Sunday, November 1, 2009

That Great Big Pile of Slush

This past week I volunteered with a group of my colleagues at Zane State College to judge a fifth grade essay contest put on by the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. It was an interesting and fun experience and it reminded me a lot of the slushpile parties that Permafrost, UAF’s graduate student run literary journal, used to have. If you had walked in on us judging the essay contest, you would have found a group of exhausted looking English faculty sitting around a table with stacks and stacks of contest entrants in the center, and at our feet you would have seen stacks of essays that had already been judged. As the day wore on we got more and more draggled looking, I’m sure, and by the end of the day we were admittedly somewhat rushing through the essays, trying to just finish up already so we could get out of there. It was fun . . . but it was an all day thing and by the end of “all day” pretty much any activity begins to wear on you.

Even though we spent the first hour or so of the day norming our standards, we disagreed on a lot of things. While any essay that scored under a certain point got tossed to the side immediately, many of the essays had to be read by at least two readers. If the disagreement by those two readers was large enough, the essay would go to a third reader. It was fascinating to see how all these English instructors that all teach at the same institution could have such different reactions to the very same essays. Ultimately the winners were essays that we were able to come to some sort of a consensus on, though often the winner in one category would be the one that three or four people thought was the best, and the rest of the people just sort of agreed to accept the decision since the one that they would have chosen wasn’t going to get a majority vote.

This experience very much mirrored reading for a literary journal. You start with stacks of submissions and the feeling that you’re in over your head. Some of the submissions are going to be at a low enough level – however you even gauge that! – that you don’t have to spend much time with them. Others will have different readers in total disagreement. One reader might think it’s good but it should be rejected for X reason. Another might argue that X reason is nowhere near important enough to reject such a good piece. Yet another might think the whole thing is crap and it should be rejected now before anybody wastes any more time arguing about it.

Some editors and agents say that there are good submissions and there are bad submissions. The good ones will get published and the bad ones won’t. Period. This is absurd! It completely ignores how subjective literature is, for one thing, and it also relies on the fallacy that there are no other variables going into the reading process. If I grab a submission off the slushpile after I’ve been at it for four hours, I might, through no fault of my own, be less inclined to give it a fair read as I would have been if I had grabbed it at the beginning of my reading session. If the particular submission in question happens to be 25 pages long – forget about it! I don’t want to read another 25 pages right now. I’m probably going to be looking for any excuse I can find to stop reading and reject it. This is all completely subconscious. You don’t pick up a submission and consciously think, “I don’t think I’m going to give this a fair chance.” But the variables, the variables!

With the essay contest, what it really came down to, I feel, is that the essays that were saying something different from the other essays were the ones that rose to the top. Most of the essays were extremely similar. This did not make them inherently bad. It did, however, make them boring, at least after you had already read several others about the exact same topic. The same is true with submissions. You might get a really well crafted story that just happens to remind you of any number of other stories you’ve read or that have been submitted to your journal, and you’re going to reject it because even though it’s good, it bores you. I’ve received rejections like this, rejections telling me that the writing is excellent but the topic is nothing new. I’ve written rejections like this, too.

The fact is it’s the ones that are doing something we’ve never seen before that seem to be the ones we all agree that we like.

13 comments:

Justus said...

Excellent points. I think as a writer, this is one of the big obstacles: somehow saying something new or doing something new. Although I think there's much to be said in simply doing something well even if it's been done before, it's still the new that will break out the most. But the same thing holds true for essays, too, which I don't think gets as much attention. I certainly look primarily for good structure, solid arguments, and clear explanations when grading my students' work, but if somebody genuinely comes up with some new idea I hadn't considered or encountered before, that stands out. Essentially, as teachers, we want to encourage them to think more deeply and complexly, and if all they come up with is the exact same stuff other people have already come up with (I don't know if I can stand to read another freshman girl's essay about eating disorders), then it seems like maybe they aren't really thinking too hard about the issue. I love it when I read something in a student's paper that I had never previously considered. When that happens, it's truly exciting being a teacher.

Also, what were the fifth grade essays like? Were they one page little things about their summer vacations or what? Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if some of those fifth graders could put some of my college students to shame in their writing.

Ashley Cowger said...

The fifth grade essays were one pagers about how living in Appalachian Ohio inspires them. I would say some of those fifth graders are writing at the same level as some college freshman. Sad but true.

PancakePhilosopher said...

I don't know all the details about how much primary education has changed, but I do know that kids seem to be learning a lot more at much younger ages than when even I was in grade school. Maybe they're getting better writing related educations now that they used to? Or maybe the primary language/writing education sort of languishes throughout middle/high school?

Ashley Cowger said...

I think it's probably a little of both, but I bet it's mostly the latter. I think a lot of kids are not getting very good educations in their high school English classes. At UAF we were given this handout that English teachers at one of the local high schools were passing out to their students; it was FULL of wrong information. Sometimes I feel like you have to spend half of your time in a Freshman Composition course unteaching them the bad habits they learned in their high school English classes.

Justus said...

I found out an interesting factoid the other day. Due to women's rights, school teachers are now dumber than they used to be. Once upon a time, there were few career options for women, so the best and brightest became teachers. But now the best and brightest become CEO's and doctors and lawyers instead, and the overall intelligence and test scores and so forth for the average teacher has dropped significantly in the past few decades. And so now those teachers pass out handouts full of wrong information.

MFAguy said...

Permafrost published my essay "Bhutto and the Burro" last year after many months of holding onto it. It's interesting to hear what goes on in these places.

Ashley Cowger said...

Contratulations on the Permafrost acceptance! As you can imagine, it really means something to make it through all the way to an acceptance.

MFAguy said...

Yeah, thanks. I think, you know, we both have a piece in Etchings 8?

Ashley Cowger said...

Etchings 8 - yes! The writing world is a very small world, it turns out.

MFAguy said...

haha, yup. Did you by chance get your copy and/or payment yet?

Ashley Cowger said...

I got my payment but I haven't gotten the actual copy yet.

MFAguy said...

Cool! Got my cash yesterday!

I've also linked your blog to my website:

http://christopherlinforth.wordpress.com/

Ashley Cowger said...

Thanks! I'll link to yours, too. I just got my copy of Etchings in the mail - can't wait to read yours, it looks awesome. Good ol' Woody Allen.