Slushpile Tips From a Conference Slushfest
Image courtesy of pixabay.com I attended a small writing conference over the weekend. I took lots of notes and, over the next few weeks, will share several things I learned. Today, because I'm playing catch up from being away, I'm going to share the easiest topic to relate: tips learned from a slushfest. What's a Slushfest? This popular writing conference event attempts to provide writers a glimpse into what happens when an agent (or the agent's assistant, actually) attacks the slush pile of unsolicited submissions. As much as agents want to find the next best seller, they do have a lot of queries to plow through, so there are certain things that cause them to pass on submissions. In a slushfest, attendees anonymously provide the first page or two of their manuscript, and the experts (authors, agents, editors, publishers) read until they find something that would make a professional reject a submission. Then they explain why they stopped reading. Tips Fr