Cover Letter Fail

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I volunteer as a slushpile reader for The Leading Edge.  We see some pretty bad stuff, such as stories written entirely in one-line paragraphs, or self-proclaimed “short stories” over 80 pages and 30 chapters long, or hilariously awkward phrases like “the copious softness of her breasts.”

This, however, takes the cake.

It’s a cover letter from an author who submitted a story to us a few months ago that we rejected.  Can you tell?  In one and a half pages, I think he does just about everything that you’re not supposed to do. In fact, it was so bad that Chris, the head editor, wrote a special comment sheet critiquing just the cover letter.

Anyways, here’s it is (with names changed and/or completely removed):

Thanks for your very interesting critiques of “Shamelessly Amateur Story.”

It was perhaps too mysterious and weird. Since much of it went past your knowledgeable readers, I have to think it was too subtile. Or just not clear, something like that.

I, myself, may be a bit mysterious and weird.

This is a much clearer sort of story. It’s about an engineer on a starship, and it draws very strongly on my own experience. No, not on a starship. Smile.

I also do some scifi humor, which the best stories I could use as examples are under submission to others. Since statistics say they will puke on them, if you like scifi humor, you might tell me. (In the computer programmer’s world, to puke on something is only to say that you do not understand it. It does not mean someone is throwing up. I say, “I do not know what you want with ‘w/carrot/show’ ” and that does not mean anything is wrong with what you said, just that my program could not process it.

I do not think I can write a simple story. My work is full of twists and turns and implications. What I need to learn, I believe, is not how to write more simply, but how to write so that the simplest level of interpretation is accessible. I have a story in Rosebud this winter, and I don’t know how the editor looked at it, but I imagine he (Rodrick Clark) is smarter than the next Bear.

Why do I have to make it so complicated? I could write a blood and thunder story, and anyone could see it was pretty good. Well, that would make it easy if it was just about writing what you know. I have seen blood. But I do not want to write about negatives. I want to write stories about how good people are not about how bad they could be. Let me see if I can get to you with ‘Yet Another Shamelessly Amateur Story’ and maybe you can tell me something about positive writing froom this. Oh, and sure, I need to see a sample copy, so here is the $6 for that.

If your guidelines say anything unique, I would like to have them, and will refer to them. I do not think of anyone’s guidelines as really mandatory, but as ‘have an effin’ good reason’ to not follow. You might tell me not to touch you, but if a train is about to run you over. I will grab you and thrrow you off the tracks like a sack of sand. If I have a storyteller’s reason to blow off your guidelines, I will do that, too, but I will have to understand that I need to listen closely to the rules. It’s a little bit like grammar. But bad grammar is more easily forgiven.

Well, anyway. I would like you to look at this story, ‘Yet Another Shamelessly Amateur Story’ and I would like a review, or better, I would like you to buy it. 😉

In any event, I want a sample copy, and here is the $6 for it.

Needless to say, “Yet Another Shamelessly Amateur Story” was rejected. Grammar this bad is NOT more easily forgiven, and though “Yet Another” may have been too subtile for us, we resent it when people treat us like bags of sand.