Committed but Realistic: Wisdom Gleaned from Twenty Years of Publishing

Experienced submitter shares strategies for getting acceptances from lit mags

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 Erica Goss

My goals as a writer are simple: 1) Write. 2) Publish. 3) Repeat.

For me, publishing completes the act of writing. I wish I could publish everything I write, but of course, that’s not possible. I’m happy to have at least some of my literary output shared with the public, and I’m grateful to every editor who saw enough in my work to publish it.

Sending out your work: must you pay to play?

I started sending my written work to journals in the early 2000s, years before Submittable, before most journals had websites, on-line versions of their printed magazines, or accepted email submissions. Back then, the process was simple: print the essay or poems, add a cover letter and a stamped, self-addressed envelope (the SASE of yore), stuff the whole thing into another envelope and mail.