xenith: (Default)
[personal profile] xenith
Funny thing about slush piles, when people talk about them, you get the impression that the bad writing is the worst part of it. Of course it's not, the really bad stuff is obviously bad. It's easy to deal with.

The mediocre, that's a bit harder, because it's not always obvious. It might just be a slow start, or might be even be a good start then go downhill. But being mediocre, it's usually quickly forgettable.

No, the worse is the good but... stories. The beautiful writing with no story or characters who seem real but don't do anything or the well crafted, lovingly developed, have to read story with the clunker of an ending. Or the ones that leave you feeling that there is something wrong but you can't quite put your finger on it.

Bah.

I suspect small press mags get a lot of these. Too flawed for the bigger markets, so their writers work down the list until they find someone who either doesn't see the flaws or is silly enough to think they can do something about it.

At least with a mag like ASIM, with rotating editors, individual editors can take the time to work with an author if they choose because they have months/times between their own issues. So why not make use of that?

Because good but.. stories are like stray cats, once you take in one, it's hard not to take in more.

Profile

xenith: (Default)
xenith

Most Popular Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags