorting purely to form rejections, regardless of the quality of the submission, and at times when you can afford to invest in them but are too lazy to do so is, in my opinion, a sign that perhaps you should not be evaluating slush as your commitment to the task is on the wane.

Finally, don’t reject anyone on a holiday. Perhaps arbor day is acceptable, but most anything else is fairly inconsiderate. You may even decide certain days of the week are verboten — for example, I disliked sending rejections on Sunday or Monday, reasoning that the beginning of the week is hard enough without getting a big NO in the inbox. I was reluctant to ruin someone’s Friday for similar reasons. Obviously, these represent more my own quirks than some sort of rules of courtesy, but the important point is that you possessing the power of yea or nay over someone’s manuscript does not mean you are above showing them consideration and respect as human beings.

What Is All This Really About?

Slush reading will help you as a writer, especially as a beginning writer, probably in more ways than I can quantify. But it is also worth doing in and of itself — at least for a while — and the ‘other side of the fence’ perspective you gain will be at least as valuable and the contacts you make and the practical skills you acquire. But more than that it’s about stretching yourself to do something more, to get away from the writer’s tendency to be locked-up in his own head, and to start seeing the publication game as a larger phenomenon, and not just one writer’s struggle against the world. It can be a lot of work but, after all, it’s only through work that we achieve anything. In the end, a stint as slush reader could lead to greater editorial duties or open completely unexpected new avenues for you to explore, bring you new friends and get your name in front of valuable contacts, teach you some of the realities of publishing and let you be a part of a collaborative project, and, if you are lucky, you might just get the chance to help a few other writers achieve their own goals and look as good as possible while doing it.

• Get Thee to a Slush Pile, Part One
• Get Thee to a Slush Pile, Part Two

In part one of this article I talked about why a writer, especially a beginning writer of short fiction, should seriously consider looking for a position reading slush with a small press magazine or ezine. In this article I’ll look at ways someone with no contacts can go about looking for a volunteer position as slush reader.

Do note I say ‘volunteer,’ because if you think those readers of slush and junior editors in the world of small press publications are getting paid even a token amount you are sadly mistaken — especially at the entry level positions a first-time reader can aspire to. As meager as payment tends to be for writers at this level, it’s not so much as a dewdrop in the desert for slush readers of small press publications. The rewards of these positions are in learning your craft, building your contacts, and in being part of something larger that you believe in and want to help succeed.

Also, be aware that my experience with this is purely as a writer who has dabbled in editing, not as someone seeking to attain the higher echelons of that vocation. My advice is colored by this, and someone who is serious about pursuing editing as an end in itself, or even as a profession, should look elsewhere for information on that path.

All Hail the Internet

It used to be that the plucky young writer who wanted to make a good impression on an editor could maybe arrange for a face-to-face, walk-in meeting with said editor — somewhere in downtown Manhattan. Fortunately, the internet has leveled the playing field (and also changed it in enumerable other ways — like making a lot of small press publications and ezines possible in the first place), and it is now possible to make that first impression with a private message, email, blog comment, or forum post. This means editors are probably receiving a lot more of this kind of ‘static’ than they once did, but how else is a gal in Nebraska supposed to impress upon a guy in New Jersey that she’d be an asset to his editorial team? The internet provides a thousand ways for the proactive writer to make the contacts she needs to thrive.

Is there a small press publisher or magazine you like to read? Are they established pros, or start-ups? Do they look like they are short on personnel? There is a lot to be found out from a publisher’s web site, many of which you can find by following links from Ralan’s or Duotrope, and most of those sites proudly list their editorial team and publishing history. Clearly, you want a fit with your interests and experience level, but don’t be afraid to aim high in your initial queries — the old saw ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ didn’t get to to be an old saw for nothing!

Get Your Name Out

So you’ve found a crop of publishers you are interested in, but the guys running it don’t know you from Adam. What do you do? Well, while it may seem a bit stalkerish, you could always start by googling them to find their homepages and online hang-outs. Simply leaving comments on their blog and participating in the same forum can give you a reason to interact with them, and means that you will longer be a complete stranger.

Now, on the surface of things this sounds rather creepy, chasing someone around the internet to ‘be their friend,’ and I’ll have to admit I haven’t yet done it myself so I couldn’t tell you if it actually feels creepy; but it is essentially just taking the accidental process I (and a lot of people) followed in our own haphazard ways and making it deliberate and planned. My own journey went something like this: researching fiction markets lead me to publisher’s websites, following links from those sites or google searches lead me to online forums, and interacting on the forums put me in touch with various editors and publishers in the small press without me really realizing I was making valuable contacts. But whether it’s a serendipitous process or a deliberate one, the result should be the same — meeting people that are good for you.

What does that mean? Well, just remember that ambition and sincerity are not mutually exclusive, that you can like and respect someone for who they are as well as value them as a contact that can further you own interests. In today’s world of instant communications and virtual friendships, pursuing this kind of social capital is as natural as it is beneficial; it’s called ‘networking’ and business types have been doing it for decades. And don’t be at all surprised if it leads to genuine friendships over the years — after all the people you meet through writing and editing will share many of your same passions.

No Experience? No Problem

It’s all well and good to get your name out and schmooze with these editor types, but what will you tell them when you do make first contact and you have absolutely zero experience with editing? That you are enthusiastic? That you like to read the same things they do? Actually, that’s not a bad start, so don’t ever dismiss the importance of being a fan — in fact the more widely read you are in whatever genre they publish in, the more valuable you can be to them, especially if you keep current on recent pro and amateur fiction markets. But what else can you do? How else do you get some skills and set yourself apart from the herd?

Critique

In part one of this article I mentioned the benefits of joining a critique group to get experience with ‘raw,’ that is unedited and straight from the writer’s fevered brain, manuscripts. A variety of online critique groups exist, some catering specifically to genre fiction (Critters is a popular free group, Forward Motion is another), and participating in these groups actually comes closer to the experience of reading slush than perhaps anything else, and is also a good way to flex those proofreading muscles. And, unlike face-to-face critiquing, online workshops are carried out the same way most editors handle their communication, through email, with all the pitfalls of etiquette that can entail. So it turns out online groups can also be a good rehearsal for sending polite, professional correspondence as an editor.

When you are looking for that editing position, being able to claim some months experience in a critique group not only makes you more desirable, but it should have taught you a great deal about reading manuscripts with a critical eye, budgeting your reading time, and dealing with authors. You can read more about those aspects of slush reading in the third part of this article.

Review

If you didn’t like books you wouldn’t be reading this, and you’d never think about doing something crazy with your time like critiquing fiction manuscripts for no pay to get a perspective on the submissions game. So why not review some? Not only does writing a good book review require many of the same skills that evaluating slush does — analyzing narrative elements and making judgments about a piece’s effectiveness — but it is also a concrete addition to your portfolio in a way critiquing is not. You can’t very well show your emails from your online workshop to a prospective boss, but you can link to your reviews on the web or send him a manuscript of reviews you’ve had in print.

There are a lot of places on the web that need book reviews, and many will even send you the books they want reviewed if you like. If you don’t want to start a book review blog like I did, have a look at SFReader as a showcase for your reviews.

Publish

Maybe it’s obvious, maybe it isn’t, but actually having published short fiction sends a message to an editor that you might at least know something about effective storytelling. While having publication credits is also a way to get yourself known to other editors — in fact if you’re well known enough they might love to have you on board to get that name of yours on the cover of an anthology — it is also a signal that you can craft a manuscript capable of swimming free of the slush pile. ‘Being able to do it’ often translates into ‘being able to recognize it when you see it,’ so having some publication credits is a great way to distinguish yourself.

First Contact

All of these areas mutually reinforce one another, as does most anything writing- or reading-related that you can think to turn into a asset. Don’t overlook your job experience and other ‘real world’ pursuits, either, when thinking about how to sell yourself to a prospective publisher. But once you’ve considered your selling points, and you’ve gotten your name out and know who you’d love to work with, how do you do approach them?

Just ask. Yes, it can be, and often is, that simple — it was for me when I got my first editing gig. Sure, if the press happens to have an open call for readers, or advertises some other lack in their personnel, that’s a clear invitation to contact them then and there. But that’s usually pretty rare. What isn’t rare is that most of these small presses are always looking for talent — and help — and an extra set of eyes is guaranteed to make their life easier.

In your initial approach draw upon what you have in common with the editor you are speaking with, express enthusiasm for their products (genuine enthusiasm — you are reading their publications, right? if not, back up and do so before you embarrass yourself), outline your skillset and interests, and be completely honest in stating that you are interested in learning the editorial ropes. That’s really it right there, there isn’t any secret way to contact someone that you don’t already know and have a professional or personal relationship with for a position like this.

Offer your services for whatever the editor has in mind — proofreading and copyediting are places he may want you to start before you read slush. Expect an evaluation period in which you make few decisions while the editors you report to get to know your capabilities and talents. In the third and final part of this article I’ll talk more about just what a slush reader is expected to do, and offer some tips for people new to that position that will save them making some of the mistakes I did when I first started doing it myself.

Above all, remember this is a position that requires serious commitment from you, so do not enter lightly into it and do not expect to get away with less time investment than you would give to your own writing week in and week out. If you aren’t prepared to do that, or cannot, for at least six months, then looking for a slush position is probably not for you.

• Get Thee to a Slush Pile, Part One
• Get Thee to a Slush Pile, Part Three

A recent discussion over at the SFReader forums on developing a thick skin in the short fiction submissions game got me thinking about rejection, and how it doesn’t really bother me anymore. I’m not bragging, I certainly haven’t had nearly the level of success or landed the sales to many of markets that I most want to be in, but I no longer take rejection personally and haven’t felt that all-too-familiar sting for quite some time. Many writers over at SFReader mentioned ways they got over the newbie rejection hurdle, and some of them hit on the one thing that I think helped me the most when I started out — seeing things from the other perspective.

That is, sending out some rejections of my own.

If you think I’m suggesting some sort of malicious counterstrike on all those evil editors, I’m not. No, what I mean is volunteering to read slush somewhere — to become one of those evil editors and find out, first hand, that maybe they aren’t so evil after all.

In this three-part article I’ll first be exploring some of the reasons a writer should consider volunteering for a slush position. Next week in part two I’ll make some suggestions as to just how a new writer/editor with no contacts can go about getting such a position. Finally, in part three, I’ll talk about the ins-and-outs of reading and evaluating slush, and offer some tips on how to do so.

What is Slush?

For those of you unaware of what I’m talking about, slush is the term for all those unsolicited manuscripts piled-up in back rooms and clogging up email in-boxes of magazine and anthology editors the world over. Somebody has to read all that stuff, and make decisions on whether or not each submission needs to be passed over, or passed to the higher-ups. Slush readers are assistant or associate editors with an important job — they have to evaluate a manuscript for its publication potential, applying criteria ranging from grammar and narrative soundness to appropriateness and the needs of their market. It’s a crucial role at any publication, though more so at the level of small press publications that cannot contract for a large percentage of their content from already established writers, and reading slush is one of the best ways a new writer of short fiction can get a feel for the submissions process, manuscript preparation, dealing with editors, and crafting a story that demands attention from the start.

So Why Read Slush?

Firstly, the benefits of reading slush for the beginning writer isn’t just about learning how to deal with rejection — it isn’t, as you might think, some callus-building exercise where if you dish out enough ‘no thank you’s,’ you get better at taking it on the chin. There may be a little bit of truth to that, because once you discover it generally feels worse to reject someone than it does to be rejected (assuming you aren’t a sociopath) your whole emotional understanding of rejections changes. But, beyond that, it is about looking at the whole process of reading, evaluating, and acting on submissions and realigning your perspective as just one piece of a bigger dynamic.

The Importance of Formatting

If you ever thought editors were irritable and nit-picky and too obsessed with their submissions guidelines, a few months of wading through slush piles will cure you of that. Weirdly formatted, completely off-topic, borderline-insane manuscripts are a slush pile editor’s constant companion — a perpetual reminder of the idiocy of his fellow man. See enough of that stuff and you start to wonder how anyone can put up with it for long.

So, the work of going through all this slush is one way to start seeing things from the editor’s perspective. All of a sudden taking the time to make sure things are the way the editor expects them isn’t merely a hassle for you, the writer, but a courtesy, a gesture of respect for someone working at a sometimes thankless task — and one which it does not pay for you to make any more difficult. But beyond the surface appearance of things, beyond the necessity of coming across as one professional dealing with another by making sure your spacing, font, point size, and layout are the way the editor wants them, there is the question of substance.

Reading Manuscripts Teaches You to Write Them

Beginning writers can only read what they have access to — in other words the polished and edited work of published writers. Consider, then, that they don’t ever see other examples of what they themselves are called on to produce — namely manuscripts — and so don’t necessarily have a model for their own work. Joining a critique group, which I will discuss further in the second part of this article, is the most immediate fix for this situation. Reading slush is an even better one.

Why is reading slush a better learning experience? Because of volume, pressures of time, and the practical demands of putting together a publication — none of which come into play in the critique group atmosphere. Learning from experience what pops out of a slush pile and what sinks beneath it, what works to grab an editor’s attention and what does not, are critical insights into the submissions process. Read enough good, bad, and mediocre manuscripts and you start to get an idea of what you can do to make your own stand out from the crowd.

It Isn’t Personal Anymore

When you, the writer, receive a rejection from an editor it’s a singular incident, a big unhappy face stamped on your day. When you, the editor, juggle dozens of submissions a week and send a handful of rejections out every few days, it’s an impersonal process — one in which you deal with many different submitters. And the first time you reject a story you really like — one you possibly like even more than one you are accepting! — for any one of a thousand reasons that have nothing to do with quality but everything to do with the needs of your publication, you start to understand what rejection is really all about. Eventually, you can even forget that people could possibly take it personally at all.

Reading slush, experiencing the editing process from the bottom and the submissions game from the other side, is a fantastic way to grow as a writer — both in craft and in understanding of the big picture. It’s also a great way to get your name out and make valuable contacts in other writers and editors, and in part two of this article I will be exploring ways that you can go about getting yourself a position reading slush. But I also want to add that, while this article focuses on the benefits to you as a writer from a stint reading slush, the editorial process should not be looked at merely as a means to this end. Indeed, a great deal of the satisfaction one can derive from it has nothing whatsoever to do with becoming a better writer, but in ensuring the work of other writers is presented in the best possible light.

• Get Thee to a Slush Pile, Part Two
• Get Thee to a Slush Pile, Part Three

Sometimes it seems as if the laws of weirdness stack up to create the illusion of the unlucky — or, dare I say it, the cursed. I’ve got a story that just doesn’t seem to have even the normal, ‘getting rejected every three or four months’ kind of bad luck that at least keeps a thing in circulation. No, this cursed story is two years old and has only seen three markets:

In September and October of ’06 I wrote ‘The Dogs of the Desert’ to specifically target an anthology called Guzzolene, a collection of stories paying homage to the spirit of The Road Warrior. The story is fairly brutal, hopefully a little unexpected, and a lot of fun spread out over 8k words. It’s accepted, but the market folds. The market comes back . . . and folds again, along with the whole press.

Where to send it next? Not a lot of markets fit, it’s too long, and it’s post-apocalyptic action SF. I send it to Apex Digest in February of ’07 as my dream candidate and wait for the inevitable quick rejection so I can get it back out there again. But as the months slide by I hear nothing, and assume it must be the object of much scrutiny and appreciation — or at least at the bottom of a very large slush pile. When Apex temporally closes to subs I keep waiting, figuring they’ll clear the backlog and I’ll hear something. I don’t. Finally I query after nine months, and it turns out they lost it.

Now, that’s not normal for them, I’ve had quick turn arounds with every other sub I’ve sent them. And their Editor-in-Chief was good enough to look at ‘Dogs’ right away after my query . . . and reject it, of course, just as I pretty much assumed they would nine months previously.

So then I sent it, in December of last year, to Brutarian, with basically the same idea — a long shot at a highly desirable market, with me figuring a decent turn around time will have me shopping the piece around in a few months time again, anyway. I wait a while, and a while longer, getting pretty jazzed as the months go by, imagining, hey, maybe the guys at Brutarian are giving my little doggies some serious thought! I finally queried in September ’08 and got a prompt response — if I haven’t heard anything by now, they didn’t get the sub.

So, wow, right? I mean, really, that’s two markets in a row and over a year of ‘dead time’ for ‘Dogs,’ only to find out my story was lost. Twice. In a row.

Now, I find this more amusing than frustrating, and I’ll tell you why and maybe someone out there with even less experience than me might even learn something from it:

Know what markets want — as I said, Apex and Brutarian were long shots, and ‘Dogs’ isn’t exactly a swell fit for 99% of what’s out there. Knowing that there weren’t a lot of places to send ‘Dogs’ meant that it didn’t really matter if it got lost — there weren’t many markets to send it to anyway.

A corollary to this rule is, if you plan to write a targeted sub to a themed anthology, think long and hard about where it goes if (read: when) it’s rejected or the anthology folds. If having 8k+ of Road Warrior inspired short fiction collecting dust on your hard drive bothers you, then don’t even write the story if you don’t think you can sell a piece to another market once your first option evaporates. Me, I had fun writing ‘Dogs,’ and that’s all that mattered for that particular story, but I don’t necessarily recommend making a habit of it.

Have lots of irons in the fire — If I had made the beginner’s mistake of sitting on a handful of stories back when I first started submitting short fiction, having ‘Dogs’ out of commission for fifteen months with nothing to show for it would have really, really stung. Instead I kept writing and submitting to markets. ‘Dogs’ is now one story of forty or so, and represents a whole lot less of my output then it did back when it was the third thing I ever wrote. Quantity is crucial to short fiction in so many ways, the odds of acceptance increase with each finished piece, the more you spread your stuff around, the more contacts you will make with editors and other writers. Psychologically this shields you from failure and boredom as the inevitable rejections, losses, and miscues come your way. Finally and most importantly, keeping the writing-submitting wheel turning builds discipline and craft.

Save you’re imagination for the stories and query! — After about ten rejections things became ‘business as usual,’ for me, I no longer imagined every submission was a sale. But that’s not the only area where a writer’s imagination can get the better of them as, when confronted with the blank wall of waiting for a submission, the writerly mind naturally supplies a bit of color and structure — despite the lack of any basis for speculation as to the submission’s true status. The imagination can go wild with this. Did the market you just submitted to close to subs? Must be clearing the backlog, wait till they reopen before you bother them. They reopened and sent you no word? They must really like your story, you can just see them throwing out some other poor bum’s short in order to shoehorn your 10k opus into the Christmas Double Issue. Did the editor mention in his blog how impressed he was with his recent crop of slush? — surely that means he had your piece uppermost in mind. . .

The truth is, there is no reading between the lines here. Even if you receive an email stating your submission was received, you’d have no idea if it was erased accidentally the next day. The only real information you have to go on when playing the waiting game is a response from the editors, and that means if you hear nothing past a reasonable waiting period you need to query. Some markets tell you how long they usually take, some have decent statistics at Duotrope that reflect return time, and sometimes you can ask around and get a somewhat accurate idea. One thing you shouldn’t do is assume anything about your sub, or worry that a polite query after a decent interval is going to irritate anyone but a curmudgeon (though don’t ever be surprised if you do encounter a curmudgeon, just don’t curmudgeon back).

Oh yea, and anybody know where to send an 8,400 word homage to The Road Warrior?