Tag: submitting work

Completing work: the submission process.

May 7th, 2013

Work never sent out is never finished. Hidden from the world it remains safely (and sadly) on the writer’s shelf. – Priscilla Long

I wrote recently that I altered my writing practice one morning – I sat by a window and penned thoughts on paper rather than staring into a pixelated screen and clacking keys on a keyboard – and the shift electrified me. It shuffled my synapses and portended a heightened level of productivity.

Since that day, I shifted my focus to not just producing more and more new work, but to doing something with all the words I’ve already written. I bought a copy of the 2013 Writer’s Market and devoured the first 180 pages in one sitting. I learned about query and cover letters, how to format a manuscript, how to negotiate contracts, track submissions, build an author platform, use LinkedIn. Then I scanned 400 pages of submission guidelines for consumer magazines, trade journals, and writing contests, highlighted titles that my work might fit, and marked pages with paper clips.

I browsed our library’s periodicals and checked out back issues of magazines to familiarize myself with the work they print. I ordered introductory issues to The Sun and Creative Nonfiction, journals our library doesn’t carry. I studied content on online journals like Brevity, who publishes brief, concise literary nonfiction (less than 750 words) and is happy to work with budding authors.

Then? I began the work of submitting. And have reaped the heightened level of productivity my pen and ink session activated. In the past two weeks I have submitted five manuscripts to online and print magazines, two to my critique group, and one to a blog I follow. And I’ve got four more queued up.

Meanwhile, I check email obsessively, wondering about a manuscript I sent out nearly 6 weeks ago. Waiting for the note that says, “We’d like to publish your work.” To my surprise, the first email I received was not about that 6-week old submission. It was about a piece I sent barely a week ago.

And it was a rejection. I received my first rejection this morning. I felt strangely calm about it as I entered today’s date in the “date returned” column of my submission spreadsheet. Maybe because I’ve known all along that this is part of the process. Writers probably write as much about rejection as they do about writer’s block, and before I began my submission process, I read a particularly entertaining piece by Alexis Paige on The Rumpus – Rejection Sucks and Then You Die: How to Take a Dear Sad Sack Letter (and Shove it). Paige, and every writer I’ve ever read, talked to, shared a critique room with, has prepared me for this first of what will be many rejections.

So though my heart flutters with every new email I receive, now dreading the next “So sorry,” rather than anticipating the “Congratulations” I originally hoped for, I will keep submitting. Today, I will buy envelopes so that I can mail a manuscript to a publication that does not accept submissions online or by email. I will continue through my queue.

I will complete my work.
From Posts to “Pieces”

April 14th, 2013

Lord, I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into. I started attending a critique group, and for the past few sessions, I’ve been perfectly content to read other writer’s work and give them what I hope is helpful feedback. But when the organizer emailed a call for submissions for next month’s meeting, I impulsively hit reply and said, “I’ll do it!” Do I have something for them to read? No.

A good friend wrote last week, “I have been reading a lot about writing recently. Specifically, I am curious about the writer’s process as I am developing one of my own.” As I attempt to come up with a piece worthy of my critique group’s time, I’ve thought a lot about her statement, reflecting on my own process. I set an alarm for 6am during the week, getting up to write while the rest of the house sleeps. But that’s not really a process, that’s just a schedule, right?

During times of deadlines, my process is one of avoidance. I have dozens of “big ideas” jotted down in Evernote, on post-its, on the lines of my navy blue Moleskine – five or six word phrases like “I am an unreliable narrator,” or “Notes under my pillow for God.” My phone is full of voice memos for those pieces. But when I think about sitting down and trying to put it all together? I procrastinate. I delay. I use my writing time to blurt out blog posts. Like right now.

A local friend and I trade critiques sometimes. We email our work to each other, then meet for lunch or coffee and trade feedback. Lesley’s advice is instrumental in my growth as a writer (as I hope mine is to hers), and thanks to one of her critiques, I tightened up a piece that was ultimately accepted. This past week, after reading the work I gave her, she told me, “I love your voice.” But the piece still needs a lot of work.

That’s where I get stuck as a writer. My voice comes through in my blurts, in my blog posts, in my “shitty first drafts,” as Anne Lamott calls them. When I start polishing, though, when I cobble together the voice memos, and the scattered notes, and rearrange and cut and organize, I don’t know how to keep my voice. The writing feels forced. “That’s why I loved Wild,” I told Lesley. “Strayed’s writing is raw, like when I blurt, yet it’s also refined. Somehow she keeps her voice through all the polishing.”

It’s a tricky transition, this progression from posts to pieces. From self-publishing on a blog to submitting for review by others. But reading about writing and setting an alarm clock, meeting deadlines for your critique group and maintaining your raw voice while refining your words, I guess those are all part of the process.

Tag: submitting work

Completing work: the submission process.

From Posts to “Pieces”