Both Kay and I spent almost the entire day reading submissions, and finally, everything’s been read. Whew! So now we’re free to go into the narrowing-down and selection process.

Generally, our initial read-throughs tend to eliminate at least 75% (and usually more) of submissions, usually leaving us anywhere from 8 to 15 stories. Our issues usually have 5 stories – we have done 4 or 6 in an issue, but 5 usually seems right and is around the optimal wordcount. There are almost always 1 or 2 submissions that we both agree are definite Yesses, so we’re left to pick 3 or 4 stories from the remaining group.

The final selection process that we’ll be doing over the next few days is one of the more difficult parts of running CG. We’re not rejecting bad submissions: we’re actually eliminating good stories because there’s that one that’s just a bit better.

Kay put it very well earlier today when she said to me “It’s kind of sick that creativity has to be competitive”. It’s that part of it that galls us: that we have to say no to stories we actually like, that good writers have to receive rejection of their work. Don’t get me wrong – the process is useful and has value. But there’s something about the “Pass/Fail” aspect of it that’s perpetually frustrating.

Anyway: other than read, I handled some communication and did some more work on the new website, which is starting to take shape.

On today’s installment of “Don’t do that when submitting a story”: Don’t manually double-space your submission. I know that Standard Manuscript Format says you always double-space, but if you don’t know how to use the double-space function of your word processor, or it doesn’t have one, single-spaced is fine. It’s better than forcing us to manually undo it if/when we decide we want single-spaced.

-Bart