101 Reasons to Stop Writing

Despite what the following interview might lead you to believe, Spencer Ellsworth is more than just a slush-reading intern for a leading literary agency (that has two blogs but no website). He’s a first-time father trying to balance work commitments with baby’s flagrant disregard for circadian biorhythms. He’s also the proud subject of the sexiest back-of-the-head author photo I’ve seen in many a while.

More than that, Spencer Ellsworth was once one of you.

As an unpublished writer now reading slush for little more than kudos, I was keen to hear his opinion on the process of sifting the slushpile for the rare submission that’s even worth an agent’s attention. So when he volunteered to be interviewed, well naturally I jumped at the chance after a few weeks. When he submitted his responses via email, I immediately moved them to the Maybe pile.

If you’re curious about the slush process, and just how long it takes a new reader to become jaded, read on. (If you’re not curious, that might explain why you’re still unpublished, and why your writing is like a grainy photocopy of a nineteenth century potboiler.)

101 Reasons: So, what qualifies you to judge other people’s babies? (I mean, a *lot* of people have an English degree.)

That’s a good question. I helped birth and nurture a science fiction magazine in college [UVSC], called Warp and Weave. I attended a by-audition-only writing workshop, Orson Scott Card’s 2005 Literary Boot Camp, which parleyed me into the Codex Writer’s Group, where I met Jenny [Rappaport] and critiqued some of her stories. Obviously that was my best criteria, because Jenny recommended me to Lori [Perkins].

What proportion of Perkins’ 30,000 queries/year is your responsibility? How many, how fast, how often, how few deserving of attention?

The proportion changes depending on how busy Lori/Jenny are with their other clients. Each week Jenny and Lori send me around 50 emails. That’s not much, but remember that in my first week they sent me a combined total of three hundred from their backlog. And I’ve only been doing this for a month, part-time.

Out of those, I’ve asked for partials from forty percent of the queries. It’s not hard to write a decent query. But of those partials, I’ve sent two on to Jenny and Lori, and requested rewrites from three. The rest I quit on around the third page.

How has your perspective changed since the first week?

My first day I made a list of “maybe queries” and set them aside. At the end of the day I looked at them and realized that they were all rejection material for one reason or another, and I had been trying to find reasons to keep them.

Having written several slush novels, it still hurts me to reject someone’s baby, even if they can’t use gerunds correctly or insert a comma every four words. But there’s no use in flawed but interesting queries. I’m better off rejecting anything that looks like it might not make it. If I let it through, it’ll be worse when Jenny or Lori or a publisher doesn’t take it.

How long did it take to establish a rhythm or routine?

I’m still working on that. I can go through about twenty emails an hour just saying “send me a partial” or “Thanks, but not for us.” Rejecting partials is harder. I often don’t read past the first three pages, so they get a note that says something like “It didn’t grab me” or that references some good technique for beginning writers, like “don’t introduce more than two characters in your first scene.” But there are a few that are almost there, so I give detailed critiques on those, because I want the writers to make the changes and send them back. I have to care a lot to write a detailed critique.

Barring agent’s tastes, industry vagaries and market forces, how many books are “good enough” to be published?

Out of three hundred queries, I passed along two to Lori and Jenny. Then of course, they have to like them, an editor has to like them, and a publishing house has to buy them. Two.

How far “out there” do some people go? Worst/strangest/most elaborate?

There are some rules on queries that everyone should know. Don’t tell me how much your mother loved it. Don’t tell me “I know agents ignore queries from unknown writers…” (So you know we’re a snob club and you want in?)

One guy mentioned that he was extremely handsome and could eat X pieces of bacon in one sitting. He got a partial request, not because of that, but because his novel sounded funny.

If you could add some clauses to the submission guidelines, what would they be?

This is assuming that people read the submission guidelines? Because if they did, they would see that Lori prefers the first five pages be pasted into the query, but NO ONE DOES IT.

I would probably add some information that I’ve said before: make sure your grammar is perfect, give information about character, conflict and setting, don’t introduce too many characters at once, don’t use omniscient voice, show, don’t tell, make your characters likeable, and present a compelling situation right off the bat.

How has reading the slushpile impacted your own writing, and your opinion of publishing?

Slushing is the easy way to learn to recognize mistakes in your own writing-easy in the sense that you hit yourself over the head with others’ mistakes. I can see now which ideas are worth it and which are crap, or tell when I’ve really screwed up a story. Of course, it’s much harder to let go and draft, because my inner editor has become a beast from overfeeding.

Publishing-I actually feel sorry for them. There is so much slush. The first time I had a novel rejected, at the age of 21, I thought, “They could at least take the time to really look at it. It’s good once you get into it.” If I had known how deluged the publishing world was by first-timers with those same thoughts, I would have cried for them. And I would have gone back and revised my novel.

How long can you imagine yourself doing this before you go completely insane?

What?  I couldn’t hear you over the worms.
Seriously, I love slush. I just wish there were less of it. Like, one-tenth.

My thanks to Spencer for this interview. I love his use of ’slushing’ as a verb.

Those of you who believe 101 Reasons is intended as reverse psychology may observe that the collective advice and commentary herein is more useful to your goal of getting through the slush stage than Lori Perkins’ business card with a handwritten direct phone number. If you feel you haven’t learned something, then it’s probably time for you to stop writing, and save Spencer the half-minute it would take to determine that your work is an uninspired collection of basic errors. If you think you’re already following his advice, then you’re running out of reasons to justify your failure.