SFWA Hilarity

• Personal Hero Charles Coleman Finlay has written a nice little Walter Mitty pastiche starring one Andrew Burt. I think Charlie’s absolutely right, in his little postscript–I think this is absolutely how Burt sees himself in this whole process.
• Also via the flist, Jeremy Tolbert provides some awesome campaign posters, just like the one on display to the right there. I love the campaign poster phenomenon that Scalzi fostered last year; I’m hoping to see a lot more.
• And via the Scalzi, speaking of whom, a little translation of Aburt’s campaign platform into English. Very funny stuff, not to mention quite spot-on in many instances. There’s a certain amount of delusion floating around that platform (starting with the salutation: what the fuck?) and it’s almost impossible not to read between the lines and see the feelings of persecution that Charlie so ably lampoons.

It’s shaping up to be yet another hilarious SFWA campaign season.

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In other writing-related news, Clarkesworld Magazine editor Nick Mamatas continues to question the sanity of submitters, which may be putting it nicely.

It boggles my mind that people would write to argue about rejections. I mean, in the comment thread to that I mention, as a data point, that there are places in the world (such as the US government’s contracting processes) where you can argue rejection as part of the regular course of business–but it just doesn’t seem like the smart thing to do in this instance. I mean, it’s a truism in this business that editors generally seek out what they think will sell books/magazines… but there’s also a distinct subjective element to it, as anyone who has been submitting for more than a couple months should know.

So how do you argue with someone’s taste? Seriously? It’s not like this is a contracting process where there are hard-and-fast specifications to be met, and dollar figures to shoot for, and so on. “Story shall include three paragraphs inciting sensawunda, no more than five paragraphs of character development, and one macguffin. Remuneration for Story shall not exceed $0.15 per word.” No, doesn’t happen like that, and even if it did, there would still be the subjective matter of how well it was executed, whether the prose and style supported the requirements.

I’d be tempted to draw a parallel to American Idol where all the mockery-bait in the first few episodes argue with Simon and the crew on the judging… but it’s not like any of those jerks actually succeed, so I’m hard-pressed to see where writers might be getting it in their heads that the submission process is a multi-layered effort at persuasion.

Thumb’s up, or thumb’s down, and if you’re lucky enough to get comments back on the story, then take them to heart. Disregard them only in the event that the editor is telling you something you already know and have done “wrong” deliberately for one reason or another. But never argue them.

Oh well. Maybe these writers will get it, someday. Until then, I suspect Mamatas is going to have a pretty steady supply of fuel for this particular fire.

Crossposted with klech.net