There are only a couple of those. Most aren't half bad, though some people need to be reacquainted with the concept of the Mary Sue.
Quotes from one cover letter: "A completed novel...is fabricated in literary style..." "This tale is fictive but inspired by a veritable time in my life." "The dichotomoy of cadres dissolves throughout the tome as the characters interact and events unfurl to become the cause of a great and terrible ruse." "[The hero] cannot actualize his aim..." "Samples and entire existential manuscripts...are available for your review."
All from one letter - the first I looked at, in fact. Somebody buy this guy a dictionary because he obviously doesn't know what he's doing with his thesaurus.
Oh, this is for the job. At least they're only partial manuscripts. Honestly, for most of them I read the cover letter, maybe a paragraph of the synopsis and a few lines of the manuscript. And if they don't get me with that, tough. Deeply unfair, yes, but I have a hundred of these things sitting on my desk right now.
I feel like writing to all these people - please, please get an agent. Because some of it's not half bad, but something would have to be un-fucking-believable - like, Shakespeare and Kerouac and Fitzgerald and Pratchett all rolled together only better, and it would have to be all that in the first page - to get published from the slush pile.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2005-10-03 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 04:11 pm (UTC)Quotes from one cover letter:
"A completed novel...is fabricated in literary style..."
"This tale is fictive but inspired by a veritable time in my life."
"The dichotomoy of cadres dissolves throughout the tome as the characters interact and events unfurl to become the cause of a great and terrible ruse."
"[The hero] cannot actualize his aim..."
"Samples and entire existential manuscripts...are available for your review."
All from one letter - the first I looked at, in fact. Somebody buy this guy a dictionary because he obviously doesn't know what he's doing with his thesaurus.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 12:08 pm (UTC)Is this part of your new job, or are you still reading slush for other companies?
no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 04:05 pm (UTC)