RTFSG

Is it really so hard? I can't imagine that anyone who writes for a living, or even as an occasional hobby, can claim that reading a few hundred words is too taxing for them. The words I speak of are submission guidelines, and I am about to make one of those editorial rants that every single editor has made at least once since we were deciding whose mammoth drawing was worthy of the really good wall space in the cave. Five words: Read the ______ submission guidelines. The third word was excised from that sentence to maintain this post as family friendly, but it's seven letters long and rhymes with 'fucking'. Anyway, it's not those innocent souls who don't read the submission guidelines that really make me the most angry. I like to think of them as excited young artists, so enamored with their latest creation that the details escape them and they must send it now. No, more than these, the real bother is the applicant who prefaces their submission with the words "I read your submission guidelines", and then precedes to break every one of those guidelines, one by one. My God, people. It's like having a woman walk up to you and kick you in a very uncomfortable place, only to smile down at you, writhing in a ball on the floor, and say "I read today that it hurts when you kick someone there, and I swore I would never do it. Ever. Oh, by the way, can I have five dollars?"