How I Get Published More in One Hour a Week
Copy my system for sending out essays and short pieces.
People often talk about creative luck, when what they mean is “evidence of hard work.” It’s not lucky that I had a pitch accepted or a story come out in a prestigious outlet. It’s the end result of the invisible work of writing. Or deciding to show up for myself–to take my career seriously and invest in my professional development.
That’s actually so much better than luck because it means you can apply similar strategies when working toward a goal. Here’s my strategy to stay consistent with submitting my work in hopes of getting it published.
How I Stay Consistent With Sending Out Work
When I create a system for something, I tend to follow through with it more often than not. When I rely on whimsy or “being on the mood,” the opposite is true.
Since I’m in control of my own schedule, I create routines for myself. One of these is my submission routine. It used to be looser and more informal–I’d send a piece out to a number of journals, then when a rejection came in I’d send it out again so a piece was always under consideration at five journals.
After hearing about poet Christopher Citro’s strategy, I tweaked my approach. Citro says he spends one hour a week sending out poems, at minimum–a strategy that’s paid off with poems in countless journals. Places you’ve heard of and places you’ve never heard of. Chapbooks, collections, residencies, and so on. All the result of one hour a week compounded with time (if Citro’s on a roll with sending out and wants to keep going, he will).
Now, I’ve adopted Citro’s strategy of spending one hour a week on submissions. That’s one hour a week on:
•researching submission opportunities
•editing and proofreading work
•sending out work
•cataloging submissions in a spreadsheet
It sounds like a lot of work, but a one-hour time frame makes it doable even when time is limited. If you have something ready to go, identify four to five markets, craft a cover letter, send it out, and log your results.
If you aren’t sure what work you have, spend one hour inventorying your files and creating a log of work that’s submittable, in draft, and published. Or track things that have been published, so you can consider reprint markets.
If you don’t know where you can submit, spend the hour looking through curated lists (I’m a fan of Clifford Garstang’s lists), looking at the “Best American” series to see where winning stories were published, browsing calls for submission on Entropy, or Submittable Discover, or Poets and Writers.
Read a few recently published pieces to see if work an outlet publishes is similar to yours. If a journal publishes work that seems like a match, they’re a potential place to query. If a journal publishes work that’s not at all in line with yours, then it’s not a great match and your effort is better focused elsewhere.
Always end by keeping track of what you’ve done. When you log your work, you signal to yourself that you take it seriously, and that you investment of time matters. Tracking potential markets also allows you to pick up where you left off, or identify markets that might be a good match for other writing than what you’re currently sending out.
Things I read and loved this month:
Room Magazine: Lessons for Future Ancestors: Reflections on mentorship with Hiromi Goto - Erica Hiroko Isomura's article on mentorship for queer BIPOC artists, and non-kinship lineage, said so much about what I'm often thinking about. Here's one bit I liked: “‘Being able to witness an older person’s life so closely has been a great reminder of pacing,’ I reply. ‘Because I see how you balance your career and your writing with other parts of life. You don’t take on more than what you are able to. You’re a freelance writer, so you are writing and editing all the time, but you also find time to pursue your interests, like photography, and cultivate relationships, whether with your partner, your adult children, community, or nature.’”
The Creative Independent: How to Apply for Grants - One of the best primers I've seen about how to apply for grants to support your work, including what makes a competitive grant application.
My latest piece:
Eater: It Took Leaving the Restaurant Industry for Me to Understand How Wrong I Was to Stay Silent About Its Abuses - I've been working on this piece since September(!). Thanks to Eater for publishing my take on the complicated reasons restaurant workers stay silent about toxic work cultures and some ways we might make the industry a fairer place to work.
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Every two weeks, I answer your questions about the writing life and making it work for you. Want yours answered? Email lindsey.danis[at]gmail.com.
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