Ten Ways I Found Homes for My Work (And Became a Better Writer)
"Whatever method you have of submitting may be comfortable, but that doesn’t make it the most effective."
Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.
1. I Dove Head-first Into Chill Subs.
I can’t say enough good things about Chill Subs. Picture this. It was the Year of Our Lord 2022, and though I had earned my MFA from West Virginia University in 2009, I was a largely unknown struggling writer with only about 25 short fiction publications to my name and no book. While I realize that this wasn’t a terrible end of the world Hunger-Games-type tragedy, I also knew that I, like the dreaming heroine in the Lady Gaga film A Star is Born, wanted something more. Somehow, somewhere, some way I wanted to be in those publications that I had been submitting to over and over again for years, and I also wanted to find other publications that might appreciate my particular brand of wild, weird, what-on-earth writing.
I don’t know how or where I first discovered Chill Subs. It may have been, and it most likely was, through Twitter (now X), which is still, despite all the turmoil and the mass firings and resignations, my favorite social media platform. (More on that later.) While Duotrope is like the elder statesman of submission systems and very useful for many things like finding out where people who had work published in a specific journal are submitting and publishing their other work, or what a journal’s typical response time is, and if that journal is still publishing at all, Chill Subs was the new kid on the block, and they opened up a whole new world.
For example, one innovative feature that Chill Subs offers is that it allows readers to search by “vibe.” One of my favorite vibes to search for is Weird / outsider / wtf even is it because well, let’s face it, I sometimes write weird things. Searching by that feature allowed me to find magazines such as Black Moon Magazine, which published my werewolf-human love story in Issue 8. Trust me when I say that that wasn’t the easier story to place.
2. I Read Literary Journals: If They Rejected My Work, I Read Them Again and Sent Them Something Different
This might sound like an obvious tip, but there were some journals that I had been submitting to over and over again and in some cases getting encouraging rejections from for over ten years but still not crossing that hurdle from almost to yes, girl, yes, and I wanted to figure out what I might be potentially doing wrong. How, I wondered, could I go from almost there to accepted?
During this time, I learned to go back and look at the journals more carefully so I could stop doing (or least do less often) not the best move things like submitting non-eclipse themed writing to an eclipse themed issue. (And, yes, I actually made this mistake recently. But surely I wasn’t the only one, right?) If I was submitting really long stories, I realized maybe I should try something shorter. After all, many things are moving to shorter, bite sized, consume on your smart phone type stories. Hence the popularity of flash fiction.
Or, since I write in multiple genres, primarily in fiction and poetry, I could try a different genre. For example, North Dakota Quarterly has never published (and likely will never publish) any of my fiction, but I sent them several poems last year, and to my surprise and quite honestly shock, two were accepted. You can read them here, if you want to prove I’m not lying.
How, I wondered, could I go from almost there to accepted?
3. I Attended a Carefully Chosen Conference with a Particular Goal in Mind
Not all writing conferences have to be Bread Loaf. Or Sewanee. In fact, for the purposes of what I’m advising here, it might be better if it’s not. What I’m saying is to find a conference that is affordable and do-able for your work schedule. (And yes, some of us, like me, don’t currently work in academia. So summer doesn’t necessarily work best for everyone, and it may not work best for you.)
Conferences don’t all have to be use all your PTO and your life savings to attend experiences, though I’m still dreaming of attending both Sewanee and Bread Loaf someday. Those exclusive highly selective conferences can open different doors. But for our purposes here, the conference does not have to be competitive and selective at all. It’s fine to attend a conference with a high acceptance rate. It's fine to attend a conference that accepts every single person who applies. In fact, it’s less stressful.
One of my favorite conferences to go to is the West Virginia University Writers’ Workshop, which is held each summer in Morgantown, West Virginia. I started attending that conference when I was a student at WVU getting my MFA, and I kept going after I graduated. I didn’t go every year, but I did go at times, when I felt I particularly needed something more than my daily dose of writings and readings. What I do daily is like a run of the mill caffeine schedule. But when I go to a conference like this one it’s like getting a straight shot of adrenaline to supercharge my writing game.
4. I Went Down the Rabbit Hole
You know how you sometimes watch a movie and you’re like wait, I know that guy, that guy is in every film. Well, there are some writers like that. A few particularly prolific writers that come to mind are Bethany and Amy. There are actually several Bethanys and several Amys. But two that I have followed online, because they have had work published in many of the same journals that I have and some I wish I had, are Bethany Cutkomp and Amy DeBellis.
Seriously, check out their websites. Bethany and Amy, who I do not work for an am not receiving any kind of commission to promote, are widely published. We don’t even know each other. But I do follow them on my favorite social media site, X, and they even follow me back.
So when I can get stuck, I can ask now instead of where would Jesus submit because, even if you are a Christian, that’s not a particularly relevant question, as publication choices were likely slim in ancient Jerusalem, but instead I can ask WWBD or WWAD? I can even print this on bracelets and wear them, and no one will know and probably won’t ask. But I’ll know.
If I’m stuck, I can look at where other writers who are writing and publishing in places with the same or similar vibe to mine are getting their work picked up, and I can send to those journals. Granted, this is not a foolproof strategy. But it’s better than, say ,wearing a blindfold and throwing darts at a dartboard with lit magazine names on it, right? I mean that might work too, but this strategy might work better or at least cause less interior wall damage.
5. I Started Submitting Beyond Submittable
You know that saying: If the shoe fits, wear it? Well, I’m saying the opposite. I’m saying: If the shoe fits, take it off and put it aside for a while. Try on a different pair of shoes, maybe a flashier or more casual pair, or even a shoe alternative like sandals or slipper socks. Whatever method you have of submitting may be comfortable, but that doesn’t make it the most effective. If you’re only using Submittable to submit, you’re missing out on a bunch of journals, many of whom don’t charge fees that use other submission systems like Duosuma, email, Google Forms or Moksha (a submission platform that is popular with genre publications) and usually free for submitters.
Once I started taking that extra step of submitting to journals that use Moksha and more regularly using other submission managers and sending more submissions by email, I started getting acceptances to a bunch of really awesome submission fee-free journals like The Summerset Review, for example, which accepts submissions by email.
6. I Used Submittable as My Own Personal Cloud Storage
Who knows what flash fiction piece I wrote ten years ago and hardly submitted anywhere is? Well, Submittable knows. So if I’m feeling stuck and am like, okay, I’m not sure if I have it in me to write a new zombie apocalypse story right now, but I think I wrote one back in 2013, if I used Submittable to send it anywhere, it’s saved there. So I can back and download that story and read it and figure out what was wrong with it and rewrite it and submit it (with or without Submittable) but using Submittable allows me to access my old work on any computer with Internet access. (You can do this with actual cloud storage as well, but one good thing about Submittable (unlike the scary system I sometimes use to compose my work in email drafts) is that it’s easily searchable. That’s how I got my acceptance to Talk Vomit, a journal that pays contributors, by mining and revising my forgotten saved in Submittable stories.
If I’m stuck, I can look at where other writers who are writing and publishing in places with the same or similar vibe to mine are getting their work picked up, and I can send to those journals.
7. I Took Risks
When I was a grad student, someone asked one of our teachers if we should submit to newer lit journals. Like what if, they said, that journal closes down? Well, one thing that you should know by now is that the literary landscape is volatile. Sometimes, it feels like we’re all walking on landmines in a place where even established respected literary magazines like The Gettysburg Review can shut down with little to no warning. What my professor, who taught graduate poetry, said was: If you submit to a journal that closes down, write another poem.
This strategy has served me well, and it has allowed me to find some magazines before they became bigger well-established magazines. For example, I had a short story in the very first issue of Heavy Feather Review. That journal is still going strong and publishing many awesome writers today.
8. I Wrote and Workshopped Out of Genre
This strategy can help defeat writer’s block or nip it in the bud before it even begins. Feeling burnt on fiction? Try writing a poem a day. Needing to put your novel in a drawer after a long November? No problem. Maybe it’s time to dust off that essay you’ve been wanting to work on about pickles or bridges. What? You ask. Those are legitimate essay topics. In fact, I did write a whole essay about my fear of bridges, which was rather inconvenient given that I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That essay was published in The Hawaii Pacific Review.
You don’t have to be good at the genre that you choose as your retreat from your main genre relief. For example, I started doing a poem a day in April of 2009 when I was pregnant with my older son who is about to turn 15. I haven’t done it every year, but my friend Heather and I have done it many years. And those poem-a-day poems have led to many of my recent poetry publications.
9. I Used Submission Calls and Writing Prompts
There are a few that I do nearly every month. Those are Apex’s monthly themed flash fiction prompt (hey, Rebecca, it’s me, the girl whose flash has never made it in) and Rattle’s ekphrastic poetry challenge. Apex’s flash fiction call is posted monthly, and it’s themed. It’s revealed to Apex’s paying patrons on the first of the month and to everyone else on the 7th of the month. After that, writers have the rest of the month to get their themed flash fiction piece submitted. Details on that can be found here. Like I said, I’ve never (to date had anything) published my Apex flash-themed pieces or my responses to Rattle’s monthly pieces of art. Many other journals have taken and published their sloppy seconds. (In the interest of discretion, here, I’m not naming names.) It's great if you have a piece that fits a particular journal's themed submission call.
You can find more themed submission calls on websites like Chill Subs or on social media sites such as X, Instagram or Threads I’ve found a lot of great submission calls such as Moss Puppy Mag’s Boneyard submission call by using social media. It’s also fine if you don’t yet have a piece that fits a particular themed submission call. Start writing one.
10. I Channeled My Anger
Lit journal wrote you a really nasty rejection letter? Write about it. Guy from your writing workshop gave you really unhelpful comments on your latest story? Write about it. Encountered lit journal guidelines that seemed increasingly ridiculous? Write about it. (Okay, that one I did: Really Hard to Understand and Even Harder to Follow Submission Guidelines for Our Literary Journal.) And, you know what, not only did it help me get another publication under my typewriter, it also helped make me feel better.
Hope this helps, and Happy Writing!
I loved the way you wrote this (I’ve done a lot these things too and found them very effective). My favourite part is this didn’t come off as a “how to” advice column (which I don’t love), as much as a good story of the ways you’ve succeeded (and not succeeded). It was a great and magical read! Thank you for sharing your methods!
I'm too busy memorizing Lori's Ten Ways I Found Homes for My Work to write much.