#submitting

Make sure to let us know how turned on you get at having us decide how you go out

This hits my submissive heart directly!

It's been months since then, so I didn't think it'd get in. This is a small company I now have a longish association with so I shouldn't be that surprised but I am because I had kind of forgotten about it... which proves that submitting one's work shouldn't be as daunting as it is; afterwards, it's out of your hands, so you may as well forget about it. If you're accepted it's a pleasant surprise, and if you're rejected it's simply forgettable. I don't remember how many times I've had work rejected in various mediums — I rarely submit, so not that much — it's probably somewhat 50/50 rejection/acceptance. But that's just so; it's a coin flip, and nothing personal.

Their job is to read stories not relive trauma because some asshole won’t say “fyi this occurs” in their cover letter. If they wanna read about that traumatic event they can on their own time as a means of processing or whatever but they don’t need to for a fucking job. Content warnings aren’t just about being conscientious, they’re worker solidarity in this case. Not only is it about not being a dick, it also prevents someone from having a worse day at work. To me that’s the win. If I can make it so your job doesn’t suck as much just by giving you a heads up, I’m gonna do it.

Also thorough content warnings aren’t spoilers. Especially in this case. They’re professionals appraising writing for publication. Give them all the details so that the writing gets into the hands of the person best-equipped to enjoy it. You’ll have a better chance at getting published.

I am nearing the very end of a truly staggering number of short story submissions. AI submissions have come, at last, to the magazine for which I am a first reader; we had an increase of more than a thousand submissions this round.

I am tired. I've been doing this for a solid month longer than the outside of the usual time. I've worked my way through hundreds of stories, many of them absolutely appalling. Published authors who think that since they Came Up With the Idea, it's okay to use AI and then just tweak the story in edits (not only is this not okay, it's also generally painfully obvious; writing and editing are two different skillsets and these things are edited BADLY), unpublished authors who think that just letting the computer do it for them is fine...and then the usual raft of a couple of thousand sincere, honest attempts at the gate.

Some of the genuine stories have been good! One or two have been excellent. Some have been good-but-wrong-for-us (why are you sending us historical fiction with no element whatsoever of the fantastical? Why are you sending us Fifties-style westerns? Why are you sending us very non-magical romance? Why are you sending us straight-up porn without plot?). Many have been not good enough, as is usual for any submissions queue.

We're all tired, every one of us submissions editors. We're so beyond ready to be finished with this.

I have eight stories left to read in my own personal queue. And then I can be done and take a rest for a little while.

And it is into THAT frame of mind that comes the first page of the next story on my list.

Top left corner, contact information. Good.

Center of page, title and writer name. Good.

Top right corner, word count: 11,000 words.

And I look at it for just a moment.

I am fucking exhausted. It is my job to approach stories with the very clearest mind I can, as unaltered by outside circumstances as possible, but you want to bet your fucking ass I am not going to do anything but instantly bounce a story that is a thousand words over our top limit.

It feels weird to have to say something so obvious in 2024, but, authors?

Stick to the word limit and other submission criteria for whatever market you're submitting to.

If you're going to push your luck, at least do that at the beginning of a submission period, not the end; the queue fills up chronologically, meaning that if you submit at the end of a two week period it goes to the end of the list. Meaning I, or another submissions editor, will see it when we're the most tired we could possibly be.

If you're thinking "huh, this bitch hasn't posted about the lit mag racket in a while" (which you're probably not thinking because about two people read these posts lol), YES, you're right. It's been just over a year since I published something new. I've been really slow and deliberate about my submissions, aiming higher in terms of where I'm submitting and writing weirder, more taboo work which is a combination that makes the already slow pace of the pub world, uh, even slower. I've been sending out this story for about a year and a half, and I was starting to have a crisis about it because... It felt like if I couldn't find a place for this particular story, I would have to completely rethink this path of continuing to write more fucked up, challenging work except... I don't know how to do that. Because I write what drives me, and this is it.

Maybe that sounds dramatic, but it's just such an odd time right now for dark, weird fiction in general and the sliver of space in the lit fic world for the people who write those kinds of pieces has always been small. Realizing that you've made a turning point in what type of writer you are, what kind of stories you create, and then wondering if there's even a corner of the pub world where you can do that? Kind of shakes your foundation pretty hard.