Reading Slush

When originally approached to read slush for Static Movement, I remember thinking, oh, that's going to be tedious. Boy, was I wrong. It's fascinating. It's frustrating. It's a huge learning lesson, because boy, oh boy, you see writers making the same mistakes over and over in their submissions. I'll start talking about those over the next few weeks, the recurring patterns I see -- the inability to spell, the unneeded exposition, the dialog that fails to move a story forward, the difference between what sounds like a nifty idea and a story (and they ain't the same thing, folks).

But the coolest thing about reading slush is that excitement I feel whenever I start reading a new story. Is this the one? I'll wonder. Is this the one that's going to knock my socks off? One I won't be able to put down, that'll give me great characters and a strong story and an ending that makes me sit back and go "woah!" It's worth wading through all the rest just to get to that one story that blows me away. I want more of those. I want every story to be a homerun. And when I find one that's so close, but it fails because of something simple, I want to cry. That's the worst part of this job. Rejecting the "almosts."