Top Ten Reasons You're Stuck in the Slushpile

#10. You addressed your submission to "The Slushpile".

#9. You opened your query with "Dear Unthinking, Uncaring, Dream-Crushing Wannabe Who Couldn't Recognise Talent If It Shoved a Pulitzer in Your Open Client Slot."

#8. You opened your query with "Dear [DATA_AGENT_NAME]".

#7. Someone else already wrote The Da Vinci Code.

#6. You claim you won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1982.

#5. You weren't sure how to summarise your novel, so you copied the back cover blurb from Stephen King's The Shining.

#4. You describe your novel as "contemporary postapocalyptic chicklit, with overtones of minimalist literary horror, sort of a Tolkeinesque beat poetry take on a cyberpunk whodunit, as if written by Ernest Hemingway."

#3. Not only is your manuscript bigger than the New York phone directory, but in your submission package you accidentally included a New York phone directory instead of chapter 4.

#2. Your best fiction writing is your list of previous publishing credits.

and the number one reason you're stuck in the slushpile is:

#1. Your. Writing. Sucks.