Grindstone Time Again 08th September 2010.

A small observation today, seeing as I’m going to be spending a good portion of the next few hours reading submissions I thought I’d mention an observation about writer behaviour that has become apparent over the last week or so.

We closed submissions at the beginning of this month in order to allow us to catch up on both the existing submissions – those that came in before the deadline, and also our work in progress (or should that be works in progress?).

Before, when we put the closure notice up on the submissions page on the web site, we left the page intact, and put the closed line at the top. Despite this, we still continued to get a steady trickle of submissions being sent in. This time, I did it differently, literally gutting the page and removing all references to submissions, the formatting and other guidelines. The page says we are CLOSED and that’s it.

I did leave the general points and links to information and sample contract in place but that is all there is on the page. Result – you guessed it – no unsolicited submissions.

So there you have it – a conclusion, drawn on insufficient evidence, writers are selective readers, and they practice selective blindness, only seeing what they want to see.

Not exactly earth-shattering is it – oops, must stop the puns about the earthquake.

We have 4 or 5 submissions sent in at the tail end of last month before I put the closed notice up, so I’m about to pull on the harness, shrug on the aqualung tanks, spit in the goggles and jump right in.
Wish me luck on this particular fishing expedition.