Slush

This comment about the perils of the slush pile, from Laura Miller's interesting piece about the problem with a world in which everyone can be a published author, reminds me of some of my worst hours spent reading fiction by my students:

Being bombarded with inept prose, shoddy ideas, incoherent grammar, boring plots and insubstantial characters—not to mention ton after metric ton of clichés—for hours on end induces a state of existential despair that's almost impossible to communicate to anyone who hasn't been there themselves.