I spent the last few days crunching through the Space Squid slushpile. We seem to get a submission or two every day, so if I let things slide for a few weeks (or a month) then there’s a lot of work waiting for me.
I was struck by the high quality of submissions these days. Sure, there’s plenty of the wacko subs, but there were a lot of stories that I ended up rejecting that I would have gone to bat for only a couple of years ago. Nowadays all it takes is a couple of mis-worded sentences or two paragraphs in a row that bore me.
Here’s my strategy for reading slush: I only break into the submissions when I’m tired and irritated. If a story holds my attention when I’m in that state of mind, then it’s special enough for Space Squid.
Or spastic enough, which is practically the same thing.