3 Ways to Get Started: Lit Mag Advice for Newbies, From a Newbie

Writer new to submitting shares insights and experience

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors all over the world.

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By Lily Anderson

“[Author Name]’s work can be found in…”

Author bios from sites like this to the backs of novels are often full of listed publications, which, when I read them, can contribute to a suffocating web of self-doubt. This industry can be absolutely overwhelming, and the “you’ve gotta start somewhere!” mantra is wildly unhelpful when you have no idea where to start. Where can my work be found? Where do I want it to be found? I have short fiction, poems, and essays to share, but where do I even begin?  

As a young writer fresh out of undergrad with no MFA lined up, I quickly began crafting my own web of insecurity. I had work I wanted to see published, work I thought was good, but had no idea how to do so. The poorly crafted Instagram posts seen by four people weren’t seeming to cut it.

Most of the podcasts I listened to and things I read provided advice on the writing process, on navigating agents, and on getting your book sold, but when it came to publishing short fiction, poetry, and submitting to contests, I found very little.

How was I supposed to share my short fiction, build a network, and (hopefully) get paid with absolutely no connections? 

Lit mags, in all their glory, ended up serving as my entrance to the world of published writing. Perhaps more importantly, though, the countless submissions, the seemingly endless rejections, and the handful of acceptances have all contributed to building my confidence as a young writer.

Over the past eight months, I have spent about an hour a week researching literary magazines and submitting pieces of my writing. The three tips below illustrate a process I have found to be efficient and beneficial in building your publication list as a young writer. In a way, I am addressing this article to myself eight months ago – it is chock-full of the things I wish I had known right away.

1. INDIE MAGS, BABY!

As many of us do, I often find myself romanticizing the idea of being a real writer, whatever that means, more than I should. This was particularly counter-productive when I first started submitting to literary magazines, as time carved out for sending out my work was spent daydreaming about the inevitable, glorious acceptance email from The New Yorker I was waiting on.

Spoiler alert – still haven’t heard back from them.

This is not to say you shouldn’t submit to the large, established publications you love and daydream about. You definitely still should! However, don’t be like me and rule out smaller, independent magazines just because they don’t fit your aesthetic, daydreamed direction. I wanted my resumé to contain only the flashiest of flashy publications, but I soon realized the magic in many, many indie mags.

There are many pros to submitting to smaller publications. In my experience, the response time is often faster, and the editors engage with your work kindly and constructively. I have found them to not only accept, but encourage unpublished and young writers. The anxiety-inducing “her writing appears in” has yet to be a barrier! There is such a wide variety of magazines, from genre-specific ones (fantasy, romance, horror, etc.) to those that publish anything and everything.

I utilize Duotrope to find these magical independent gems. For $5 a month, you have access to quite an impressive database full of magazines accepting submissions. Duotrope’s filtering abilities make it very simple – you can weed publications out by their payment status, if they accept simultaneous submissions, what genres they like, and oh so many more. I typically utilize three or four filters when I am searching and go through the massive list alphabetically. After over one hundred submissions, I have barely scratched the “E”s.

2. CONTESTS (through lit mags)!

Many literary magazines run contests in conjunction with their typical publications. They exist for everything from a poem to a short story to an essay, and there is often some serious money involved. I have personally enjoyed submitting flash fiction. Some are general and have very loose requirements, while others have specific, often ridiculously zany, prompts. I have seen everything from a 10-word story to a poem about a pendulum.

While it is unlikely you will already have something written that fits the wackier requirements, these prompts can be great creative constraints. Plus, you can always submit what you write to other publications if you are rejected.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fantastic blogger Erica Verrillo of “Curiosity Never Killed the Writer,” who links free contests, magazines accepting submissions, and many more resources in her posts. She does this in an accessible, organized manner that I look forward to every single month.

3. SPREADSHEET IT!

Staying organized throughout this process is crucial. Months often pass between the time you submitted your piece and when you hear back from the magazine. If you are accepted, add another few months for it to be published. If you are submitting to roughly twenty magazines a month, it can become quite challenging to stay on top of everything without some sort of system.

The spreadsheet I use – a basic Microsoft Excel document – helps me stay on top of things. I note the date, magazine name, piece, and whether or not I should return to it later for every single submission. When I am accepted or rejected, I mark that down, too.

My spreadsheet also helps me notify magazines when a piece I submitted has been accepted elsewhere. Most publications require you to indicate if your piece is a simultaneous submission, or if you are submitting it elsewhere. Sending a quick email to withdraw your piece, or removing it yourself if the magazine has some form of submissions portal, is a kindness (and a mandate, in many cases), that I have been told makes editors’ lives much easier. The great people who staff the magazines I submit to have certainly appreciated when I do this. Once, when I told a magazine my piece had been accepted elsewhere they emailed and asked for more of my writing, and ended up accepting something else. You never know.

The world of literary magazines can be ridiculously intimidating, but the payoffs (financial, emotional, and professional) make every little action taken worth it.

Like most things in life, having people to talk to, share contests and cool magazines with, and share creative work has been such a blessing in this crazy world of publication. I am active on a Discord server called “the word garden,” which I encourage absolutely everyone who enjoys writing to join. Publication resources, contests, challenges, and just about anything writing-related is discussed and nurtured there.

Wonderful magazines and communities like “the word garden” hold my hand as I come closer and closer to feeling like a real author. The ever daunting author bio still induces a bit of anxiety in me. But, utilizing the advice I laid out here, I no longer have a blank space after “her work can be found in…”

It can be so easy, at least for me, to stew in my own creativity and fixate on the idea that nobody may ever read my words. Independent lit mags have yanked me away from that web of insecurity.

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Lilia Snowfield Anderson was named after a great-uncle she never met. Bartending shifts consume her nights, her debut novel draft consumes her days, and sitcom re-runs consume the in-between times. She lives in a small, Minnesota lake town, accompanied by the magically real. Her fiction can be found in The Marrs Field Journal, Blink Ink, and The Agapanthus Collective.