On the Tyranny of Slush Piles
How should a society decide who gets to be a writer?
In the present-day U.S., the answer is simple: Submittable.com. While the specific target of the submission may differ—literary journals, MFA programs, agents, or writing contests—the experience of trying to make it as a brand-new writer has broadly unified around the singular method of submitting semi-anonymously online, tossing one’s work into the ocean like a letter-in-a-bottle and praying that someone reads all the way to the bottom on the other side.
In many ways, this is just an extension of earlier procedures that existed throughout the twentieth century, when authors would submit manuscripts to editors or publishing houses directly, either in person or by mail. But like most things touched by the Internet’s infinite monkey’s paw, there is a point at which a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
