The Slush Pile
Teenage girl poetry. Manifestos written in all caps. Manuscripts covered in wood shavings. Illegible postcards. Five dollar bills.
I’ve seen them all in the slush pile.
The biggest stack arrived on Friday. It could take a half hour to open all the packages, express letters, and taped-shut envelopes. I always felt very “inside” when I did this work. I had found my way behind the curtain. But I also experienced the longing and the wish to be a writer, to be published. So I was sympathetic to the slush pile.
There were all kinds of strategies on the part of the slush-pilers. Wax seals and embossed letterheads, as if to overwhelm the reader with prestige. The entreaty that also tried to create a dare: “No one in hell is ever going to read this but if anyone cares, it’s a story about . . .” The mention of distant connections: “My aunt’s college roommate worked at the magazine. . .” The pure desperation: “Any response will encourage me to keep going, please please please please respond.”
It was not a completely foolish idea to submit to the slush pile. There were stories of writers who made it out: Thom Jones being the famous example in my day. But in my experience that happened only in Fiction, a department in which there were—and still are—dedicated readers of the slush pile. I was reading the everything-but-fiction slush. The land of the oblivious and the overconfident.
I learned an important lesson early: any response, even a quickly-scrawled “Not bad!” on the top of a manuscript before stuffing it back into the self-addressed stamped envelope, could bring on a barrage of follow-up messages. In one case, repeated phone calls to the main magazine number asking to invite the young man or woman who reads the slush pile to an afternoon tea.
It was important to respond though, even with just the pre-printed rejection slip. The magazine had a social contract with its readers (and its aspirants) that we assistants were all charged with maintaining. There were two people whose sole job was responding to reader letters—signed as Owen Ketherry.
The slush pile was a slog for a long while. But then I began to tune into its strange energy. A lot of the slush-pilers seemed to have made a promise to themselves: I am going to finish this thing and send it off! The sending itself was the success. The slush-pilers also had a purity that I came to admire. They weren’t in some cubicle in Midtown trying to hustle and edge their way into a literary career; they were scattered in towns and cities, bedrooms and garages, typing away. Sure, maybe a retelling of the Old Testament, in rhyme, wasn’t the best idea—but you had to admire the intensity.
The slush-pile is no more. It fell victim to the anthrax attacks that began after 9/11, and the magazine made the decision not to accept mail. The unsolicited submissions carry on in e-mail form but that’s not the same as hand writing seven thousand words on the connection of the Kennedy family to the Crusades and overnighting it to New York, NY.
Still, when faced with a loss of belief in whatever project that I am embarked upon, I try to recall some of that slush-pile energy. I am going to send it. Hit send now. Don’t overthink it. Keep going. Send it. Send it. Maybe they’ll write me back. ◊