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#10. You addressed your submission to “The Slushpile”.
#9. You opened your query with “Dear Unthinking, Uncaring, Dream-Crushing Wannabe Who Couldn’t Recognise Talent If It Shoved a Pulitzer in Your Open Client Slot.”
#8. You opened your query with “Dear [DATA_AGENT_NAME]“.
#7. Someone else already wrote The Da Vinci Code.
#6. You claim you won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1982.
#5. You weren’t sure how to summarise your novel, so you copied the back cover blurb from Stephen King’s The Shining.
#4. You describe your novel as “contemporary postapocalyptic chicklit, with overtones of minimalist literary horror, sort of a Tolkeinesque beat poetry take on a cyberpunk whodunit, as if written by Ernest Hemingway.”
#3. Not only is your manuscript bigger than the New York phone directory, but in your submission package you accidentally included a New York phone directory instead of chapter 4.
#2. Your best fiction writing is your list of previous publishing credits.
and the number one reason you’re stuck in the slushpile is:
#1. Your. Writing. Sucks.
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From now on, I’m addressing all my letters to “The Slushpile.” It has an elegant simplicity that exudes squalor.
A few other reasons that didn’t make the top 10:
-You described your main character as “quirky.”
-The main character’s grandmother has “home-spun wisdom.”
-Your manuscript has (a)dragons (b)unicorns (c)elves
Thanks to the efforts of Rik Mayall and Ben Elton, I have the surefire query letter that’s guaranteed to sell any short story or novel manuscript, and I’ve had great results with it:
“Darling Fascist Bully-Boy,
“Buy my story, you bastard,
“May the seed of your loins be fruitful in the belly of your woman,
“Paul.”
Well, if that doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will!
One addendum:
#3b – The agent thought chapter 4 was the best-written of all.
I think you need to add one about how you describe who might play your characters in a major motion picture. (I’ve seen this done. Seriously.) And those actors are Paris Hilton, Gary Coleman, and the guy who played the Indian Head in Deadwood.
I also had to leave out “Your writing is full of cliched gags stolen from famous comedians”, but it’s a top ten list, people, not a “lots of” list.
[...] 10 Reasons You’re Stuck in the Slushpile 17 05 2008 Haha, this post from 101 Reasons to Stop Writing made my day. [...]