Different Approaches to Submitting

So, this article, "8 Reasons Why Your Submission Strategy Sucks" is a really great one, because it outlines a bunch of reasons why writers either don't succeed at all or get fed up, frustrated, and walk away from things.

In my humble opinion, there are a lot of ways to do things wrong when trying to submit your work for publication, and the article outlines them pretty clearly, but there's also more than one way to do things "right."

First thing to do is decide what your objective is.

My submission strategy has been somewhat "firehose": I do take time to make sure I'm submitting to places that might be a proper fit for my work, but I don't hold myself back and I don't pass on submitting to a small journal that might be easier to get into than a bigger one with more prestige that might not accept me.

Now this doesn't mean that I don't ever submit to those top-tier journals. But my submission to a small indie journal got me published for the first time in my adult life, and got me nominated for a sci-fi poetry award, the Rhysling, where I appear in the anthology's table of contents a few notches down from Neil Gaiman. Kind of a thrill.

This submission strategy also got me a publishing deal for my first novel, which is coming out with a small indie publisher this fall. Is it Random House? Did I get a huge advance? No. But I've got something. And it makes handling the rejections from these upper tier publications easier when I have other places taking my work and have people responding to it.

My objective is to get my work out there and see evidence in my life that I'm writing things that matter to people. That approach is getting me there.

I have a good friend who is also a writer, and has implemented an entirely different strategy. She has put herself into a Master's program where successful mentors review her work, and she's taken the long and painful path of submitting to the top, most difficult to get into journals first, and working her way down. She has been taking heart when the rejection letters come with personalized notes. She has continued to refine and submit, refine and submit. I watched her do this for quite a while, a year at least, but probably more like two. When she finally did get her short story published, it was in a far more prestigious journal than anything I've managed to get my toe into yet.

Her objective has to do with creating a particular career path for herself and aiming a for literary respectability that I'm honestly not sure I have the patience, talent or toughness to even try to follow. Neither approach is wrong, so long as it's meeting our particular objectives, which they are in both cases.

All that being said, to summarize the wonderful article at the top, once you know what you want to get out of it, keep these things in mind:

1. Don't sit on your writing forever. It's not going to submit itself.

2. Don't send it out prematurely. Sit with it a little, polish it.

3. Don't aim too high and then give up because you get rejected.

4. Believe editors when they say "please feel free to submit again."

5. Don't give up on the top-drawer pubs. Keep trying.

6. Choose appropriate publications who are likely to be a fit for your work.

7. Make lots of submissions.

8. Follow up on opportunities.

And I would add one last thing:

Know yourself. Know what kind of writer you are, embrace and love that. Always try to be the best version of that. Don't try to push yourself into a category that you think you should be in, or that you want to be in because you think you'd be more successful. Be your best you, and let that find its audience.