How to Get Out of Your Own Way on the Road to Publication
"Are you sabotaging yourself?"
Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.
Writers on the road to publication in literary magazines — whether short stories, poems or nonfiction pieces — know the process can be fraught with obstacles. What many writers don’t realize is that they themselves may be one of those obstacles.
Are you one of them?
If you are submitting your unproofed work to journals you are. If you are submitting your work without following their guidelines you are.
While many writers have a great deal of experience submitting, sometimes guidelines can feel annoying, complicated or downright random. But if a journal is asking for something, most likely they have a good reason, and, generally, most guidelines are reasonable.
If you are submitting work right now, do yourself a favor: read those guidelines and make sure you are following them. Additionally, it bears reminding how important it is to proofread your work before submitting to ensure you are giving yourself the best shot at having your work accepted.
As a fiction assistant for a community college literary magazine, I give first reads to submissions and recommend top choices for further consideration. And my role has confirmed what I already knew: guidelines matter and proofreading matters.
Unfortunately, many would-be-published authors haven’t gotten the memo. Or if they did, they might believe they will be an exception to the guidelines or proofreading rules. They aren’t. Their work probably won’t even get read.
The reality is that if guidelines say failure to follow those guidelines will result in a manuscript going unread, it’s a safe bet that it is a true statement. The most recent batch of submissions I received contained at least half that failed to follow guidelines. I didn’t read them. Not a word.
I also rejected a few manuscripts that went over the maximum word count, and I rejected some after reading only three or four pages because they were clearly rough drafts. Rough drafts should never be submitted.
So the three most common offenses that result in me rejecting a short story are improper manuscript format, exceeding the maximum word count and lack of proofreading. Avoiding these issues are all things within the author’s control, within your control.
The sad part is there are enough obstacles for writers who want to get published without them sabotaging their own chances. Are you sabotaging yourself? Maybe it’s time to get out of your own way and give yourself an honest chance.
The reality is that if guidelines say failure to follow those guidelines will result in a manuscript going unread, it’s a safe bet that it is a true statement.
READ GUIDELINES CAREFULLY
This might seem obvious, but it bears repeating: read and follow the guidelines for any literary magazine you submit to. Some literary journals might stipulate that they are not strict about certain parts of their guidelines, and you have some leeway in those cases. But unless a literary magazine’s guidelines specifically state this, do not veer from them.
Guidelines also vary from magazine to magazine. What is acceptable at one journal might be cause for automatic rejection at another. This might mean you make a few modifications to your manuscript. In some cases you might be asked to remove all identifying information from your submission because their magazine reads “blind.” That means they want to base their acceptances on the work itself and not be influenced by names, in case a submission comes from a known author.
Whatever the case, most guidelines are pretty easy to follow. But if you have any questions about a particular guideline at the magazine to which you are submitting, check to see if there is contact information to ask someone about it. Most magazines will list such a contact.
FORMAT YOUR MANUSCRIPT ACCORDINGLY
For the magazine at which I’m a fiction assistant, the guidelines address various points regarding formatting. They say submissions must be in a Word-compatible file and that “PDFs will not be read.”
Guess what? Four of the submissions I received to read in my last batch were PDFs. I did not read them.
Additionally, our guidelines state submissions must be double spaced, which is standard formatting for short stories. “Single spaced entries will not be read” our guidelines state.
Guess what? Some of the submissions I received were single-spaced. They were not read.
Standard short story formatting is pretty straightforward. In fact, a website established by author William Shunn is often referenced to guide writers in the process of formatting their short story manuscripts. It also includes examples for formatting poetry and novel manuscripts.
Again, each literary journal maintains their own guidelines so make sure to read and follow those for submissions to that magazine. Don’t assume all guidelines are the same for all literary journals.
PROOFREAD BEFORE SUBMITTING
It might be tempting to send off your manuscript once you write “The End” on the final page. You are excited about your creation. You just know it will be accepted.
But don’t allow your eagerness to cloud your judgment. Proofread your manuscript carefully before setting it loose upon the world.
You might be surprised at the errors you have missed. You might find misspelled words, but sometimes you’ll find words that have been omitted. In the worst cases, you might find entire portions of sentences are missing or cut-and-pasted somewhere else in addition to finding numerous grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. (Yes, such manuscripts have shown up in my to-read batches. No, I did not finish reading them.)
Does this mean your manuscript must be absolutely flawless? No.
A grammatical error or two in the entire manuscript will not merit an automatic rejection from me. Mistakes happen, and sometimes they slip by us.
But if multiple errors appear on every page, this becomes a distraction from your story. And that’s something no writer should want. It’s something that eventually will make me stop reading a manuscript and reject it, in most instances. In the rare case that I read your story completely despite numerous errors, such a manuscript generally gets a lot of points knocked off. This means other submissions without a multitude of errors have an edge over yours.
STAY WITHIN WORD COUNT
So you’re looking at a journal that seems like it’s a good fit for your 5,500-word story. You noticed in the magazine’s guideline that they have a strict word count limit of 5,000, but you submit your manuscript anyway because you figure an extra 500 words isn’t going to matter much.
Wrong. Your story is rejected. It probably didn’t get read.
I’ve rejected — without reading — all submissions that don’t fall within our specified word count range. I typically check word count first to determine if I will read a manuscript.
The Managing Editor often reminds the assistants to refer to the guidelines when considering a submission. If your work doesn’t fit our guidelines, you are disqualifying yourself and your work right off the bat.
LAST THOUGHTS
Obviously, all literary journals are different, and each has its own policies about their guidelines and other manuscript issues. This article was not written as the be-all, end-all about such things.
As mentioned previously, some magazines will state that certain guidelines are not strictly enforced. In those cases, I’ve noticed this often pertains to word counts. They might specify a maximum and qualify it by saying longer works might be considered but would have to earn their length.
But, as a lifelong writer who has submitted work for close to 50 years and a fiction assistant of more than a decade, I’ve learned that many, if not most, literary magazines have neither the time nor the manpower to consider manuscripts that don’t bother to adhere to their guidelines. The same goes for submissions that appear to be rough drafts.
There are enough other reasons your manuscript might be rejected, even when you follow guidelines and proofread your submissions. Readers’ and editors’ tastes are subjective. The journal might have recently published a story similar to yours. The high quality of submissions the journal receives might make breaking into the upper ranks difficult at best.
The point is this: if you don’t follow guidelines and present a well-proofed manuscript, you are likely taking yourself out of the running before it even starts. You are your own obstacle to publication.
So, does following guidelines and proofing all your submissions guarantee you will be published? Of course not. But your odds of having your work accepted will increase. And what writer aspiring to publication doesn’t want that?
Best way to succeed with literary submissions is: keep a daily writer diary. Track where your acceptances have landed, which "rejection notes" also included encouragement & personal notes. Also pay attention to which journals ask you to wait one year (or even two) before you submit there again.
And, as Robert Villanueva emphasized, read the guidelines.
Actually, I prefer you do NOT follow directions; your mistakes improve my acceptances. (big smile)
This article brings to mind students who refuse to follow assignment guidelines and then complain when they get a poor grade. I don't get it . . . .