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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
But even if the reject rate is higher than the comment I quoted (which was specific to that editor's experience), it doesn't affect my point.
(The editor, BTW, was the late George H. Scithers, who was the original editor at Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine before Gardner Dozois took over, and later was editor for Amazing Stories when TSR Publications picked it up. He was describing what he encountered. I used to live across the street from George back then, and was at a couple of editorial meetings as an interested observer.)
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From my point of view, it does, and your comment enforces my point. In the time of George H. Scithers you could find 10% of the authors with manuscripts good enough to publish as they were, but that is gone now.
The situation that is described by
Making Light is depressing:
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1. Author is functionally illiterate.
2. Author has submitted some variety of literature we don’t publish: poetry, religious revelation, political rant, illustrated fanfic, etc.
3. Author has a serious neurochemical disorder, puts all important words into capital letters, and would type out to the margins if MSWord would let him.
4. Author is on bad terms with the Muse of Language. Parts of speech are not what they should be. Confusion-of-motion problems inadvertently generate hideous images. Words are supplanted by their similar-sounding cousins: towed the line, deep-seeded, dire straights, nearly penultimate, incentiary, reeking havoc, hare’s breath escape, plaintiff melody, viscous/vicious, causal/casual, clamoured to her feet, a shutter went through her body, his body went ridged, empirical storm troopers, ex-patriot Englishmen, et cetera.
5. Author can write basic sentences, but not string them together in any way that adds up to paragraphs.
6. Author has a moderate neurochemical disorder and can’t tell when he or she has changed the subject. This greatly facilitates composition, but is hard on comprehension.
7. Author can write passable paragraphs, and has a sufficiently functional plot that readers would notice if you shuffled the chapters into a different order. However, the story and the manner of its telling are alike hackneyed, dull, and pointless.
(At this point, you have eliminated 60-75% of your submissions. Almost all the reading-and-thinking time will be spent on the remaining fraction.)
8. It’s nice that the author is working on his/her problems, but the process would be better served by seeing a shrink than by writing novels.
9. Nobody but the author is ever going to care about this dull, flaccid, underperforming book.
10. The book has an engaging plot. Trouble is, it’s not the author’s, and everybody’s already seen that movie/read that book/collected that comic.
(You have now eliminated 95-99% of the submissions.)
11. Someone could publish this book, but we don’t see why it should be us.
12. Author is talented, but has written the wrong book.
13. It’s a good book, but the house isn’t going to get behind it, so if you buy it, it’ll just get lost in the shuffle.
14. Buy this book.
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Most of the people that belong to numbers 1-10 shouldn't have gotten the idea that they can write. In fact, some of the ones from numbers 1-7 shouldn't have graduated primary school. But here they are, submitting manuscripts. And why? Because they think that they did a good job, and an editor out there can make it great.