The Flailings of a Publishing Intern
Feb. 17th, 2009 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usullusaSo I am working for a literary agency this semester. First, I have to say that all of the people I work with are so amazingly kind and helpful it astounds me. I suspect that whatever work I do for them doesn't balance out the effort they're putting into training the interns and the attention they shower on us, so I am sort of floored.
Anyway, I love the work that I'm doing for them. I used to constantly hear things like "98% of what we get we automatically reject" and I would despair. But reading the manuscripts and seeing the kinds of things that live in the slush pile I am incredibly surprised by the low quality of the writing that gets submitted. Hundreds of manuscripts, thousands of hours, billions of words... I am almost saddened by how much time and effort gets spent on writing that really isn't fit for consumption.
I've also learned some other things. All the nice stuff your editor or agent tells you at the beginning of their correspondence is just padding for when they rip into your writing a paragraph later. I am torn between flinching and laughing my arse off. (Yea that's right, I just used a British-ism)
And I don't know about other people, but in my experience a surprising amount of time is devoted to mocking the writing that gets submitted.
You know, just in case any of you were thinking about getting published...
Anyway, I love the work that I'm doing for them. I used to constantly hear things like "98% of what we get we automatically reject" and I would despair. But reading the manuscripts and seeing the kinds of things that live in the slush pile I am incredibly surprised by the low quality of the writing that gets submitted. Hundreds of manuscripts, thousands of hours, billions of words... I am almost saddened by how much time and effort gets spent on writing that really isn't fit for consumption.
I've also learned some other things. All the nice stuff your editor or agent tells you at the beginning of their correspondence is just padding for when they rip into your writing a paragraph later. I am torn between flinching and laughing my arse off. (Yea that's right, I just used a British-ism)
And I don't know about other people, but in my experience a surprising amount of time is devoted to mocking the writing that gets submitted.
You know, just in case any of you were thinking about getting published...
