All that said, I do have my foot in one lit world (Mormon lit) that\u2019s so small that if nobody reviewed anything, nobody would get reviewed at all. And that\u2019s a shame. Because some of the stuff I\u2019ve been reading, put out by the major Mormon publishers, is really bad. And the stuff that\u2019s really good (i.e., brilliant, e.g., Bound on Earth<\/em><\/a> by Angela Hallstrom) gets lost in the shuffle because a) people who want to read good stuff will assume it\u2019s bad and b) people have been reading schlock so long they don\u2019t know what\u2019s good.<\/p>\n But you know, from the cradle, we\u2019re trained to be nice. (Clearly, most of that didn\u2019t take with me.) Our cultural heritage is Nice. And so what does Nice get you? Crap work because nobody wants to say, \u201cThis is crap work. This is why it\u2019s crap. Everybody, take note. Don\u2019t write like this.\u201d<\/p>\n Actually, what I want to say is, \u201cThis was vetted by a Gatekeeper who asked money for it, and I spent that money and I spent the time based on the fact that it was vetted by a Gatekeeper, and now I have to wonder what the Gatekeeper thinks is good writing, because this ain\u2019t it.\u201d Our market is flooded with (sub)mediocre writing, and it distresses me. I\u2019d rather have nothing<\/em> than most of what passes for good in our market. Are we so starved for \u201cclean\u201d content that we\u2019ll take anything we can get and call<\/em> it good<\/a>?1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n![\"Handwritten](\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/20110306_sudoku.jpg\")