The Ways In Which This Is Horrible
I like how Virginia Quarterly Review has changed in the last few years, and perhaps that’s why I think this post is beneath them. Their blog has a list of comments their editorial readers made on rejected submissions. Here are some of their “brutal” thoughts, which they journal thinks should be on the web for the world to see:
- I can’t enumerate all the ways in which this is horrible.
- If this were written by an eighth grader, I’d call a parent/teacher conference to discuss his anger issues. Since he’s a self-published novelist, though, I can only decline this and move on with my life.
- “I think the people who read essays in your literary magazine would probably understand it.” This essay is the kind that gives philosophy a bad name.
- Narrator/murderer describes how he is going to kill his victim and dispose of the body by mixing it into the fillings of eclairs. Then he talks about himself. God this is awful.
Some of the comments are funny, for sure, but should they be shared with the world? Of course this kind of thing goes on all the time at publications. Slush piles are awful, for the most part, and reading through them would make any well-read person cringe. So yes, everyone who has ever judged a contest or worked at a journal is guilty of these kinds of snarky comments, but if you ask me, they should be kept in house, between editors. It’s crass to publish them on the web, not to mention a little elitist and snotty.
What do you think? Am I taking this too seriously?
~ Joy
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
You’re not the only writer to say that, Joy. I’m coming from the perspective of a magazine, not a writer. So I look at our readers’ comments and think “wow, God bless ‘em, but they’ve got a tough row to hoe,” especially given that the submissions that they’re responding to are so stunningly inappropriate for VQR and, in some cases, simply unpublishable. That’s just going to happen receiving over 10,000 submissions each year. My goal wasn’t to make writers look silly but, rather, show readers at their most beleaguered.
Though the sort of authors who are reading lit blogs are not the sort of authors writing this sort of stuff, and though I provided that disclaimer, inevitably (in retrospect) I tapped into some sort of primal author fear that those readers were talking about their writing.
I did just post a followup that may make some writers feel a little warm and fuzzy inside, a listing of some of the most glowing, excited reviews that have been by our readers. I’m curious what you’ll make of that, Joy — does that compound the error, or perhaps redeem it?
Comment left on May 2, 2008 @ 12:07 pm
Waldo, hi. Thanks for commenting and explaining your intentions with the post. That makes sense. It does touch a nerve, I guess–most writers fear being made fun of (although I really did understand that the writers that inspired those snarky comments were probably beyond horrible). Anyway, I took a look at the glowing reviews, and think that it does balance it out a little better. Thanks again.
Comment left on May 2, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
Well, that’s good news.
I was worried that you might find posting the nice comments to be just as inappropriate as posting snarky comments.
Though I spent some time as a contributing editor for Campaigns & Elections Magazine, my writing for the past 12 years has been as a blogger — I assume I’ll be made fun of.
But that’s setting the bar awfully low. I have to wonder whether I ought to try my hand at producing some purple prose of my own and submit it (pseudonymously, I suspect) to some lit mags. That may give me a better perspective on the frustrations of being a freelance writer.
Comment left on May 2, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
I always appreciate niceness. And yeah, give publishing a try, and you’ll see why we’re all so sensitive.
Comment left on May 6, 2008 @ 8:39 am