Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

A day of pseudo-mourning: rejection slips for my three stories that were at market all came in this week. Ugh.

In a sort-of related note, I watched the premiere of American Idol the other night. I doubt I'll watch much more of the series, since they seem to have winnowed things down to the people who have at least some talent, and judging by what little I saw of the show's original incarnation last season, they are concentrating on that "Top 40" style of pop-music that is not remotely my cup o' tea. However, as I watched all of these unbelievably horrible singers step up, give it their all, and then act utterly stunned when they didn't make it (and, in some cases, getting indignant about it), I was thinking: I am watching the pop-singer equivalent of the slushpile.

Every fiction magazine gets an immense amount of submissions each month, numbering in the hundreds. Since each market only prints a small handful of stories each month -- seven or eight, at most, for the larger fiction markets and fewer than that for magazines that only publish fiction intermittently or as just one feature among others -- the vast majority get rejected. From what I'm told, in most cases, the vast majority even, the decision not to publish is a no-brainer. We're talking ineptly written stories with ghastly prose, cardboard characters and clicheed situations. In cases like these, the editors or editorial assitants or first-readers going through the slushpile need only read perhaps a single page of the story before they can safely toss it aside. That's what we saw, primarily, on the first episode of American Idol: the horrible "singers" who either had no voice, no ear, no performing presence, or (in the worst of cases) none of the three. These are the people who would be cut off after singing for about thirty seconds, receive a tongue-lashing from Simon Cowell, and be sent on their way.

In fiction writing, though, there is no Simon Cowell, really. There's really never a moment when an editor sends a rejection slip reading, "God, man, you are horrible. Please channel your efforts into burger-flipping, gravedigging, or political action; but for the love of All Things Good and Pure, do NOT pick up the pen again." All there is for us would-be writers is, "This doesn't meet our needs. Good luck in the future. Thank you." Of course, Simon Cowell simply saying "I'm sorry, but we can't take you this time. Next!" would not make for particularly compelling television; but I wonder a little if maybe he's not doing these people a favor, because some of them really, truly, are awful.

That's what made another phenomenon so surreal. Since we would-be writers don't know if we're any good, really, until we actually make a sale, all we can do is file our bland rejections (or throw 'em out) and keep on writing. But these people on American Idol, the ones who really are terrible, walk away from their public, brutal, and nationally-televised rejection still convinced that they are talented and that they will make it sometime. They are operating on precisely the same assumption that keeps us would-be writers going, even though they have far less reason to do so.

I'm generally confident in my writing, but occasionally -- once in a great while -- I will wonder: if there were a Simon Cowell of the fiction-world, would he look at my writing and say something like, "If this were 2000 years ago, they would have stoned you" or "If you were to win here, you would be the end of the American publishing industry". I prefer to think that I'm one of the people who clear the first round, and thus far I've just not been able to get farther in the competition. I like to think that, and I have to think that. Even when three rejections come in the same #$^%&@!! week.