Playing the Numbers

This week's FAMILY MATTERS column was preempted several days ago by a kitchen accident of the stupid kind followed by a trip to the Emergency Room for stitches. (What? Stitches? This is the 21st Century! Can't they like, superglue it or stick my hand in the Heal-O-Matic or something?) Having thus spent the past several days becoming reacquainted with the importance of having functional opposable thumbs and the difficulties of using Windows without them, I've decided to skip expounding upon relationship issues this week and instead share the following, which grew out of an email exchange that thankfully can be transferred without much further thumbage.

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As aspiring but unpublished writer asks:

This is just impossible. There are so many writers competing to get into publication and so few markets. How do you manage to rise above the crowd? And how in the world do editors manage to wade through all the crap they must have to read?

Actually, it's not that difficult. The following numbers are gleaned from conversations had with a number of major magazine editors back in the late 1980s but still should be reasonably indicative.

In an average month, Joe Editor, head honcho at Stupefying Stories Magazine, receives 600 manuscripts and publishes eight. How does he bridge the gap between the two numbers?

• 100 manuscripts are rejected on receipt, because they're either
  
  
  • addressed to the previous editor who quit five years ago, thus indicating that the writer has not looked at a recent issue of the magazine
    
    
  • addressed to "Ms Jeo Edtori," and if the writer can't even get that much right, what hope is there for the rest of the manuscript?
    
    
  • addressed in crayon, or submitted in an envelope covered with cutie-poo pony and butterfly stickers, in the apparent and misplaced hope that this will somehow draw attention (it does, but not the sort of attention you want)
    
    
  • or have a return address indicating the submission is from a known crank or jerk that Mr. Editor would never in a million years publish even if he or she was the last living writer on Earth or any of the nearer planets
  
  
• 100 manuscripts are rejected based on the first line of the cover letter, which begins, "I know you don't usually publish stories about..." and then goes on to describe a topic that, yes, Stupefying Stories never publishes stories about.
  
  
• 100 manuscripts are rejected based on the rest of the cover letter, which either describes the submission in such tedious detail as to remove all desire to read the manuscript or else includes palpable bullshit or even threats. (Yes, people have been known to send cover letters that include lines like, "My good friend Gordon Dickson read this story last week and said you'd really love it," [Gordie died in 2001], or "Don't even TRY to steal my story because I have COPYRIGHTED it and I have a VERY GOOD LAWYER!!!!")
  
  
• 100 manuscripts are rejected based on the first page of the manuscript, which either shows that the writer has no knowledge of standard manuscript format, thinks a hideously overused cliché is a marvelously original title, has sent a stained and shopworn wad of paper that's obviously been bouncing around for awhile, or is simply so bad a writer as to be beyond all hope of redemption.
  
  
• 100 manuscripts are rejected based on the first two pages of the manuscript, which are decently written but such an obvious setup for a "twist" or "pun" ending that Mr. Editor jumps to the last page and—yup, sure enough, the narrator *is* a lobster in an aquarium in a seafood restaurant! And given that the whole story hinges on keeping this fact hidden from the reader until the very end, this is also where Mr. Editor's interest ends.

Which leaves Joe Editor with a considerably more manageable stack of 100 manuscripts, in which to find the eight that are well-written, interesting, the right length, and not too much like something he already has in inventory to be worth buying. And if he has the budget for it he'll probably end up buying ten manuscripts, just in case next month's batch of submissions only includes four acceptable stories.

So there: that doesn't look so daunting now, does it?