As a writer whose career path is following a pattern of exponential decay I have decided to apply scientific principles to the process (it hurts less this way) and have come up with Jeni’s Theory of Inverse Proportion. Quite simply, this states that the time taken for a writer to get their work read by a publisher is inversely proportional to the number of editors reading the slush pile. Which begs the question: How many editors does it take to read a slush pile? 

And why the fascination. Because given my experience of exponential decay, this is where I find myself again. To all those authors wallowing in the complacency of success … Beware!

That slush pile is a slippery little sucker.