I’ve mentioned my experience in being mentored, but I don’t think I’ve ever even alluded to my past failure at helping other writers before. To be honest, I have absolutely no idea how editors like John and Howard manage to survive the slush pile, based on my thankfully brief experiences as a workshop critiquer and editorial assistant at a publishing house. I mean, for all that I mock the idiot wereseal fiction that is so mystifyingly popular now, it’s far from the worst fiction that’s being legally committed in public today.