Between high school litmag and bad fanfic, I figure I'm pretty well inured to the worst of what the publishing industry can throw at me. Which is good, because I fully expect to spend a lot of time with the slush pile if I intern for a publishing company.

Heh, heh, heh.

You think you know. What you are. What's to come. You haven't even begun.

Holli, take it from someone who's done both sides of the fence, as writer and as publishing company employee: Victor is horribly, tragically right.

Holli, take it from someone who's done both sides of the fence, as writer and as publishing company employee: Victor is horribly, tragically right.

All I can say is, I hope that you never encounter work as horribly, horribly bad as the poem that made an editor friend of mine reply with the one sentence rejection letter, "I'm sorry. I was looking for something that was actually good."

Victor, howsabout falling in love with a manuscript, having everyone agree that the author deserves a Pulitzer, and then having the publisher bring it out in limited midlist with no pr and no backup because all their advertising money is tied up in frontlist writers who desperately need the publicity, like poor unknown Stephen King?

Victor, howsabout falling in love with a manuscript, having everyone agree that the author deserves a Pulitzer, and then having the publisher bring it out in limited midlist with no pr and no backup because all their advertising money is tied up in frontlist writers who desperately need the publicity, like poor unknown Stephen King?

Ouch. Yeah, that sucks.

But to be fair, that book took SK's assistants hours to write.

While working at a big theater in NYC, we once had to reject a play by informing the writer that it was not neccessary to put quotes around every line of dialogue and suggesting that he might actually like to read a couple plays before reworking this one. Also had to point out to another hopeful that in plays one page is about one minute playing time, so a 723 page play about Columbus was a LITTLE long for an evening's entertainment.

so a 723 page play about Columbus was a LITTLE long for an evening's entertainment.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Oh my. That's amazing.

If only Mr. O'Neill had listened.

Even the badfic could not have prepared me for some of the things I had to read from the TSR game fiction slush pile.

Even the badfic could not have prepared me for some of the things I had to read from the TSR game fiction slush pile.

Try running poetry open readings for the better part of a decade.