Submissions

I keep track of my submissions in a handy Excel file. I have the story, the journal I've submitted it to, when I submitted it, any other notes, and the date it's rejected or accepted. I think something along these lines is a must for anybody who is seriously trying to get published. It's easy enough to keep track of submissions this way, and I can quickly glance at it to see how many pieces I have currently making the rounds.

Right now, I have two stories that I'm sending out to journals. One I've been submitting for a few years. The other I've been submitting for less time. Both of these pieces have received personal responses from readers at various journals, ranging from the somewhat generic "the writing is good, but this isn't right for us right now" to more detailed critiques with explanations for why the journal doesn't want the piece. Both of these stories have undergone substantial revisions over a period of years, and both are, I feel, in pretty solid shape. Yet both also are still being submitted because they have not been accepted anywhere.

Ordinarily, I like to have each piece at about ten places. When I get a few rejections, I resubmit to a few more places so I have a steady flow of submissions and responses coming and going. But lately, I've been really bad about sending out new submissions. The rejections keep coming in every so often, and without new copies going out, my overall submission numbers keep going down. I got a rejection the other day, and when I logged it in the file, I noticed that I'm down to only a few places still considering my work.

It occurred to me, obviously, that I should send out a new batch of envelopes, but I didn't. Sometimes when I've received several rejections in a row, I think it's probably a good idea to review my work again and see if I might want to revise further. I think that's a good idea right now, since it's been several months with the current drafts, and still nobody has accepted these stories. But there's another reason I'm delaying submitting right now, and that has to do with the uncertainty of my future.

I don't know where I'll be living a few months from now. I might be in the same place I am now, or I might be living on the other side of the country. Of course, the post office can forward mail, and there are e-mails as well, but I still think it's easier to submit work with an accurate address. Plus, there are a lot of places that shut down or slow down during the summer months since they are affiliated with schools. So until I know where I'm going to be, I've decided not to submit anything new.

This is a practical decision, but it also has the benefit of allowing me time to go back over my pieces once more and do that additional revision. Clearly, the current drafts are not quite doing it, despite the positive feedback I've already received. So maybe more dramatic changes are in order. For instance, one story has a protagonist who is an English teacher. I've been thinking that perhaps this detail might work against the story's success since many writers are also English teachers, and it's likely that a lot of stories are written by wannabe writers featuring English teacher characters. So maybe making the character another type of teacher would help. He could be a physics teacher, perhaps, or a math teacher. And maybe something as small as that change could lift the story out of the slush where it's spent so much time in the past few years.

Waiting a few months to send out a new big batch of submissions also means that when I start submitting again next fall, I will (I hope) have a new piece or two to send out along with the old pieces. Unfortunately, I've really been slacking the past few months. I had great plans for this semester. I'm teaching four classes, which is a lot, but this is the first time since I've been adjuncting when I didn't have a second job on top of my teaching, so I figured I'd have plenty of extra writing time. I did make some decent use of that time early in the semester. I wrote regularly and made some decent progress on a short story rewrite. Then I left the story behind to work on a writing sample from my novel for a fellowship application. But then by the time I was ready to get back to the story, I was in the midst of the job application process, having been contacted about interviews.

I can't honestly say that preparing for interviews and going through the interview process took all of my extra time, but the anxiety surrounding those interviews sucked a lot of my energy and left with little ability to concentrate the past several weeks. So, basically, I've barely done any writing since February. But my hope is that in a few weeks, I'll know whether I've got a job lined up for the fall, and I can either plan a move or settle back into the life I've been living the past couple of years. And at that point, when the nerves have settled down, I'll return to that story that I haven't touched in weeks. And maybe by September, it will be ready to send out.