Years ago, when I first started submitting my work to various literary journals, I was a nervous wreck. I would write something, change it a hundred times, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. I was always pushing that last-minute deadline—sometimes submitting my stuff literally at the last second.
I write in many different genres and have been published in several well-respected journals. I have written multiple books, including fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Several years ago, I started using the online submission program, Submittable (which WAG’s journal, Bacopa Literary Review, uses for submissions).
Submittable is easy to use and provides a way to keep track of the many stories, poems, and pieces of nonfiction you submit. You can download your files and your lists of all submissions and access them anytime you want.
Admittedly, I’m one of those chronically late people. My friends tell me the time of an upcoming event is a half hour earlier than it actually starts, so I’ll make it there on time. My relatives send me texts: “Are you on your way?” “Where are you now?”
But what the heck, who doesn’t want to make sure their writing is perfect before they submit? Right? Keep editing, keep changing, keep going till that last minute.
Or at least, that’s what I thought until—until a very strange situation occurred. I received the weirdest rejection I have ever seen.
“Dear Ms. Thornton, thank you for your incredible piece. We really loved it. Please consider submitting again.”
Okay, that was a rejection? Huh? What the heck? I couldn’t understand—if they loved my work so much—why did they reject it with such positive responses. If they liked it so much, why didn’t they accept it?
And then the journal came out. I obtained a copy and read through all the fiction pieces to see what the editors accepted rather than my piece, a piece they said they loved. And I was shocked.
One of the published pieces was so close to what I had written that we could have used the same description for each story. Yes, the other author wrote about a different environment, and the details of the characters’ lives were different from the story I wrote. But basically, we had both written about a family conflict that finally got resolved at the end of the story. In a very similar way.
I couldn’t believe it. Why did they accept the story they published instead of mine? I was convinced my details were more specific, that my characters were more realistic, and my story was better written. After all, I’d spent every spare minute up to the deadline working to correct every little comma, every tiny error, every—
Wait a minute … Submitting at the very last minute? Right up to the deadline? Was it possible the editors of that journal accepted the piece by that other writer before I even submitted my work?
Of course it was possible. So, I started submitting my pieces earlier and earlier. It was so hard to let my babies go, though, knowing that I could take more time to make them more perfect.
My ongoing joke when I open up a file I’m still working on is,
“Who broke into my computer and wrote this crap?”
But let’s face it. Most of us writers are never, ever going to be satisfied with our work.
I’m an editor, too. I always ask the people whose books I’m editing if they want me to send their work back chapter by chapter or send the whole thing all at once. I can’t tell you how many times my clients have sent basically the same response back to me:
“I never want to see the darn thing again.”
Okay, so we joke. But it’s true, we’re usually a little obsessive about our work, and even after we’ve submitted it, we feel that we could have done better. We could have made it more perfect.
The thing is, another writer may be sending something similar, and that piece might get accepted before your work even gets out the door.
Now, I’m not saying be irresponsible. Let’s face it, editors might reject it. But if not, and something you wrote gets published with a lot of mistakes in it, you’ll never hear the end of it. Your fellow writers will log in laughing.
Do you want to become famous after you die? Well, go ahead and delay sending your work out. After all, a lot of writers got famous after they died: Franz Kafka, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, John Keats, Herman Melville, and Zora Neale Hurston, to name a few (https://blog.bookbaby.com/infographic/famous-authors-infographic).
But if you’d like to see your work published, enjoy the acclaim, and show it off, then get it ready early. Clean it up as much as you can and let it go.
Our WAG literary journal, Bacopa, is open for submissions now, with a deadline of April 30 (https://writersallianceofgainesville.submittable.com/submit).
So, procrastinators, don’t wait.
Knock it out of the ballpark!
Click “send” now!
Davis McGlathery
Well-written and so true for other art forms also! Good work, Wendy!
Ed Baranosky
Of course you’re right. I had similar experiences, a rave review from a poetry editor (full manuscript), but rejected without other comment. Additionally I knew the man, that he was staff editor for four different publishers at once, so
He saved me some stamps (before I was online)–but also eliminated those
four venues.
A few other points. When you do get published in a journal, no other will take the same work. Then Manuscript guidelines indicate that maybe 20% of a book should be published in journals, but reputable ones. If too much
work has been accepted, then they don’t want it either.
Also, timelines are skewed for editors. I had one acceptance in two days. It
made me so nervous, I withdrew it. It turns out to have been an ego trap.
They hadn’t read it. Some are so exclusive that it probably would be years to get a guaranteed rejection. An English professor, retired, got a rejection forty years after his submission. That was from The New Yorker.
I have had over five hundred submissions in two years, thirty acceptances,
a few reputable, two outright scams (if I wanted to see them, I’d have to buy it, let alone submission fees, so they’re lost to me).
Also a visual artist, I’ve noticed a number of galleries are run by the
insensitive and uncaring, visually illiterate–with similar attitudes. No wonder people self-publish.
The danger in sending something out isn’t just a question of balance, but of fitting in. A lot of rules, then “be creative.” Right. Hypocrisy is blind as well as ignorant
My work is as good as, and often better, but largely unread. It’s still a question of “who do you know?” “What grants (cash) have you obtained?”
“Are you well known?”
Never “how good is the work?”
Heinlien’s rules for writers are still relevant. One of which is “Never edit
except on a publisher’s request.” Good point. I knew someone who rewrote the first chapter of a novel fifteen times, without going forward…
Anyway, that’s life as I’ve seen it.
Ed Baranosky
Kathy Dobronyi
Thank you for writing this, Wendy. It’s full of gentle reminders addressing the art of picyunish procrastination and perfection.