Education Good Writing Gets You Through The Slush

"I think there's an anxiety provoked by that, that if I'm dealing with hundreds of submissions, how am I ever going to make it. But I really do believe that there's no gimmick or trend to make a submission pop, that it's good quality writing, and you can often tell very early on about the craft of the writing." -Robyn Read, acquisitions editor for Freehand Books Okay, if you can get past the irony that her last name is "Read" (which I didn't pick up on until I was halfway through the interview in today's Edmonton Journal), then you'll notice that she makes a point that's at the core of all this debate following the WSJ's declaration last month that the slush pile is dead. I'm thirty-seven years old. I became an editor to support my writing habit. If you'd asked me in college if I thought I would be a published novelist at this stage in my life, I wouldn't have blinked. "Yes, of course," I would have said. "And you'll be asking me to sign your first edition, chump." I spent most of this past decade writing a novel. Lots of early mornings and late nights that could have been otherwise spent with family and friends - or asleep in a warm bed. And when it was finally complete, I sifted through Writer's Market for hours on end trying to find a publisher who was worthy of all my hard work - and also happened to accept unsolicited manuscripts. The list was slim. All the big names had shuttered their doors. But I went to the post office and spent $16 at a clip mailing out copy after copy of the admittedly too lengthy manuscript. When I didn't hear back from them, I bit the bullet and sent out the perfunctory query letters to agents - agents I felt I didn't need because quite frankly, I know book publishing contracts inside and out thanks to years spent as an acquisitions editor. I didn't think I needed to give them a 15% cut for a job I could do myself. Then I just quit. I threw in the towel. I thought that regardless of how much my test readers liked my book, I didn't have a chance in hell of getting plucked from the slush pile. The odds were stacked against me. I knew it better than anyone. I was also the guy mailing the rejection letters to you. But Ms. Read is right. Good writing stands out. And editors can usually tell, halfway through the first paragraph of a cover letter, whether they're going to stuff that SASE with a thanks but no thanks note. They still read as much (and often too much) of the submission that they can tolerate. But it's not hard to spot the good ones. You get tingly all over. Authors can try all the marketing gimmicks in the world. They can self-publish. They can put their books on Amazon. They can post sample chapters on their blogs. They can send editors stuffed animals. (Inexplicably, I received a few of those back in the day.) But those books aren't going anywhere if the quality of writing isn't there. If all else fails, go back to the computer and start revising. That's what I'm doing. I'm rewriting my novel. It's going to be so much better. And it's going to cost less to ship. I won't accept that the slush pile is dead, that publishers don't want to take chances on new writers. This time around, I'm going to bet that the quality of my writing can overcome the odds of getting noticed. I suggest you do the same.

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