zeekie: take two.

Work at Tor Books has settled into a comfortable, if somewhat numbing routine. I arrive at work between ten and ten-fifteen, muddle around on the computer checking my various email accounts, and then stare at the towering shelf of slush that doesn't seem to have changed since day one.

Okay, perhaps that is a minor exaggeration. With three interns chipping away at the piles of manuscripts, we have managed to put a noticeable dent into the uneven piles. But considering the rate at which we chip has begun to slow of late, I suspect it won't be long before the shelf is full again.

The slowing down of our slush-kill is perhaps to be expected. At first it was fun and fun and fun, but then I suppose we each at some point recognized the neverending-ness of blah. It really doesn't matter where the author is originally from, whether he's an astronaut or she an English major; there are a lot of people out there who just are - middling. And those are really the heartbreakers, because they're not bad enough to be rejected out of hand, but they don't do anything to inspire interest beyond the first page.

I've personally rejected well over hundreds of manuscripts now, from women who have written paranormal romantic trilogies, to brothers who must have posted their novels on the very same freaking day. There have been police officers and high school math professors, retired veterans and even prison convicts, lawyers, doctors, bookkeepers and scientists, astronauts and middle school students and grandmas with nothing to do.

It's gotten to the point where I can honestly predict a blah manuscript from the very first freaking blah paragraph. Of course I usually read the damn thing for at least three more whole pages, but my batting average has gotten very good.

And these are perhaps the coin sides of slush-reading. You get a fine sense of what makes for boring, but that's a negative skill that doesn't really teach anything substantial. It's like learning the ten ways that a person shouldn't swim, but knowing only those still won't help get you anywhere.

I suppose, right now for me, that's why I feel like I'm treading water. After half a semester's worth of mostly blah, every half an hour of slush these days, I feel like I have to take a break or I'll lash out at something. Because how do you begin to fix the problem of blah?

Thankfully, every once in a very long while I get something that actually makes me sit up straight. There have only been two so far, but one looks like it might be headed for recommendation, and the other simply hasn't been read by the other interns yet.

Thank the writing gods for those.