Some Days you just feel musical...

Sorry if you read this already...

Theresa Hayden Nielson has one of the best blogs about publishing ever. I read her awhile back when she was writing about an MFA recipient who wrote this HORRIBLE piece about "what to put in a cover letter" (pretty much everything and most of it false - including awards that your friends give you) when submitting a manuscript.

Check out her explanation of Rejection Letters

My favorite Excerpt so far:

Manuscripts are unwieldy, but the real reason for that time ratio is that most of them are a fast reject. Herewith, the rough breakdown of manuscript characteristics, from most to least obvious rejections:

• 1. Author is functionally illiterate.
  
• 2. Author has submitted some variety of literature we don't publish: poetry, religious revelation, political rant, illustrated fanfic, etc.
  
• 3. Author has a serious neurochemical disorder, puts all important words into capital letters, and would type out to the margins if MSWord would let him.
  
• 4. Author is on bad terms with the Muse of Language. Parts of speech are not what they should be. Confusion-of-motion problems inadvertently generate hideous images. Words are supplanted by their similar-sounding cousins: towed the line, deep-seeded, dire straights, nearly penultimate, incentiary, reeking havoc, plaintiff melody, viscous/vicious, causal/casual, clamoured to her feet, a shutter went through her body, his body went ridged, empirical storm troopers, et cetera.
  
• 5. Author can write basic sentences, but not string them together in any way that adds up to paragraphs.
  
• 6. Author has a moderate neurochemical disorder and can't tell when he or she has changed the subject. This greatly facilitates composition, but is hard on comprehension.
  
• 7. Author can write passable paragraphs, and has a sufficiently functional plot that readers would notice if you shuffled the chapters into a different order. However, the story and the manner of its telling are alike hackneyed, dull, and pointless.
  
  (At this point, you have eliminated 60-75% of your submissions. Almost all the reading-and-thinking time will be spent on the remaining fraction.)
  
  
• 8. It's nice that the author is working on his/her problems, but the process would be better served by seeing a shrink than by writing novels.
  
• 9. Nobody but the author is ever going to care about this dull, flaccid, underperforming book.
  
• 10. The book has an engaging plot. Trouble is, it's not the author's, and everybody's already seen that movie/read that book/collected that comic.
  
  (You have now eliminated 95-99% of the submissions.)
  
  
• 11. Someone could publish this book, but we don't see why it should be us.
  
• 12. Author is talented, but has written the wrong book.
  
• 13. It's a good book, but the house isn't going to get behind it, so if you buy it, it'll just get lost in the shuffle.
  
• 14. Buy this book.

Aspiring writers are forever asking what the odds are that they'll wind up in category #14. That's the wrong question. If you've written a book that surprises, amuses, and delights the readers, and gives them a strong incentive to read all the pages in order, your chances are very good indeed. If not, your chances are poor.

And if you're editing an anthology for a small press and not paying any advances (or paying small advances) 98% of short story submissions stop at #5.