“Very strong medicine. I recommend a dose of it to the VQR.”
By Waldo Jaquith
May 2nd, 2008
A few authors were less than thrilled with our recent listing of readers’ negative comments, worrying that their work may have received similarly rough treatment. (Rest assured, any author who takes the time to read our blog, or who can even identify us by name, is far too competent to write submissions that are that bad.) I have no background in the literary world (I’m a programmer), so I have no concept of the point at which transparency becomes garish to writers. Whaddya know–I’ve found that point.
The forthrightness of our readers extends not just to submissions that they don’t like, but also to submissions that they adore. Sometimes a submission will strike a chord with a reader, validating the task of minding the slush pile. They’re effusive, funny, and often sweet. Here are some of my favorites, with the hope that transparency of happy comments is rather better received:
It’s worth noting that a positive review from a reader certainly doesn’t guarantee publication in our pages, given the enormous volume of submissions we receive. (We’re on track to receive 10,400 during this reading period, in which time we’ll have published 160. You do the math.) But our readers wade through hundreds of submissions every week, not for the money (there’s little to be had), but for the opportunity to be part of the literary community, and for that rare but wonderful occurrence of discovering a new and talented voice.
The Virginia Quarterly Review
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Questions:
1) Are all these comments for pieces that have appeared in VQR, or did some of them eventually get rejected?
2) Did the authors get to see these comments?
3) If the answer to 1) is yes, can you link to some of the actual pieces so we can compare with the comments?
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Some of them were declined, some have been accepted, some are in the netherworld between those two points, and may or may not become published. Those authors would very rarely see the exact comments presented here. They might be excerpted, but they’re generally given a version of these comments in a more useful form than this.
I’m not sure that it would be appropriate to cross-reference any of these comments to the published pieces, Abigail. It’s not something that I’ve entirely thought through the ramifications of, but I suspect that doing so would probably have some negative side effects.
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:25 pm
See! This proves my point. The negative comments were more fun to read. :)
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Not a big fan of the warm-and-fuzzies, huh? :)
I should mention that these reviews have been anonymized — names have been removed and key submission facts have been tweaked so that authors are unlikely to recognize even their own works. Those changes should have no impact on the substance of the reviews, though.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Waldo, nice balance of the scales. Actually, this made me think of something else I had wondered about: Once a story receives a note like the ones in today’s post, does it go directly to the editor? Or does it get passed to another reader for a second round? That is, how many times does a story get read, once it’s clear the story might be right for VQR?
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:34 pm
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May 4th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
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May 5th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
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May 6th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
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