Hard Reality? More Like Hard Realities

I've read a lot of submission guidelines lately. They contradict each other, of course. The default is always to follow the preferences and guidelines of the exact publisher or agent you submit to. Deviate at your peril. Second default position is to follow the guidelines for the genre for which you specifically write, especially if they're guidelines posted on a major organization for that genre such as RRA or SFWA. Seeing the variations can be instructive. Or it may send you screaming to the bedroom to hide under the covers where you can sob over the hopelessness of it all in that black space where the boogeyman editor can't get to you. Here are some gems:

Brutal but true: Kent Brewster confirms our worst nightmares. You're wonderful Kent please don't hurt my ms! Sweeping Back the Slushpile by Kent Brewster

I love you, Murderati. In my fantasy life, INK becomes similar to Murderati. Anyway, this is both a demonstration of individual genres having their own set of 'absolute' or macro-rules that you can generally follow and be safe and also that no matter what you do, you'll be hitting someone's pet peeve so just try not to make yourself too crazy and make your ms as professional as you can before you send it out. I think it also helps to be cool, like the murderati:
Things Your Creative Writing Instructor Never Told You by Gordon Aalborg

For our entertainment: Because we need a break from the insanity to laugh at the stupidity of others. Please, muse, don't let me get this messed up about my rejections. Let me continue celebrating their collection and to view a hand-written note as a priceless artifact painstakingly dug out from the ruins of my manuscript! Slushkiller by Teresa Nielson Hayden

Not only do we have to worry about how to publish, but of course where. Sad to say, I would be enthused to get a short published on toilet paper as long as it counted as a real publication. I hope that someday toilet paper won't seem nearly as appealing. Trying to Get Published on Toilet Paper by the Fine Folks at Slushpile.net

The last word, though, is always this. The story has to be good, or the formatting doesn't matter. Reversely, if the story is really good, the small details (what font, how many spaces after a period) won't matter. Rachel Funari in her article Escaping the Slushpile put it well:

The stories that were sent to my office were mainly about the same one-dimensional characters: the abused wife obsessed with cleaning, the husband who kills his wife because she’s gone to fat, the stereotypical mobster, and let’s not forget the drunk, fat, ex-policeman, snidely-comic private detective who has to figure out the illegal mess the husband of a beautiful, blond, buxom woman has gotten into. All of these characters are boring because they aren’t real people. Successful stories are about the same types of characters, but they are people with compulsions and neuroses and subtleties and contradictions. They are caught in worlds they don’t understand, forced into situations they have no answers for, made desperate by people they love, made obsessive by people that have no room for them. No matter whether your story is about an ordinary person or an extraordinary one, your voice needs to be unique, your character whole and full, your storytelling revelatory and involved, your reason for telling this story clear and revealed. Otherwise, why should I read it? When you sit down to write, you should ask yourself, Why must I tell this story? Why must my character be the hero or anti-hero of this story? What do I have to say about this story, or this life, or this world that needs me to write it? What is my point? If you can’t answer these questions, then you shouldn’t be writing the story. And if this is the case, then all above advice is moot.

I hate my reader thiiiiiiis much

Exploder has been crashing repeatedly when I try to post, and iCab gets into a loop of continuous info dump so that the average typing speed becomes about one letter every 2-3 seconds. Hence the infrequent posting. I'm expecting this to crash at any moment.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, OryCon 29 is coming up and as writer's workshop coordinator (or workshop fool, which may be a more accurate description) I've had the opportunity to watch the submission process from eager beginning to its black demise. Here are some observations that may be helpful, or may be simply suitable to inspire a sense of professional superiority in pro-minded individuals.

"I was terribly disappointed. I got almost no comments on my content and about ten pages of formatting information. Since then I've published in (X and X) magazines."
Gee, I was at that critique and that's not how I remember it, but who am I? This seems to be a classic case of not listening. This person may very well be turning out good prose, hence the publishing credits (which were both paying markets, btw) however it's really hard to go from good to amazing when you can't listen to comments. The hyperbole doesn't help--she didn't get even ten pages total of comments much less ten on formatting. There was plenty of room for improvement in the manuscript, including the formatting. But more on formatting later ...
Comments from anyone, whether they're a professional, fellow writer trying to break into the business, or helpful buddy are always a mixed bag. A great resume' does not make a great critiquer, unfortunately. Still, if that person wasn't impressed (and maybe couldn't say much more than stuff about your formatting) then something is falling flat. If you can't see it for yourself, then try to get a second and third and fourth opinion. If those other opinions are all about the excited enthusiasm and spewing about the perfection of your vision, then feel free to pat yourself on the back for writing the next international classic (or for finding the perfect audience or providing sufficient bribery or blackmail for this result.) It stinks to get a poor critique, but you gotta get what you can from it. Poor critiques require more advanced listening, reading between the lines, and before you decide that it was totally worthless (and some of them are) you need to take a healthy dose of objectivity. Sometimes you can do that all by yourself, but be careful. It's better to get another reader involved, hopefully one with a good skill set, and get at the truth that way.

Dear Cover Letter Reader--I have no idea what to say so I'll take a guess without looking at the big picture.
What's a cover letter's job? Sometimes it's easier to figure that out by looking at your entire submission package in the context of who is getting it. I'll use a writer's workshop novel package as an example. The package consists of a cover letter, a 500 word synopsis and a 7500 word chunk of novel. Logically we can deduce that the cover letter is an introduction. But then what? A key is to try not to double up on information. Another key is to not include extraneous information.
A good cover letter will include who you are, contact information, and date. Unearthing manuscripts from a haphazardly stacked pile is an exercise in surprises--giving the editor a chance to place your manuscript should it become misplaced is key.
A good cover letter will include pertinent information about your experience. Editors (or in this case pros reading your manuscript) want to know where you're at in your career. They want to know if you're just starting out, if you're in it for the long haul, get a sense of how prolific you might be in the case of novels (it's not inappropriate to mention if you've got other works in the works and what stage they're at) and if you've taken any major steps for self-improvement (degrees, Clarion, etc.) Be sensitive to the pro's pov as much as you can. They get no real information from 'I've been writing since I've been three years old.' Well, me too. I learned to write my name at three. They don't really get a sense of your quality or stick-with-it if you say you started writing seriously in high school, or in college. So what are they looking for? I majored in journalism (or English) in college. I have published work in non-paying markets from 1985 onward. If you're submitting for publication you may want to keep out information about the high school poetry chapbook unless you're close to high school age but if you're submitting to a workshop you have more freedom since you're not trying to sell your work. In a workshop you're trying to give the pro perspective so they can critique in context. For example, looking at it from the other side, if I'm critiquing something I want to know if I can say 'you slipped into passive voice during this action scene which slowed it down' and let it go or whether I need to explain what passive voice is. I'd like to know if I can boldly say, "this character was so unsympathetic I was ready to stop reading by page three" or if I should gentle it down--not leave out information, but get more technical and not assume that the writer is going to understand that I'm having a specific issue with the story, not with the writer or the prose or their worthiness to publish. With advanced writers you can use shorthand without coming across as brutal, taking a five minute explanation about a character's flaws, actions and inner dialogue and how that made me feel like they were a worthless whiner and pare it down to "this character whined too much. I wanted more protagging."
In short, a cover letter needs to give useful information, and in the case of a professional submission to a paying market, not too much information about amateurish stuff so you don't come across as an amateur. It doesn't need a description of the plot (handled in the synopsis) or a hook (handled on the first page of your manuscript) or how many margaritas you drank as research for this piece. Shorter is better, but include all the necessary parts.

Now, back to "...ten pages about my formatting."
The last time I helped someone with their formatting it took six pages of explanation. I kid you not. Not on how to do it--that was clearly outlined on the submission guidelines along with a .pdf example. But on how to fix the piece of I-don't-know-what-they-were-thinking workmanship they handed in as their submission. I kid you not! It seems that even the extensive precautions I took didn't prevent me from having to deal with very badly formatted manuscripts.
And why should an editor care? It's all about the content, right?
Readability. An editor's eyes are precious. They've chosen fonts and line spacing to accommodate their vision and not following those guidelines is a slap in the face. It says I care more about having this come in under ten pages by using ten point font than your vision.
Space to write. An editor needs room to write in comments, when they're inspired to do so (which is rare) and both the editor and typesetter, should you be so lucky as to have your work accepted, need scribbling room for editing and typesetting stuff.
Ability to estimate. An editor prefers to see how many pages there are and have a good idea of how much room it will take up in the magazine. They do this through word count as well, but word count doesn't always accurately measure room on a magazine page or thickness of the book because writing styles and word choices differ. The page length is another tool they like to use, and that's useless or misleading if you've used 1.5 line spacing or a font that they're not used to estimating with, for example.
Certainty of placement. An editor needs to know absolutely where a paragraph starts and ends, where there's a scene break, a new chapter, etc. without having to think. The problem with email-style paragraphing with no indentation and a double return after paragraphs is that it looks like stream-of-consciousness meets a monstrosity of scene breaks every paragraph (but missing the # sign that helps them determine that yes, this is a scene break.) Other style changes are even worse. Whenever a writer breaks out of standard format the editor has to adapt to that style, and I'm going to guarantee right now that the editor doesn't want to adapt. You can argue if you want that everyone is used to reading such and such a style. Personally, I prefer not to argue with someone I'm trying to sell work to, or someone I'm trying to gain a good opinion from.

Having done this job for several years, I sometimes wish that everyone in INK could take on this job for at least a year, preferably two, to help put the whole professional submission thing into perspective for them. I've often heard editors wish aloud that writers would take on an editorial job or slush pile reading, even if it's informally and just a short while. This is why. It's the experience of seeing other people's mistakes that help you figure out what to do with your submission, much more than being told what to do and what not to do.

Any takers?