Aspiring authors love to spend large amounts of time and money seeking advice on "getting published" or "breaking into print". It's funny and tragic that they so seldom ask for advice on how to improve their writing, which is why publishing houses relegate the slush pile to unpaid interns, if they deal with it at all.

Two weblogs recently came to my attention. The first, Fiction Bitch, is, on the face of it, an editor who takes a perverse glee in tearing apart stories submitted to her website by aspiring authors. She writes an essay on each submission that points out the (usually few) good bits, and discusses the bad bits. She also posts the original submission with her comments. One would expect that the comments within the actual stories would be cruel and belittling, given the title of the blog, but actually they are constructive and to the point. She's a damn good editor, and for those with the stomach to take these comments to heart, a perceptive and generous mentor.

The second, Making Light, has a great entry for September 20, 2004, titled A brief note on linguistic markers, containing as good a list of phrases as I've ever seen, that should alert authors to potential scams.

Will your average "aspiring author" put ego aside long enough to consider the advice offered by either of these sites? Or are the unpublished convinced that free advice is always worth what you pay for it, and continue paying for praise and publication under the assumption that this is their only option?