The people who need to read this post won’t read it.
The people who need to read this post (but won’t) are the ones who send Shimmer blatantly misogynistic stories. Rape stories – that slut sure got what she deserved. Necrophilia – at least the bitch is quiet now. Transphobia. Racism. Balls, balls, balls, and more balls. And worse. There are markets that welcome those stories, but we’re not one of them. We’ve tried to make this clear on social media, in our guidelines, on this blog. We’ve tried to make this clear with the entire body of work we’ve published.
The people who need to read this post (but won’t) write about 50% of the stories in our slush pile. That’s 250 or so stories a month.
Just think about that for a second. That’s an awful lot of grossness, even if they just get a form rejection after the first paragraph full of sexist clichés and balls.
The people who need to read this post (but won’t) think their stories are suitable for Shimmer. The people who need to read this post (but won’t) think I should pay them the professional rate of five cents a word for their work.
The people who need to read this post won’t read it, because they think they’re just *fine*. The people who need to read this post (but won’t) believe they are such gifted writers that they don’t need to be thoughtful about their submissions. The people who need to read this post (but won’t) are so God damn entitled that even if they do read it, they’ll assume it’s not about them.
It is.
Sometimes, Elise and I complain about slush on Twitter.
@ecthetwit Dear slush, are you kidding me? ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
@bethwodzinski Slush isn’t ALL balls. There’s also pee!
@bethwodzinski Rewriting slush to add dinosaurs. HUGE IMPROVEMENT. For example, this story about an inflatable sex doll? SO MUCH BETTER with a velociraptor. you know?
@bethwodzinski “This time will be different,” vowed the velociraptor, as he walked carefully toward the inflatable sex doll.
@bethwodzinski “I just wrote a story about handjobs and my balls. I know, I think I’ll send it to Shimmer!” — everyone all the fucking time.
Someone I respect contacted me privately to suggest that complaining publicly about slush isn’t professional. Further, good writers might believe we’re talking about them, and be discouraged.
Maybe it *is* unprofessional to complain.
Or maybe it’s unprofessional to send your ballsack fanfiction to Shimmer.
In this culture, silence signals acceptance.
Fuck that.
That said, is snarking on twitter an effective form of speech and social change?
Probably not.
But neither is reading sewage in silence.
So if you’re thoughtful enough to wonder if this post is about you?
It’s not.
Thank you for being the other 50% of our submissions.
If a complaint is general and vague, I might wonder if it was me (especially if I later get rejected). But when a complaint is specific, I only think it’s about me if I’ve sent a story like that. In this case, I haven’t sent you a love story to genitals, so I know it’s not me.
So as you’re being specific, I don’t see you’re going to put off anyone you don’t want to put off.
Yet, not so specific that we’re calling out individual people for public disdain. I really don’t want to do that, either.
I’m pretty sure the sex doll story got sent to Apex, too. That tweeted line about “this time it’ll be different” is FAMILIAR.
I TOTALLY made up the “this time it’ll be different” part! Any resemblance to the actual story is a COMPLETE ACCIDENT. I was just imagining the poor velociraptor’s previous popped paramours.
All the velociraptors say that, but they are sadly mistaken.
Hahaha ok. 🙂 I’m sure all velociraptor stories have similar feels to them!
I read about 1000 slush stories over a few years for Aboriginal Science Fiction back in the 90s. The thing I did, which pro editors frowned upon, was to actually finish all the stories, no matter how bad. I was warned that this would burn me out, and could actually be damaging, mentally.
The thing is, some of those terrible stories have stuck with me in ways that stories I’ve read in the year’s best haven’t.
The pyschotronic, MST3k, Ed Wood thing, in the hands of an incompetent, storytelling itself becomes visible, all of our assumptions and demands on storytelling emerge as we struggle with people who somehow can’t manage to fulfill on any of these implied contracts. Sometimes your eyes blur and you worry that maybe you’re discarding genius, because its so amazingly different. Stories without characters, just settings. Stories that are outlines of plot events with no staged action or description. Stories that don’t end they just stop.
Then there’s the normal kind of bad, which makes up the vast majority of it, and then there’s the even worse thing, the stories that aren’t bad but aren’t good. You recognize that you yourself have written them.
Some of the mediocre stories that aren’t bad are harder to read than the awful ones.
The politically detestable content I always found interesting. But I’m the kind of person that reads comment threads and argues with idiots.
I laughed and I laughed when i read this post. I rolled around in the computer chair, trying to hold in the cheese sandwich that was still snaking its way down my esophagus, not daring to drink something to make it go down easier for fear I would shoot said liquid out of my nose.
After I finished laughing, I sat down to write a story about balls. I wish I knew somewhere to send it.
Just kidding guys. None of my submissions will ever be about genitalia.