{"id":3692,"date":"2010-01-12T22:47:45","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T03:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3692"},"modified":"2010-01-12T22:47:45","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T03:47:45","slug":"so-thats-tuesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3692","title":{"rendered":"So that’s Tuesday"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Today was a little more Tuesday-ish than yesterday, but otherwise it was about the same.<\/p>\n

I’ve started reading through slush<\/a> again for Kaleidotrope<\/a> and I’m starting to remember all the things I didn’t miss about it. Sometimes you come across a great story or poem — and the whole thing’s worth it just for that relatively small handful — but the great majority of submissions just don’t work, and often in the same predictable ways. Most are far for terrible; there’s just a lot of not-very-good stories being written. Still, as I noted on Twitter the other day, there are only two ways to get me to read your story all the way through: make it good, or make it really, really, really<\/i> bad.<\/p>\n

And yes, that means I don’t always read every story all the way through. I hope that doesn’t seem shocking or disrespectful. If it’s no good for the first four or five pages, who is<\/i> going to read any further than that? I read a lot further than anyone subscribing to the zine would be expected to, given a story that doesn’t work, and I try to offer comments on when and how each one went wrong for me. I’ve rejected many stories I have read all the way through — some I’ve even re-read multiple times, and liked, but that for some reason just didn’t fit with the zine — but a lot of them lose me much earlier than that. I often start skimming. Sometimes that skimming convinces me to turn back, reconsider, look for ways to salvage the broken beginning. More often, though, it just crystallizes what’s broken about the entire thing. That’s just the reality of it, I’m afraid.<\/p>\n

Of course, I’m also remembering all the things I missed about reading slush. Sturgeon’s Law isn’t really about the ninety percent of crud, after all. It’s about the ten percent that’s worth it.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was a little more Tuesday-ish than yesterday, but otherwise it was about the same. I’ve started reading through slush again for Kaleidotrope and I’m starting to remember all the things I didn’t miss about it. Sometimes you come across a great story or poem — and the whole thing’s worth it just for that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[4,28],"class_list":["post-3692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-kaleidotrope","tag-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}