Rage: On

One of the most frequent and obvious distinctions between promising writers and bad ones is how they handle criticism. The other day, something barely comprehensible, scarcely imaginable, and wholly terrifying happened. An author responded to a query complaining that several hours was insufficient time to have truly considered his proposal. You’d think his response would be “thank you for not making me wait days, weeks, even months for an answer.” But instead, thinly veiled by polite words such as “you’d be doing me a tremendous service” was the very clear bait for an argument. I even drafted a response to him explaining why he’d been rejected so quickly. See, there’s a catch-22 involved in this. If I told him the truth, he’d think I’m an asshole because his problems as an author run very, very deep. Or, I could not tell him and he’d think I’m an asshole who just rejects everything after only a cursory glance (which is not true in the least. If I must- very well, I apologize for being a fast reader and on top of my job). This isn’t the real problem. I don’t mind if he thinks I’m an asshole. I AM AN ASSHOLE. But I need to consider the agencies’ reputation and even more significantly it burns me up that no matter what I say that author will walk out of the situation taking entirely the wrong lesson to heart. For the rest of you, and who knows, maybe him too, here’s the skinny.

1. The query letter was a mess. Only two short paragraphs or so, with convoluted text about “good guys” and “bad guys” which said nothing about character or plot, or even about the author.
2. A humdrum opening line.
3. A serious telling-rather-than-showing problem.
4. A complete lack of focus- not only was everything told instead of shown, the sheer amount of details thrown at us from page one without even context to hang it on was astonishing.
5. The manuscript itself was no less a jumbled mess than the letter. This is hard to explain so that you’ll truly appreciate it, so I may go a little overboard here in which case I apologize for the violent and remorseless beating of dead horses. Let’s start with simple stuff. What is a sentence? This is a sentence. “Mary scored the winning goal” is a sentence. “Bobby prepared meatballs” is a sentence. What is not a grammatically correct nor stylistically tolerable sentence? Something like “Jeff rubbed his swollen red eyes which resulted from the hangover he had because he was thinking about his ex-wife’s birthday as a result of going past the Hallmark store where they met and where he had once broken a Christmas ornament and slipped out the backdoor quickly while his best friend Hal distracted the pimply 17 year old clerk who probably wouldn’t have cared anyway because he was a weasely little shit and besides neither Jeff nor Hal had ever seen him work there again; he probably quit because kids today are such fucking slackers and oh god did Jeff’s head hurt like a mother fucker and the ideas forming within coalesced and burst out painfully one after another like kidney stones which, incidentally, Jeff had had twice in the last three years and he wasn’t terribly happy about that at all- no sir.” That’s about on par with how that guy writes. It’s also about twice as interesting, which is much less a testament to my skill as a writer than his lack thereof.

In short, the author was rejected quickly because his manuscript was essentially unreadable. Let’s be clear. I’ve edited college theses for students who never set foot in an English speaking country in their lives. I’ve tutored kids with ADD, Dyslexia, NVLD or who were just straight up dumb or lazy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such incoherent and culturally bankrupt ramblings in my life. Well sir, you wanted to know why you were rejected. There’s the truth of it . If you place garbage on the corner, you’d best be prepared for the eventuality that the garbage man will cart it away. For those of you with the sense to listen rather than tout paranoia as a defense, I’ve decided to dust off (and add a few things) to a list of my top query no-nos. Join me for the next week or so for a section I like to call “Damn Your Eyes: America’s Funniest Home-Spun Queries.” Maybe after that I can finally get around to the stuff about (picture books in) China I’ve been wanting to post since Christmas.