Submitting After the MFA
I submitted a bit half-heartedly during my MFA program. I don't mean my heart wasn't in it. It was. Maybe a bit too much so. I got rejected. Every time. And I felt sad. Every time. I submitted stories to journals I really love, but I submitted stories that were all wrong for them. I did this less than a year ago and in the year since then, and it makes me cringe. Because after reading just a little longer and working on my stories just a little harder, I realize that they were never gonna take them.
Oops.
Here is a bit of unsolicited advice to any new and future MFAers: Don't worry so much about publishing. Sure, throw some stuff out there. Collect some rejections. Make a deal with a friend that each time you get rejected, your friend has to buy you a beer (and vice versa). If you get an acceptance, you buy your friend a drink, but don't worry about it because those are rare. It's a good deal and I recommend it, if only because it makes all that drinking you're going to want to do a bit more writerly. And for every hour you spend thinking about where to send stories, spend four reading literary magazines. To have friends, you gotta be a friend. So be the kind of friend lit mags need: a reader. Then, finish you MFA, go to your reading and believe your professor when he smiles at you, tells you congrats and says, "Ok, time to submit things."
As far as I can tell (and have ever been told), there is no secret to publishing success. Except doggedness and a thick skin. Not that I'd know, really, having never been published. But I've spent a lot of time reading about it on the internet and listening to other writers talk about it and if there is a secret, some kind of private club that meets in a shady basement and requires you to wear a robe and promise to tithe ten percent of your New York Times Bestsellers profits, no one has slipped up and hinted at it, yet. (I'm gonna watch Franzen pretty closely when he's on Oprah, though, just in case she gets him to spill.) So, what follows is more or less what I'm doing. Please leave comments and let me know what you do, or why my strategy is sure to lead to either fame and riches or a lifetime of ramen noodles and crushing jealousy.
I use Duotrope. Last year, when I was foolishly submitting the wrong stories to magazines, I used an Excel spreadsheet. This was ok, but I like Duotrope's submission manager much better. Especially because Duotrope allows you to search magazines based on any number of criteria, and it gives you a lot of good info, like if a magazine accepts electronic or simultaneous submissions, the average response time and acceptance rate and other literary magazines that are similar.
I submit to magazines I read. This means I have been rejected by The Collagist and Ploughshares and Glimmer Train and PANK and Smokelong Quarterly and many others. Some of those when I really should have, and some recently and with more pending. But the idea is that these are the magazines I know the best and who publish writing I admire. I want others to admire my work, too, and it makes sense to aim for the places I find writing like that.
I use other resources too, like the CLMP Directory and the lists of magazines in the back of The PEN/O. Henry Prize collections and The Best American Short Stories. These lists are put together just for writers, so take advantage of other people's hard work.
I have a dream market. Do you? I mean, besides The New Yorker? I have yet to submit anything to my dream market (and in fact, am not even going to tell you, internet, which it is). But it's on my mind, and I think it helps to have something to strive and look forward to.
I keep a list of "positive rejections." My most recent rejections have all be positive, for the most part. All along the lines of "we enjoyed this, and unfortunately it's not quite right for us, but do send more!" It's small, but it's a something, and by keeping a list I'll know where to send the next story I think might be right. (In the mean time I'll keep reading the magazine in hopes of getting an even better feel for what they might accept.)
I set deadlines. This is especially true for contests, which have hard and fast deadlines anyway. I make an event in my calendar, with a link to the contest page. This way I don't forget about a contest I run across, if I'm not ready to submit to it right away. The downside to entering contests is that they often require a submission fee, but so far I've only entered contests that include a subscription with the contest fee and that have substantial prize money. I will also make deadlines to submit to literary magazines to remind myself when their reading period opens, or so that I don't continually say, "oh, I'll do that next tomorrow/next week/really soon."
Tell me! What do you do?
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 9:02AM
Reader Comments (4)
This all sounds very sensible to me – I think that you're doing all the right things, like researching the markets and making sure your stories are as good as they can be. Now it's just a matter of time and persistence.
Unfortunately I don't really think any lit mags will necessarily lead to fame and riches, even if you're published in every single one. But other good things will happen!
No fame and riches!? Damn. Oh well, on to my next scheme! ;)
Sure sounds to me like you have a good, thorough process. I submitted half-heartedly after my MFA and got discouraged by the rejections...my advice is, don't! Keep going. I heard once that you have to get 100 rejections on a piece before you will get an acceptance, which I actually don't think is true, but it is a nice thing to keep in mind when the rejections come in. So much of acceptances is luck and timing (not yours, necessarily, but the mag's) and the whims of those who happened to read your stuff. In my experience, a careful, thorough submission process will yield results, eventually. Good luck!
You have a good solid plan going!
I still haven't tried Duotrope but I am trying a different spreadsheet format to see if it can, perhaps, keep me more in line.
I make a point when I compile my new list for each year of really focusing on the journals I read and love the most as well as those places that send me those positive rejections :)
Keep going!