I’m back again with more complaints about my slushpile. I’ve done a few posts about this before, but not recently.
For those of you who haven’t followed this blog for long, I read slush for Andromeda Spaceways, formerly Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. For personal reasons, slush reading is now my only connection, but I used to be a member of the committee, even edited some stories for the anniversary issues and a couple of issues in my own right. It was a good experience, and I’m proud to say that one of my authors, Michelle Goldsmith, had her story reprinted in Year’s Best Australian Fantasy And Horror, and another, C. Stuart Hardwick, is now a regular contributor to Analog, one of the world’s top SF magazines. She made her second sale to me for ASIM, his was a first sale. ASIM(now ASM) is a semi-prozine, so doesn’t pay much, but we’ve published the first or second stories of some very big names.
Unfortunately, being a low-paying semi-prozine means you also get all the rubbish already rejected in the US. After all, who would send a story to an Australian semi-prozine when they can have a go first at Fantasy And SF or Asimov’s? So, those distinguished magazines throw the stories back at the authors and guess who gets to read them next? And is expected to comment on them?
We actually got an email from the slush wrangler a while back asking us to try to put through at least one story in five to the next round, because ... no. Not going to happen with me. Sorry. If I don’t think a story is publishable I’ll say so,
It may be that I’m finding so very little that looks publishable because at this stage I’m only reading one story a week. I just can’t bring myself to do more, because I have my own writing to consider, even though one more story a week and comments which I’m doing anyway would give me a subscription. (I saw an ad from another magazine, far better known than mine, which wanted slush readers to do 20 stories a DAY and offered nothing but the honour of slushing for them!) It just seems to me that I can remember reading some utterly wonderful stories in the past, some of which ended up getting awards. Not now. I was pleased, recently, to receive a story I thought publishable. But it was the first in at least a year.
To be fair, it has been a while since I read a story that was full of typos, grammar mistakes and punctuation errors. These days I only have to think about the story.
But the stories I read nearly all need a lot of work. They often don’t make sense, even after a second reading. I won’t go into too much detail here, as we read them blind and for all I know the authors might be reading this post. I mostly let a story “rest” overnight before I write my comments or make my final decision as to whether it should go on to the next round. (Some of the stories have gone to the second round already, making me wonder why).
I try not to be rude, but I guess that comments on a rejected story are always going to make you feel as if your baby has been called ugly. I will sometimes suggest the author read a story or novel which handled a similar theme better.
There have been several space operas in my inbox lately. I love space opera, so I’m probably harder on those than other genres. I try not to be, but I’m reading these as a reader, after all, not as an editor. If I ask myself whether I’d want to pay money for a zine that had this or that story in it and the answer is no, it’s no.
The frustrating thing is when a story is almost publishable, but not quite. You get almost through what looks like a story you can pass on to the next round...and then the ending lets you down - badly. I’ve had several of those lately. And I can’t pass them on, I just can’t.
Today’s submission was - well, it was fan fiction, basically. Fan fiction of a classic novel, but fanfic. The author assumed the reader would know what was going on. I did know what it was referring to, but not everyone would. I wouldn’t have minded so much if the story hadn’t raised more questions than it was worth trying to answer, even if the author could do that. A beta reader might have picked that up.
The thing is, other authors have done it too, but much better. I guess the author was unlucky to get me in the second round.
In fact, I think I’m the slush reader authors pray they won’t get! I wish I wasn’t.
5 comments:
Hi Sue - I'd hate to review things I'm unhappy with ... had to do one book - and hated it ... the book was awful - perhaps had a good story ... but it needed to be 'English' as that's what it was about - set in England. Too much rubbish out there ... or unfinished works. Well done ... and have a happy peaceful Christmas - cheers Hilary
I can imagine that all this would be very time consuming. One story a week sounds like enough. I also think that honest criticism is important.
Hi Hilary! I’m quite happy to review books, though I generally stick to books I liked, rather than being horrible about books I didn’t. Recommendations, that is. There is indeed a lot of rubbish out there, as well as good stuff. I’ve read some books written by Americans that forget that language and culture are very different in England, using American words for things when they are written in first person by a British character. I won’t name them here!
Brian, yes, one story a week is well and truly enough for me now, especially when I get a story that is novella length! But I used to read three to six(when there was a backlog). I just can’t do that any more, not if I’m to get on with my own writing.
I understand where you are coming from, Sue. I spent six years as a judge for a short story contest. For the most part, it would take me a couple of hours to judge a 3,000 word story with comments because of how poorly the story was constructed. This year I stopped because it took so much time away from my own writing.
Hi Anita! I’ve only judged one short story competition, the Mary Grant Bruce Award for children’s fiction, which didn’t require comments, luckily. But there were 75 stories, the vast majority of which were awful. And I HAD to give a special prize for someone in Gippsland because that was the requirement with the author’s estate which sponsored the competition (she came from Gippsland). I chose the least dreadful of the Gippsland entries, which was still the most appalling rubbish. I am betting the author assumed their win meant they could write! We had one entry from a child writer, who really should have entered the children’s section, but the mother entered i5 in the adult section. She not only wrote the kid’s name on it(it was supposed to be read blind)but took the trouble to advise me that the author was twelve, no doubt expecting me to cry out, “A child! How wonderful, give her the prize!” In the end, I chose a short list of seven and then handed it to two children, sisters, to finish judging it, as was the procedure in that contest at the time. The story they chose was the best of a not very good lot, but the seven stories were the best of the 75.
I agree that reading too many of other people’s stories does take away from one’s own writing time.
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