The Public Slush Pile

 

The dreaded slush pile.

Writers view it as the place where manuscripts go to die, a symbolic elephants' graveyard of writers' aspirations. Slush piles are physical or virtual collections of unsolicited manuscripts that accrue in the offices of literary agents and smaller publishers. With luck, some manuscripts are reviewed by assistants or contract readers for literary merit and, if found worthy, passed up the food chain to an agent or editor for consideration.

At the end of my last post, I stated that I understand why writers turn to self-publishing after having their work validated by others – and after receiving multiple rejections from agents, the traditional "gatekeepers" of the industry. Although self-publishing precludes the need to add to traditional slush piles, they still exist in self-publishing – as the public slush pile.

One of the oft-noted results of self-publishing is the...how do I put this?...mass of amateurishly written, poorly presented, and/or ineptly marketed works offered to the public through self-publishing sites[1]. To be fair, that mass also certainly contains some of the best writing of this century[2]. So, the result of self-publishing is offerings that span the spectrum from some of the worst to some of the best writing available.

Some of those who would disparage the accumulation of self-published writing, from the shoddy to the shining, would also defend to the death the concept of capitalism, one of the basic tenets of which is free market competition.

Such competition is the connection to the public slush pile of freely-published short stories, novels, essays and other works available on sites such as Smashwords, Createspace, KDP, and others. Implied is the freedom to offer any product, within legal constraints of course, to the market for consideration.

In the tradition of free market economics, the consuming public will decide if a product is worthy of consideration and outlay of cash. The slush pile is open to the public and not hostage to the judgment of literary agents, publishers, and editors. Granted, one can question the judgment of, at least, American consumers when considering the sales of pet rocks, invisible dog leashes, viewers of "reality" shows, and the like; however, the freedom to make those buying decisions is pivotal to the free market system. Like Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords, wrote in a 12/23/12 blog post, "Readers are our gatekeepers."

It would not surprise me to see the self-publishing industry, barely out of diapers at this point, evolve to the point that, if left to its own devices, it becomes a self-correcting outlet for deserving writers and a source for consumers who wish to slog through the public slush pile.

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[1]  A cursory review of offerings on self-publishing sites will confirm the existence of such writing and therefore are not referenced  separately here.

[2]  A simple search with Google® will uncover debut and previously published authors, who have been highly successful and critically acclaimed, on self-publishing sites and therefore are not referenced separately here.

Where Is Agents' Mutual Respect?

 

On the road to traditional publishing, it is virtually compulsory that writers query agents in an attempt to obtain representation. At this point, the writer begins a metaphoric game of darts – played in the dark. The lights are turned off and the dart board begins to move around the room in a random, haphazard fashion.

Agents are insulted if a query is addressed, "Dear Agent," and insist that a query be addressed to a specific agent. However, if the agent bothers to respond to the writer with a rejection, it is often addressed, "Dear writer" or "Dear author."

Many agents state that, if the writer does not hear from the agent within a specified time period, the writer should assume rejection, citing the high volume of queries as reasons that they are too busy to return the writer's respect. Further, agents expect a writer to submit a query, after dozens of hours spent polishing it, and if they respond to the writer at all, do so with an email comprised of perhaps ten words, tersely phrased. The message is simple and clear: Dear writer; I demand respect and my time is dear; however, you should not expect respect from me because your time is not as valuable as mine.

While reviewing 130 agency websites this past week, I discovered an agency who advises writers that they are too busy to respond to the writer unless they are interested; however, they ask that the writer advise them if another agency is interested in the work – the apex of agency arrogance. I am sure that there are more agencies with the same attitude.

If an agent's requirements for submission of a query are amenable to the writer and respectful to both parties, that doesn't mean that the dart board stops moving and the lights come on. If an agent is having a bad day, the chances of viewing a well-phrased, deserving query in a positive light can be dim, depending on the professionalism of the agent.

Many are fond of pointing out to novice writers that publishing is a business and should be treated as such. Others argue that the process is simply one that all writers must endure in order to earn their chops. Is writing a business or is it a sport ... for example, darts?

For those relatively few writers who have courted and won an agent, I submit that the query was enticing, the work well written, respect flowed bilaterally, and the agent saw a market for the piece. However, much more than a well-fletched, trimmed, and sharpened dart was involved. I further submit that the agent was contacted on a good day and the winds were steady and at the agent's back. In short, the writer threw a bull's-eye in the dark.

Although there is a relatively small contingent of agents who respect deserving writers – and online comments confirm their efforts – the majority appear unable to return the respect and professionalism that is so important to the agent. It should come as no surprise that talented writers, many who have gone through hell to finally – and sometimes only through luck – have their work validated by friends, family, independent editors, and online contacts and critiquers, turn to self-publishing.

EULOGY FOR A FRIEND

 I lost a good friend today.

He has been my friend, one of my best friends – maybe my best friend ever – for fifteen years. He never lied to me. He was never disloyal. He never disrespected me – except when joking or playing, and even then, he knew the limits. He didn't have a mean bone in his body and showed compassion to many, including his sisters, of whom he felt protective.

He was a black male and I named him Kuma, Japanese for Bear (熊). Kuma was a felis silvestri catus linnaeus, a domestic short-haired cat. (To those who might note Kuma's inability to lie due to his inability to speak our language, I would ask: Because we have the ability to lie, does that imply that it is mandatory, or excusable?)
Kuma first came into our lives when my wife and I adopted him from the local humane society in January of 1998. At roughly six weeks of age, he exhibited a willful determination to escape the cage in which he and his three siblings were housed. At every opportunity, during feeding, changing litter, visits by potential families, he would escape and run under or around the surrounding cages to defiantly display his freedom to all, human and feline alike.

We wanted to adopt a kitten to keep company with Maggie, our young female who had recently lost her adopted brother, Rocky, after a two-year battle against diabetes and associated organ failure. Given Kuma's estimated age and the timing, we assigned Kuma the nominal, yet roughly, if not entirely, accurate birth date of Rocky's death, December 9, 1997.

Kuma was not a hunter by nature. When outside – always under our supervision – he usually preferred to smell the flowers or sit on the bench under a pergola and watch the woods or the traffic, or perhaps  contemplate life – or his navel, whatever. He was free to do whatever he wanted, except to play in traffic.

When his human sister, Sami, came along in October, 2011, Kuma's hunting nature surfaced. On many occasions, we found huge wolf spiders, dead and dismembered, in the hallway or in the guest room adjacent to Sami's bedroom. Kuma was protecting Sami from the spiders, shown by the spider parts that he regurgitated after they gave him an upset stomach. To that point, he had never hunted or killed insects; he left that to his hunter-sister, Michi, a young female.

He lived a full life of play when wanted, rest when needed, cuddling with his parents when desired, food, double-filtered water, toys, understanding, and love. He was as civil – and civilized – as any human I've ever known.

Kuma died today of a malignant tumor on one of his kidneys, the cells of which had metastasized to two other areas of his gentle body, one between his left lung and his beautiful heart and the other on the right side of his abdomen. He finally escaped the cage of his childhood – forever. We will miss him terribly but remember him fondly, the greatest legacy that anyone, humans included, can hope for.

I lost a good friend today.

IN MY OWN TIME*

Aging...the term can bring a smile to the palate of an oenophile when contemplating a fine Bordeaux or to the taste buds of a turophile when choosing a ripe Camembert.  Yet, to those of us who have happily escaped our teenage years, the word usually brings a fallen and furrowed brow while we contemplate goals met and unmet, places visited and not-yet-visited, and the one thing that we cannot give away nor escape from – our own mortality.  At the age of 66, I might have a relatively unique perspective on the issue of aging because I became a father for the first time at the age of 65.

The word, aging, connotes the passage of time and the concept of time remains a mystery to all – even to astrophysicists.  Although it can seem to move more slowly in some parts of the world than others, time passes everyone at the same speed the world over.   We can watch a clock and see the seconds, minutes and hours pass by mechanically; but, the meaning of time, in human terms, is not so easy to grasp.

Aging slowly gives birth to a paradox because its strongest and most sinister power is the authority that we, ourselves, surrender to it.  We tend to live by others' expectations of behavior  against the backdrop of age.  Of course, time, in the guise of old age, will eventually win.  Each of us will die as an individual; I cannot, for the life of me, understand why we would live otherwise.

Several years ago, I watched as a married couple reached their early sixties and decided, consciously, that they should expect to weaken and to grow frail soon.  Within months, they were in and out of the hospital because one fell while walking and the other's organs began to fail.  They not only accepted old age, they invited it.

In October, 1971, a series of physics experiments demonstrated irrefutably that time is not an absolute constant.  Time is mutable; that is, it can be compressed or expanded – literally.  So, if we can conjure a complete work of fiction, compose stirring poetry, and  put into words the most complex and profound of human thoughts, surely we can control time with our attitude toward living and not according to the expectations of others.

When I turned 63-years-old, I returned to college as a full-time student.  When I turned 64-years-old, I happily participated in the conception of a baby girl.  And, at 65, I became my daughter's father.  At 66, whatever I decide to do, age will not deter me.  Someday, the infirmities of old age might, but age alone will not – cannot – intimidate me.  Ultimately, aging is the tuition that we pay for the lessons that life teaches us.

Time can be our enemy if we allow it to dictate when and how we live.  Some of us die long before our bodies surrender because we carry around with us others' expectations of our behavior relative to our age.  Others welcome old age as a time to marinate in memories instead of making new ones.  I may not agree with such decisions but I fought, in our military, for the freedom to make them.  Time can also be our friend while we wait nine months for the birth of our child, the ripening of a select Camembert, or the aging of a fine wine.    I wish for everyone the opportunity to live by your own clock and no one else's.

*This post was published, in a radio broadcast, on Thursday, 11/1/12, from two NPR stations near Salisbury, Maryland.

Intelligent or Smart ? 2.0

Years ago, I adopted the personal philosophy that anyone who concluded that I was stupid or unintelligent (not the same thing – see the post below), as indicated by their words or actions, demonstrated only one thing – their own stupidity.  Stupidity is required to conclude that another person is stupid or unintelligent without due evidence prior to that conclusion.

I have long suspected that nearly everyone on the planet thinks that they are smarter than everyone else. otherwise, there would be many fewer people lying and manipulating others than there are. (Notice I didn't use the term, intelligent.)  The only exceptions may be those who have been told since childhood that they are stupid.  Ironically, many of those people are more intelligent than they think but were indoctrinated by others, e.g. parents, siblings, et al, who were insecure about their own level of intelligence.  Notice that I wrote "thinks that they are smarter."  I'm convinced that, deep down, people know, not quantifiably but subjectively, if they are intelligent or not. 

However, many people fear proving to themselves, much less to anyone else, their level of intelligence.  For example, Mensa^® accepts people for membership whose intelligence is at the 98^th percentile, correlating to an IQ of 130 and above.  Yet, their membership is roughly 53,000 in the United States while, given the 98^th percentile qualification, six million people would qualify for membership.  Less than one percent (<1%) of those who qualify for membership take the required tests.  Of course, there are other factors, among them, lack of awareness of the organization, awareness but choosing not to join for a variety of reasons, and others.

My point remains – most people fear proving their intelligence by quantifiable means.  Some choose to "prove" their intelligence by their own means, e.g. how well they play pool (yes, I have heard that sideways argument); comparing a game of pool to a chess game (yes, I've also heard that), a game often equated, many times erroneously, with high intelligence. Others would cite their financial success (see my previous post) or memory games and regurgitating trivia, skills that can be easily learned by those with average intelligence.

Intelligence is innate; stupidity is a choice.  Conversely, low intelligence is also innate while smartness is a choice.  Granted, some studies indicate a combination of nature/nurture impact on intelligence and one would be hard-pressed to argue that a factor such as childhood diet would not impact intelligence later in life.  However, the basis of intelligence appears to be genetics, other factors such as disease, genetic mutation, or the mother's diet, drug use, alcohol consumption, and other choices during pregnancy notwithstanding.

Intelligent or Smart?

I've often wondered about the intelligence of smart people.

For years, I've wondered why many of the people who are considered successful do not always appear intelligent or act intelligently proportional to their perceived success; yet, their success indicates that they are smart.  How can that be?  In (at least American) English vernacular, intelligent and smart are used interchangeably, as are unintelligent and stupid.

I began to see a distinction between the concepts, intelligent and smart, and conversely, unintelligent and stupid.  The reason for using the term, intelligence, is self-evident, indicating an objective quantification of an individual's intellectual faculty.  The words, stupid and smart, are natural choices, given common use and understanding, to indicate an individual's usage of given intelligence, low or high.  Other words for stupid, e.g. dim, thick, obtuse, can involve irrelevant connotations.

Further, intelligence is relatively lasting, given its biochemical source, barring the effects of aging or brain trauma, whereas stupidity and smartness can be fleeting, lasting for seconds or a lifetime.

That is not to say that successful (read smart) people cannot also be intelligent.  Carl Sagan, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and many others are/were intelligent and smart.  But, anyone who would argue that all successful people are necessarily, or by definition, highly intelligent would need to explain to me apparently successful people such as Donald Trump, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, any Kardashian, and many others.  Of course, some would further argue that those people are also intelligent, requiring the results of intelligence testing to be convincing.

Conversely, the concept does not imply that intelligent people are always smart.  An intelligent person can design and build a fully functional and innovative jet-powered skateboard and stupidly decide to immediately test its feasibility on a busy highway or over the Grand Canyon.

Intelligence is innate, relatively stable, objective, and measurable by proven and continually updated methods[1].  Smartness, like stupidity, is not innate but is the result of a conscious decision and is therefore subject to capriciousness.   Smartness/stupidity is subjective and not measurable by anyone's behavior which can change in an instant and is seldom, if ever, admitted or discovered for reasons implied below. 

Smartness and stupidity cannot be measured.  It cannot be quantified by tests or by bank accounts, for example, since bank balances are affected by inheritances, mistakes, and intelligent or unintelligent decisions.  However, smartness/stupidity can be judged, albeit without great accuracy, using success as an indicator.  There are several forms of success, e.g.  affluence, notoriety, power (pull, authority).  

If viewed philosophically, i.e. without moral judgment, there are many identifiable behaviors that can be used to gain success: deceit, lying, self-discipline, theft, manipulation, education, flamboyance, fraud, forgery, intimidation, tenacity, coercion, among others.  (See?  Not all those traits are, even in the non-philosophical sense, negative.)  The biggest difference between any two humans lies in what they are willing to do to get what they want.

I submit that using the words, intelligent and smart, or unintelligent and stupid, interchangeably serves only to confuse. The practice leads us to assume that, because someone is successful, regardless of their methods to achieve success, they are also intelligent enough to head corporations, serve in significant elected positions, or make momentous military decisions.

In the case of elected office, the more (financially) successful person can afford to spend vast sums on advertising and an entourage to maximize their chances of being elected.  Ultimately, their success depends on the intelligence of the American electorate, but that's a subject for another time.

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[1] There are, of course, arguments against IQ tests, asserting that they are inherently biased, inaccurate, and meaningless.  There are also arguments against evolution and for creationism.  I suspect that there is a correlation somewhere.

Fatherhood – My reason to blog

This past October, 2011, I became a father for the first time when my wife delivered our baby girl.*  Not unusual at all since babies are born every day.  However, when our daughter was born, I was sixty-five years old.  (My wife is obviously much younger than I am.)

I have been around newborns, infants and toddlers a few times in my life but never out of necessity.  This time it was required and I have been with my daughter every day. I've witnessed the small and subtle changes in her development as she masters the skills of head and neck stability, holding her back straight, grasping, vocalizing, unsupported sitting, crawling and many other developments that I'm sure are too subtle to notice yet.

The day that we brought her home was the first time in my life that I changed a diaper.  It is not a difficult task to master, basically mechanical movements that ensure that the bum is clean, dry, and powdered; the diaper is securely but not too tightly attached; and the baby is smiling when it's all over.  That last part is not  always easy to accomplish – and doesn't always happen – but we talk to her and follow her progress in vocalization and ask her questions to assess her curiosity and responses.

Like most parents, we have high hopes and great aspirations for our daughter.  She will be tall, no doubt, placing in the 90-95%ile so far; slim, placing in the 50%ile; and with eyes which color has settled on bright blue with a dark blue outline. 

She is the main reason I started this blog.  I have learned a few things during my life and I want to pass them on to her. Still, I want to include input from others so that she has, not only my view, but those of other people with diverse backgrounds, perspectives and philosophies.

* I am lead to believe that I have a child, born in 1968 in northern Japan in Aomori Prefecture, but have not been able to confirm that.  It's a long story.