101 Reasons to Stop Writing

In the recent interviews with ASIM slush readers, I asked the question: What responses, if any, have you received from rejected writers?

A straightforward enquiry, yet it left the door open to answer the question I was really asking: Have any of these social landmines tried stalking you from Fortress Ego?

Three of the four interviewees responded to the literal question, indicating that (because the anonymity of ASIM’s slush system) they haven’t had to face an onslaught of ’How Dare You?’ attacks from an author who doesn’t understand their position in the submission process. 

Lee Battersby, however (who in the interview discussed his experiences reading slush for other publications), had a story to tell.

For readers familiar with the Australian SF scene, this story may be known (and old news) to you. But for everyone else, this is a world class example of “OMFG he did what?”.

I received a story that was submitted by an acquaintance of mine. In the interests of anonymity, we’ll give him my brother’s name:  Scott. I’d met Scott at a few cons, we knew each other by sight, and he was a friendly enough guy that I quite liked him in that way you like casual acquaintances. Scott had been round the traps for a while and had a few publications to his credit, so it wasn’t out of the realms of surprise that he’d send us something.

The story itself wasn’t up to scratch: it was clumsily written, had leaps of logic that didn’t gel, and the whole thing really didn’t measure up to our needs. I sent him a rejection, thanking him and explaining why we wouldn’t be taking the story. All standard.

Scott sent me an email in reply: Wow, he said, his first rejection in 15 years of industry success. He’d forgotten what they tasted like. Sorry he didn’t meet our stellar standards, and thanks ever so for pointing out all his multitudinous faults from our position of all-knowing invulnerability. What could I say to that? It happens. I shrugged, and binned it. He’d had a silly moment, what’re ya gonna do?

Then, over the next couple of days, I received a number of emails from friends, all of which asked the same questions: Had I just rejected Scott’s story? What did I say? What was the story like? Scott, it seemed, had a blog. Scott had blogged his rejection. Scott had quite a few things to say about his rejection, particularly on the subject of editors who were too stupid to recognise a spoof of bad SF stories, which he’d deliberately written to be bad, and clumsy, and contain massive leaps of logic.

Anyway, he wrote, ha ha to the stupid editors, because he’d sent it to Argosy and they’d got back within 24 hours, and were “absolutely bugfuck” about the story. Scott was sure the large cheque he’d receive for the story would make it all worthwhile. In fact, Scott was doing pretty well at the moment. Look at all the other markets that were buying his work: here, and here, and here. Which was great for Scott. Except:

Argosy had been closed to submissions for over a year. Several comments appeared on his entry to that effect. Then someone decided to follow up the other stories Scott had mentioned. None of the editors had heard of him. Several visited his blog, just to tell him so.

Then another writer blogged an entry on his blog, on the subject of liars, and CV padding, and the sadness and pathetic nature of people who did so. They linked to Scott’s entry. And so it went. More people commented, and blogged, and linked, and commented again. Pretty soon, within a month or so, the jackboot brigade were denouncing Scott at every opportunity, and calling for him to be run out of Dodge, as if we were all somehow members of a posse, charged with keeping good ole SF clean and pure of heart.

In the end, of course, Scott left the con scene, and stopped submitting to magazines, and locked his blog so only his chosen friends could read it, and his name became, for a short while, synonymous with ‘mud’ at the small press level in Australia. Until the next brouhaha came along, and the literary SA got another chance to shine their truncheons. Just to be clear, incidentally: it wasn’t my brother. He doesn’t need that sort of incentive to send me hate mail

Being publicly censured by your peers is a humiliating way to stop writing, but this is the closest he ever came to telling an entertaining story.

I’ve independently verified most of the details of this sordid tale — including the last bit about Lee’s brother, who did once send him hate mail. Lee inspires that sort of passion.

It’s a shame Lee chose not to name the author, who doesn’t have a snow ball’s chance in hell of publishing in the Australian SF scene, but otherwise got away scot free. You could learn more from the blog entry by the other writer Lee mentions, but without any names, how would you find it?