101 Reasons to Stop Writing

SLUSHPILE
Looking for a needle in a field of haystacks, and having
to tell each stalk that it’s not the needle you’re looking for.

click for larger version (widescreen)

Photo by P. Winberg, of MorgueFile.

London — At a press conference earlier today, a committee comprised of representatives from many of the world’s leading publishing companies announced that starting this year, no participating publisher would accept submissions of unsolicited manuscripts or queries during the month of May. The so-called ‘Slushpile Moratorium’, planned to run in conjunction with International Slushpile Awareness Month, is designed to reduce the strain on editorial departments, who have reported steadily increasing numbers of unsolicited submissions over the last five years.

An artist’s impression of the slushpile at a mid-sized independent publisher, for the months of April to June.

"No more submissions, the slushpile is closed," said Jane Friedman, President and CEO of HarperCollins. "You have no idea how long I’ve waited to say that."

Under the moratorium, editorial departments are given discretion to shred or delete any submissions they receive between the first and last days of May, with exceptions granted for submissions postmarked during April, and staff are encouraged to use the time saved during the month to process any backlog of submissions from previous months. At the end of the month, to mark International Slushpile Bonfire Day, editorial departments are invited to incinerate any remaining backlog at designated bonfire sites in major cities, or to stage bonfires of their own.

"It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally got industry-wide agreement on how to deal with one of the most pervasive problems threatening our business," said Friedman. "Everyone who’s ever worked in publishing has dreamed of finding that gem in the slushpile, the next Confederacy of Dunces or Skinny Bitch Diet. But now, with every subliterate numbskull with a blog thinking he can be the next Doris Lessing, the gems are rare and getting rarer. Even the interns give up on the slush after a month or two of opening four-pound packages containing six hundred pages of eighth-grade drivel. Many big firms and imprints stopped accepting unagented submissions years ago, but do you think that stops Joe Writer-Guy in Poughkeepsie from sending out a thousand copies of the same submission to every editor he can find, even if they’re in the same building? We’re already renting containers on the docks to store all the ‘memoirs’ we get, and every once in a while one of those containers accidentally finds itself on a ship bound for a sneaker factory in China, but it just isn’t making a dent. So this May, and every May, we’re not even going to check the post office box, and anything that turns up at the office in a yellow envelope is going straight on the fire."

Patricia Schroeder, CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said most AAP members were honoring the moratorium. "Our members are reporting that they receive as many as 50,000 submissions a year, and that’s just the stuff that arrives through the postal system — it doesn’t include the manuscripts that mysteriously find their way into editors’ handbags, gym lockers and bedrooms. In our last survey, 15% of editors reported receiving submissions that took the term ’slush’ literally. The AAP is very supportive of initiatives that streamline the publishing process, and anything that reduces the burden of having to write the sentence "Not right for us" over and over is going to give editors time to concentrate on more important tasks, like editing the works of established writers. And fact-checking."

Many independent publishers stated they intend to honor the moratorium. "The slushpile is a growing problem for every publisher, big or small, mainstream or niche," said John Stamos, former Full House actor and now acquisitions editor for Jane’s Information Group, publisher of Jane’s Infantry Weapons. "Granted, every publishing company has its own submission guidelines, and they’re not always obvious, but really, why would anyone think that a firm specialising in defence and intelligence reference material is going to want to publish a passionate story of lesbian awakening in the Alaskan wilderness? It’s a full-time job just carting this stuff out to the dumpster. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the suckers at other companies that have to open and read it."

The Association of Unpublished Writers (AUW) was approached for comment, but had not responded by press time.

Sidebar: What Is The ‘Slushpile’?

The ’slushpile’ is industry vernacular for the accumulation of manuscripts and query letters sent unsolicited to the editorial departments of publishing companies by prospective authors. According to industry guidelines, each submission should be evaluated by editorial staff to determine its ‘publishableness’, a report compiled detailing the submission’s ‘bestsellerosity’, and copies of each submission and editorial report delivered to the company CEO and an editorial board consisting of at least four vice-presidents and six career authors, where each submission is read aloud and discussed. Submissions that pass this stage are sent for focus group testing and market analysis prior to making an offer to the submission’s author, while unsuccessful submissions are returned to the author, along with the publishability report and a thorough review by a New York Times staff writer.

In practice, however, standards and processes for dealing with the ’slushpile’ vary, from only opening every fifth submission, to building towers and only evaluating the packages that don’t topple over, to simply writing ‘Addressee Unknown’. Simon & Schuster only recently abandoned the policy of forcing debut authors to evaluate one submission for every dollar of their advance.

– Stephen Jayson Harris reports on the publishing industry for the Association of Unpublished Writers newsletter. From 1995 to 1998 he was the Fiction Editor for The New Republic magazine.

The revised cover for
The Da Vinci Code 1.5

New York — Author Dan Brown and Stephen Rubin, president and publisher of Doubleday, announced today that they would publish a fully revised version of the mega-selling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code. The new edition, dubbed 1.5, would be "like re-reading the book for the first time," said Brown.

"The Da Vinci Code has been the publishing success story of the decade, second only to, well, you know who," said Rubin. "It’s sold more copies than we thought there were adults who still read books. But there were some minor errors in the original edition, little mistakes that slipped through the rigorous program of fact-checking that Dan did on his own work. So, now that the book’s been out there for five years, and the sales finally seemed to have dropped off, we felt this was the perfect time to bring out a revised edition, with absolutely bullet-proof historical detail. The Da Vinci Code 1.5 provides that and more, with some new characters, more chase sequences, and a completely revised conspiracy."

"It’s true that I let a few little mistakes go in the first edition," said Brown. "Factual errors about Biblical history, early Christianity and Judaism, Catholic theology, Egyptian mythology, Mithraism, the origins and language of the New Testament and Gnostic Gospels, the Nicene Council, Emperor Constantine, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts, the history and modern organizational structure of Opus Dei, the history of the Vatican, interpretations of Leonardo’s Last Supper and Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s sexuality, the history of the Knights Templar, the history and architecture of Rosslyn Chapel and the Church of Saint-Sulpice, the history and geography of Paris, the location of Versailles, the position of Curator of the Louvre, the design of the Louvre Pyramid, the French education system, the French language, Andorra’s rail system and propensity for seismic activity, the geography of London and the procedures of the Metropolitan Police, the astronomical position of Venus, the feasibility of a button-sized GPS tracking device, the number of female victims of the Inquisition, the existence of a professorship of religious symbology at Harvard University, the existence of a scholarly discipline of religious symbology, the origin of the word ‘minstrel’, the ratio of male and female bees in a hive, the secret agenda of Disney films, the number of words in Job 38:11, the existence and supposed history of a Priory of Sion, the physical characteristics of people with albinism, to name a few — and, umm, the divinity of Jesus, and the notion that there is any historical evidence, at all, that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene.

"These are all minor errors," said Brown, "but a few people have complained about them since the novel was first published. We’ve corrected a few errors over the years in different editions, but Doubleday and I felt it was time we had another bite at the apple, and release a new edition with enough changes that people would want to buy it again."

When asked if the revisions made substantive changes to the plot of the novel, Brown replied, "Oh sure. When you take out all the factual errors, baseless conjecture and flawed reasoning, the whole storyline basically collapses. All you’re left with is a guy who’s good at solving puzzles running around Europe for no reason. I don’t even like Europe. The new version is entirely set in Connecticut, so I could fact-check everything myself without having to drive more than two hours."

Doubleday president Rubin added, "I have personally verified every single fact in this new edition, which doesn’t reference anything that happened before 1985. It took most of a weekend."

"It’s still called The Da Vinci Code, though,"said Brown, "even though the only reference to Leonardo — Vinci is the town he was from, did you know that? I didn’t — is a print of the Mona Lisa in Robert Langdon’s bedroom. I know for a fact that he has a bedroom."

Brown refused to be drawn on the revised conspiracy plot of the new edition, saying only that "It involves aliens. Let’s see the bastards at Wikipedia disprove that."

The Da Vinci Code 1.5 goes on sale on April 31st, according to Brown.

Similes, metaphors and allegories are the unholy Trinity of bad storytelling.

Somewhere in humanity’s distant past, a storyteller was recounting the tale of a skirmish between two warring tribes, embellishing details of a battle he didn’t witness. Elaborating on the strengths and prowess of his tribe, and the weakness and cowardice of their enemies, the storyteller struggled with his limited vocabulary to keep the story going, to turn a simple act of brutality into an epic tale that would be remembered.

In a moment of inspiration, the storyteller compared the leader of the tribe to a bear, large and powerful — and invented the simile. He said their enemies were wolves, vicious and predatory — creating the first metaphor. Cheered by his audience, he described the rest of the story as a battle between bears and wolves — and the allegory was born.

And in so doing, he doomed the future of storytelling to a constant struggle for imagery, a search for similes, metaphors and allegories that would make each story seem greater than those told before — and the simple skill of recounting events as they happened was lost.

It’s Like an Analogy

Similes, metaphors and allegories are the unholy Trinity of bad storytelling, the linguistic embodiment of the over-rated maxim Show, Don’t Tell. Collectively, they are more frequently abused than the exclamation point, the deus ex machina and the phrase "As you know". They can be used to brilliant effect, but more often than not they only exist to demonstrate the author’s inability to tell the story clearly.

Similes, metaphors and allegories are all essentially analogies: they serve to illustrate something unknown by comparing it to something known. But, like writers, they usually don’t work. This simple principle of description-by-comparison has been largely abandoned to a game of linguistic excess, where writers construct ever more outlandish and distracting imagery as if there was a merit badge for it (or, more accurately, to prove their literary cred to the critics in their writing group).

Similies and metaphors have their place, though: in 19^th Century Symbolist poetry. The worst of the trio is the Allegory, which has the power to ruin entire stories.

Allegory is not a Character in a Troma Movie

Allegory is when the entire story becomes a metaphor for something else — whether or not the author intended it as such. You’re probably familiar with the term from its most commonly-used phrase, "But it’s really an allegory for … ", usually followed by an unconvincing "Oh yeah, I knew that."

Allegories are written (or interpreted) because people have a hard time justifying the time it takes to read a book without deducing or ascribing a "deeper meaning". This is especially true of so-called "classic" works, which require more effort to read and thus should yield greater reward than a contemporary work. By the same token, writers create allegorical stories because they don’t want their work to be read and forgotten in an afternoon.

There are two kinds of allegories:

• those that pretentious writers build their stories around, and
• those that critics with nothing else to do insist on interpreting into stories.

There’s little we can do about the second group — there will always be a dialogue about the "deeper meaning", because English professors have to justify their tenure, and lit students their tuition, by endlessly re-analysing stories with newly-invented critical frameworks called Post- something — post-feminist, post-colonial, post-caring. The most an author can do is deny the bogus interpretations, as J.R.R. Tolkein did when people insisted that Lord of the Rings was an allegory of the Second World War, or revel in the infamy of competing interpretations, like Don McLean has since recording "American Pie".

But stories designed to be allegories are the scourge of literature, intent on making it impossible to enjoy a story without having discuss it afterwards to check if your interpretation is "right".

When Allegories Attack

There are really only two circumstances that warrant an allegorical story:

• When the author lives in, and is writing about, a repressive society that punishes direct criticism with censorship, imprisonment or worse; and
• When the author is one failed novel from being dumped by their publisher, and really needs to get shortlisted for a literary award this time.

It’s no wonder that some of the best allegorical stories are written during wartime, or in repressive or archly conservative societies, such as Orwell’s Animal Farm. The allegory is an essential tool in those conditions, both for communicating your meaning covertly to a receptive audience, and for deniability when the powers-that-be wise up and come knocking.

Outside those conditions, it’s a tool of literary pretension, deliberately obfuscating the meaning of a story in order to make your readers feel clever for having decoded it, to court critical and academic discussion, and to apply in advance for Penguin Classics reprint rights. It’s also a convenient way of excusing the fact that the story doesn’t stand up on its own.

But What Does It Mean?

That’s the eternal question. In every allegorical story, there is a conflict between the surface story and the deeper meaning. The best ones are entertaining enough on the surface to be enjoyed even if the reader never perceives the allegory. It’s possible to enjoy Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for example, as an epic tale of a nation in conflict, without understanding that it’s really an allegory for life in high school.

The Holy Grail of allegorical writing is timing the "aha" moment, when the reader discovers the deeper meaning, for as close to the end of the story as possible. For example, the final sequence of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is very powerful when you realise the whole movie, culminating in Richard Dreyfus’ decision to leave with the aliens, is an allegory for the moral dilemma of deadbeat dads.

The problem, though, is that allegories almost never achieve this. Either the allegory is so obscure that you only discover it when the pseudo-intellectual husband of your wife’s friend mocks you at dinner for not having figured it out (after he read it in a review), or the allegory is so blatantly signposted that the surface story reads like its own Cliff Notes.

This is the essential problem with allegories: the surface story is usually dull or even meaningless without understanding the allegory, and once you understand the allegory, it’s boring and predictable.

When Good Allegories Go Bad

All allegories are parables, or satires — but in the information-rich 21^st Century, allegories are preaching, or satirising, to the converted. The "deeper meaning" of your allegory has almost certainly already been discussed ad infinitum on talk shows, blogs and message boards, and if your readers don’t understand the idea already, they won’t get it from your story.

In Western countries at least, there is just no need for allegory anymore — when the moronic antics and draconian douchebaggery of the sitting US President are daily fodder for bloggers, talking-head pundits and comedians alike, what is there that you can’t say, except allegorically?

The only thing worse than a story that relies on allegory is a one with no deeper meaning at all. The allegory then becomes an exploration of why a reader would want to waste their time.

New York — Reports have emerged that a ‘cabal’ of literary and film critics held a secret meeting in early 2002 to discuss ‘enhanced review techniques’ and other new initiatives, to combat the escalating threat of inferior film and literature, at home and abroad.

The conference room at the Best Western Apalachin, where the meeting allegedly took place – Photo by Gracey Stinson / Morguefile

Sources for The New Republic, which broke the story in this week’s issue, claim that the meeting was attended by many of America’s most highly-regarded critics and editors, including David Ulin, Editor of the LA Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus, Editor of the New York Times Book Review; and heavyweight reviewers and columnists including Michiko Kakutani, Christopher Hitchins, Roger Ebert and Joe Morgenstern. All have denied that any such meeting took place, but NYTBR editor Tanenhaus was quoted as saying, "the critical community in this country needs the authority to do what ever is necessary to prevent the proliferation of these fictions of mass dumbification."

The agenda for the meeting, it is claimed, was to discuss how far a reviewer could go in criticising a novel, film or purportedly-nonfiction work, to set limits on the use of ebullient language, and to devise a strategy for relocating the reviews of marginal or fringe books to so-called ‘black sites’ where they are unlikely to attract attention, such has the Weehawken Gazette and Operational Risk & Compliance Magazine. As a result of the meeting, critics at major newspapers allegedly must write at least seven negative reviews for every positive, with a maximum of three clichéd phrases per review, and no mystery, romance, science fiction, fantasy, horror, or young adult novels may be favorably reviewed unless the author has recently received a literary award previously won by William Faulkner.

"For decades, critics have been negotiating with authors and publishers, irresponsibly using and inventing twenty-point words like ‘corsucating’ and ‘unputdownable’ to describe books that definitely do not coruscate, and are easily put down," said NYT critic Janet Maslin. "The platitudinous hyperbole of our critical verbiage is typically transcended only by the conspicuous mediocrity of the literary subject. This softly-softly approach has reduced the ability of reviews to negatively impact sales, and has only emboldened the authorists. We need to strike preemptively, exposing their plots and taking out their deus ex machinas before they can hit our shelves."

According to the unnamed sources, most of the meeting was devoted to a detailed discussion of harsher criticisms reviewers would be permitted to use. These allegedly included a much broader definition of sarcasm, direct comparisions to the works of James Patterson or Uwe Boll, a new procedure called ‘waterbacking’, and for the first time, the literal use of vitriol.

The most controversial suggestion to emerge from the meeting is a plan for the entire publishing process be overseen by a new government agency, the Publication Safety Administration. Under the plan, every book would be carefully inspected by PSA agents at galley checkpoints, and books that failed to meet undisclosed criteria would be placed on a "no buy" list.

– Stephen Jayson Harris covers the White House on issues of print security and counter-publication for Fox News 2: Liberal Agenda channel. He was nominated for a Pulitzer for his investigation into Vice President Dick Cheney’s high-school poetry.