Living in a world where most writers suck

I received an email last week from an editor of a well-known online magazine. Said editor was venting about online submissions, and how the slush pile was overwhelming her because it was "too easy" for horrible writers to send in their stories.

The worst part, she said, were all the submissions from new writers who couldn't write. According to this editor (and here I'm paraphrasing), these new writers have not been taught proper grammar, can't be bothered with correct spelling, believe video games and bad movies are plausible inspirations for plots and characters, and see fanfic as not only fun but a legit way to become an author.

I should note this editor was venting in private, and said I could write about our conversation as long as I didn't identify her or her magazine. I also don't agree with her assessment--her critique treads too much toward an over-generalized complaint about younger generations being bad writers. I find bad writing to be cross-generational and not caused by someone loving video games or fanfic. If you turned Shakespeare loose on gaming or fanfic, he'd likely come up with some great stories.

He'd also come up with some horrible stories--don't forget that before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet he penned Titus Andronicus, a play so bad Harold Bloom claimed it could only be enjoyed if directed by Mel Brooks. Which is the other reason I'm not overly worried about the writing ability of new writers. A new writer who produces bad stories might simply need more practice before blossoming into a 21st-century Shakespeare.

Still, this is an interesting insight into the mind of an editor selecting stories for publication, and actually ties in with something I blogged about last month, which is that if you write a very good story you have a decent chance of having it published. The truth is most fiction submissions suck like a gasping chest wound. Editors usually only read a few paragraphs of such suck before flushing these abominations down the rejection drain.

Don't believe this? See Sturgeon's Law for a refresher course in crud.

But if you actually write a good story, odds are you'll eventually land a publication. And this applies to new writers, established writers, and every writer in between.

This also makes be wonder about the writers who simply don't get it. Those whose writing doesn't improve with practice. Who embrace the truth of Sturgeon's Law like a long-spurned lover. When I worked as an editor I met and read the stories of far too many writers who believed they had the right stuff. Never mind that these "writers" couldn't tell a cliche like "right stuff" from the wrong stuff, and wrote as if their secret desire was for their readers to commit ink-stained seppuku. But each one was still absolutely certain he or she was destined for literary greatness.

We've all met writers like these. They're on every writing forum and in every writing group. When they discover you write fiction, they pull out their self-published epic fantasy about a humble garbageman discovering a ring of power ... and ask if you'll review it. You try cutting them down with the machine gun of criticism and they overwhelm you like a hoard of librarian zombies out for literary brains.

And I think that's what my editor friend was getting at. As someone on the front lines of publishing, she feels overrun by writers who refuse to learn sound storytelling techniques. Who don't try to improve with every story they write. Who dabble in the cliched and the hack-worn, and look at honest feedback as a poisonous snake about to strike.

Naturally I pointed this out to my friend. I mentioned Sturgeon's Law. I said this was how fiction writing had always been. That's most writers simply suck. That this fact would never change, and she had to get over it.

Her response? That thanks to the internet, these bad writers have the ability to spam her with their horrible visions of suckiness, so she doesn't care if they've always been around. She simply wants the pain to stop!

As you can imagine, the conversation between me and my editor friend never reached a hand-holding, huggie-huggie moment. Personally, I love online submissions, but it's obvious my friend thinks they open the door to a great stinking mass of bad writing. I also subscribe wholeheartedly to Sturgeon's Law. While my friend understands the law, I suspect she'll only be happy after personally shooting every bad writer in the world for wasting her time with submissions.

Guess that's enough rambling about all this.  In fact, I can't even say what the point of this essay is, except to note that we live in a world where most writers suck. And if you let that get to you, you are in for a long, painful spell of slush pile hell.

Comments

[Rachel Swirsky]

I'm surprised she feels overwhelmed. As much as I rail against their cover letters (learn how to cover letter, people! it is not complicated!), I kind of love subs like that. They're so simple to reject.

[Aaron M. Wilson]

My advice, as a writer who sucks, is to reject the work.

Rejection is a strong evolutionary force. If an editor rejects a story, I revise and try it elsewhere. Without editors rejections there can be no evolution, no progress.

Writers are not born. Writers are honed through critique. Sometimes peer review is not enough to shape a new writer (of any age). What is needed is a forceful rejection.

There are very few editors left who are able (have the time) to provide feedback to authors. I've been lucky enough to stumble into a couple of editors who have had the time or at least felt that my writing had enough promise to point out my errors.

To these editors, thank you.

[Kristan]

Dude, Aaron's comment rocks. What a great attitude!

I can only imagine how awful it is to be inundated with awful stories thanks to the ease of online submissions... on the other hand, (a) as a writer I love online submissions!, and (b) isn't it also easier to *reject* via email? :)

[Robert Laughlin]

Jason, you might tell your editor friend about a sure cure for slush pile excruciation: stop reading submissions the instant you realize they're no good. As George Bernard Shaw put it, you don't have to eat a whole egg to know it's rotten.

[Jason Sanford]

I suspect my friend feels the desire to keep reading bad submissions well past the point when they should be rejected, and desires to give writers feedback. But with the number of subs most editors handle this isn't possible and can drive you crazy.

[Paul Bassett Davies]

I see a lot of scripts and stories and the truth is most people have great ideas and can't write. Some of those people can learn and some can't. Of those who learn, some become good writers and some don't. So, you end up with the same spectrum that applies to everything and is a law of physics: a narrow band of good quality material rises to the top, a big, stodgy layer of mediocrity sits in the middle, and a sediment of diabolical sludge slops around at the bottom.

On the hackneyed subject of what Shakespeare would or wouldn't do I tend to think that if Shakespeare were alive today what he'd really be doing is making a lot of money by selling small, expensive bottles of whatever it is that's kept him alive for 400 years.

Visit my blog and read more.

[kathryn Magendie]

As co-editor/publisher of Rose & Thorn, we encourage "new" writers to submit, and if a story captures our imagination and attention, even if it isn't grammatically (or otherwise) "perfect," we will work with the writer so they can see their work in print. We love it when we publish a writer for the first time . . . there is that excitement they feel, the thrumming of energy from them.

That said, (the cliche'd "but" here *laugh*), every so often there is a writer, or two, who keeps submitting the same thing over and over and over again, as if by wearing us down we will finally give in and publish them. The first time, maybe two, we will gently try to guide them as to what they can do to help the story, but after that, if they continue to send the same thing, we send straight rejects -- usually these writers will also have a slew of other editors in the "To" of their email, as they just dump their stories all over creation at once and hope something sticks - these are writers few and far between, thank gawd.

I can remember when I sucked - because I was learning how to find my own voice and style. But even in my suckiness there was something there that could be cultivated, and I thank the very first person who published my very first work, because they saw something in my writing that they responded to in a visceral, or otherwise, way. Now I've come quite further from that "first" and am still learning, always learning.

[Suzanne]

From the editor's comments you shared, it sounds like he/she might be a little burned out and needs to step back from the job. Agreed a new writer has a responsibility to research and learn their craft and then polish, polish, polish that MS BEFORE it gets anywhere near an agent or editor.

From my research for the last several months, I also can't understand why writers seem to send out their MS to anyone and everyone without doing the research into which agent/editor/publishing house would be most interested in their specific voice/story and be the best fit. With the advent of social media, I've found agents and editors to be incredibly generous with sharing their experience and specifics about what they are looking for, especially on their blogs and publishing hosue websites. It's all out there publishing in books and online, spelled out clearly, but a writer must go out there and find it for themselves.

Writers MUST do the work beforehand, you can't just type out 40k and expect everyone else to do the rest of the work for you.

[Ann Leckie]

Oooh, sounds like someone needs a slush reader. A slush reader can save your sanity in a situation like that.

I know this it's "common sense" to assume that electronic slush will be somehow more flooded with garbage than snail mail, but I don't think that assumption makes sense. The sort of writer who confidently hits "submit" on their Sturgeonriffic e-sub is not the sort to balk at having to print the same out on paper and put stamps on it. And I've seen a sample, admittedly small, of a paper slushpile and it was pretty amazingly bad. I haven't seen anything noticeably worse in the electronic slush I've had access to. But then, noticeably worse would be difficult to achieve, a species of genius in itself.

The truth of the matter is, the vast majority of folks submitting to magazines aren't any good. And thanks to Dunning/Krueger, they're blissfully unaware of the fact. Once they achieve a higher skill level they'll realize, possibly with some mortification. But at that stage, their work looks like sheer brilliance to their fond eye, so why would they hesitate to send it in, paper or email?

Everyone has to start somewhere. Among those awful subs are writers who will gain better skills and go on to send in stories that don't actively hurt to read, and eventually, work editors will want to buy. I believe that, I truly do, but that doesn't make reading slush any less difficult.

Which is why a good slush reader is so important.

[Jason Sanford]

I totally agree with the "burned out" and "needs a slush reader" comments. I think anytime an editor feels this way about reading submissions, it's time to take a break and/or get some help to share the slush load.

[T.W. Anderson]

I went through nearly 300 stories for the first issue of Marginal Boundaries. Thankfully I'm early enough in my editing career that I haven't reached a burned out stage, but I do agree that many of the stories were very difficult to get through. Ultimately we chose 10 stories, but only published 9 because one of our authors had a family emergency that kept him from finishing revisions.

I responded personally to each and every submission that came in, and gave critiques on every single one, keeping true to our commitment to always give feedback on stories rather than form letters so we can actually help writers get better, rather than just giving them the "good luck, your story doesn't work for us" routine. But I will say this: I amended our submissions guidelines for the second round of submissions because there were a few trends that developed which would probably rob me of my sanity.

For example...there were two writers in particular who appeared to not understand the meaning of speculative fiction. One sent in a story which was pure hack and slash sword and sorcery. Not that I don't enjoy such stuff, but it's not speculative...it's D&D. Not a day after his rejection he sent me another of the same kind...and after the next rejection I got another one from him! I eventually left a note on his third rejection that while we appreciated his vigor we weren't interested in those types of stories because they were not speculative in nature. It was pretty much battle scene after battle scene with female characters chopping their way through big, huge, mangled, and various other forms of "large men who were physically 2-3 times larger than the female lead".

Another writer seemed incapable of writing outside of the werewolf/vampire genre, and sent me several stories in a row that were nothing more than romance stories that read like direct rip-offs of Twilight. Those two in particular led me to amending our submissions policies.

For Issue 2 we've already received just over 150 submissions since opening once again on April 1st. And that was without being listed on Duotrope. Since I finally took the time to get us listed there earlier this week I've seen 25 new submissions in the past 48 hours. I have a fairly large back order, and I'm doing all of the slushing myself.

I see a lot of comments on why a good slush reader is important, and I guess I just totally disagree. I understand why slush readers are important...if you are receiving 400-500 subs per month (or more). For Issue 1 there were times I admit I felt overwhelmed trying to wade through the bad to find those which had a gleam of possibility, but I also had an incredible amount of fun doing it, despite the fact that working on the zine pushed me to the limits in terms of my freelance writing + slushing and editing, with a few days in there where I pulled some 14 hour shifts, but establishing a reading period has also allowed us to keep things manageable, which means I've never been to the impossible point in terms of getting through the slush pile. I managed to keep most of our response times down under 2 weeks.

I guess for me...I'm not jaded enough by wading through thousands of bad stories to weed out a few dozen which are good enough for publication. I'm still "wet behind the ears". But I also believe I have a different attitude than most editors who have allowed themselves to become jaded in the first place, allowing the drudgery of the job to suck the fun out of it. Ultimately I've had a blast reading through stories, because this is part of what I wanted to do my entire life. Growing up I always wanted to write and be involved in writing, and for the past 2.5 years now I have been able to do just that...pay the bills for my wife and myself solely off of writing.

I'm treating Marginal Boundaries like a hobby. I don't expect it to make me any money personally, simply be self-sufficient, and I pour every ounce of my spare energy and passion into the project like I would for any other hobby. And I have fun at it, even when I'm reading through bad submissions. Why? Because it's a passion project for me, something I enjoy doing. And I'm going to try awfully hard to remain positive and upbeat about it, and make sure that my passion remains at a high point. If it ever becomes frustrating or I begin to sound like some of the other editors out there I'll fold in my cards and call it quits, because if it ain't fun why the hell waste time doing it? Seriously. If you aren't enjoying what you do, do something else. It's really that simple. Absolutely agree that if you let it get to you [the fact that so many writers aren't really that great] you really are in for a world of pain and misery.

I went into this wanting to provide authors with something beyond just a publishing platform...actual critiques, which doesn't happen anymore, at least not frequently. I'm going to quote Aaron's thread here: "Writers are not born. Writers are honed through critique. Sometimes peer review is not enough to shape a new writer (of any age). What is needed is a forceful rejection."

Peer review isn't enough. Critiques from editors is the only way writers can become better. Form letter rejections from grumpy editors who feel as if there are no good writers left in the world do not do that. Only editors who still have a passion for finding the good stories and helping writers get better at their craft do that, and they accomplish it by critiquing even the bad stories. If they are too jaded and too pissy in their old age to handle doing their job (critiquing stories and weeding through the bad with the good) than perhaps it is time to find a new job or move on to a smaller publication where they can find their passion once again.

I'd probably get burned out if I was editing for a large-scale publication. But that's one of the reasons we have a reading window and are keeping our publication to quarterly...all of us want to retain our sanity AND our passion for doing what we do, and if we lose sight of that we don't feel that we need to be involved in the industry from this side of things. So far we are keeping it real :) I manage to read 4-5 stories a day, 7 days a week, and 100% of those receive critiques, regardless if they are good or bad. If I ever get to the point I can't provide writers with what they need...I'll quit. It's as simple as that. I see zero point in continuing to involve myself in something for which I have no passion and ultimately receive no joy from doing. If it ain't fun, don't do it!

In the meantime...I'm still having fun doing something I always wanted to be doing :)

[Laura Lam]

T.W. Anderson--that is an excellent comment. I've been brave enough to send out a couple of stories and poems for the first time this year and have either gotten no response or form rejection letters, which is frustrating (I did get one short story shortlisted at least! Yay!). Even a sentence or two of constructive criticism saying why it wasn't right for them would be so helpful for me. I want to revise them and send them out again, but I don't know what to focus on.

[Jason Sanford]

T.W.: I agree with Laura, that's an excellent post. When I was editing storySouth, I experienced the same slush pile woes you describe. I tried to send critiques as often as I could, but it was impossible to send detailed feedback to every submitter. As the year's wound by, my desire to edit lessened and I began to burn out. My solution--turn storySouth over to new editors! So anytime an editor is reaching the ends of his or her rope, my advice is to take a break and/or bring in some fresh editorial blood.

[Dave]

In reading what your editor friend had to say, I came away with a totally different take on it than everyone else it seems. i think she already knew most writers suck before she got any submissions. i think her main point here is its way to easy for bad writers to electronically submit work to her, so she's overwhelmed by the sheer number of bad submissions.

So, my advice to her would be to require snail mail submissions. I think the same rule of thumb is operating here between electronic vs. snail mail submissions as e-mail vs. snail mail letters (do they exist any more?). That rule of thumb is, people will write and send a lot of things through E-mail (slanderous comments, grammatically incorrect atrocities, etc.) they would never even think of sending in a snail mailed letter. My bet is simply switching to snail mail submissions will considerably reduce the number of manuscripts she receives. I'm betting that reduction would consist mostly of bad manuscripts to boot. A good writer has no problem putting something in the mail that might result in being paid, whereas a bad writer, lacking confidence, won't make it to the post office.

[Kellye Parish]

"Who dabble in the cliched and the hack-worn, and look at honest feedback as a poisonous snake about to strike."

^ This stuck out at me in your post Jason. I'm two years out of college and after several advanced fiction and poetry writing classes, I have to say that I think a lot of this problem roots from the inability of new writers to either accept (or give) constructive criticism. It is not encouraged in the feel-good, we're-all-special-in-our-own-way liberal arts arenas these days. I personally feel like it has led to a deterioration of sorts in post-modern literature.

We had some sub-par writing go through the critique groups I was a part of in school, but I was really surprised that out of all the people in those writing groups, very few were willing to give back anything but overwhelmingly positive (and ultimately useless) feedback. I mean, honestly - what can you really do with "This is really good"?

But the same people that were so willing to state, "This is good," about a colleague's work were unequally willing to declare, "This is crap," even if it was the truth. That's what I found so frustrating.

So we would sit around mutely when it came time to shred this sucky writing, everybody all fidgety and awkward; all that was was on everyone's minds was flabbergasted disbelief at the poor quality of the fiction before us. Each gentle suggestion was usually rejected by the author(s) in question with a sense of fierce defensiveness, with such memorable rebuttals as, "That's how I MEANT it to read."

I found myself somewhat disappointed with the critiques available in these groups, even if I did receive a lot of "This is good" comments throughout my college career to stroke my ego with. I would much rather have had someone willing to point out an error in my work, however small, than give me a warm and fuzzy brush-off.

Guess that's how I ended up an editor in the first place.

I disagree with those who value snail mail with regards to submissions over electronic ones. I can understand how it would increase the number of submissions dramatically, but I would think this phenomenon is easily countered by the correlating ease of rejection through electronic mediums, such as the new submission management software that a lot of the literary magazines are using now (like Clarkesworld).

But I'm a little biased - I live in the middle of nowhere and I HATE having to go to the post office because it's an hour away. So any literary magazine which accepts electronic submissions is my new best friend.

[Jason Sanford]

Dave: I'm not sure postal subs cut down much on bad submissions, although it probably does a little bit. Bad writers are some of the most determined people on the planet, and most are unlikely to let postage and mailing costs stop their "inevitable" march toward literary superstardom (at least in their minds).

Kellye: You are totally correct. It can be difficult to find honest criticism and feedback in many writing workshops. But I do wonder if this is simply part of basic inter-personal restraints...ie, it's hard for people in our culture to critique others in an in-person interaction. I've found that online workshops tend to offer much more pointed criticism than in-person workshops, which could be b/c people are not sitting face to face as they rip each other to pieces.

[Alex Austin]

Well, suppose everyone could write, and you got 500 brilliant submissions every week, and your little magazine publishes but ten. What would you do then? Would you write 490 personal rejection letters, commensurate with the brilliant work submitted? Editors should be grateful for bad writing, the rejection of which is no doubt more satisfying that the acceptance of the gems that will be published.

[marc nash]

You're right, it's not a generational/age thing. merely that in this day and age and level of technology, more people are able to submit than before. For all the democratising of the medium, it just opens the floodgates to more cruddy writing, that in the olden days wouldn't have even got close to a slush pile. Now all they have to do is press send. With the ease of such action, comes an expectation of the greenhorn writer that it is an easy business to break into. This is why they do not take rejection well. If you have had to wait for a response in the mail and the dread sight of your MS's outsized envelope being returned, then you get seasoned by rejection. The online way is so remote and detached, there is probably not the associated pain of the old fashioned print & mail method.

The cream will always rise to the top. All art forms to some extent demand a modicum of talent and ability. That is why we opt for artists who are seers and visionaries. The danger is that the producers, the publishers and editors, get so swamped by the deluge of mediocrity or rank awfulness, that like your friend cited they get burned out or cynical, while the great piece of work gets missed in the morass of submissions.

In other words, same as it ever was

marc nash