Submit
Submit
verb
1. Subject oneself to a particular process.
2. Yield to the authority of another.
By all means, submit your short stories to literary magazines for possible publication. If you don’t have a line in the water, you won’t catch fish.
Once you’ve committed to subjecting yourself to the publication process, definitely submit to the authority of said magazines.
Maybe you believe you’ve written the greatest short story ever penned.
Better than “The Lottery,” better than “A Good Man is Hard To Find,” better than “The Semplica Girl Diaries” (IYKYK, if you don’t, turn off this device and read “The Semplica Girl Diaries” now.)
By all means submit your work for consideration and stick to your guns.
Do it in waves. Check the submission calendar*, line up ten magazines that you feel would offer your baby a good home, then submit, submit, submit.
You’ll get rejected by three, four, five of them in short order. Reliably. The best publications take less than 1% of whatever chokes their inboxes. And your story takes chances, so some rejections are to be expected—how can it be the best if you’re not swinging for the fences, right?
Babe Ruth struck out nearly twice as often as he hit homers.
But then a sixth, a seventh, an eighth rejection knocks you sideways.
Okay, maybe a good idea to get more submissions out so your submittable queue isn’t bone dry. Another ten, tout suite!
Your ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth rejection arrives.
Oy vey is mir.
And these are form rejections.
Not one “while this work isn’t right for our next issue, please consider submitting to us again”?
Not one “our editorial team delighted in your visionary world-building”?
Thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth…
Submitting for publication in a literary magazine is an act of faith. Every submission you put out there is a message in a bottle cast into raging sea of indifference.
You’re betting that, against all odds, the tides will carry that bottle to the feet of a person who is so moved by your story’s theme, who so clearly sees themself in a character, who has such an irrefutable taste for your freaky brand of exposition that they’ll feel compelled to lift the work up.
Once you’ve found that person (or rather, once they’ve found you), you’ve got an advocate. Usually a reader—often someone that has volunteered their time to the magazine—who will champion your story.
But that’s only the first hurdle.
Your reader-advocate may get you into the short stack of stories that reach the magazine’s editorial team. But each of the stories in that stack has an advocate of their own. Now you need more advocates in this smaller and more discerning room.
And we haven’t even gotten to the short, short stack of finalists for any given issue.
After your thirtieth (fortieth? fiftieth? two-hundred-and-thirty-seven-ieth?) rejection with no encouraging feedback, it’s time to cut a big slice of humble pie and submit, by diving back into the work.
What is it about your fantastic, ground-breaking story that isn’t working?
Well, what do your critique group colleagues have to say about it?
You’re not in a critique group? Well, you’ve got to get that going (right after you’ve read “The Semplica Girl Diaries.”)
And don’t immediately dismiss any of the feedback you get. The critique group member you respect the least could be the one who lays pearls of wisdom about INSERT BROKEN STORY ISSUE HERE at your feet.
Very often it’s simply taking the feedback that three of the seven members in your group bring up independently, like some annoying Greek chorus.
You’ll know the best feedback when you hear it because one of three things will happen:
· You’ll think yeah, I kinda knew that all along but couldn’t bring myself to admit it.
· You’ll disagree vehemently, but lie awake that night mulling the note over and damning the message-giver to a blast-furnace hell.
· You’ll immediately submit.
A good rule of thumb: when you get three rejections that still manage to laud the work (hooray! A personalized rejection!), it’s a distinct possibility that an acceptance is in your future. So keep submitting.
And maybe, just maybe, you’ll get visited by the writer’s unicorn; an invitation from a magazine to make revisions to your story, based on their notes, for further consideration. This isn’t a promise to publish. It’s actually something better—a chance to work with editors who are already in your corner.
It’s also a chance to hone a skill that many writers never get near; one that teaches you how to build a professional relationship based on your ability to take criticism with grace, to work to a deadline, to consider the possibility that your story isn’t the staggering work of genius you think it is.
In other words, a chance to submit.
* there really isn’t a submission calendar, but here’s something close to it—subscribe to Short Story Shoutout! You’ll get introduced to one great, recently-published short story a week, along with info about the submission-window for the magazine that published it.
If the charms of that story align with your taste and skills, maybe that magazine is one you should target for submission. Maybe you’ll be introduced to a writer you’ll want to follow. Maybe neither of those things will happen, but at least the experience will be teed up for you and delivered to your doorstep…saving you valuable writing time.
That about sums it up...and so well, Frank.